FF comes in quietly and sits down at his table.

SHAMRAEFF. [To TRIGORIN] We have something here that belongs to you,
sir.

TRIGORIN. What is it?

SHAMRAEFF. You told me to have the sea-gull stuffed that Mr. Constantine
killed some time ago.

TRIGORIN. Did I? [Thoughtfully] I don't remember.

MASHA. Sixty-one. One.

TREPLIEFF throws open the window and stands listening.

TREPLIEFF. How dark the night is! I wonder what makes me so restless.

ARKADINA. Shut the window, Constantine, there is a draught here.

TREPLIEFF shuts the window.

MASHA. Ninety-eight.

TRIGORIN. See, my card is full.

ARKADINA. [Gaily] Bravo! Bravo!

SHAMRAEFF. Bravo!

ARKADINA. Wherever he goes and whatever he does, that man always has
good luck. [She gets up] And now, come to supper. Our renowned guest did
not have any dinner to-day. We can continue our game later. [To her son]
Come, Constantine, leave your writing and come to supper.

TREPLIEFF. I don't want anything to eat, mother; I am not hungry.

ARKADINA. As you please. [She wakes SORIN] Come to supper, Peter. [She
takes SHAMRAEFF'S arm] Let me tell you about my reception in Kharkoff.

PAULINA blows out the candles on the table, then she and DORN roll
SORIN'S chair out of the room, and all go out through the door on the
left, except TREPLIEFF, who is left alone. TREPLIEFF prepares to write.
He runs his eye over what he has already written.

TREPLIEFF. I have talked a great deal about new forms of art, but I feel
myself gradually slipping into the beaten track. [He reads] "The
placard cried it from the wall--a pale face in a frame of dusky
hair"--cried--frame--that is stupid. [He scratches out what he has
written] I shall begin again from the place where my hero is wakened by
the noise of the rain, but what follows must go. This description of a
moonlight night is long and stilted. Trigorin has worked out a process
of his own, and descriptions are easy for him. He writes that the neck
of a broken bottle lying on the bank glittered in the moonlight, and
that the shadows lay black under the mill-wheel. There you have a
moonlight night before your eyes, but I speak of the shimmering light,
the twinkling stars, the distant sounds of a piano melting into the
still and scented air, and the result is abominable. [A pause] The
conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that good literature is
not a question of forms new or old, but of ideas that must pour freely
from the aut