Again there followed a moment of complete silence in which was heard nothing but the even voice of the stage-manager, the dripping of the rain and the buzz of the saw in the dressing-room.

"Let me have a cigarette," said Wawrzecki turning to Wladek. "Did you win anything at cards yesterday?"

"I lost, as usual, just as I was on the point of making a big haul of three hundred rubles. Some luck, eh? . . . A certain plan has occurred to my mind! . . ." Wladek leaned over toward Wawrzecki and began to whisper secretly into his ear.

"What have you done about your living quarters?" Krzykiewicz asked Glas, handing him a cigarette.

"Oh, nothing, I'm still living in the same place."

"Are you paying your rent?"

"Not yet, but soon!" answered the comedian, winking one of his eyes.

"Listen Glas! I heard that Cabinski is buying a house on Leszno Street."

"What are you trying to tell me! By Gad, I'd immediately move into it to make up for the salary he owes me. Where would he get the money?"

"Ciepieszewski saw him with the agents who have the house for sale."

"Nurse!" called Cabinska.

The nurse hastily entered carrying a letter under her ap.r.o.n.

"It wasn't I, it was Felka who broke that looking-gla.s.s. She threw a champagne bottle aiming at the chandelier, but struck the mirror instead. Bang! and immediately thirty rubles were added to the bill.

That fat guy of hers merely frowned," one of the chorus girls was relating.

"Don't lie! I was not drunk and I remember exactly who broke it,"

retorted Felka.

"You remember do you? Do you also remember how you jumped off the table and then took off your shoes and . . . ha! ha! ha! ha!"

"Be quiet there!" sharply called Topolski to the chorus girls.

They subdued their voices, but Mimi began almost aloud to tell Kaczkowska about a new style of hat she had seen on Long Street.

"If it goes on that way much longer, I won't be able to stand it!

The landlord has ordered me to move. Yesterday I p.a.w.ned almost the last rag, for I had to buy my Johnnie some wine. The poor little fellow is convalescing so slowly. He already wants to get out of bed and is getting restless and peevish. If Ciepieszewski doesn't engage me and pay me in advance, the landlord will throw me out into the street," whispered Wolska to one of her companions of the chorus.

"But are you sure Ciepieszewski is organizing a company?" asked her listener.

"He is, undoubtedly. I am to see him in a few days to sign a contract."

"So you're not going to stay with Cabinski?"

"No, he doesn't want to pay the overdue salary he owes me."

Thirty years were written plainly on Wolska's wearied face on which worry had left its deep marks. The thick layer of powder and rouge could not conceal those wrinkles, nor the unrest that glowed in her eyes. She had a six-year-old son who had been ill since the spring.

She defended him desperately, at the expense of starving herself.

"Counselor! Welcome to our company!" cried Glas, spying the old man, who for a few weeks had not been seen in the theater.

The counselor entered and began greeting everybody. The reading of the play was interrupted, for all sprang up from their seats.

"Good morning! Good morning! Am I interrupting you?"

"No, no!" chorused the actors.

"Have a seat, Counselor. We shall listen together," cried Cabinska.

"Ah, young master! my regards to you!" called the counselor to Glogowski.

"An old idiot!" growled Glogowski, nodding his head and hiding behind the scenes, for he was already exasperated at those continual interruptions and conversations.

"Silence! For goodness' sake, this is getting to be like a real synagogue!" cried the irritated Topolski and began to read on. But no one listened any longer. The directress left with the counselor and, one by one, the others quietly slipped out after her. The rain began to pour heavily and beat so noisy a tattoo upon the tin roof of the theater that it drowned out all other sounds. It became so dark, that Topolski could not see to read.

The entire company removed to the men's dressing-room. It was lighter and warmer there, so they began to chat.

Janina stood together with Glogowski in the doorway and was saying something in an enthusiastic voice about the theater when Rosinska interrupted her with derision: "Goodness, you seem to be obsessed by the theater! . . . Well, well, I would never have believed such a thing possible had I not heard it . . . ."

"Why, it's simple enough; the theater holds everything that I desire."

"I, on the other hand, only begin to live outside of the theater."

"Then why don't you abandon the stage?"

"If I only could break away. I'd not stay here another hour!" she answered with bitterness.

"That's merely talk! Each one of us could break away from the theater, if we only would," said Wolska quietly. "For me this life is harder than for any of you and I know that if I forsook the stage my lot would be much better, but whenever I think that I shall have to quit the stage some day, so great a fear besets me that it seems as though I should die without it."

"The theater is a slow poisoning, a dying by inches each day!"

complained Razowiec.

"Don't you whine, for your sickness comes not from the theater, but from your stomach," remarked Wawrzecki.

"That continual dying and poisoning is, nevertheless, a kind of ecstasy!" began Janina anew.

"Oh, a splendid ecstasy! If you want to call hunger, continual envy, and the inability to live otherwise, an ecstasy!" sneered Rosinska.

"Happy are they who have not fallen a prey to that disease, or escaped it in time" added Razowiec.

"But isn't it better to live and suffer and die in that way, as long as you have art as your goal. A thousand times would I prefer to live that way than to be my husband's servant, the slave of my children, and a household chattel!" exclaimed Janina with a pa.s.sionate outburst.

Wladek began to declaim with a comical pathos:

"Oh priestess, most elect! To thee, in this temple of art, High altars I'll erect!

"Please forgive me that," continued Wladek. "I myself say that outside of art there is nothing! If it were not for the theater . . ."