“Well, what does it mean?” she asked finally with an inquisitive glance. I was a little surprised. “It doesn’t mean anything in particular,” I answered. “It’s just a landscape. That’s the ground and that’s the sky and that there is a road--an ordinary road----” “Yes, I can see that,” she interrupted in a somewhat unfriendly tone; “but I want to know what it _means_.” I stood there embarrassed and irresolute; I had never happened to think that it ought to mean anything. But her idea was not to be removed; she had now got it into her head that the picture must be some sort of “Where is the cat?” affair. Why otherwise should I have shown it to her? At last she set it up against the window-pane so as to make it transparent. Presumably someone had once shown her a peculiar kind of playing card, which in an ordinary light represents a nine of diamonds or a knave of spades, but which, when one holds it up against the light, displays something indecent. But her investigation brought no result. She gave back the sketch, and I prepared to leave. Then all at once the poor girl grew very red in the face and burst out, with a sob in her throat: “Shame on you! it’s real mean of you to make a fool of me like that. I know very well I’m a poor girl, and haven’t been able to get myself a better education, but still you don’t need to make a fool of me. Can’t you tell me what your picture means?” What was I to answer? I should have given much to be able to tell her what it meant; but I could not, for it meant precisely nothing. * * * * * Ah, well, that was many years ago. I now smoke other cigars, which I buy in another shop, and I no longer wonder about the meaning of life--but that is not because I think I have found it. THE WAGES OF SIN This is the story of a young girl and an apothecary with a white vest. She was young and slim, she smelled of pine woods and heather, and her complexion was sunburned and a trifle freckled. So she was when I knew her. But the apothecary was a quite ordinary apothecary; he wore a white vest on Sundays, and on a Sunday this attracted attention. It attracted attention in a place in the country so far away from the world that no one in that region was so sophisticated as to wear a white vest on Sundays except the apothecary. This, you see, was how it happened that one Sunday morning there was a knock at my door, and when I opened it, the apothecary stood outside in his white vest and bowed several times. He was very polite and very much embarrassed. “I beg your most humble pardon,” he said, “but Miss Erika was here yesterday with her sisters while you were away, and when she went, she left her poetry book for you and me to write something in it. Here it is. But I don’t know at all what to write. Could you perhaps kindly----?” And he bowed again several times. “We will think the matter over,” I answered in a friendly tone.