_Constantine_ still loves her. He pleads with her to go away with him, to begin a new life. But it is too late. The lure of the footlights is beckoning to _Nina_; she returns to the stage. _Constantine_, unable to stand the loneliness of his life and the mercenary demands upon his art, kills himself. * * * * * To the Anglo-Saxon mind such an ending is pessimism,--defeat. Often, however, apparent defeat is in reality the truest success. For is not success, as commonly understood, but too frequently bought at the expense of character and idealism? "The Seagull" is not defeat. As long as there is still such material in society as the Constantines--men and women who would rather die than compromise with the sordidness of life--there is hope for humanity. If the Constantines perish, it is the social fault,--our indifference to, and lack of appreciation of, the real values that alone advance the fuller and more complete life of the race. THE CHERRY ORCHARD "The Cherry Orchard" is Tchekhof's prophetic song. In this play he depicts three stages of social development and their reflex in literature. _Mme. Ranevsky_, the owner of the cherry orchard, an estate celebrated far and wide for its beauty and historic traditions, is deeply attached to the family place. She loves it for its romanticism: nightingales sing in the orchard, accompanying the wooing of lovers. She is devoted to it because of the memory of her ancestors and because of the many tender ties which bind her to the orchard. The same feeling and reverence is entertained by her brother _Leonid Gayef_. They are expressed in the _Ode to an Old Family Cupboard_: _Gayef._ Beloved and venerable cupboard; honor and glory to your existence, which for more than a hundred years has been directed to the noble ideals of justice and virtue. Your silent summons to profitable labor has never weakened in all these hundred years. You have upheld the courage of succeeding generations of human kind; you have upheld faith in a better future and cherished in us ideals of goodness and social consciousness. But the social consciousness of _Gayef_ and of his sister is of a paternal nature: the attitude of the aristocracy toward its serfs. It is a paternalism that takes no account of the freedom and happiness of the people,--the romanticism of a dying class. _Mme. Ranevsky_ is impoverished. The cherry orchard is heavily mortgaged and as romance and sentiment cannot liquidate debts, the beautiful estate falls into the cruel hands of commercialism. The merchant _Yermolai Lopakhin_ buys the place. He is in ecstasy over his newly acquired possession. He the owner--he who had risen from the serfs of the former master of the orchard!