Dorian looked at him and smiled.  “What a way for a fashionable painter to travel!  A Gladstone bag and an ulster!  Come in, or the fog will get into the house.  And mind you don’t talk about anything serious.  Nothing is serious nowadays.  At least nothing should be.”

Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library.  There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth.  The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table.

“You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.  He gave me everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.  He is a most hospitable creature.  I like him much better than the Frenchman you used to have.  What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?”

Dorian shrugged his shoulders.  “I believe he married Lady Radley’s maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.  Anglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear.  It seems silly of the French, doesn’t it?  But—­do you know?—­he was not at all a bad servant.  I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about.  One often imagines things that are quite absurd.  He was really very devoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away.  Have another brandy-and-soda?  Or would you like hock-and-seltzer?  I always take hock-and-seltzer myself.  There is sure to be some in the next room.”

“Thanks, I won’t have anything more,” said the painter, taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the corner.  “And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.  Don’t frown like that.  You make it so much more difficult for me.”

“What is it all about?” cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa.  “I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired of myself to-night.  I should like to be somebody else.”

“It is about yourself,” answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, “and I must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour.”

Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette.  “Half an hour!” he murmured.

“It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London.”

“I don’t wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me.  They have not got the charm of novelty.”

“They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his good name.  You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded.  Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind you, I don’t believe these rumours at all.  At least, I can’t believe them when I see you.