hand organ, then again, a warm breath of wind, saturated
with the raw odor of the river, fanned her feverish face. All these
sights and sounds beat against her as against a lifeless statue and
rebounded again without making any impression on her.

The water in its depths began to pass through ever stranger
transformations: it turned black, but that blackness was interwoven
with gleams of light, flames of red, streaks of violet, and rays of
yellow, like the glowing flame of pain. There, in those silent
depths, there seemed to be a better and fuller life, for the waves
murmured so joyously, broke against the piers and stone bulwarks
and, as though with frenzied laughter, united again, blended,
tumbled over one another and flowed on. Janina seemed almost to hear
their care free laughter, their calling to one another and their
voice of mighty joy.

"What are you doing here?" suddenly said a voice behind her.

Janina trembled and turned around slowly. Wolska was standing before
her and curiously and uneasily watching her.

"Oh, nothing, I was just gazing about."

"Come with me, the air here isn't healthy," said Wolska, taking
Janina by the arm, for she read in her dimmed eyes a suicidal
intent.

Janina allowed herself to be led away and only after they had gone
some distance, she asked quietly, "So you have not left with
Cabinski?"

"I couldn't. You see, my Johnnie's health is again worse. The doctor
has forbidden me to move him from bed and I believe that it would
kill him," whispered Wolska sadly. "I had to stay, for, of course, I
can't send him to the hospital. If it comes to the worst, we shall
die together, but I will not forsake him. The doctor still gives me
some hope that he will recover."

Janina gazed with a strange feeling at the face of Wolska which,
though worn and faded, beamed with a deep motherly love. She looked
like a beggar woman in her dark, stained cloak and gray dress,
frayed at the bottom; she wore a straw hat and black mended gloves
and carried a parasol which was rusty from continual use. But
through all this poverty there shone, as bright as the sun, her love
for her child. She saw and heeded nothing else, for all that did not
concern her child had no meaning for her.

Janina walked alongside of her, gazing with admiration at this
woman. She knew her story. Wolska was the daughter of a rich and
intelligent family. She fell in love with an actor, or else with the
theater itself, and went