"Oh, you are unspeakably mean!" she retorted.
"A comedy of some kind again? . . ." he queried.
"You dare to speak to me in that way?"
"Well . . . I'll quit then and merely say: good-day!" he snapped back angrily, bowed stiffly and, before she could bethink herself, jumped into a hack and drove away.
Cabinska was petrified with indignation.
Cabinska, on returning home whipped the children, scolded the nurse, and locked herself in her room.
She heard her husband enter, ask for her, and knock at her door; when dinner was served, she did not come out, but paced angrily up and down her room.
Soon thereafter, Janina arrived. Cabinska greeted her cordially in her boudoir, becoming suddenly unrecognizably hospitable.
Janina left alone, began to explore that boudoir with curiosity, for, although the entire house looked like a junk shop, or a railroad waiting-room of the third class, filled with packs, valises and trunks, this one room possessed an almost luxurious air. It had two windows opening upon the garden, the walls were decorated with a paper resembling brocatelle, and cupids were painted on the ceiling. The grotesquely carved furniture was upholstered with crimson silk striped with gold. A cream-colored rug in imitation of antique Italian covered the floor. A set of Shakespeare, bound in gilded morocco lay on a lacquered table painted in Chinese designs.
Janina did not pay much attention to all this, for she was entirely absorbed by the wreaths hanging on the walls which bore such inscriptions as these: "To our companion on the occasion of her birthday," "To a distinguished artist," "From the grateful public," "To the Directress from the Company," "From the admirers of your talent." The laurel branches and palm leaves were yellow and shrunken from age and hung there covered with dust and cobwebs. The broad white, yellow, and red ribbons streamed down the walls like separate colors of the rainbow with their gold-stamped letters proclaiming glories that had long since passed into oblivion. Those inscriptions and withered wreaths gave the room the appearance of a mortuary chapel.