Setting- CZARIST RUSSIA – A BLACK SEA BEACH RESORT- SUMMER 1905

It was 8:00 AM. The time when the officers, local officials, and visitors usually bathed in the sea after a hot stifling night, then went to the main pavilion for breakfast.
 
Characters:

PETER- A young thin blond man wearing slippers and the official cap of the Ministry of Finance. Sensitive, timid, high-strung. Something is troubling him.

IVAN- A fat and paunchy army surgeon, with a large closely cropped head, no neck, a red face, a big nose, shaggy black eyebrows, and graying whiskers. Ivan gave the first impression of a gruff opinionated bully, but two or three days after the first encounter one began to find him extraordinarily kind and appealing in his coarse way. He was familiar with everyone in town, lent everyone money, and had a wealth of earthy advice for all occasions.

THE SCENE

Peter and Ivan meet on the beach and after greeting they disrobe and enter the water.
When they were shoulder deep in the surf Peter turned to Ivan. 

                                            PETER
               Answer me one question, Ivan. Suppose you had fallen in love with a woman,
   Had lived with her say, two years, and then as often happens, fell out of love and started feeling like she was a stranger to you. How would you act in such a case?

                                             IVAN
          Very simple. Go, dear lady, wherever you please- and that’s that.

                                            PETER
 That’s easy to say! But what if she has no place to go? A lone woman with no relatives, not a penny to her name…and who can’t work?

                                            IVAN
  Well then?  Toss her a lump sum of five hundred or give her twenty-five a month- and that’s that. Very simple.

                                            PETER
      Even supposing I. .err…, one, had the five hundred…the woman I’m speaking of is a cultivated person and proud. Could you really bring yourself to offer her money? And how should I put it to her?

  Ivan was about to answer, but at that moment a big wave covered them both, broke on the beach, and rattled back over the pebbles. The two friends came out onto the shore and began dressing.

                                           IVAN (shaking the sand out of his boot)
   Of course, it’s difficult living with a woman you don’t love. But you have to look at this humanely. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t even let her see that I no longer loved her. I’d go on living with her for the rest of my life.

He suddenly caught himself, ashamed of what he had just said.

                                           IVAN cont’d
   Ahh, but for all I care, women might as well not exist. To hell with all of them!

When they had dressed they walked up the bluffs towards the pavilion.

END SCENE