Janina lay sick in bed.

It seemed to her as though she were at the bottom of a well and, from those depths into which they had shoved her she could see only the pale, distant blue of the sky, sometimes complete darkness, sometimes the twinkling of the stars, then again some wings, flying past, would cast a shadow over her eyes so that she lost knowledge of everything. She only felt that those eddies of life without, its voices, noises, cries, fears, and despair oozed down the smooth sides of the well and flowed into her soul as into a reservoir, penetrating her whole soul with an unconscious pain which she, however, felt with every fiber of her being.

The days dragged on as slowly as though they were strung on the chain of ages, as slowly as they drag on for those who have lost everything, even hope.

Janina sent word to the director that she was sick, but no one came to see her. Cabinska merely sent Wicek to say that Yadzia was longing for her piano lessons, and nothing more.

There, they were playing, learning, creating something and living!

Here, she lay sunken in a complete apathy, like a crushed soul that hardly dares at moments to think that it still exists and then again sinks into an agony which cannot, however, end in the oblivion of death.

Janina was not really physically ill, for nothing pained her, but was dying from inner exhaustion. It seemed to her as though she had spent the whole store of her strength in those three months of theatrical life and that she was now dying from the hunger of her soul that had nothing left with which to keep it alive.

Throughout those long days, throughout that endless agony of silent nights she slowly pondered the nature of everyone whom she had met here; and that slow, but entirely one-sided, cognizance of her environment filled her with bitter sadness.

"There is no happiness on earth . . ." Janina whispered to herself, and it seemed to her that hitherto she had had a cataract blinding her eyes which fate had now brutally torn off. She now saw, but there were moments in which she yearned for her former blindness and groping in the dark.

"There is no happiness!" she repeated bitterly, and rebellious pessimism mastered her soul entirely.

Everywhere Janina saw only evil and baseness. There pa.s.sed before her the forms of all her acquaintances and she scornfully thrust them all down into one pit, not excluding Wladek. He had dropped in only once to see her and began to excuse himself for his absence, but she impatiently interrupted him and asked him to go away.

She already knew him well enough and wondered as the thought occurred to her that she had ever loved him.

"Why? Why?" Janina asked herself.

Shame and regret began to fill her at the thought that she had fallen so low and for him. He now appeared to her miserable and common. She could not forgive herself.

"What fatality placed him in my path of life?" Janina asked herself further. In her own eyes she felt deeply humiliated.

"I did not love him," she pondered and a shudder of disgust shook her. He began to grow hateful to her.

And the theater also, lost a great deal of its glamor for Janina in those hours of reflection. She now looked at it through the prism of those continual quarrels and behind-the-scenes intrigues, through the vanity of its priests and through her own disappointments.

"It is not as I used to see it formerly!" she lamented.

Everything became increasingly smaller and grayer to Janina's inner vision. Everywhere she began to discover rags, sham, and falsehood.

People obscured everything for her with their baseness and pettiness. She no longer desired to reign as a queen upon the stage.

"What is that? What is that?" she whispered to herself and saw a motley, heterogeneous public that was indifferent to the quality of a play. It came to the theater to amuse itself and laugh; it hankered for clownishness and the circus.

"What is that? Comedianism for profit and for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the mult.i.tude," Janina answered herself. The stage now appeared to her as a real arena for the feats of clowns and trained monkeys.

"I wanted to be an entertainer of the mob! And where does art come in? What is pure art, the ideal, for which hundreds of people sacrifice their lives?"

"What is it and where is it to be found?" she asked herself uneasily, beginning to see that everything is rather an amus.e.m.e.nt than an aim in itself.

Literature, poetry, music, painting, and all the fine arts pa.s.sed before Janina's mind. She could not separate their utilitarian aspect from their purely artistic one. She saw that all artists played, sang, and created only to amuse that vast, brutal, mob. For it they sacrificed their lives, their strength, and their dreams; for it they struggled and suffered, lived and died.

To Janina that vast mult.i.tude of Grzesikiewiczs, Kotlickis, and counselors, appeared in its ignorance and low instincts like a cruel master who, with a half-mocking, half-favoring smile, looked down upon that entire human throng of artists that painted, played, recited, created, and begged with a nervous look for his favor and recognition.

