Page:Plays by Antov Tchekoff (Scribner's, 1912).djvu/39

22 you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every day.

. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear godfather, let me pour you some tea.

. Oh! Oh!

. What is it, grandmother?

. I forgot to tell Alexander—I have lost my memory—I received a letter to-day from Paul Alexevitch in Kharkoff. He has sent me a new pamphlet.

. Is it interesting?

. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he defended seven years ago. It is appalling!

. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma.

. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say. Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an illuminating personality——

. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn’t say anything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the truths of life. But now—Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old age now forbids.

. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!

. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction,