Well, now I am all right again. I am doing nothing because I intend to set to work. I dig in the garden. You write that for you, little people, the future is wrapped in mystery. I had a letter from your chief Nemirovitch not long ago. He writes that the company is going to be in Sevastopol, then in Yalta at the beginning of May: in Yalta there will be five performances, then evening rehearsals. Only the precious members of the company will remain for the rehearsals, the others can have a holiday where they please. I trust that you are precious. To the director you are precious, to the author you are priceless. There is a pun for a titbit for you. I won’t write another word to you till you send me your portrait. Thank you for your good wishes in regard to my marriage. I have informed my _fiancee_ of your design of coming to Yalta in order to cut her out a little. She said that if “that horrid woman” comes to Yalta, she will hold me tight in her embrace. I observed that to be embraced for so long in hot weather was not hygienic. She was offended and grew thoughtful, as though she were trying to guess in what surroundings I had picked up this _facon de parler_, and after a little while said that the theatre was an evil and that my intention of writing no more plays was extremely laudable--and asked me to kiss her. To this I replied that it was not proper for me to be so free with my kisses now that I am an academician. She burst into tears, and I went away. In the spring the company will be in Harkov too. I will come and meet you then, only don’t talk of that to anyone. Nadyezhda Ivanovna has gone off to Moscow. TO A. S. SUVORIN. YALTA, February 12, 1900. I have been racking my brains over your fourth act, and have come to no conclusion except, perhaps, that you must not end it up with Nihilists. It’s too turbulent and screaming; a quiet, lyrical, touching ending would be more in keeping with your play. When your heroine begins to grow old without arriving at anything or deciding anything for herself, and sees that she is forsaken by all, that she is uninteresting and superfluous, when she understands that the people around her were idle, useless, bad people (her father too), and that she has let her life slip--is not that more dreadful than the Nihilists?