forget your fatigue and the darkness and the sharp twigs that
whip your face? I work, that you know--as no one else in the
country works. Fate beats me on without rest; at times I suffer
unendurably and I see no light ahead. I have no hope; I do not
like people. It is long since I have loved any one.

SONIA. You love no one?

ASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your
old nurse for old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they
are stupid and live in dirt, and the educated people are hard to
get along with. One gets tired of them. All our good friends are
petty and shallow and see no farther than their own noses; in one
word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical,
devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate,
they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. They sneak
up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of the eye, and
say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or, if
they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am
strange. I like the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat;
that is strange, too. Simple, natural relations between man and
man or man and nature do not exist. [He tries to go out; SONIA
prevents him.]

SONIA. I beg you, I implore you, not to drink any more!

ASTROFF. Why not?

SONIA. It is so unworthy of you. You are well-bred, your voice is
sweet, you are even--more than any one I know--handsome. Why do