"I think so. It is quiet and light. . . . Who lived here before me?"
"Miss Nicolette. She is now at the Warsaw Theater . . . That's a good omen."
"No, not entirely. They are likely not to engage her. . . ."
"Oh, they'll engage her all right. . . . Miss Zarnecka is clever," said Mme. Anna, the daughter of Sowinska into whose home Janina had just moved.
She was twenty-four years old, neither homely nor pretty with an indefinite color of hair and eyes, but with a very definite slenderness and bad temper.
She conducted a dressmaking establishment under the name of Mme. Anna and although she made her living on actresses and very often received free tickets to the theater, she never went there and hated artists. There were often scenes over this with her mother, but old Sowinska, would not so much as listen to any suggestion that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly stingy, ignorant, pitiless, and jealous.
Mme. Anna examined Janina's wardrobe with ill-concealed malice.
"All that will have to be made over, for it smells of the country," she decreed.
Janina began to protest a little, maintaining that the same styles could often be seen in the streets.
"Yes, but who wears them, please take notice of that: shop women or shoemakers' wives; a self-respecting woman will not wear such rags!" Mme. Anna scornfully persisted.