! Hotel America, Ivanukovskaya, twenty-two!"

While to the black-bearded man he said:

"Don't forget, Lazer, to feed the girls at dinner and to bring them
somewhere to a movie show. About eleven o'clock at night wait for me.
I'll come for a talk. But if some one will be calling for me extra,
then you know my address--The Hermitage. Ring me up. But if I'm not
there for some reason, then run into Reiman's cafe, or opposite, into
the Hebrew dining room. I'll be eating GEFILTEH FISCH there. Well, a
lucky journey!"

CHAPTER III.

All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were simply
brazen and glib lying. All the samples of drapers' goods, suspenders
gloire and buttons helios, the artificial teeth and insertible eyes,
served only as a shield, screening his real activity--to wit, the
traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he
had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines
of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that
free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen
are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up
against his real profession. In some way, while going to
Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress
fall in love with him. This girl had not as yet succeeded in getting on
the official lists of the police, but upon love and her body she looked
without any lofty prejudices. Horizon, at that time altogether a green
youth, amorous and light-minded, dragged the sempstress after him on
his wanderings, full of adventures and unexpected things. After half a
year she palled upon him dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden,
like a millstone, hung around the neck of this man of energy, motion
and aggressiveness. In addition to that, there were the eternal scenes
of jealousy, mistrust, the constant control and tears ... the
inevitable consequences of long living together ... Then he began
little by little to beat his mate. At the first time she was amazed,
but from the second time quieted down, became tractable. It is known,
that "women of love" never know a mean in love relations. They are
either hysterical liars, deceivers, dissemblers, with a
coolly-perverted mind and a sinuous dark soul; or else unboundedly
self-denying, blindly devoted, foolish, naive animals, who know no
bounds either in concessions or loss of self-esteem. The sempstress
belonged to