It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker’s men to get the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.
“I do not wonder you did not like to show it,” I said. “How can you bear to paint such a dreadful picture?”
“It is a true one. It only represents a fact.”
“All facts have not a right to be represented.”
“Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of sight?”
“No; nor yet by gloating upon them.”
“You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such pictures—as far as the subject goes,” he said with some discomposure.
“Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my possession, I would—”
“Put it in the fire,” suggested Percivale with a strange smile.
“No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that they need the Saviour.”