The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.  “Why do you ask me that, Harry?”

“My dear fellow,” said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, “I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.  That is all.  I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher.  As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audience.  It struck me as being rather dramatic.  London is very rich in curious effects of that kind.  A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips—­it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion.  I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not.  I am afraid, however, he would not have understood me.”

“Don’t, Harry.  The soul is a terrible reality.  It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away.  It can be poisoned, or made perfect.  There is a soul in each one of us.  I know it.”

“Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?”

“Quite sure.”

“Ah! then it must be an illusion.  The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true.  That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.  How grave you are!  Don’t be so serious.  What have you or I to do with the superstitions of our age?  No:  we have given up our belief in the soul.  Play me something.  Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.  You must have some secret.  I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow.  You are really wonderful, Dorian.  You have never looked more charming than you do to-night.  You remind me of the day I saw you first.  You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.  You have changed, of course, but not in appearance.  I wish you would tell me your secret.  To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.  Youth!  There is nothing like it.  It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.  I do it on principle.  If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing.  How lovely that thing you are playing is!  I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes?  It is marvellously romantic.  What a blessing it is that there is one art left