KULIGIN. [Kisses her] You’re tired, just rest for half an hour, and I’ll sit and wait for you. Sleep.... [Going] I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied. [Exit.] IRINA. Yes, really, our Andrey has grown smaller; how he’s snuffed out and aged with that woman! He used to want to be a professor, and yesterday he was boasting that at last he had been made a member of the district council. He is a member, and Protopopov is chairman.... The whole town talks and laughs about it, and he alone knows and sees nothing.... And now everybody’s gone to look at the fire, but he sits alone in his room and pays no attention, only just plays on his fiddle. [Nervily] Oh, it’s awful, awful, awful. [Weeps] I can’t, I can’t bear it any longer!... I can’t, I can’t!... [OLGA comes in and clears up at her little table. IRINA is sobbing loudly] Throw me out, throw me out, I can’t bear any more! OLGA. [Alarmed] What is it, what is it? Dear! IRINA. [Sobbing] Where? Where has everything gone? Where is it all? Oh my God, my God! I’ve forgotten everything, everything... I don’t remember what is the Italian for window or, well, for ceiling... I forget everything, every day I forget it, and life passes and will never return, and we’ll never go away to Moscow... I see that we’ll never go.... OLGA. Dear, dear.... IRINA. [Controlling herself] Oh, I am unhappy... I can’t work, I shan’t work. Enough, enough! I used to be a telegraphist, now I work at the town council offices, and I have nothing but hate and contempt for all they give me to do... I am already twenty-three, I have already been at work for a long while, and my brain has dried up, and I’ve grown thinner, plainer, older, and there is no relief of any sort, and time goes and it seems all the while as if I am going away from the real, the beautiful life, farther and farther away, down some precipice. I’m in despair and I can’t understand how it is that I am still alive, that I haven’t killed myself. OLGA. Don’t cry, dear girl, don’t cry... I suffer, too. IRINA. I’m not crying, not crying.... Enough.... Look, I’m not crying any more. Enough... enough! OLGA. Dear, I tell you as a sister and a friend if you want my advice, marry the Baron. [IRINA cries softly] You respect him, you think highly of him.... It is true that he is not handsome, but he is so honourable and clean... people don’t marry from love, but in order to do one’s duty. I think so, at any rate, and I’d marry without being in love. Whoever he was, I should marry him, so long as he was a decent man. Even if he was old.... IRINA. I was always waiting until we should be settled in Moscow, there I should meet my true love; I used to think about him, and love him.... But it’s all turned out to be nonsense, all nonsense....