surprised at the expression that had overspread his face, the sombre light that glowed in his eyes. In a moment the adventurer was lost, another being had come uppermost--a strange, unexpected being.

"What do you think of this picture?"

The Irishman did not answer for a moment, then his eyes returned to the canvas and his tongue was loosed.

"If you want to know," he said, "I think it's the most damnable thing I've ever seen. When the Gallic mind runs to morbidity there's nothing to touch it for filth."

"Why filth?"

"Why filth? My dear boy, look at this--and this!" He pointed to the other pictures, each a study of monkey life, each a travesty of some human passion.

The boy obeyed, conscientiously and slowly, then once more his eyes challenged his companion's.

"I say again, why filth?"

"Because there is enough of the beast in every man without advertising it."

"You admit that there is something of the beast in every man?"

"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. "You would approve of that because it pleases your eye and soothes your senses, yet you know that all womankind is not slim and gracious--that all life is not lived in boudoirs." "Neither is man all beast." "Ah, that is it! If we are to be students of human nature we must not be 

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