"Mr. Glogowski! come, hurry!" she cried, taking him by the hand.
"Let me alone!" he growled threateningly.
Majkowska left him and Glogowski sat there and continued to think. Neither the applause, nor the demands for his appearance nor the success of his play interested him any longer, for he was sorely worried by the knowledge that his play was entirely bad. He saw its defects ever more plainly and the knowledge that another one of his efforts had proved vain made him writhe with pain. With helpless rage he listened to the public applauding the rude and characteristically comic episodes which were merely the background upon which the souls of his Churls had to be outlined, while the theme and thesis of the play itself passed without making any impression.
"Mr. Glogowski I want you to go out after the fifth act if they call for you," Janina said to him decisively.
"But please consider, who is calling for me! Don't you see that it is the gallery? Don't you see the smiles of derision upon the faces of the press and the public in the first rows of seats? I tell you the play is bad, abominable and rotten! Wait and see what they will write about it to-morrow."
"What will happen to-morrow we shall see to-morrow. To-day there is success and your splendid play."
"Splendid!" he cried painfully. "If you could see the plan of it that I have here in my head, if you could see how splendid and complete it is here, you would know that what they are playing is merely a poor rag and a fragment."
Immediately afterwards Cabinski, Topolski, and Kotlicki approached Glogowski and urged him to appear before the public, but still he resisted. Only at the end of the play when the entire audience was wildly applauding and calling for the author, Glogowski went out on the stage with Majkowska, bowed ostentatiously, smoothed his shock of hair and clumsily retreated behind the scenes.
"If the play had dances, songs, and music, I wager it would run to the end of the season," said Cabinski.
"Dry up, or drink yourself to death, but do not tell me such nonsense," shouted Glogowski. "The next thing you know, the restaurant-keeper will come running in here and begin to berate me because for the same reasons he sold less beer and whiskey; a public that must listen and laughs seldom prefers hot tea."