[MASHA and IRINA take him by the arms and, laughing, lead him back.]
MASHA. Come, come!
ANDREY. Leave me alone, please!
MASHA. How funny he is! Alexandr Ignatyevitch used to be called the love-sick major at one time, and he wasn't a bit offended.
VERSHININ. Not in the least!
MASHA. And I'd like to call you the love-sick violinist!
IRINA. Or the love-sick professor!
OLGA. He's in love! Andryusha is in love!
IRINA [claps her hands]. Bravo, bravo! Encore! Andryusha is in love!
CHEBUTYKIN [comes up behind ANDREY and puts both arms round his waist]. Nature our hearts for love created! [Laughs, then sits down and reads the newspaper which he takes out of his pocket.]
ANDREY. Come, that's enough, that's enough. . . [mops his face]. I haven't slept all night and this morning I don't feel quite myself, as they say. I read till four o'clock and then went to bed, but it was no use. I thought of one thing and another, and then it gets light so early; the sun simply pours into my bedroom. I want while I'm here during the summer to translate a book from the English. . . .
VERSHININ. You read English then?
ANDREY. Yes. Our father, the Kingdom of Heaven be his, oppressed us with education. It's funny and silly, but it must be confessed I began to get fatter after his death, and I've grown too fat in one year, as though a weight had been taken off my body. Thanks to our father we all know English, French and German, and Irina knows Italian too. But what it cost us!
MASHA. In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury! Not even a luxury, but an unnecessary encumbrance, like a sixth finger. We know a great deal that's unnecessary.
VERSHININ. What next! [laughs] You know a great deal that's unnecessary! I don't think there can be a town so dull and dismal that intelligent and educated people are unnecessary in it. Let's suppose that of the hundred thousand people living in this town, which is, of course, uncultured and behind the times, there are only three of your sort. It goes without saying that you cannot conquer the mass of darkness round you; little by little, as you go on living, you'll be lost in the crowd. You'll have to give in to it. Life will get the better of you, but still you'll not disappear without a trace. After you there may appear perhaps six like you, then twelve and so on until such as you form a majority. In two or three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, marvellous. Man needs such a life and, though he hasn't got it yet, he must have a presentiment of it, expect it, dream of it, prepare for it; for that he must see and know more than his father and grandfather [laughs]. And you complain of knowing a great deal that's unnecessary.
MASHA [takes off her hat]. I'll stay to lunch.
IRINA [with a sigh]. All that really ought to be written down. . . .
[ANDREY has slipped away unobserved.]
TUZENBAKH. You say that after many years life on earth will be beautiful and marvellous. That's true. But in order to have any share, however far off, in it now we must be preparing for it, we must be working. . . .
VERSHININ [gets up]. Yes. What a lot of flowers you have! [Looking round] And delightful rooms. I envy you! I've been knocking about all my life from one wretched lodging to
