Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives.  If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect.  Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play.  Or rather we are both.  We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.  In the present case, what is it that has really happened?  Some one has killed herself for love of you.  I wish that I had ever had such an experience.  It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life.  The people who have adored me—­there have not been very many, but there have been some—­have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.  They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences.  That awful memory of woman!  What a fearful thing it is!  And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals!  One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details.  Details are always vulgar.”

“I must sow poppies in my garden,” sighed Dorian.

“There is no necessity,” rejoined his companion.  “Life has always poppies in her hands.  Of course, now and then things linger.  I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die.  Ultimately, however, it did die.  I forget what killed it.  I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me.  That is always a dreadful moment.  It fills one with the terror of eternity.  Well—­would you believe it?—­a week ago, at Lady Hampshire’s, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future.  I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.  She dragged it out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life.  I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety.  But what a lack of taste she showed!  The one charm of the past is that it is the past.  But women never know when the curtain has fallen.  They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.  If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce.  They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.  You are more fortunate than I am.  I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you.  Ordinary women always console themselves.  Some of them do it by going in for sentimental colours.  Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.  It always means that they have a history.  Others find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands.  They flaunt