Janina gazed with a strange feeling at the face of Wolska which, though worn and faded, beamed with a deep motherly love. She looked like a beggar woman in her dark, stained cloak and gray dress, frayed at the bottom; she wore a straw hat and black mended gloves and carried a parasol which was rusty from continual use. But through all this poverty there shone, as bright as the sun, her love for her child. She saw and heeded nothing else, for all that did not concern her child had no meaning for her. Janina walked alongside of her, gazing with admiration at this woman. She knew her story. Wolska was the daughter of a rich and intelligent family. She fell in love with an actor, or else with the theater itself, and went on the stage and, although later her lover abandoned her and she suffered poverty and humiliation, she could not tear herself away from the theater and now, she centered all her love and all her hopes upon her child that had been seriously ill since the spring. "Where does she get all her strength?" thought Janina and then, turning to Wolska, she asked: "What are you doing now?" Wolska shuddered, a faint blush flitted over her worn face and her lips quivered with a painful expression as she answered: "I sing . . . What else could I do? I must live and must earn enough to pay Johnnie's doctor bills. I must. Although it fills me with shame to do it, I must. Alas, such is my fate, such is my fate!" she moaned complainingly. "But I don't know what you mean," said Janina, who could not understand why Wolska should feel ashamed to earn a living by singing. "Because, you see, Miss Janina, I don't want anybody to know about it. . . . You will keep it to yourself, won't you?" she begged with tears in her eyes. "Certainly I give you my word. Moreover, whom would I tell? . . . I am all alone in the world." "I sing in a restaurant on Podwal St.," said Wolska in a low and hurried voice. "In a restaurant!" whispered Janina, standing stock-still in amazement. "What else could I do? Tell me, what else could I do? I need money for food and rent. How else could I earn it, when I don't even know how to sew? At home I knew how to play on the piano a bit and could speak a little French, but of course, that would not bring me a penny now. I saw an advertisement in the Courier for a singer, so I went there and got the position. They pay me a ruble a day together with meals and . . ." but tears choked her voice and she grasped Janina's hand and pressed it feverishly. Janina returned the hand-clasp with a similar one and they walked on in silence. "Come along with me, won't you? It will make me feel a little more at ease," said Wolska. Janina willingly agreed.