dn't give it to me."

"Why didn't you tell me about that sooner? May the deuce take me,
but even if I had to smash up the whole theater I would have forced
them to give you that role!"

"The director gave me the part of Phillip's wife."

"That's merely a super, an episode . . . it could have been given to
anyone. I feel that Mimi is going to chatter like a soubrette from
an operetta. See what you have caused me! By glory, what a mess! If
you think that life is a charming operetta, you are greatly
mistaken!"

"I already happen to know something about that . . ." answered
Janina with a bitter smile.

"So far you don't know anything . . . you will learn it only later
on. But after all women usually have an easier time of it. We men
have to fight hard to grasp our share and have to pay dearly. God
knows how dearly."

"Don't you think the women pay anything?"

"It's this way: women, and particularly those on the stage, owe the
minimum part of their success to their talents or themselves; the
maximum part to their lovers who support them and the rest to the
gallantry of those men who hope to be able to support them some
day."

Janina answered nothing, for there flashed before her mind a picture
of Majkowska with Topolski in back of her, Mimi with Wawrzecki,
Kaczkowska with one of the journalists and so on through almost all
of them.

"Don't be angry with me. I merely stated a fact that came to my
mind."

"No. I'm not angry. I admit you're entirely right."

"With you, it will not be that way, I feel it. Come, let us go now!"
he suddenly cried, jumping up from the bench.

"I will say something more . . ." said Glogowski when they were
already walking down the shaded paths on their way back, "I will
repeat what I said on the day that I first met you at Bielany; let
us be friends! . . . It's no use trying to deny it, man is a
gregarious beast: he always needs someone near him so that his lot
on this earth may be half-way bearable . . . Man does not stand
alone; he must lean against and link up with others, go together
with them and feel together with them to be able to accomplish
anything. To be sure, one kindred soul suffices. Let us be friends!"

"All right," said Janina, "but I will lay down one condition."

"Quick, for God's sake! For perhaps I will not accept it!"

"It is this: give me your word of honor that you will never, never
speak to me about love, and that you will not fall in love with me.
You c