mas 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.

In a few years her classmates began to fear her, even the teachers
often gave way to her, for she had her father's violent character
and brooked no restraint. She never wept nor complained, but she was
ever ready to avenge her wrongs with her fists, irrespective of what
might happen to her. At the same time she was always one of the
brightest scholars in her class.

All sincerely disliked her, but had to grant her supremacy. She
herself became conscious of her superiority over the throng of her
classmates, who treated her with aloofness, laughed at her shabby
dresses and shoes, and barred her from all intimacy with them. Later
she paid them back with unrelenting vengeance.

There were times when Orlowski was proud of Janina and warmly
defended her before his friends, for the whole neighborhood was
shocked at her tomboyish adventures. She would tramp through the
woods late at night and in all kinds of weather, alone, like a young
wild-boar separated from the herd. She was not a bit ashamed of
climbing up trees for birds' nests, nor of riding astride in
horse-races with the peasant lads on the pasturage. To avoid her
father she would stay away from home for whole days at a time,
dreaming of her return to school, while at school she would again
dream of returning to the solitude of her home.

S