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I alone stood still, leaning against the side scene, overwhelmed by what had happened, not understanding and not knowing what to do. I saw them lift her up and lead her away. I saw Anyuta Blagovo come up to me; I had not seen her in the room before, and she seemed to have sprung out of the earth. She was wearing her hat and veil, and, as always, had an air of having come only for a moment.
Anyuta, too, rose before his imagination a plain, slovenly, pitiful figure . . . and he made up his mind to part with her at once, at all costs. 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 part! The fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer."
When Anyuta and the artist had gone out Klotchkov 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.
My sister and Anyuta wanted to ask how I was getting on here, but both were silent, and simply gazed at me. I was silent too. They saw that I did not like the place, and tears came into my sister's eyes, while Anyuta Blagovo turned crimson. We went into the garden. The doctor walked ahead of us all and said enthusiastically: "What air! Holy Mother, what air!" In appearance he was still a student.
Anyuta 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 part sooner or later, anyway," said the student. "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool; you'll understand. . . ."
"Anyuta, let us go home," croaked the tax-collector. Seeing her husband standing before her, Anna Pavlovna started as though recalling the fact that she had a husband; then she flushed all over: she felt ashamed that she had such a sickly-looking, ill-humoured, ordinary husband. "Let us go home," repeated the tax-collector. "Why? It's quite early!"
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.
I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing gaily. Then, lying down, she ate some French bread and said to me: "When you wouldn't go into the service, but became a house painter, Anyuta Blagovo and I knew from the beginning that you were right, but we were frightened to say so aloud. Tell me what force is it that hinders us from saying what one thinks?
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."
Take Anyuta Blagovo now, for instance. She loves you, she adores you, she knows you are right, she loves me too, like a sister, and knows that I am right, and I daresay in her soul envies me, but some force prevents her from coming to see us, she shuns us, she is afraid." My sister crossed her arms over her breast, and said passionately: "How she loves you, if only you knew!
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