Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/143

Rh women from Saratov, Nijni-Novgorod, Warsaw. . . . And what happens to the hundred thousand in London? What can be done with those in Hamburg?

The oil in the lamp was used up and the lamp began to smell. Vassiliev did not notice it. Again he began to pace up and down, thinking. Now he put the question differently. What can be done to remove the demand for fallen women? For this it is necessary that the men who buy and kill them should at once begin to feel all the immorality of their rôle of slaveowners, and this should terrify them. It is necessary to save the men.

Science and art apparently won't do, thought Vassiliev. There is only one way out—to be an apostle.

And he began to dream how he would stand to-morrow evening at the corner of the street and say to each passer-by: "Where are you going and what for? Fear God!"

He would turn to the indifferent cabmen and say to them:

"Why are you standing here? Why don't you revolt? You do believe in God, don't you? And you do know that this is a crime, and that people will go to Hell for this? Why do you keep quiet, then? True, the women are strangers to you, but they have fathers and brothers exactly the same as you. . . ."

Some friend of Vassiliev's once said of him that he was a man of talent. There is a talent