Janina lay sick in bed.
It seemed to her as though she were at the bottom of a well and, from those depths into which they had shoved her she could see only the pale, distant blue of the sky, sometimes complete darkness, sometimes the twinkling of the stars, then again some wings, flying past, would cast a shadow over her eyes so that she lost knowledge of everything. She only felt that those eddies of life without, its voices, noises, cries, fears, and despair oozed down the smooth sides of the well and flowed into her soul as into a reservoir, penetrating her whole soul with an unconscious pain which she, however, felt with every fiber of her being.
The days dragged on as slowly as though they were strung on the chain of ages, as slowly as they drag on for those who have lost everything, even hope.
Janina sent word to the director that she was sick, but no one came to see her. Cabinska merely sent Wicek to say that Yadzia was longing for her piano lessons, and nothing more.
There, they were playing, learning, creating something and living! Here, she lay sunken in a complete apathy, like a crushed soul that hardly dares at moments to think that it still exists and then again sinks into an agony which cannot, however, end in the oblivion of death.
Janina was not really physically ill, for nothing pained her, but was dying from inner exhaustion. It seemed to her as though she had spent the whole store of her strength in those three months of theatrical life and that she was now dying from the hunger of her soul that had nothing left with which to keep it alive.
Throughout those long days, throughout that endless agony of silent nights she slowly pondered the nature of everyone whom she had met here; and that slow, but entirely one-sided, cognizance of her environment filled her with bitter sadness.
"There is no happiness on earth . . ." Janina whispered to herself, and it seemed to her that hitherto she had had a cataract blinding her eyes which fate had now brutally torn off. She now saw, but there were moments in which she yearned for her former blindness and groping in the dark.
"There is no happiness!" she repeated bitterly, and rebellious pessimism mastered her soul entirely.
Everywhere Janina saw only evil and baseness. There passed before her the forms of all her acquaintances and she scornfully thrust them all down into one pit, not excluding Wladek. He had dropped in only once to see her and began to excuse himself for his absence, but she impatiently interrupted him and asked him to go away.