VOITSKI. Help me first to make peace with myself. My darling!
[Seizes her hand.]

HELENA. Let go! [She drags her hand away] Go away!

VOITSKI. Soon the rain will be over, and all nature will sigh and
awake refreshed. Only I am not refreshed by the storm. Day and
night the thought haunts me like a fiend, that my life is lost
for ever. My past does not count, because I frittered it away on
trifles, and the present has so terribly miscarried! What shall I
do with my life and my love? What is to become of them? This
wonderful feeling of mine will be wasted and lost as a ray of
sunlight is lost that falls into a dark chasm, and my life will
go with it.

HELENA. I am as it were benumbed when you speak to me of your
love, and I don't know how to answer you. Forgive me, I have
nothing to say to you. [She tries to go out] Good-night!

VOITSKI. [Barring the way] If you only knew how I am tortured by
the thought that beside me in this house is another life that is
being lost forever--it is yours! What are you waiting for? What
accursed philosophy stands in your way? Oh, understand,
understand---

HELENA. [Looking at him intently] Ivan, you are drunk!

VOITSKI. Perhaps. Perhaps.