"It only made you laugh, I know. The whole theater is laughing at my expense, for all the ladies have already been here."
"Your mother loves you," Janina spoke seriously.
"That love is beginning to choke me like a bone in my throat!" he answered sourly and wanted to add something else, but Janina bowed silently and passed on.
Wladek did not have the courage to follow her and went upstairs.
"What is happening in my own home?" she thought as she walked toward the theater. "What is my father doing? . . ."
And she suddenly felt within herself a glimmer of sympathy for that tyrant. She saw now how lonely he must be among strangers who ridiculed his eccentricities.
During the whole performance, the vision of her father constantly recurred in her memory. She asked herself what it was that had made him so cruel, and why he hated her?
Kotlicki brought her a bouquet of roses. She received it coolly, without even glancing at him.
"I see that you are out of sorts to-day," he said, taking her hand.
She pulled it away.