“Their contents are not nourishing. Why not leave such scraps to the degenerates so well known to the medical gentlemen who specialize in them?—to the Gauguins, Cezannes, Matisses among professors and students in that ghastly clinic where subject, operator and onlooker are scarcely distinguishable to the normal eye?”
“Good heavens, what bitterness!”
“Good God, what insanity!”
“I must hew out my own way——” insisted Annan hotly.
“Hew on! But follow the standard! Don’t lose sight of the standard——”
“Standards change——”
“Not The Cross!”
There was a silence; then Barry said: “Is it the function of art to make people better by lying to them?”
“It is not its function to make them worse by offering distorted truths.”
“Does it hurt people to know the truer and less pleasant side of life?”