unfold
in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel's or Anna
Markovna's. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father
of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of
prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an
amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an
asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution
he will bless and sustain."

"Magdalene asylums!" with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the
ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.

"Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a
total mockery," cut in Lichonin. "But let me be ridiculous and stupid,
yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a
warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time:
'Oh, my, but it's burning ... by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are
even people burning!'--but for his part merely laments and slaps his
thighs."

"Well, now," said Platonov harshly, "would you take a child's syringe
and go to put out the fire with it?"

"No!" heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... "Perhaps--who knows?--perhaps
I'll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that
I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I
implore you, without jeers, without cooling off ..."

"You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?" asked Platonov,
looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire
conversation.

"Yes ... I don't know ... I'll try ..." answered Lichonin uncertainly.

"She'll come back," said Platonov.

"She will," Jennie repeated with conviction.

Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in
a trembling whisper:

"Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don't call you as a mistress
... but a friend ... It's all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and
then we'll master some trade or other ... we'll read..."

Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.

"Oh, into a bog with you!" she almost shouted. "I know you! Want me to
darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without
sleeping on account of you when you'll be chitter-chattering with your
short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a
government clerk, then it's me will get a knee in the back: 'Out on the
street with you, now, you public hide, you've ruined my young life. I
wa