"Have you any kind of a voice?" "A voice?" "Do you sing?" "At home I used to sing a little . . . but I do not think I have a stage voice . . . however, I . . ." "Only come a little earlier and we shall try you out. . . . I shall speak to the musical director." CHAPTER III The Lazienki Park in Warsaw was athrob with the breath of spring. The roses bloomed and the jasmines diffused their heavy odor through the park. It was so quiet and lovely there, that Janina sat for a few hours near the lake, forgetting everything. The swans with spreading wings, like white cloudlets, floated over the azure bosom of the water; the marble statues glowed with immaculate whiteness; the fresh and luxuriant foliage was like a vast sea of emerald steeped in golden sunlight; the red blossoms of the chestnut trees floated down on the ground, the waters and the lawns, and flickered like rosy sparks among the shadows of the trees. The noisy hum of the city reached here in a subdued echo and lost itself among the bushes. Janina had come here straight from the theater. What she had seen disquieted her; she felt within herself a dull pain of disillusionment and hesitation. She did not wish to remember anything, but only kept repeating to herself, "I'm in the theater! . . . I'm in the theater!" There passed before her mind the figures of her future companions. Instinctively she felt that in those faces there was nothing friendly, only, envy and hypocrisy. Presently she proceeded to her hotel at which she had stopped on the advice of her fellow-travelers, on the train to Warsaw. It was a cheap affair on the outskirts of the city and frequented chiefly by petty farm officials and the actors of small provincial theaters. She was given a small room on the third floor, with a window looking out upon the red roofs of the old city, extending in crooked and irregular lines. It was such an ugly view that, on returning from Lazienki, with her eyes and soul still full of the green of the verdure and the golden sunlight, she immediately pulled down the shades and began to unpack her trunk. She had not yet had time to think of her father. The city, the hubbub and bustle which engulfed her immediately upon her arrival at the station, the weariness caused by the journey and by the last moments at Bukowiec, and afterwards those feverish hours at the theater, the rehearsal, the park, the waiting for evening and her own coming rehearsal all this had so completely absorbed her that she forgot almost entirely about home. She dressed carefully, for she wished to appear at her best. When she arrived at the garden-theater the lights were already turned on and the public was beginning to assemble. She went boldly behind the scenes. The stage hands were arranging the decorations; of the company, no one was as yet present.