_Constantine_: It all began on that evening when my play was such a failure. Women cannot forgive failure. I burnt it all to the last page. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am! Your coldness is terrifying, incredible! It is just as if I awoke, and suddenly saw that this lake was dry, or had disappeared under the earth. You have just said you were too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to understand? My play was a failure, you despise my work, you already consider that I am a thing of no account, like so many others! How well I understand that, how well I understand! It is as if there were a nail in my brain; may it be cursed, together with the _amour propre_ which is sucking my blood, sucking it like a snake! (_He sees Trigorin, who enters reading a book._) Here comes the real genius. He walks towards us like a Hamlet, and with a book too. “Words, words, words.” This sun is not yet come to you, and you are already smiling, your looks have melted in its rays. I will not be in your way. (_He goes out rapidly._) There follows a conversation between Trigorin and Ina, during which she says she would like to know what it feels like to be a famous author. She talks of his interesting life. _Trigorin_: What is there so very wonderful about it? Like a monomaniac who, for instance, is always thinking day and night of the moon, I am pursued by one thought which I cannot get rid of, I must write, I must write, I must ... I have scarcely finished a story, when for some reason or another I must write a second, and then a third, and then a fourth. I write uninterruptedly, I cannot do otherwise. What is there so wonderful and splendid in this, I ask you? Oh, it is a cruel life! Look, I get excited with you, and all the time I am remembering that an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud which is like a pianoforte, and I at once think that I must remember to say somewhere in the story that there is a cloud like a pianoforte. _Ina_: But does not your inspiration and the process of creation give you great and happy moments? _Trigorin_: Yes, when I write it is pleasant, and it is nice to correct proofs; but as soon as the thing is published, I cannot bear it, and I already see that it is not at all what I meant, that it is a mistake, that I should not have written it at all, and I am vexed and horribly depressed. The public reads it, and says: “Yes, pretty, full of talent, very nice, but how different from Tolstoy!” or, “Yes, a fine thing, but how far behind _Fathers and Sons_; Tourgeniev is better.” And so, until I die, it will always be “pretty and full of talent,” never anything more; and when I die my friends as they pass my grave will say: “Here lies Trigorin, he was a good writer, but he did not write as well as Tourgeniev.”