On her second entrance she felt only a slight tremor. She sang, heard the music, and gazed straight at the public. She was also emboldened by seeing the editor sitting in the front row and encouraging her with a friendly smile. She kept looking at him and after that she was able to distinguish with increasing clearness individual faces in the audience. In some scene in which the chorus promenaded about the back of the stage, while a comic dialogue was going on at the front, Janina's companions indulged in whispered conversations. "Brona, look! Your fellow is there in the third row toward the left." "Oh look! Dasha is in the theater . . . goodness, how she is dolled up. . . ." "Siwinska! fasten my hooks, for I feel my skirt is falling down." "Lou! your wig is coming off." "Look to your own shags!" "I'm going to Marceline with someone to-morrow . . . perhaps you will go with us, Zielinska?" "Look at the eyes that student is making at me!" "I don't care a snap for penniless plugs." "But what merry chaps they are!" "No, thank you! They have nothing but whiskey and sardines. That's a treat, only for those of the street." "Hush! Cabinska is sitting in that box." "My gracious, what a maidenly make-up she has to-day!" "Quiet, we sing!" Behind the scenes stood a great variety of people: waitresses, stage-hands, restaurant boys, and actors waiting for their cues to enter all these were gazing on the stage. Cabinska's nurse, with the two eldest children, was sitting near the proscenium under the ropes of the curtain. Wawrzecki from behind the scenes was violently beckoning to Mimi who was just then singing a duet with Wladek. In the pauses, the actress would spitefully stick out her tongue at him. "Give me the key to the house . . . I forgot my shoes, and I need them right away!" he whispered. "It's in my skirt pocket in the dressing-room," she answered, backing away toward the center of the stage with a broad musical phrase on her lips. "Halt" was banging the desk with his baton, for Wladek was cutting short his tones and continually wavering. The threatening anger of the orchestra director only made him all the more nervous, and his singing was growing steadily worse. "The damned Hun is purposely trying to trip me!" he muttered angrily under his breath, embracing the singing Mimi in the love scene. "For God's sake don't squeeze me so hard!" panted Mimi, at the same time smiling at him rapturously. "For I adore you with the frenzy of love . . . for I adore you!" sang Wladek with fiery intonation. "Are you crazy? I will be all black and blue and . ." She suddenly broke off, for Wladek had finished his song and the applause came roaring like an avalanche, so she pulled him by the hand and they walked to the front of the stage to bow to the audience. During the intermission Janina observed the editor standing in the center aisle, conversing with some stout, blond man.