ose
days.

"The stages of the whole world were open to me. The director of the
Comedie Francaise came purposely to see me and offer me an
engagement. . . ."

"You possess also a mastery of French, madame?"

"Do not interrupt me. I was paid a salary of several thousand
rubles; the papers could not find words strong enough to praise my
acting; I was pelted with flowers and bracelets set with diamonds!
(She unconsciously adjusted her cheap bracelet.) Counts and princes
courted my favors. . . . Then came a great misfortune which changed
everything; I fell in love . . . Yes, do not wonder at that! I
loved, as deeply as it is possible to love, the most beautiful and
best man in the whole world. . . . He was a nobleman, a prince and
heir to a large estate. We were about to be married. I cannot tell
you how happy we were! . . . Then . . . like a bolt from the blue
sky . . . his family, the old prince, a tyrannical magnate without a
heart parted us. . . . He took him away and wanted to pay me a
hundred thousand guldens or even a million, if only I would renounce
my beloved. I threw the money at his feet and showed him the door.
He avenged himself cruelly. He spread the most dishonorable
calumnies about me, bribed the press, and persecuted me at every
step, the base wretch! . . . I had to leave Lwow and my life took an
entirely different turn . . . a different turn . . ."

Cabinska paced up and down the room, tears in her eyes, love in her
smile, a sad bitterness upon her lips, a tragic mask of resignation
upon her face, forsaken, violent grief in her voice.

She acted the tale with such mastery that Janina believed
everything.

"If you knew how sincerely I sympathize with you, madame! . . . What
a dreadful fate!"

"That is already past! . . ." answered Cabinska, dropping into her
chair.

She herself had come almost to believe in those stories, retold with
numerous variations a hundred times over to all those who were
willing to listen. Sometimes, on ending her account, moved by the
picture of that fancied misfortune, she would actually suffer.

Cabinska had acted the parts of so many unfortunate and betrayed
women that she had already lost all memory of the bounds of her own
individuality; her own emotions became merged and identified in ever
greater degree with the characters which she impersonated, and thus
it happened that her fanciful tales were not downright lies.

After a long silence, Cabinska asked in a ca