"Naturally."

"Then why fear to see it?" The boy's face was pale, his eyes still
challenged.

The other made a gesture of impatience. "It isn't a question of fear;
it is a question of--well, of taste."

"Taste!" The boy tossed the word to scorn.

"What would you substitute?"

"Truth." There was a tremor in his voice, a veil seemed to fall upon his
youth, arresting its carelessness, sobering its vitality.

The Irishman raised his brows. "Truth, eh?"

"Yes. It is only possible to live when we know life truly, see it and
value it truly."

"There may be perverted truth."

"You say that because this truth we speak of displeases you; yet this is
no more a perversion of the truth than"--he glanced round the
walls--"than that, for example; yet you would approve of that."

He waved his hand toward another painting, a delicate and charming
conception of a half-clothed woman, a picture in which the flesh-tints,
the drapery, the lights all harmonized with exquisite art.