The Bet and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with them to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but eventually dressed himself and went with them.

Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never once in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew there were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for dead, science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are free to avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society does not forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is not lower than the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an unfortunate woman in the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a picture of one in a comic paper, there came into his mind every time a story he once read somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in love with an unfortunate woman and asks her to be his wife, but she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, poisons herself.