Janina felt a strange disappointment as she realized that the faces of the public were very much like those of Grzesikiewicz, her father, her home acquaintances, the principal of her boarding school, the professors at the academy and the telegrapher at Bukowiec. For the moment, it seemed to her that that was a sheer impossibility. How so? . . . She, of course, knew what to think about those others, whom long ago she had classified as fools, light-heads, drunkards, gossipers, silly geese and house-hens; small and shallow souls, a band of common eaters-of-bread, sunk in the shallow morass of material existence. And these people that filled the theater and doled out applause, and whom she had once thought of as demi-gods were they the same as those others? Janina asked herself, that, wonderingly. "Madame!" said a voice beside her. She tore her face away from the curtain. At her side stood a handsome, elegantly dressed young man who was holding his hand to his hat, smiling in a conventional manner. "Just let me look a moment . . ." he said. Janina moved away a bit. He glanced through the slit in the curtain and relinquished her place to her. "Pardon me, pardon me for disturbing you . . ." he said. "Oh, I've looked all I wanted to, sir . . ." she answered. "Not a very interesting sight, is it? . . ." he queried. "The most authentic Philistia; trade-mongers and shoemakers. . . . Perhaps you think, madame, that they come to hear, and admire the play? Oh, no! . . . they come here to display their new clothes, have supper, and kill time. . . ." "Well then, who does come for the play itself?" she asked. "In this place, no one. . . . At the Grand Theater and at the Varieties . . . there, perhaps, you may yet find a group, a very small group who love art and who come for the sake of art alone. I have often touched upon that matter in the papers." "Mr. Editor, let me have a cigarette!" called an actor from behind the scenes. "At your service." He handed the actor a silver cigarette-case. Janina, moving away, gazed with admiration at the writer, delighted with the opportunity of observing such a man at close range. How many times in the country while listening to the everlasting conversations about farming, politics, rainy and clear weather, she had dreamed of this other world, of people who would discourse to her of ideals, art, humanity, progress and poetry, and who impersonated in themselves all those ideals. "You must not be very long in this company for I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before . . ." "I was engaged only to-day." "Have you appeared elsewhere before?" "No, never on the real stage. . . . I took part only in amateur theatricals." "That is the way nearly all dramatic talent develops. I know . . . I happen to know . . . Modrzejewska herself often mentioned that fact to me," he remarked, with a condescending smile. "Mr. Editor . . . do your duty!" called Kaczkowska, extending her hands.