I know how people chatter in England.  The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander.  In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.  And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves?  My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”

“Dorian,” cried Hallward, “that is not the question.  England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong.  That is the reason why I want you to be fine.  You have not been fine.  One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.  Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity.  You have filled them with a madness for pleasure.  They have gone down into the depths.  You led them there.  Yes:  you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now.  And there is worse behind.  I know you and Harry are inseparable.  Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister’s name a by-word.”

“Take care, Basil.  You go too far.”

“I must speak, and you must listen.  You shall listen.  When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her.  Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park?  Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her.  Then there are other stories—­ stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.  Are they true?  Can they be true?  When I first heard them, I laughed.  I hear them now, and they make me shudder.  What about your country-house and the life that is led there?  Dorian, you don’t know what is said about you.  I won’t tell you that I don’t want to preach to you.  I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word.  I do want to preach to you.  I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you.  I want you to have a clean name and a fair record.  I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with.  Don’t shrug your shoulders like that.  Don’t be so indifferent.  You have a wonderful influence.  Let it be for good, not for evil.  They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after.  I don’t know whether it is so or not.  How should I know?  But it is said of you.  I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.  Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.  He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone.  Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read.  I told him that it was absurd—­that I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind.  Know you?  I wonder do I know you?  Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”