“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you.  It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.  Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”

The painter considered for a few moments.  “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me.  Of course I flatter him dreadfully.  I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said.  As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things.  Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain.  Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger,” murmured Lord Henry.  “Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will.  It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty.  That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.  In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.  The thoroughly well-informed man—­that is the modern ideal.  And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing.  It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.  I think you will tire first, all the same.  Some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of colour, or something.  You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you.  The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent.  It will be a great pity, for it will alter you.  What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

“Harry, don’t talk like that.  As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me.  You can’t feel what I feel.  You change too often.”

“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it.  Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love:  it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”  And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase.  There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows.  How pleasant it was in the garden!  And how delightful other people’s emotions were!—­ much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.  One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends—­those were the fascinating things