through the keyhole. “He is here, too,” she says, “do not tell him anything. I love him, I love him more than ever.” She goes out through the garden. Constantine tears up all his MSS. and goes into the next room. Arkadina and the others come out of the dining-room, and sit down once more to the card-table to play Lotto. The agent brings to Trigorin the stuffed sea-gull which Constantine had shot two years ago, and which had been the starting-point of Trigorin’s love episode with Ina. He has forgotten all about it; he does not even remember that the sea-gull episode ever took place. A noise like a pistol shot is heard outside. “What is that?” says Arkadina in fright. “It is nothing,” replies the doctor, “one of my medicine bottles has probably burst.” He goes into the next room, and returns half a minute later. “It was as I thought,” he says, “my ether bottle has burst.” “It frightened me,” says Arkadina, “it reminded me of how....” The doctor turns over the leaves of the newspaper. He then says to Trigorin, “Two months ago there was an article in this Review written from America. I wanted to ask you....” He takes Trigorin aside, and then whispers to him, “Take Irina Nikolaievna away as soon as possible. The fact of the matter is that Constantine has shot himself.” Of all the plays of Tchekov, _Chaika_ is the one which most resembles ordinary plays, or the plays of ordinary dramatists. It has, no doubt, many of Tchekov’s special characteristics, but it does not show them developed to their full extent. Besides which, the subject is more dramatic than that of his other plays; there is a conflict in it--the conflict between the son and the mother, between the older and the younger generation, the older generation represented by Trigorin and the actress, the younger generation by Constantine. The character of the actress is drawn with great subtlety. Her real love for her son is made just as plain as her absolute inability to appreciate his talent and his cleverness. She is a mixture of kindness, common sense, avarice, and vanity. Equally subtle is the character of the author, with his utter want of wit; his absorption in the writing of short stories; his fundamental weakness; his egoism, which prevents him recognising the existence of any work but his own, but which has no tinge of ill-nature or malice in it. When he returns in the last act, he compliments Constantine on his success, and brings him a Review in which there is a story by the young man. Constantine subsequently notices that in the Review the only pages which are cut contain a story by Trigorin himself. If _Chaika_ is the most dramatically effective of Tchekov’s plays, the most characteristic is perhaps _The Cherry Garden_. It is notably characteristic in the symbolical and historical sense, for it depicts for us the causes and significance of the decline of the well-born, landed gentry in Russia.