The boy was standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he came
silently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They were
alone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed over
some knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distance
stretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain.
From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American
ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second
the two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with a
restless, nervous activity.

These facts came subconsciously to the Irishman, for his eyes and his
thoughts were for the boy and the subject of the boy's interest--a
picture curiously repulsive, yet curiously binding in its realism of
conception. It was a large canvas that formed one of a group of five or
six studies by a particular artist. The details of the picture scarcely
held the mind, for the imagination of the beholder was instantly caught
and enchained by the central figure--the figure of a great ape, painted
with cruel and extraordinary truth. The animal was squatting upon the
ground, devouring a luscious fruit; its small and greedy eyes were
alight with gluttony; in its unbridled appetite, its hairy fingers
crushed the fruit against its sharp teeth, while the juice dripped from
its mouth.

The intimate, undisguised portrayal of greed shocked the
susceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in the
brute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mind
and brush the artist had laid bare a vice that civilization cloaks.

For two or three minutes the boy stood immovable, then he looked back