voice. "I am calling you."

The shopkeeper looked at Father Grigory's red and wrathful face, and
only then realized that the twitching eyebrows and beckoning finger
might refer to him. He started, left the railing, and hesitatingly
walked towards the altar, tramping with his heavy goloshes.

"Andrey Andreyitch, was it you asked for prayers for the rest of
Mariya's soul?" asked the priest, his eyes angrily transfixing the
shopkeeper's fat, perspiring face.

"Yes, Father."

"Then it was you wrote this? You?" And Father Grigory angrily thrust
before his eyes the little note.

And on this little note, handed in by Andrey Andreyitch before mass, was
written in big, as it were staggering, letters:

"For the rest of the soul of the servant of God, the harlot Mariya."

"Yes, certainly I wrote it,..." answered the shopkeeper.

"How dared you write it?" whispered the priest, and in his husky whisper
there was a note of wrath and alarm.

The shopkeeper looked at him in blank amazement; he was perplexed, and
he, too, was alarmed. Father Grigory had never in his life spoken in
such a tone to a leading resident of Verhny Zaprudy. Both were silent
for a minute, staring into each other's face. The shopkeeper's amazement
was so great that his fat face spread in all directions like spilt
dough.

"How dared you?" repeated the priest.

"Wha... what?" asked Andrey Andreyitch in bewilderment.

"You don't understand?" whispered Father Grigory, stepping back
in astonishment and clasping his hands. "What have you got on your
shoulders, a head or some other object? You send a note up to the altar,
and write a word in it which it would be unseemly even to utter in the
street! Why are you rolling your eyes? Surely you know the meaning of
the word?"

"Are you referring to the word harlot?" muttered the shopkeeper,
flushing crimson and blinking. "But you know, the Lord in His mercy...
forgave this very thing,... forgave a harlot.... He has prepared
a place for her, and indeed from the life of the holy saint, Mariya of
Egypt, one may see in what sense the word is used--excuse me..."

The shopkeeper wanted to bring forward some other argument in his
justification, but took fright and wiped his lips with his sleeve.

"So that's what you make of it!" cried Father Grigory, clasping his
hands. "But you see God has forgiven her--do you understand? He has
forgiven, but you judge her, you slander her, call her by an unseemly
name, and who