The act opens up to show Charlotta, Yasha and Dunyasha sitting on a bench while Yepikhodov stands by them and plays the guitar. They are all deep in thought. Charlotta tells about how she used to do tricks and acrobatics as a child. Then, when her parents died, a German woman took her in and raised her to be a governess. Yepikhodov explains that he is a man of culture. He’s read a remarkable amount of books, but yet doesn’t quite know what direction he wants to go in or whether he wants to live or not. Then, Yepikhodov asks to speak to Dunyasha alone. She agrees, but tells him to fetch her cape first. Then, while her and Yasha are alone, Dunyasha says that she loves Yasha passionately because he has an education and he can discuss most everything. She tells Yasha to go home as if he’d gone for a swim because she doesn’t want the family to think they’ve been going out together.
Lyubov, Gayev and Lopakhin enter. Lopakhin is getting impatient and asks them to give him an answer as to whether or not they agree to sell the land for money. They continue to put the question off; Gayev talks about his itch to play billiards and Lyubov realizes as she looks in her purse that her daughter feeds all of the family milk soup every day while she is spending money like a madwoman. Lopakhin gets irritated and says he’s never come across such frivolous, unbusiness like people. They are told in plain Russian (English) that their estate is being sold and they just don’t seem to understand.
Lyubov explains that she has always been bad with holding onto her money and that her husband only ran up her debts even more. Then, her boyfriend, who was sick for three years, followed her to Paris, robbed and abandoned her, and lived with another woman. Then Lyubov tried to poison herself. Upon the failed suicide attempt, she felt a longing for Russia and for her daughter. When she arrived in Russia, she received a telegram from her ex-lover, begging her to return to him.
