ing gone? Where is it all?
Oh my God, my God! I've forgotten everything, everything... I don't
remember what is the Italian for window or, well, for ceiling... I
forget everything, every day I forget it, and life passes and will never
return, and we'll never go away to Moscow... I see that we'll never
go....

OLGA. Dear, dear....

IRINA. [Controlling herself] Oh, I am unhappy... I can't work, I shan't
work. Enough, enough! I used to be a telegraphist, now I work at the
town council offices, and I have nothing but hate and contempt for all
they give me to do... I am already twenty-three, I have already been
at work for a long while, and my brain has dried up, and I've grown
thinner, plainer, older, and there is no relief of any sort, and time
goes and it seems all the while as if I am going away from the real, the
beautiful life, farther and farther away, down some precipice. I'm in
despair and I can't understand how it is that I am still alive, that I
haven't killed myself.

OLGA. Don't cry, dear girl, don't cry... I suffer, too.

IRINA. I'm not crying, not crying.... Enough.... Look, I'm not crying
any more. Enough... enough!

OLGA. Dear, I tell you as a sister and a friend if you want my advice,
marry the Baron. [IRINA cries softly] You respect him, you think highly
of him.... It is true that he is not handsome, but he is so honourable
and clean... people don't marry from love, but in order to do one's
duty. I think so, at any rate, and I'd marry without being in love.
Whoever he was, I should marry him, so long as he was a decent man. Even
if he was old....

IRINA. I was always waiting until we should be settled in Moscow, there
I should meet my true love; I used to think about him, and love him....
But it's all turned out to be nonsense, all nonsense....

OLGA. [Embraces her sister] My dear, beautiful sister, I understand
everything; when Baron Nicolai Lvovitch left the army and came to us in
evening dress, [Note: I.e. in the correct dress for making a proposal of
marriage.] he seemed so bad-looking to me that I even started crying....
He asked, "What are you crying for?" How could I tell him! But if God
brought him to marry you, I should be happy. That would be different,
quite different.

[NATASHA with a candle walks across the stage from right to left without
saying anything.]

MASHA. [Sitting up] She walks as if she's set something on fire.

OLGA. Masha, you're silly, you're the silliest of the fami