Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other saints.  When it had happened to Vassilyev in the street to recognize a fallen woman as such, by her dress or her manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always remembered a story he had once read:  a young man, pure and self-sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife; she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.

Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of Tverskoy Boulevard.  When he came out of the house with his two friends it was about eleven o’clock.  The first snow had not long fallen, and all nature was under the spell of the fresh snow.  There was the smell of snow in the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth, the roofs, the trees, the seats on the boulevard, everything was soft, white, young, and this made the houses look quite different from the day before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white, youthful, feathery snow.  “Against my will an unknown force,” hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, “has led me to these mournful shores.”

“Behold the mill...” the artist seconded him, “in ruins now....”

“Behold the mill... in ruins now,” the medical student repeated, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.

He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round: 

     “Here in old days when I was free,
     Love, free, unfettered, greeted me.”

The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off their greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each.  Before drinking the second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his vodka, raised the glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time, screwing up his shortsighted eyes.  The medical student did not understand his expression, and said: 

“Come, why look at it?  No philosophizing, please.  Vodka is given us to be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to be walked upon.  For one evening anyway live like a human being!”

“But I haven’t said anything...” said Vassilyev, laughing.  “Am I refusing to?”

There was a warmth inside him from the vodka.  He looked with softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them.  In these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls!  They sing, and have a passion for the theatre, and draw, and talk a great deal, and drink, and they don’t have headaches the day after; they are both poetical and debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be indignant,