VERSHININ. Yes. [Laughs] How strange everything really is! [Pause] When the fire broke out, I hurried off home; when I get there I see the house is whole, uninjured, and in no danger, but my two girls are standing by the door in just their underclothes, their mother isn’t there, the crowd is excited, horses and dogs are running about, and the girls’ faces are so agitated, terrified, beseeching, and I don’t know what else. My heart was pained when I saw those faces. My God, I thought, what these girls will have to put up with if they live long! I caught them up and ran, and still kept on thinking the one thing: what they will have to live through in this world! [Fire-alarm; a pause] I come here and find their mother shouting and angry. [MASHA enters with a pillow and sits on the sofa] And when my girls were standing by the door in just their underclothes, and the street was red from the fire, there was a dreadful noise, and I thought that something of the sort used to happen many years ago when an enemy made a sudden attack, and looted, and burned.... And at the same time what a difference there really is between the present and the past! And when a little more time has gone by, in two or three hundred years perhaps, people will look at our present life with just the same fear, and the same contempt, and the whole past will seem clumsy and dull, and very uncomfortable, and strange. Oh, indeed, what a life there will be, what a life! [Laughs] Forgive me, I’ve dropped into philosophy again. Please let me continue. I do awfully want to philosophize, it’s just how I feel at present. [Pause] As if they are all asleep. As I was saying: what a life there will be! Only just imagine.... There are only three persons like yourselves in the town just now, but in future generations there will be more and more, and still more, and the time will come when everything will change and become as you would have it, people will live as you do, and then you too will go out of date; people will be born who are better than you.... [Laughs] Yes, to-day I am quite exceptionally in the vein. I am devilishly keen on living.... [Sings.] “The power of love all ages know, From its assaults great good does grow.” [Laughs.] MASHA. Trum-tum-tum... VERSHININ. Tum-tum... MASHA. Tra-ra-ra? VERSHININ. Tra-ta-ta. [Laughs.] [Enter FEDOTIK.] FEDOTIK. [Dancing] I’m burnt out, I’m burnt out! Down to the ground! [Laughter.] IRINA. I don’t see anything funny about it. Is everything burnt? FEDOTIK. [Laughs] Absolutely. Nothing left at all. The guitar’s burnt, and the photographs are burnt, and all my correspondence.... And I was going to make you a present of a note-book, and that’s burnt too. [SOLENI comes in.] IRINA. No, you can’t come here, Vassili Vassilevitch. Please go away. SOLENI. Why can the Baron come here and I can’t? VERSHININ. We really must go. How’s the fire?