In the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Allan Leisner, a medical student in his third year, was walking back and forth, zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart. He was living in a poor black neighborhood near the University of Chicago.  In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the girl who shared his room -- Jackie, a thin tall twenty six year old black girl, with very big, mild gray eyes. Sitting with bent back she was busy sewing with red thread the collar of a man's shirt. She was living with Allan for about six months. The relationship between them was straight. He paid the rent and she did whatever he wanted her to do. Her logic was simple. Anything is better than being homeless.  Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about, books, clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled with soap-suds in which cigarette ends were swimming, and the litter on the floor -- all seemed as though purposely jumbled together in one confusion. . . .  "The right lung consists of three parts . . ." Leisner 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 scapulæ. . ."  Leisner raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving to visualize 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 familiarize 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, Jackie, let me pick them out."  Jackie put down her sewing, took off her blouse, and straightened herself up. Leisner 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?"  Leisner took his crayon and drew on Jackie's chest several parallel lines corresponding with the ribs.  "First-rate. That's all straightforward. Well, now I can examine you. Stand up!"  Jackie stood up and raised her chin. Leisner began examining her, and was so absorbed in this occupation that he did not notice how Jackie's lips, nose, and fingers turned blue with cold. Jackie shivered, and was afraid the student, noticing it, would leave off drawing and examining her, and then, perhaps, might fail in his exam.  "Now it's all clear," said Leisner 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 back and forth, repeating to himself. Jackie, 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 Leisner. Now they had all finished their studies, had gone out into the world, and, of course, like respectable people, had long ago forgotten her. One of them was living in Paris, two were doctors, the fourth was an artist, and the fifth was said to be already a professor. Leisner was the sixth. . . . Soon he, too, would finish his studies and go out into the world. There was a fine future before him, no doubt, and Leisner probably would become a great man, but the present was anything but bright; Leisner had no bread and no tea, and there were only four pizzas left. She must make haste and finish her sewing, take it to the woman who had ordered it, and with the few bucks she would get for it, buy tea and bread.  "Can I come in?" asked a voice at the door.  Jackie quickly put a coat over her shoulders. Mr. Cashe, the artist, walked in.  "I have come to ask you a favor," he began, addressing Leisner, and glaring like a wild beast from under the long locks that hung over his brow. "Do me a favor; lend me your young lady just for a couple of hours! I'm painting a picture, you see, and I can't get on without a model."  "Oh, with pleasure," Leisner agreed. "Go along, Jackie."  "The things I've had to put up with there," Jackie murmured softly.  "BS! The man's asking you for the sake of art, and not for any sort of nonsense. Why not help him if you can?"  Jackie began dressing.  "And what are you painting?" asked Leisner.  "Psyche; it's a fine subject. But it won't go, somehow. I have to keep painting from different models. Yesterday I was painting one with blue legs. 'Why are your legs blue?' I asked her. 'It's my stockings stain them,' she said.  And you're still frustrated? Lucky fellow! You have patience."  "Medicine's a job one can't get on with without some frustration. It pays more than artistic work. "  "H'm! . . . Excuse me, Leisner, but you do live like a pig! It's awful the way you live!"  "How do you mean? I can't help it. . . . I only get hundred dollars a month from my father, and it's hard to live decently on that."  "Yes . . . yes . . ." said the artist, frowning with an air of disgust; "but, still, you might live better. . . . An educated man is in duty bound to have taste, isn't he? And goodness knows what it's like here! The bed not made, the dirt . . . yesterday's porridge in the plates. . . That socks!"  "That's true," said the student in confusion; "but Jackie has had no time to-day to tidy up; she's been busy all the while."  When Jackie and the artist had gone out Leisner lay down on the sofa and began learning, lying down; then he accidentally dropped asleep, and waking up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and sank into gloomy reflection. He recalled the artist's words that an educated man was in duty bound to have taste, and his surroundings actually struck him now as loathsome and revolting. He saw, as it were in his mind's eye, his own future, when he would see his patients in his hospital, drink tea in a large dining-room in the company of his wife, a real lady. And now that slop-pail in which the cigarette ends were swimming looked incredibly disgusting. Jackie, too, rose before his imagination -- a plain, slovenly, pitiful figure . . . and he made up his mind to break up with her at once, at all costs. "I should find a wife from the good family who has money. Why should I live with stupid black hore? When, on coming back from the artist's, she took off her coat, he got up and said to her seriously:  "Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and listen. We must break up. Fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer."  Jackie had come back from the artist's worn out and exhausted. Standing so long as a model had made her face look thin and sunken, and her chin sharper than ever. She said nothing in answer to the student's words, only her lips began to tremble.  "You know we should have to break up sooner or later, anyway," said the student. "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool; you'll understand. . . ."  Jackie put on her coat again, in silence wrapped up her sewing in paper, gathered together her needles and thread:.  "Thanks for everything . . . . . . " she said softly, and turned away to conceal her tears.  "Why are you crying?" asked Leisner.  He walked about the room in confusion, and said:  "You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why, you know we shall have to break up. We can't stay together for ever."  She had gathered together all her belongings, and turned to say good-bye to him, and he felt sorry for her.  "Shall I let her stay on here another week?" he thought. "She really may as well stay, and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and decided at his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly:  "Come, why are you standing there? If you are going, go; and if you don't want to, take off your coat and stay! You can stay!"  Jackie took off her coat, silently, stealthily, then blew her nose also stealthily, sighed, and noiselessly returned to her invariable position on her stool by the window.  The student drew his textbook to him and began again pacing from corner to corner. "The right lung consists of three parts," he repeated; "the upper part, on anterior wall of thorax, reaches the fourth or fifth rib . . . ."  Modified from the classical literature.

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