and develop it, but life will remain the same, laborious, mysterious,
and happy. And in a thousand years' time, people will still be sighing:
"Life is hard!"--and at the same time they'll be just as afraid of
death, and unwilling to meet it, as we are.

VERSHININ. [Thoughtfully] How can I put it? It seems to me that
everything on earth must change, little by little, and is already
changing under our very eyes. After two or three hundred years, after
a thousand--the actual time doesn't matter--a new and happy age will
begin. We, of course, shall not take part in it, but we live and work
and even suffer to-day that it should come. We create it--and in that
one object is our destiny and, if you like, our happiness.

[MASHA laughs softly.]

TUZENBACH. What is it?

MASHA. I don't know. I've been laughing all day, ever since morning.

VERSHININ. I finished my education at the same point as you, I have not
studied at universities; I read a lot, but I cannot choose my books and
perhaps what I read is not at all what I should, but the longer I love,
the more I want to know. My hair is turning white, I am nearly an old
man now, but I know so little, oh, so little! But I think I know the
things that matter most, and that are most real. I know them well. And I
wish I could make you understand that there is no happiness for us,
that there should not and cannot be.... We must only work and work, and
happiness is only for our distant posterity. [Pause] If not for me, then
for the descendants of my descendants.

[FEDOTIK and RODE come into the dining-room; they sit and sing softly,
strumming on a guitar.]

TUZENBACH. According to you, one should not even think about happiness!
But suppose I am happy!

VERSHININ. No.

TUZENBACH. [Moves his hands and laughs] We do not seem to understand
each other. How can I convince you? [MASHA laughs quietly, TUZENBACH
continues, pointing at her] Yes, laugh! [To VERSHININ] Not only after
two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it
was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws
which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out.
Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts,
high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or
where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to
life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they
will fly..