"Madame Directress loaned it to me."
"Oh! something must have melted her today!"
"She told me such sad stories. . . ."
"The actress! . . . if she only played that way on the stage there would be no better in the world."
"You must be joking, madame! . . . She told me about Lwow and her past."
"She's a liar, that old hag! She was then the sweetheart of some hussar and made such scandals that they turned her out of the theater. What was she at the Lwow theater? . . . a chorus girl only. Ho! ho! those are old tricks. . . . We all know them here long since!"
"Tell me how I look?" asked Janina at length.
"Beautiful. . . . I'll wager they'll all be chasing after you!"
An increasing nervousness seized Janina. She walked up and down the stage, peered through the hole in the curtain, viewed herself in all the mirrors, and then tried to sit still and wait, but could not endure it. The feverish excitement and nervousness attendant upon a first appearance shook her as with the ague. She could not stand or sit still for a single moment.
It seemed as though she did not see the people, the preparations that were going on about her, the lights, or even the stage itself, but only had in her brain the reflection of a confused and moving mass of eyes and faces. At each moment she would gaze with terror at the audience and feel as though her heart were ceasing to beat.