"And what answer did you give to all that?"
"I? . . . Nothing, of course! I merely turned my back on them and, since I have a splendid plan for a new play, I shall immediately start working on it. I have received a job as a dramatic coach at Radomsk and I shall go there for a half year. I am only waiting for the final notification."
"Is it absolutely necessary for you to go?"
"Yes, I must! Dramatic coaching is my only means of support. For two months I have been without any occupation and now I am penniless. I presented the play at my own expense, paid my respects to the public, had a good time at Warsaw and now it is time to quit! It is time to ring down the curtain so that I may prepare for another farce. Goodbye, Miss Janina. Before I leave, I'll drop in here or at the theater."
He shook hands with her, exclaimed, "May the deuce take me!" and hurried away.
Janina was sad. She had become so accustomed to Glogowski, to his eccentricities, paradoxes, and to that rough and ready manner which was merely a screen for his shyness and hypersensitive delicacy that regret filled her at the thought that she was now to remain alone.
She had no more money left and was living solely on what she received at the theater. Janina dared not admit it to herself, but with each new request for money she would be reminded of her home and of those times when it was unnecessary for her to think of anything, for she had all she needed. She felt deeply humiliated by this almost daily begging for a few meager copecks, but there was no way out of it, unless it was the one that she constantly read in the gray eyes of Sowinska and saw exemplified in the life of her companions.
Almost each evening Janina would stroll on Theater Place. If she was in a great hurry, she would only pass through the place, get a glimpse of the Grand Theater and return home again, but if she had plenty of time she would find a seat on the square or on a bench near the tramcar station and from there gaze at the rows of columns, at the lofty profile of the theater's facade and lose herself in dreaming. She somehow felt that those walls drew her irresistibly to them. She experienced moments of deep delight when passing under the colonnade, or when in the calm of a bright night she viewed the long gray mass of the edifice. That huge stone giant seemed to speak to her and she would listen to the whispers, the echoes, and the sounds that floated from it. Spread out before her in the dim twilight and visible to her soul alone, there would pass before her imagination the scenes that were acted there not long ago.
An additional reason for losing herself in dreams was to dull the pinch of poverty, that had become more acute, for the second half of the theatrical season, from a financial standpoint, was a great deal worse than the first. The attendance was increasingly smaller because of the continual rains and the cold evenings and, of course, the pay of the actors was proportionately smaller.
It often happened that Cabinski in the middle of a performance would take the cash box and make away with it under the pretext that he was ill, leaving only a few rubles to be divided among the company and, if he was caught before he made his escape, he would almost cry.