Janina, after a long silence, asked quietly: "Where is your son now?"
"Where?" she answered, rising from the floor. "Where? . . . He is dead! He shot himself."
She began to breathe heavily.
"My whole life has been like that!" she began again. "His father was a tailor and I kept a shop. In the beginning all went well for we had plenty of money and a decent home. My husband worked for a circus and shortly a performer caught his eye and he followed her into the world when the circus moved on."
She sighed heavily.
"I merely set my teeth tightly together. I toiled like a galley slave to gain a mere living for myself and daughter, but I was stricken by an epidemic. When I came out of it, everything went to the dogs, for my shop was sold to cover my debts. I was practically turned out into the street without a penny. An unspeakable rage seized me. I borrowed money wherever I could and together with my child went to seek my husband. I found him living with a shopkeeper in such comfort that he had forgotten all about us. I took him by the neck and brought him back with us to Warsaw. . . . He staid with me a whole year, bestowed another child upon me, and ran away again. My daughter grew up, we took home sewing, and managed to make a living somehow.
"Then after some years they brought back my husband stone-blind. I gave him a nook in my home, for my children desired it. God was at least merciful enough to take him away.
"Later, I married off my daughter to a peasant. One day about two years ago, I was present at my daughter's name day party to which a few relatives and friends had been invited. In the midst of it they brought me a telegram from Suwalki asking me to come immediately, for my son was very ill."
She paused for a moment, gazed blankly about the room and in a low voice, filled with despair whispered on, lifting her pale face to Janina's:
"He was already dead. . . . They were waiting for me to bury him. . . ."