those eddies of life without, its
voices, noises, cries, fears, and despair oozed down the smooth
sides of the well and flowed into her soul as into a reservoir,
penetrating her whole soul with an unconscious pain which she,
however, felt with every fiber of her being.

The days dragged on as slowly as though they were strung on the
chain of ages, as slowly as they drag on for those who have lost
everything, even hope.

Janina sent word to the director that she was sick, but no one came
to see her. Cabinska merely sent Wicek to say that Yadzia was
longing for her piano lessons, and nothing more.

There, they were playing, learning, creating something and living!
Here, she lay sunken in a complete apathy, like a crushed soul that
hardly dares at moments to think that it still exists and then again
sinks into an agony which cannot, however, end in the oblivion of
death.

Janina was not really physically ill, for nothing pained her, but
was dying from inner exhaustion. It seemed to her as though she had
spent the whole store of her strength in those three months of
theatrical life and that she was now dying from the hunger of her
soul that had nothing left with which to keep it alive.

Throughout those long days, throughout that endless agony of silent
nights she slowly pondered the nature of everyone whom she had met
here; and that slow, but entirely one-sided, cognizance of her
environment filled her with bitter sadness.

"There is no happiness on earth . . ." Janina whispered to herself,
and it seemed to her that hitherto she had had a cataract blinding
her eyes which fate had now brutally torn off. She now saw, but
there were moments in which she yearned for her former blindness and
groping in the dark.

"There is no happiness!" she repeated bitterly, and rebellious
pessimism mastered her soul entirely.

Everywhere Janina saw only evil and baseness. There passed before
her the forms of all her acquaintances and she scornfully thrust
them all down into one pit, not excluding Wladek. He had dropped in
only once to see her and began to excuse himself for his absence,
but she impatiently interrupted him and asked him to go away.

She already knew him well enough and wondered as the thought
occurred to her that she had ever loved him.

"Why? Why?" Janina asked herself.

Shame and regret began to fill her at the thought that she had
fallen so low and for him. He now appeared to her miserable and
common. She