No; if you really
want to help this poor girl, you must give her a chance of getting
on her feet at once, like a toiling being, and not like a drone.
True, there is a great temptation here--the burden of labour,
temporary need; but then, if she will surmount this, she will
surmount the rest as well."
"What, then, according to you, is she to become--a dish-washer?"
asked Soloviev with unbelief.
"Well, yes," calmly retorted Simanovsky. "A dish-washer, a
laundress, a cook. All toil elevates a human being."
Lichonin shook his head.
"Words of gold. Wisdom itself speaks with your lips, Simanovsky.
Dish-washer, cook, maid, housekeeper ... but, in the first place,
it's doubtful if she's capable for that; in the second place, she
has already been a maid and has tasted all the sweets of masters'
bawlings out, and masters' pinches behind doors, in the corridor.
Tell me, is it possible you don't know that ninety per cent, of
prostitution is recruited from the number of female servants? And,
therefore, poor Liuba, at the very first injustice, at the first
rebuff, will the more easily and readily go just there where I
have gotten her out of; if not even worse, because for her that's
customary and not so frightful; and, perhaps, it will even seem
desirable after the masters' treatment.
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