ow was it with Pitt? She must try
and find out.

She accordingly made an attempt that same evening, beginning with the
staircase again.

'I admired Inigo Jones all the way up-stairs,' she said, when she had
an opportunity to talk to Pitt alone. Mr. Dallas had gone to sleep
after dinner, and his wife was knitting at a sufficient distance. 'The
quaint fancies and delicate work are really such as I never imagined
before in wood-carving. But your words about it remain a puzzle to me.'

'My words? About art being an expression of truth? Surely that is not
new?'

'It may be very old; but I do not understand it.'

'You understand, that so far as art is genuine, it is a setter forth of
truth?'

'Well, I suppose so; of some truth. Roses must be roses, and trees must
be trees; and of course must look as like the reality as possible.'

'That is the very lowest thing art can do, and in some cases is not
true art at all. Her business is to tell truth--never to deceive.'

'What sort of truth then?'

'What I said; spiritual and moral.'

'Ah, there it is! Now you have got back to it. Now you are talking
mystery, or--forgive me--transcendentalism.'

'No; nothing but simple and very plain fact. It is this first,--that
all truth is one; and this next,--that in the world of creation things
material are the expression of things spiritual. So all real beauty in
form or colour has back of it a greater beauty of higher degree.'

'You are talking pure mystery.'

'No, surely,' said Pitt eagerly. 'You certainly recognise the truth of
what I am saying, in some things. For instance, you cannot look up
steadily into the blue infinity of one of our American skies on a clear
day--at least _I_ cannot--without presently getting the impression of
truth, pure, unfailing, incorruptible truth, in its Creator. The rose,
everywhere in the world, so far as I know, is the accepted emblem of
love. And for another very familiar instance,--Christ is called in the
Bible the Sun of righteousness--the Light that is the life of man. Do
you know how close to fact that is? What this earth would be if
deprived of the sun for a few days, is but a true image of the
condition of any soul finally forsaken by the Sun of righteousness. In
one word, death; and that is what the Bible means by death, of which
the death we commonly speak of is again but a faint image.'

Betty fidgeted a little; this was not what she wished to speak of; it
was getting away from he