cutivum_. Of course, I'm a clever man, much cleverer than
many, but happiness doesn't only lie in that....

["The Maiden's Prayer" is being played on the piano in the house.]

IRINA. To-morrow night I shan't hear that "Maiden's Prayer" any more,
and I shan't be meeting Protopopov.... [Pause] Protopopov is sitting
there in the drawing-room; and he came to-day...

KULIGIN. Hasn't the head-mistress come yet?

IRINA. No. She has been sent for. If you only knew how difficult it is
for me to live alone, without Olga.... She lives at the High School;
she, a head-mistress, busy all day with her affairs and I'm alone,
bored, with nothing to do, and hate the room I live in.... I've made
up my mind: if I can't live in Moscow, then it must come to this. It's
fate. It can't be helped. It's all the will of God, that's the truth.
Nicolai Lvovitch made me a proposal.... Well? I thought it over and made
up my mind. He's a good man... it's quite remarkable how good he is....
And suddenly my soul put out wings, I became happy, and light-hearted,
and once again the desire for work, work, came over me.... Only
something happened yesterday, some secret dread has been hanging over
me....

CHEBUTIKIN. Luckum. Rubbish.

NATASHA. [At the window] The head-mistress.

KULIGIN. The head-mistress has come. Let's go. [Exit with IRINA into the
house.]

CHEBUTIKIN. "It is my washing day.... Tara-ra... boom-deay."

[MASHA approaches, ANDREY is wheeling a perambulator at the back.]

MASHA. Here you are, sitting here, doing nothing.

CHEBUTIKIN. What then?

MASHA. [Sits] Nothing.... [Pause] Did you love my mother?

CHEBUTIKIN. Very much.

MASHA. And did she love you?

CHEBUTIKIN. [After a pause] I don't remember that.

MASHA. Is my man here? When our cook Martha used to ask about her
gendarme, she used to say my man. Is he here?

CHEBUTIKIN. Not yet.

MASHA. When you take your happiness in little bits, in snatches, and
then lose it, as I have done, you gradually get coarser, more bitter.
[Points to her bosom] I'm boiling in here.... [Looks at ANDREY with the
perambulator] There's our brother Andrey.... All our hopes in him have
gone. There was once a great bell, a thousand persons were hoisting it,
much money and labour had been spent on it, when it suddenly fell
and was broken. Suddenly, for no particular reason.... Andrey is like
that....

ANDREY. When are they going to stop making such a noise in the house?
It's awful.

CHEBUT