Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/130

118 he would never have believed it. . . . The girl with the white trimming giggled again and said something disgusting aloud. He felt sick, blushed, and went out:

"Wait. We're coming too," cried the painter.

"I had a talk with my mam'selle while we were dancing," said the medico when all three came into the street. "The subject was her first love. He was a bookkeeper in Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was seventeen and lived with her pa and ma who kept a soap and candle shop."

"How did he conquer her heart?" asked Vassiliev.

"He bought her fifty roubles'-worth of under-clothes—Lord knows what!"

"However could he get her love-story out of his girl?" thought Vassiliev. "I can't. My dear chaps, I'm off home," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know how to get on here. I'm bored and disgusted. What is there amusing about it? If they were only human beings; but they're savages and beasts. I'm going, please."

"Grisha darling, please," the painter said with a sob in his voice, pressing close to Vassiliev,