haps you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every day.
Sonia. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear godfather, let me pour you some tea.
Mme. Voitskaya. Oh! Oh!
Sonia. What is it, grandmother?
Mme. Voitskaya. 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.
Astroff. Is it interesting?
Mme. Voitskaya. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he defended seven years ago. It is appalling!
Voitski. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma.
Mme. Voitskaya. 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———
Voitski. 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.
Sonia. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!
Mme. Voitskaya. [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,
