The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of applause, the banging of beer glasses against the tables, the clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles in the shooting galleries. The lanterns diffused a hazy and muddy light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who accosted them. Ribald laughter and coarse jokes flew around like fire-works and were immediately answered by broad, thoughtless merriment. The public expressed its satisfaction with the singing by shouting, beating time with their canes, and banging their beer glasses. At moments the wind would entirely drown out the singing, or bend the few wretched trees with a rustling sound and scatter the leaves over the stage and the heads of the public. Wolska continued to sing. Her red vaudeville costume, with low-cut front, gleamed like a gaudy spot against the blue background of the stage and excellently accentuated her thin, thickly painted face, her sunken and pale eyes, and her sharp features which looked like the skeleton-like face of a starving man. She swayed from side to side with a heavy motion to the measure of the song: "Such ardent love took hold of me, I embraced Stach most tenderly." Her voice floated through the garden with a hollow, rasping sound and added to the din made by that noisy and drunken crowd. Brutal laughs broke out in sharp, penetrating scales, and those bravos emitted by the drunken threats of a Sunday public and interrupted by hiccoughs, beat against the stage with a hoarse and hollow roar together with the biting jibes that were not spared the singer. But she heard nothing and sang on, indifferent and cold to all that surrounded her. She flung forth tones, words, and mimicry with the automatism of a hypnotized woman, only at moments, her eyes would seek Janina's as though they were begging for pity. Janina grew pale and red by turns, unable to endure any longer that alcohol-saturated atmosphere and that drunken din which filled her with aversion and disgust. "I would rather die!" she thought. Oh, no, she would never be able to amuse such a public. She would spit in its eyes and scorn herself and then . . . if there were no other way out . . . drown herself in the Wisla! Wolska finished her song and her partner, dressed in a Cracovian costume, went about among the drinking crowd with his notes in his hand, collecting money. Remarks that froze one with their cynicism and brutal frankness, were hurled into his face, but he only smiled with the dull smile of a habitual drunkard, nervously twitched his lips and humbly bowed his thanks for those ten-copeck pieces that were thrown on his notes.