Orlowski loved his daughter with hatred, that is, he loved her because he hated her. He hated her because she was the daughter of his wife, whose memory he violently cursed--his wife, who after two years of conjugal life, left him, because she could no longer endure his tyranny and eccentricities. He brought legal action against her and tried to force her to return to him, but their separation became a permanent one. He raved with anger, but his relentlessness, unexampled stubbornness, and insane pride prevented him from begging his wife to return, which she might have done, for she was a good woman. Her only failing was an illness that baffled all the provincial doctors. She had the soul of a mimosa, so sensitive that every tear, pain, or grief would cast her into despair. Moreover she had an abnormal fear of thunderstorms, showers, frogs, dark rooms, unlucky numbers, and all loud sounds; so this husband of hers was killing her with his brutality. Within a few years after their separation she died of nervous prostration, leaving Janina, who was then ten years old. Orlowski immediately took her away from his wife's family by force. An additional reason for his hatred of Janina was because she happened to be a girl. With his wild and violent disposition he wanted a son on whom he could exercise not only his fists, but also his everyday humor. He had dreamed of a son and fancied that he would be a big and half-wild fellow, energetic and as strong as an oak. He immediately sent Janina to a boarding-school, seeing her only once a year during her vacation. She spent the Christmas and Easter holidays at her aunt's home. For these vacations, which were now in their third year, he would wait impatiently, for he was weary of being alone at his remote station. And as soon as Janina arrived hostilities between them would begin. Janina grew up rapidly, and her mental and physical development were of the best, but having been conceived, born, and reared in an environment of continual hatred and quarrels and nursed with the tears and complaints of her mother at her father's brutality, she naturally disliked him and feared his scorn. This developed in her secretiveness and resentment. She rebelled against his despotism and niggardliness. Janina inherited a few thousand rubles from her mother, and her father told her plainly that the interest on that sum would have to suffice her, for he did not intend to give her a single kopeck. She attended a first-class boarding-school, but after paying her fees and, later, her expenses at the academy she had so little left for her immediate needs that she had to continually think of how to make ends meet and to feel ashamed because of her worn shoes and dresses.