MME. KABANOVA. Anything is possible, my dear, in our times, one can't be surprised at anything.
FEKLUSHA. Hard times they are, Marfa Ignatievna, ma'am, very hard. Already the time has begun diminishing.
MME. KABANOVA. How is that? diminishing, my dear?
FEKLUSHA. We, of course—how should we observe it in our blindness and vanity? but wise people have observed that time has grown shorter with us. Once the summer and the winter dragged on endlessly, you got tired of looking for the end of them, but now, before one's time to look about one, they've flown. The days and the hours still seem the same, of course; but the time keeps growing shorter and shorter, for our sins. That's what the learned folk say about it.
MME. KABANOVA. And worse than that will be, my dear.
FEKLUSHA. I only trust we shan't live to see it.
MME. KABANOVA. Maybe, we shall. [Enter Dikoy.