“Frank, you must tell me for our friendship’s sake.  Is it my fault?  Was he wrong or was I wrong?”

His weakness was pathetic, or was it that his affection was still so great that he wanted to blame himself rather than his friend?

“Of course he seems to me to be wrong,” I said, “utterly wrong.”  I could not help saying it and I went on: 

“But you know his temper is insane; if he even praises himself, as he did to me lately, he gets into a rage in order to do it, and perhaps unwittingly you annoyed him by the way you asked.  If you put it to his generosity and vainglory you would get it easier than from his sense of justice and right.  He has not much moral sense.”

“Oh, Frank,” he broke in earnestly, “I put it to him as well as I could, quite quietly and gently.  I talked of our old affection, of the good and evil days we had passed together:  you know I could never be harsh to him, never.

“There never was,” he burst out, in a sort of exaltation, “there never was in the world such a betrayal.  Do you remember once telling me that the only flaw you could find in the perfect symbolism of the gospel story was that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the foreigner from Kerioth, when he should have been betrayed by John, the beloved disciple; for it is only those we love who can betray us?  Frank, how true, how tragically true that is!  It is those we love who betray us with a kiss.”

He was silent for some time and then went on wearily, “I wish you would speak to him, Frank, and show him how unjust and unkind he is to me.”

“I cannot possibly do that, Oscar,” I said, “I do not know all the relations between you and the myriad bands that unite you:  I should only do harm and not good.”

“Frank,” he cried, “you do know, you must know that he is responsible for everything, for my downfall and my ruin.  It was he who drove me to fight with his father.  I begged him not to, but he whipped me to it; asked me what his father could do; pointed out to me contemptuously that he could prove nothing; said he was the most loathsome, hateful creature in the world, and that it was my duty to stop him, and that if I did not, everyone would be laughing at me, and he could never care for a coward.  All his family, his brother and his mother, too, begged me to attack Queensberry, all promised me their support and afterwards—­

“You know, Frank, in the Cafe Royal before the trial how Bosie spoke to you, when you warned me and implored me to drop the insane suit and go abroad; how angry he got.  You were not a friend of mine, he said.  You know he drove me to ruin in order to revenge himself on his father, and then left me to suffer.