And so great grew Janina's indignation, that she cried almost aloud through her tears: "Base wretches! wretches! wretches!" Soon afterwards, Wladek returned bringing with him the powder, a bottle of whisky and a package of sandwiches. He eyed Janina curiously and looked about the room. "The counselor was here!" she flung at him harshly. The actor laughed cynically and exclaimed in a barroom jargon, "I cornered him. Now we can have a little feast." Janina was about to tell him how base he was, but suddenly there rang in her ears those words: "Be good! Forgive!" She restrained herself and began to laugh, but so harshly and so long that she fell upon the bed and, tossing about on it, began to repeat amid that dreadful, hysterical laughter: "Be good! Forgive!" After a week's intermission there began again for Janina her former hard life and an even harder battle, because now it had become a struggle for mere daily bread. She sang, as before, in the chorus, dressed as a chorus girl, peered through the curtain at the public, whose attendance at the theater was decreasing every day, strayed about the stage and the dressing-rooms during the intermissions, and listened to the whispered conversations, the music, and the quarrels. But how different now were her thoughts and her feelings, how different now and unlike her former self was Janina! She no longer sought in the eyes of the public enthusiasm and love of art, nor did she cast challenging glances at the front rows of seats, for poverty had taught her how to estimate from the stage the size of the audience and from it to draw deductions as to the proportionate size of her salary. Poverty taught her to take covertly from the storeroom the bread that was often used on the stage and to eat it on the way home; frequently this was her entire daily sustenance. No one admired her now, or escorted her home; nor did she contend with anyone about art. Kotlicki had completely vanished, the counselor was angry at Janina and kept away from the theater, while Wladek spoke with her only at times and visited her ever more rarely, offering as his excuse his mother's growing weakness and the need of being with her. Janina knew that he was lying, but she did not contradict him, for he was entirely indifferent to her. She felt a deep contempt for him, but could not break with him entirely because there still lingered deep down in her consciousness a memory of the happy hours they had spent together. She treated him coldly and did not let him kiss her, but she could not tell him outright that he was a scoundrel, for he was, in a way, the last link uniting her strange soul with the world.