_Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch_ BERLIN, January 8. DEAR GUSTAV--I have a great piece of news to tell you. My wife returned to me yesterday, and at my earnest solicitation. I thought I could no longer live _with_ her, but I find it equally impossible to live _without_ her. I have just discovered that she too was very unhappy during the time of our separation, but she would never have acknowledged it, for hers is the stronger character of the two. I do not know how to explain the miracle, but we love each other more dearly than ever. We are celebrating a new honeymoon. The great questions of life drove us apart, but is it only the little ones which have reunited us? Would you suppose that one could find a half-desiccated heart in the pocket of an old fur coat? The stately edifice of my worldly knowledge totters on its foundations, dear Gustav. I have a great deal to unlearn. MAX. --Ludwig Fulda. =The Lady in Pink= If I hadn't had to stop in the middle of my painting and run down to the house to get some more rose-madder I never in the world should have seen her; I had to leave all my things up on the hill with little David, and on the way down to the village I passed the place. The only thing I remember now is that I was hurrying along by a stone wall which was higher than my head and that above it dark pines clustered in pointed masses against a blue and white sky--it was just the kind of sky Bougereau would have loved, with soft, opaque clouds--when I came past the gate, and one can never go by a gate, you know, and not look in, and it was there that I saw her. She was sitting on a bench built under a tree--the trunk of which did for the perpendicular in the composition and gave such a good contrast in color, too, for she--well, there she was just sitting there with her hands in her lap, her head against the tree and her feet out in front of her, and oh, dreams of loveliness--her dress was pink! Think of that! Rose pink where it touched the grass, lavender pink where it fell in shadows, shell pink where the sun flickered on it--and in her hand she held a kind of golden straw hat, and that was just dripping with roses, and they were the pinkest of all. Oh! it was a picture for the gods. I made quick work of my errand and hastened back to tell David about it. "Well, I've seen it," I announced breathlessly, coming up the slope. "Seen what?" asked David, not stopping from his clover chain. "My masterpiece," I answered, squirting out much more of the rose-madder than I needed--this paltry little sketch I was working on now would have to be finished up and gotten out of the road for real work. "Where?" asked David, with the laconic briefness of childhood. "Down inside the big gate--behind the stone wall."