“Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you.  But what the gods give they quickly take away.  You have only a few years in which really to live.  When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left [17] for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.  Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful.  Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.  You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.  You will suffer horribly.

“Realize your youth while you have it.  Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar, which are the aims, the false ideals, of our age.  Live!  Live the wonderful life that is in you!  Let nothing be lost upon you.  Be always searching for new sensations.  Be afraid of nothing.

“A new hedonism,—­that is what our century wants.  You might be its visible symbol.  With your personality there is nothing you could not do.  The world belongs to you for a season.

“The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, what you really might be.  There was so much about you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself.  I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.  For there is such a little time that your youth will last,—­such a little time.

“The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.  The laburnum will be as golden next June as it is now.  In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will have its purple stars.  But we never get back our youth.  The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish.  Our limbs fail, our senses rot.  We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we did not dare to yield to.  Youth!  Youth!  There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.  The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel.  A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment.  Then it began to scramble all over the fretted purple of the tiny blossoms.  He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion, for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.  After a time it flew away.  He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus.  The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.

Suddenly Hallward appeared at the door of the studio, and made frantic signs for them to come in.  They turned to each other, and smiled.