The two Galician women gazed at each other in silence.
At length Anka replied with manifest reluctance:

"She got no man here. Her man in Russia."

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitzpatrick in a terrible voice.
"An' do ye mane to say! An' that Rosenblatt--is he not her husband?
Howly Mother of God," she continued in an awed tone of voice,
"an' is this the woman I've been havin' to do wid!"

The wrath, the scorn, the repulsion in her eyes, her face, her
whole attitude, revealed to the unhappy Paulina what no words
could have conveyed. Under her sallow skin the red blood of shame
slowly mounted. At that moment she saw herself and her life as
never before. The wrathful scorn of this indignant woman pierced
like a lightning bolt to the depths of her sluggish moral sense
and awakened it to new vitality. For a few moments she stood silent
and with face aflame, and then, turning slowly, passed into her
house. It was the beginning of Paulina's redemption.




CHAPTER III

THE MARRIAGE OF ANKA