Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/138

126 won't have you hitting a weak, drunken woman. Ah, you. . . ."

"Yegor . . . Yegor!" the medico began to implore, "I give my word I'll never go out with you again. Upon my honour, I won't."

The painter gradually calmed, and the friends went home.

"To these sad shores unknowing"—the medico began—" An unknown power entices. . . ."

"Behold the mill," the painter sang with him after a pause, "Now fallen into ruin." How the snow is falling, most Holy Mother. Why did you go away, Grisha? You're a coward; you're only an old woman."

Vassiliev was walking behind his friends. He stared at their backs and thought: "One of two things: either prostitution only seems to us an evil and we exaggerate it, or if prostitution is really such an evil as is commonly thought, these charming friends of mine are just as much slavers, violators, and murderers as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo whose photographs appear in 'The Field.' They're singing, laughing, arguing soundly now, but haven't they just been exploiting starvation, ignorance, and stupidity? They have, I saw them at it. Where does their humanity, their science, and their painting come in, then? The science, art, and lofty sentiments of these murderers remind me of the lump of fat in the story. Two robbers killed a beggar in a forest; they began to divide his clothes between themselves and