his mother, but she went on
without even glancing at him.

Almost all feelings were dead within Janina, save that of a deathly
weariness. She entered the lighted Church of St. Ann on the Cracow
Suburb and, seating herself in one of the pews, gazed at the
illuminated altar and the throng of kneeling worshipers. She heard
the solemn tones of the organ and a wave of song rising above it.
She saw looking at her from the walls and the altars the peaceful
and happy faces of saints, but all this did not awaken a single
emotion in her.

"Thou wilt cut off mine enemies and destroy all them that afflict my
soul. Thou wilt destroy them . . ." Janina repeated mechanically and
left the church. No, no, she could not pray she could not.

Janina slept after all this with a deep, stony sleep that was free
from dreams.

On the following day Cabinski gave her a big role that used to be
Mimi's. Janina accepted it with indifference. With the same
indifference she went to Niedzielska's funeral. She walked at the
end of the procession unnoticed by anyone and gazed indifferently at
the thousands of graves in the cemetery and at the coffin and not a
scintilla of feeling stirred in her even at the sound of the sobbing
over the grave. Something had broken within her and she had lost all
ability to feel what was going on about her.

In the evening Janina went to the theater for the performance. She
dressed as usual and sat thoughtlessly gazing at the rows of candles
pasted to the tables, at the scribbled walls and at the rows of
actresses sitting before their mirrors.

Sowinska continually hung about the dressing-room and observed her
curiously.

Her companions spoke to Janina, but she did not answer them. Every
now and then, she fell into a state of torpor in which one beholds
without seeing anything and lives without feeling, while deep
within, at the very bottom of her consciousness, there was reflected
the image of that dying woman and there swarmed and hissed those
stinging and scornful whispers of her neighbors, mixed with the
words of the Penitential Psalms.

Suddenly, a tremor ran through Janina, for a voice reached her from
the stage which sounded like Grzesikiewicz's; so she arose and went
out.

Wladek was standing on the stage, engaged in a lively conversation
with Majkowska, whose naked shoulders he was kissing.

Janina paused behind one of the scenes, for some feeling without a
name passed through her heart, like the s