officials, but very soon sized up the situation and immediately
began playing a new role whereby she perseveringly strove to attain
the last act: Matrimony.

Orlowski became used to her. She knew how to make herself
indispensable and always to show that indispensability so skillfully
that it did not offend.

Moreover, the gray autumn days and the long wintry evenings brought
her nearer to her goal, for Orlowski, who was fifty-eight years old
and had rheumatism, was always a maniac, but during his rheumatic
attacks he would become a raving maniac. She alone knew how to
mollify and manage him with her inherent cleverness, sharpened by
many years of theatrical experience. There was only one obstacle in
her way--Janina. Krenska realized that as long as Janina was at home
she could accomplish nothing. She decided to wait and waited
patiently.

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 Christ