 The details in the painting are ambiguous enough for Ter Borch to have left it to the viewer to decide which of these scenes was being portrayed.Ter Borch made a number of copies of the work, and when a smaller version held in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin was cleaned, it was revealed that the man was holding a coin between the fingers of his raised hand.It has been suggested that this makes the brothel scene more likely to be the correct interpretation since it is harder to reconcile the showing of money in a formal situation.