And round her you would have wrought a
world of idle significance. You would have twisted dogma into the flowers
and grass-blades. The fact that the girl happened to be practically
brainless and a Luke Gospeler would not have weighed with you a moment."
"I'm weary of the old cant about Nature," said Tarrant. "You're a
naturalist and a materialist. That ends it. There is no possibility of
argument between us."
"Would the man who painted that gorse cant?" burst out Brady. "Damn it all,
Tarrant, if a chap can teach us to paint, perhaps he can teach us something
else as well. Look at that gorse, I tell you. That's the truth, won with
many a wrestle and heartache, I'll swear. You know as well as I do what
went to get that, and yet you say there's nothing behind the paint. That's
cant, if you like. And as to your religious spirit, what's the good of
preaching sermons in paint if the paint's false? We're on it now and I'll
say what I believe, which is that your 'Good Shepherd' is all wrong, apart
from any question of sentiment at all. Your own party will probably say
it's blasphemous, and I say it's ridiculous. You've painted a grand sky and
then ruined it with the subject. Did you ever see a man's head bang between
you and a clear setting sun? Any way, that figure of yours was never
painted with a sunset behind him, I'll swear."
"You can't paint truth as you find it and preach truth as you believe it on
the same canvas if you belong to any creed but mine," said Barron calmly.
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