Vera. [Repentant] I didn't mean it, grandmamma! Can't I help you make the blouse? But it may not be the fashion in Berlin. I will ask Sasha what the students wear. [Takes up a piece of the stuff] And how can you sew on winter things in summer time? Winter is so far away,—a thousand years away. Vasil will never live till winter time.
Cath. [Shocked] Vera!
Vera. Well, you know he can't live a thousand years.
Cath. Why does winter seem so far off, dear?
Vera. O, I don't know. [A slight pause] Alexander says we can not be married before winter.
Cath. [Smiling and laying down her work] Do you love him so much? [Vera buries her face in her grandmother's lap] And he is right, dear. You should wait a long time. What can a young man do now? Everything is uncertain. Nothing is sure but hunger and children.
Vera. [Looking up] Isn't it the strangest thing in the world?
Cath. What, dear?
Vera. That he should love me.