who played amusingly on the piano, danced splendidly, and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks; but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any carousing party “shell out the coin.”  It only remained to convince the mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of all.  She did not want to detach herself from her beloved for anything; threatened suicide, swore that she would burn his eyes out with sulphuric acid, promised to go and complain to the chief of police—­and she really did know a few dirty little transactions of Simon Yakovlevich’s that smacked of capital punishment.  Thereupon Horizon changed his tactics.  He suddenly became a tender, attentive friend, an indefatigable lover.  Then suddenly he fell into black melancholy.  The uneasy questionings of the woman he let pass in silence; at first let drop a word as though by chance; hinted in passing at some mistake of his life; and then began to lie desperately and with inspiration.  He said that the police were watching him; that he could not get by the jail, and, perhaps, even hard labour and the gallows; that it was necessary for him to disappear abroad for several months.  But mainly, what he persisted in especially strongly, was some tremendous fantastic business, in which he stood to make several hundred thousands of roubles.  The sempstress believed and became alarmed with that disinterested, womanly, almost holy alarm, in which, with every woman, there is so much of something maternal.  It was not at all difficult now to convince her that for Horizon to travel together with her presented a great danger for him; and that it would be better for her to remain here and to bide the time until the affairs of her lover would adjust themselves fortuitously.  After that to talk her into hiding, as in the most trustworthy retreat, in a brothel, where she would be in full safety from the police and the detectives, was a mere nothing.  One morning Horizon ordered her to dress a little better, curl her hair, powder herself, put a little rouge on her cheeks, and carried her off to a den, to his acquaintance.  The girl made a favourable impression there, and that same day her passport was changed by the police to a so-called yellow ticket.  Having parted with her, after long embraces and tears, Horizon went into the room of the proprietress and received his payment, fifty roubles (although he had asked for two hundred).  But he did not grieve especially over the low price; the main thing was, that he had found his calling at last, all by himself, and had laid the cornerstone of his future welfare.

Of course, the woman sold by him just remained forever so in the tenacious hands of the brothel.  Horizon forgot her so thoroughly that after only a year he could not even recall her face.  But who knows ... perhaps he merely pretended?