And she saw one immense wave of human beings spreading over the wide plains of earth, swaying slowly and going nowhere; and on the other side all those artists who were pa.s.sing through the mob in all directions, loudly proclaiming something, singing with inspired voices, pointing to the expanse of heaven, calling attention to the stars, trying to bring about some order in this disorderly, teeming mult.i.tude, opening paths among it, imploring it in deep tones. But the mult.i.tude either laughed or merely nodded its a.s.sent, but did not budge from its place. It surged and pushed about and trampled the artists underfoot.

"What is that? Why?" Janina asked herself, greatly terrified. "If they do not need us then we ought to let them alone, keeping ourselves apart from them and living only for ourselves and with ourselves." But again everything became confused in her mind and she could not conceive how it would be possible to live apart from the rest of humanity and concluded that it would not be worth living at all in that way. Her thoughts whirled in confusion through her brain.

Sowinska, who now took care of her with motherly solicitude, came in and interrupted her frenzied thoughts.

"Why don't you go home?" she advised Janina sincerely.

"Never!" answered Janina.

"Why should you wear yourself out in that way? You will rest a little, gain new strength, and return again to the theater."

"No," answered Janina quietly.

"I forgot to tell you that old Mrs. Niedzielska was here to see me yesterday."

"Do you know her?" asked the younger woman.

"Not at all, but she had some business with me. Oh, she is a sly fox, that old hag!" added Sowinska.

"Perhaps she is a bit too miserly, but otherwise she is a rather honest woman."

"Honest? You'll find out yet for yourself how honest she is."

"Why?" asked Janina, but without curiosity, for it didn't at all interest her now.

"I will only say this much . . . that she does not love you in the least, not in the least!"

"That's strange, for I never did her any wrong," answered Janina.

Sowinska's demeanor suddenly changed, for she glanced angrily at Janina and wanted to say something sharp, but seeing that Janina's face wore an expression of complete indifference, she refrained and left the room.

Janina thought about Bukowiec.

"I have no home," she thought, even without bitterness. "The whole wide world is my home," she added, but suddenly remembered what Grzesikiewicz had told her about her father and stirred as though some hidden pain had awakened in her. An uneasiness, not such as besets one on the eve of some event, but such as one feels on remembering some good that one has lost forever, filled Janina's heart. It was the pain of the past like the quiet remembrance of the dead.

But those memories of Bukowiec and those lonely nights when she dreamed, forgetting about everything, and created for herself such wondrous worlds, now flashed upon her mind in all their vividness.

Only the memory of that exuberant and majestic nature, those vast fields, and those silent glens full of murmurs and bird songs, verdure, and wild grandeur swathed Janina in melancholy and lulled her weary soul with its charms.

The woods in which she was reared, those dim depths full of unspeakable wonders, those gigantic trees to which she was united by a thousand affinities, outlined themselves in her mind ever more powerfully. Janina longed for them now and listened through the nights, for it seemed to her that she heard the grave autumnal murmur of the forest, the somnolent rustling of its branches. It seemed that she felt within herself the slow, endless swaying of those giant trees, the soft motions of the verdure bathed in golden sunlight, the joyous cry of the birds, the fragrance of the young pine saplings and juniper bushes the whole leisurely life of nature.

Janina lay for whole hours at a time, without a word, thought, or motion, for her soul was there in those verdant woods. She wandered over the meadows covered with wild raspberries and waving gra.s.s, strayed across the fields where the rye grew high like a wood, swaying and murmuring in the breeze and gleaming with dew in the sunlight, penetrated the groves full of the pungent smell of the resin. She followed each road, each boundary, each wood path, greeted everything that lived there and cried out to the fields, woods, the hills, and the sky: "I have come! I have come!" smiling as though she had found a lost happiness.

These invigorating memories restored Janina's health almost entirely. On the eighth day she felt strong enough for a walk. She was longing for the fresh air, the verdure unsoiled by city dust, the sunlight, and the vast open s.p.a.ces. She felt that the city was stifling her, that here, at every step, she had to limit her own ego and continually struggle against all the barriers of custom and dependence.

Janina pa.s.sed through the Place of Arms and, going beyond the Citadel, she walked along the damp sand dunes to Bielany.

An unbroken silence enveloped her on all sides. The sun shone brightly and warmly, but from the water there blew a brisk, invigorating breeze.