." Klotchkov repeated.
"Boundaries! Upper part on anterior wall of thorax reaches the
fourth or fifth rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib . . .
behind to the _spina scapulae_. . ."

Klotchkov raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving to visualise
what he had just read. Unable to form a clear picture of it, he
began feeling his upper ribs through his waistcoat.

"These ribs are like the keys of a piano," he said. "One must
familiarise oneself with them somehow, if one is not to get muddled
over them. One must study them in the skeleton and the living body
. . . . I say, Anyuta, let me pick them out."

Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse, and straightened
herself up. Klotchkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began
counting her ribs.

"H'm! . . . One can't feel the first rib; it's behind the shoulder-blade
. . . . This must be the second rib. . . . Yes . . . this is the third
. . . this is the fourth. . . . H'm! . . . yes. . . . Why are you
wriggling?"

"Your fingers are cold!"

"Come, come . . . it won't kill you. Don't twist about. That must
be the third rib, then . . . this is the fourth. . . . You look
such a skinny thing, and yet one can hardly feel your ribs. That's
the second . . . that's the third. . . . Oh, this is muddling, and
one can't see it clearly. . . . I must draw it. . . . Where's my
crayon?"

Klotchkov took his crayon and drew on Anyuta's chest several parallel
lines corresponding with the ribs.

"First-rate. That's all straightforward. . . . Well, now I can sound
you. Stand up!"

Anyuta stood up and raised her chin. Klotchkov began sounding her,
and was so absorbed in this occupation that he did not notice how
Anyuta's lips, nose, and fingers turned blue with cold. Anyuta
shivered, and was afraid the student, noticing it, would leave off
drawing and sounding her, and then, perhaps, might fail in his exam.

"Now it's all clear," said Klotchkov when he had finished. "You sit
like that and don't rub off the crayon, and meanwhile I'll learn
up a little more."

And the student again began walking to and fro, repeating to himself.
Anyuta, with black stripes across her chest, looking as though she
had been tattooed, sat thinking, huddled up and shivering with cold.
She said very little as a rule; she was always silent, thinking and
thinking. . . .

In the six or seven years of her wanderings from one furnished room
to another, she had known five students like Klotchkov. N