“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair.  “My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods.  Do you think this girl will ever be really content now with any one of her own rank?  I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman.  Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched.  From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation.  Even as a beginning, it is poor.  Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?”

“I can’t bear this, Harry!  You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies.  I am sorry I told you now.  I don’t care what you say to me.  I know I was right in acting as I did.  Poor Hetty!  As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine.  Don’t let us talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.  I want to be better.  I am going to be better.  Tell me something about yourself.  What is going on in town?  I have not been to the club for days.”

“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s disappearance.”

“I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,” said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.

“My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months.  They have been very fortunate lately, however.  They have had my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell’s suicide.  Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.  Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all.  I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco.  It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.  It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly.

“I have not the slightest idea.  If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine.  If he is dead, I don’t want to think about him.  Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.  I hate it.”

“Why?” said the younger man wearily.