“I hope I’ve not lost the pattern of that tape,” he thought, “where did I put it?  I believe it’s in my blue reefer jacket. . . .  Those wretched flies have covered her portrait with spots already, I must tell Olga to wash the glass. . . .  She’s reading the twelfth scene, so we must soon be at the end of the first act.  As though inspiration were possible in this heat and with such a mountain of flesh, too!  Instead of writing plays she’d much better eat cold vinegar hash and sleep in a cellar. . . .”

“You don’t think that monologue’s a little too long?” the lady asked suddenly, raising her eyes.

Pavel Vassilyevitch had not heard the monologue, and said in a voice as guilty as though not the lady but he had written that monologue: 

“No, no, not at all.  It’s very nice. . . .”

The lady beamed with happiness and continued reading: 

ANNA:  You are consumed by analysis.  Too early you have ceased to live in the heart and have put your faith in the intellect.

VALENTIN:  What do you mean by the heart?  That is a concept of anatomy.  As a conventional term for what are called the feelings, I do not admit it.

ANNA (confused):  And love?  Surely that is not merely a product of the association of ideas?  Tell me frankly, have you ever loved?

VALENTIN (bitterly):  Let us not touch on old wounds not yet healed. (A pause.) What are you thinking of?

ANNA:  I believe you are unhappy.

During the sixteenth scene Pavel Vassilyevitch yawned, and accidently made with his teeth the sound dogs make when they catch a fly.  He was dismayed at this unseemly sound, and to cover it assumed an expression of rapt attention.

“Scene seventeen!  When will it end?” he thought.  “Oh, my God!  If this torture is prolonged another ten minutes I shall shout for the police.  It’s insufferable.”

But at last the lady began reading more loudly and more rapidly, and finally raising her voice she read "Curtain."

Pavel Vassilyevitch uttered a faint sigh and was about to get up, but the lady promptly turned the page and went on reading.

ACT II.—­Scene, a village street.  On right, School.  On left, Hospital. Villagers, male and female, sitting on the hospital steps.

“Excuse me,” Pavel Vassilyevitch broke in, “how many acts are there?”

“Five,” answered the lady, and at once, as though fearing her audience might escape her, she went on rapidly.

VALENTIN is looking out of the schoolhouse window.  In the background Villagers can be seen taking their goods to the Inn.

Like a man condemned to be executed and convinced of the impossibility of a reprieve, Pavel Vassilyevitch gave up expecting the end, abandoned all hope, and simply tried to prevent his eyes from closing, and to retain an expression of attention on his face. . . .  The future when the lady would finish her play and depart seemed to him so remote that he did not even think of it.