"Have you not seen Mr. Niedzielski?" she asked Rosinska.
"No. My poor child, so that is what they have done to you! But you must not take it so much to heart. If you want to be an artist you must bear a great deal, suffer a great deal. My dear, if you only knew what I had to go through and still have to. If you wanted to grieve over all the afflictions that come to you, become irritated over all the gossip they spread about you or weep over every intrigue in which they try to entangle you, you would have neither any tears, nor eyes, nor strength left! There's no use crying over it, for things can't be any different in the theater! Moreover, you haven't lost anything by it! That one disappointment makes you richer by one more experience."
"Perhaps they are right, after all. I must have no talent whatever, if Cabinski took away the role from me . . . ."
"It is just because you have a talent that they played this trick on you. I heard what the cousin of that amateur said at the first rehearsal."
"What good will all that do me, when I can't play and have nothing to live on."
"That is all the doing of Majkowska. She forced Cabinski to take the role away from you."
"I know she bears me a grudge, but I can't conceive why she should revenge herself in such an inhuman way!"
"You don't know her yet. . . . I don't know what you two quarreled about, but I do know that when she saw you on the stage at the first rehearsal she became so greatly afraid that you might eclipse her that she immediately began to lay plans for your undoing. I saw how she hung about that amateur, how she fawned upon his cousin and Cabinski, how she kissed the hands of the directress! I saw with my own eyes! Did you ever hear of anyone degrading one's self in that manner? But she attained her end. She has already done away with many another in the same way. You probably do not know what I, an actress of long standing and with so large a repertory, have to suffer on her account. You could not notice what was being schemed, for it was all done so quickly that besides myself, probably no one else knew about it. Such a creature as she always has luck! But wait I will fix her to-day! I'll pay her back for the both of us!"
The dressing-room slowly began to fill with actresses, their noisy chatter and the smell of powder and pigments that were being warmed over the candles. They were beginning to dress.
At last Majkowska came in, stately and triumphant, with a bouquet in her hands and roses in her corsage. Seeing Janina sitting alongside of Rosinska she frowned and cried angrily: "If I am not mistaken, this is not the dressing-room of the chorus girls."