I would like to ask her: “That means you won’t be at my funeral?” But she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger’s. I escort her to the door in silence.... She goes out of my room and walks down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are following her, and probably on the landing she will look back. No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time, her steps were stilled.... Goodbye, my treasure! THE FIT I The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with them to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but eventually dressed himself and went with them. Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never once in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew there were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for dead, science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are free to avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society does not forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is not lower than the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an unfortunate woman in the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a picture of one in a comic paper, there came into his mind every time a story he once read somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in love with an unfortunate woman and asks her to be his wife, but she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, poisons herself. Vassiliev lived in one of the streets off the Tverskoi boulevard. When he and his friends came out of the house it was about eleven o’clock--the first snow had just fallen and all nature was under the spell of this new snow. The air smelt of snow, the snow cracked softly under foot, the earth, the roofs, the trees, the benches on the boulevards--all were soft, white, and young. Owing to this the houses had a different look from yesterday, the lamps burned brighter, the air was more transparent, the clatter of the cabs was dulled and there entered into the soul with the fresh, easy, frosty air a feeling like the white, young, feathery snow. “To these sad shores unknowing” the medico began to sing in a pleasant tenor, “An unknown power entices”. “Behold the mill” ... the painter’s voice took him up, “it is now fall’n to ruin.” “Behold the mill, it is now fall’n to ruin,” the medico repeated, raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.