nd them three times that number of rough-hewn chairs constituted
the entire furnishings of that summer restaurant. A small office on
the ground floor and the top of the neighboring house enclosed the
right side of the garden, while at the back there arose a high,
rough brick wall with small, dirty, and barred windows; it was the
rear of the former Kochanowski Palace, standing on the corner of
Miodowa and Kapitulna Streets.

Near the fence, a small stage shaded by a canvas roof with its two
open sides facing toward the audience, formed a sort of niche, the
walls of which were covered with a cheap, blue paper dotted with
silver stars. The smoking kerosene footlights on one side of the
stage cast a drab light upon a musician with a disheveled gray beard
and grease-stained coat, who was pounding away at the keyboard of a
wretched piano with an automatic motion of his arms and head.

The garden was filled with a public of working-class people and
those from the poorer section of the city.

Janina and Wolska pushed their way through the crowd to that little
office building in which there was a dressing-room for the
performers, divided into a men's and women's compartment by a red
cretonne curtain.

"I am already waiting!" came a hoarse, drunken voice from behind the
curtain.

"You can begin your part, I will come right away!" answered Wolska,
dressing herself in feverish haste in a grotesque, red costume.

In a few minutes she was all ready for her appearance. Janina
followed her out and took a seat facing the stage. Wolska, all
flushed with hurrying and still closing the last buttons and hooks
of her costume, appeared on the stage, greeting the public with a
long bow. The musician struck the yellow keys and at the same moment
there arose the tones of a song:

Once upon a stump among the hills, Between the oaks there sat two
turtle-doves, And I know not for what sport of love's They kissed
each other with their bills.

The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the
Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of
applause, the banging of beer glasses against the tables, the
clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles
in the shooting galleries. The lanterns diffused a hazy and muddy
light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer
glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the
drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers a