I made an arrangement with him and went down.  I missed my train and was very late; I found that Lord Alfred Douglas had dined and gone out.  I had my dinner, and about midnight went up to my room.  Half an hour later there came a knocking at the door.  I opened it and found Lord Alfred Douglas.

“May I come in?” he asked.  “I’m glad you’ve not gone to bed yet.”

“Of course,” I said, “what is it?” He was pale and seemed extraordinarily excited.

“I have had such a row with Oscar,” he jerked out, nervously moving about (I noticed the strained white face I had seen before at the Cafe Royal), “such a row, and I wanted to speak to you about it.  Of course you know in the old days when his plays were being given in London he was rich and gave me some money, and now he says I ought to settle a large sum on him; I think it ridiculous, don’t you?”

“I would rather not say anything about it,” I replied; “I don’t know enough about the circumstances.”

He was too filled with a sense of his own injuries; too excited to catch my tone or understand any reproof in my attitude.

“Oscar is really too dreadful,” he went on; “he is quite shameless now; he begs and begs and begs, and of course I have given him money, have given him hundreds, quite as much as he ever gave me:  but he is insatiable and recklessly extravagant besides.  Of course I want to be quite fair to him:  I’ve already given him back all he gave me.  Don’t you think that is all anyone can ask of me?”

I looked at him in astonishment.

“That is for you and Oscar,” I said, “to decide together.  No one else can judge between you.”

“Why not?” he snapped out in his irritable way, “you know us both and our relations.”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t know all the obligations and the interwoven services.  Besides, I could not judge fairly between you.”

He turned on me angrily, though I had spoken with as much kindness as I could.

“He seemed to want to make you judge between us,” he cried.  “I don’t care who’s the judge.  I think if you give a man back what he has given you, that is all he can ask.  It’s a d——­d lot more than most people get in this world.”

After a pause he started off on a new line of thought: 

“The first time I ever noticed any fault in Oscar was over that ‘Salome’ translation.  He’s appallingly conceited.  You know I did the play into English.  I found that his choice of words was poor, anything but good; his prose is wooden....

“Of course he’s not a poet,” he broke off contemptuously, “even you must admit that.”

“I know what you mean,” I replied; “though I should have to make a vast reservation in favour of the man who wrote ’The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’”

“One ballad doesn’t make a man a poet,” he barked; “I mean by poet one to whom verse lends power:  in that sense he’s not a poet and I am.”  His tone was that of defiant challenge.