SCENE I
A dirty, ill-lighted underground dive; people are lying around drinking, sleeping, playing cards and making love. Near the front a small table at which FÉDYA sits; he is in rags and has fallen very low. By his side is PETUSHKÓV, a delicate spiritual man, with long yellow hair and beard. Both are rather drunk.
Candle light is the only lighting in this Scene.
Petushkóv (R.C. of table C.). I know. I know. Well, that's real love. So what happened then?
Fédya (L. C. of table C., pensively). You might perhaps expect a girl of our own class, tenderly brought up, to be capable of sacrificing for the man she loved, but this girl was a gypsy, reared in greed, yet she gave me the purest sort of self-sacrificing love. She'd have done anything for nothing. Such contrasts are amazing.
Petushkóv. I see. In painting we call that value. Only to realize bright red fully when there is green around it. But that's not the point. What happened?
Fédya. Oh, we parted. I felt it wasn't right to go on taking, taking where I couldn't give. So one night we were having dinner in a little restaurant, I told her we'd have to say good-bye. My heart was so wrung all the time I could hardly help crying.
Petushkóv. And she?
Fédya. Oh, she was awfully unhappy, but she knew I was right. So we kissed each other a long while, and she went back to her gypsy troupe—(Slowly.) Maybe she was glad to go——
[A pause.