players.]

TREPLIEFF. [Looking through the pages of the magazine] He has read his
own story, and hasn't even cut the pages of mine.

He lays the magazine on his desk and goes toward the door on the right,
stopping as he passes his mother to give her a kiss.

ARKADINA. Won't you play, Constantine?

TREPLIEFF. No, excuse me please, I don't feel like it. I am going to
take a turn through the rooms. [He goes out.]

MASHA. Are you all ready? I shall begin: twenty-two.

ARKADINA. Here it is.

MASHA. Three.

DORN. Right.

MASHA. Have you put down three? Eight. Eighty-one. Ten.

SHAMRAEFF. Don't go so fast.

ARKADINA. Could you believe it? I am still dazed by the reception they
gave me in Kharkoff.

MASHA. Thirty-four. [The notes of a melancholy waltz are heard.]

ARKADINA. The students gave me an ovation; they sent me three baskets of
flowers, a wreath, and this thing here.

She unclasps a brooch from her breast and lays it on the table.

SHAMRAEFF. There is something worth while!

MASHA. Fifty.

DORN. Fifty, did you say?

ARKADINA. I wore a perfectly magnificent dress; I am no fool when it
comes to clothes.

PAULINA. Constantine is playing again; the poor boy is sad.

SHAMRAEFF. He has been severely criticised in the papers.

MASHA. Seventy-seven.

ARKADINA. They want to attract attention to him.

TRIGORIN. He doesn't seem able to make a success, he can't somehow
strike the right note. There is an odd vagueness about his writings
that sometimes verges on delirium. He has never created a single living
character.

MASHA. Eleven.

ARKADINA. Are you bored, Peter? [A pause] He is asleep.

DORN. The Councillor is taking a nap.

MASHA. Seven. Ninety.

TRIGORIN. Do you think I should write if I lived in such a place as
this, on the shore of this lake? Never! I should overcome my passion,
and give my life up to the catching of fish.

MASHA. Twenty-eight.

TRIGORIN. And if I caught a perch or a bass, what bliss it would be!

DORN. I have great faith in Constantine. I know there is something in
him. He thinks in images; his stories are vivid and full of colour,
and always affect me deeply. It is only a pity that he has no definite
object in view. He creates impressions, and nothing more, and one cannot
go far on impressions alone. Are you glad, madam, that you have an
author for a son?

ARKADINA. Just think, I have never read anything of his; I never have
time.

MASHA. Twenty-six.

TREPLIE