With that, there emerged into the vista toward the bay a veritable walrus head; a coarse, hairy body shone through the green shimmering water; and with several sharp, panting strokes the giant plunged forward to the stairway, climbed up, and threw himself blinking upon the hot bridge of the bath-house. The small white-skinned man surveyed anxiously but with interest the face of the other; the eagle nose, the bushy eyebrows, and the bristly drooping mustache. Where the deuce had he seen that face before? Thereupon the walrus suddenly got up and stretched out his flipper. “Why, devil’s in it if that isn’t little Modin!” “Yes, I surely thought it was someone I knew. Good-day, Brother Axelson! Lord! but it’s hard to recognize folks out of their clothes.” “Aye, your own dog barks at you when you’re naked. I’m scared to death of myself when I look at myself in a glass.”--Axelson surveyed his new-found acquaintance with the critical look of a doctor.--“You seem to be in good condition, Modin. Aren’t you going to plunge in?” “No, thanks; I’m just enjoying a sun bath. I love to sit here like this and take in the special bath-house smell of water and sun-steeped wood. It has a holiday scent, don’t you think?--Well, do you know, I hadn’t a notion it was in this town you were a doctor. That’s how folks lose sight of each other.” “Aye, I’ve stuck it out here these seventeen years now, you faithless little devil.--And you’ve taken over your father’s big antiquarian book business.” “Oh, you know everything of course. The same horse’s memory as ever. I taught a while, but that didn’t suit me at all. And so when my father died”---- “Your catalog is always prized by connoisseurs.” “The first assistant, old Salin, deserves the credit of that. He’s a faithful martinet. It’s really the etchings and engravings that interest me. There’s certainly a bad feeling among our regular customers because I can’t let the finest things go away from me. I’m here to look at the collection of the deceased banker. I was here once fifteen years ago, while I was still a teacher. I didn’t suspect then either that you were in the neighborhood. That visit is connected with an exquisite memory, a fleeting yet pervasive experience, which I can only compare with the fragrance of certain delicate perfumes.” “You’re very keen about perfumes, my dear Modin; I remember that from of old. Is it because the sense of smell is the weakest of the senses?” Modin made the gesture of pushing up his absent spectacles. “The weakest? On the contrary, smell is an extraordinarily fine sense. We can distinguish the smallest nuances with it. The truth of the matter is simply this, that we have only fixed a few of these nuances in words.” “True. But at any rate smell belongs to those senses which have least to do with our thought.”