lmost
nothing," answered Janina suddenly kindling anew with ardor.

"Even love?" asked Wladek.

"But art appears to me to be a greater and completer expression of
the ideal than love . . ." answered Janina.

"But it is more alien to human beings and not so necessary to life
as is love. Without art the world could exist, but without
love . . . never! Moreover, art causes more painful disappointments
than love."

"But it also gives greater joys. Love is an individual emotion; art
is a social emotion, a synthesis. One loves it with one's humanity,
one suffers for it, but only through art does one sometimes become
immortal!"

"Those are dreams. Thousands have given their lives to become
convinced of that and thousands have cursed that unattainable
mirage."

"But those thousands had their lives filled with that mirage and
felt more than one can feel, who dreams about nothing."

"But since they were not happy, what is it all worth?"

"And are most people happy?"

"A thousandfold more so than we!"

Wladek emphasized that "we" significantly.

"Never!" cried Janina, "for our happiness lies in pain as it does in
joy, in dejection as well as ecstasy. Even this in itself is
happiness: to be able to develop one's self spiritually; to reach
far out into infinity with the arms of desire; to create new worlds
in our mind, larger and more beautiful than those surrounding us; to
chant, even through tears and pain, hymns to beauty and immortality;
to dream, but to dream so intensely as to forget about life entirely
and to live in dreams alone!"

Janina felt so great a flood of happiness and inspiration flowing
into her soul that she spoke, as it were, only in periods of her
thought, so that she might express herself at least in part. She
spoke, entirely forgetful of the fact that some one was listening to
her and spun out aloud ever grander and ever more evanescent dreams.

Wladek at first listened attentively, but later grew impatient.

"A comedienne!" he thought with irony. And he was sure that Janina
was unfurling before him the peacock feathers of fervor and
enthusiasm merely to fascinate and conquer him. He did not answer or
interrupt her, for it finally began to bore him.

"That role of 'Mary' is a trifle too sentimental . . ." added Janina
after a longer silence.

"To me it seemed merely lyrical," answered Wladek.

"I should like some time to play 'Ophelia.'"

"Are you familiar with Hamlet?" asked Wladek, s