Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray.  “Am I to go, Mr. Gray?” he asked.

“Oh, please don’t, Lord Henry.  I see that Basil is in one of his sulky moods; and I can’t bear him when he sulks.  Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy.”

“I don’t know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray.  But I certainly will not run away, now that you have asked me to stop.  You don’t really mind, Basil, do you?  You have often told me that you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to.”

Hallward bit his lip.  “If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.  Dorian’s whims are laws to everybody, except himself.”

Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves.  “You are very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go.  I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.—­Good-by, Mr. Gray.  Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street.  I am nearly always at home at five o’clock.  Write to me when you are coming.  I should be sorry to miss you.”

“Basil,” cried Dorian Gray, “if Lord Henry goes I shall go too.  You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant.  Ask him to stay.  I insist upon it.”

“Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,” said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture.  “It is quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters.  I beg you to stay.”

“But what about my man at the Orleans?”

Hallward laughed.  “I don’t think there will be any difficulty about that.  Sit down again, Harry.—­And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don’t move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says.  He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the exception of myself.”

Dorian stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy.  He was so unlike Hallward.  They made a delightful contrast.  And he had such a beautiful voice.  After a few moments he said to him, “Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry?  As bad as Basil says?”

“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray.  All influence is immoral,—­immoral from the scientific point of view.”

“Why?”

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.  He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.  His virtues are not real to him.  His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed.  He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.  The aim of life is self-development.  To realize one’s nature perfectly,—­that is what each of us is here for.  People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.  They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s [14] self.  Of course they are charitable.  They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are naked.  Courage has gone out of our race.  Perhaps we never really had it.  The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,—­these are the two things that govern us.  And yet—­”