about the theater itself," she answered straightforwardly.

"Ah, in that case, I beg your pardon. . . . Now I understand your
amazement and I will presume to enlighten you that all those
quarrels, rumpuses, intrigues, envies, and even fights are nothing
but nerves, nerves, nerves! They vibrate in all of these people at
the slightest touch, like the strings of an old piano. Their tears,
their angers, and their hatreds are all momentary, and their loves
last about a week, at the longest. It is the comedy of life of
nervous individuals, acted a hundredfold better than that which they
present on the stage, for it is played instinctively. I might
describe it thus: all women in the theater are hysterical, and the
men, whether great or small, are neurasthenics. Here you will find
everything but real human beings. Have you been long in the
theater?"

"This is my first month."

"No wonder that everything amazes you; but in a month or so you'll
no longer see anything surprising; everything will then appear to
you natural and commonplace."

"In other words, you infer that I also will become a subject to
hysteria," she gaily added.

"Yes. I give you my word that I am speaking with absolute sincerity.
You think you can live with impunity in this environment without
becoming like all the rest of them; while I tell you that that is a
natural necessity. Suppose we expatiate on that a bit . . . will you
allow me?"

"Certainly."

"In the country you must know the woods. . . . Now please recall to
your mind the woodsmen. Have they not in themselves something of
that wood which they are continually chopping? They become stiff and
stalwart, gloomy and indifferent. And what of the butcher? Does not
a man who is continually occupied in killing, who breathes in the
odor of raw meat and steaming blood, in time become stamped with the
same characteristics as those beasts which he has slain? He does,
and I would say that he is himself a beast. And what of the peasant?
Do you know the village well?"

Janina nodded.

"Imagine for a moment the green fields in springtime, golden in the
summer, russet-gray and mournful in the autumn, white and hard like
a desert in the winter. Now behold the peasant as he is from his
birth until his death . . . the average, normal peasant. The peasant
boy is like a wild, unbridled colt, like the irresistible urge of
the spring. In the prime of his manhood he is like the summer, a
physical potentate, hard