imagination.  They are limited to their century.  No glamour ever transfigures them.  One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets.  One can always find them.  There is no mystery in one of them.  They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon.  They have their stereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner.  They are quite obvious.  But an actress!  How different an actress is!  Why didn’t you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?”

“Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.”

“Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.”

“Don’t run down dyed hair and painted faces.  There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes.”

[27] “I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.”

“You could not have helped telling me, Dorian.  All through your life you will tell me everything you do.”

“Yes, Harry, I believe that is true.  I cannot help telling you things.  You have a curious influence over me.  If I ever did a crime, I would come and confide it to you.  You would understand me.”

“People like you—­the wilful sunbeams of life—­don’t commit crimes, Dorian.  But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same.  And now tell me,—­reach me the matches, like a good boy:  thanks,—­tell me, what are your relations with Sibyl Vane?”

Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.  “Harry, Sibyl Vane is sacred!”

“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,” said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice.  “But why should you be annoyed?  I suppose she will be yours some day.  When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others.  That is what the world calls romance.  You know her, at any rate, I suppose?”

“Of course I know her.  On the first night I was at the theatre, the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and offered to bring me behind the scenes and introduce me to her.  I was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona.  I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he thought I had taken too much champagne, or something.”

“I am not surprised.”

“I was not surprised either.  Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers.  I told him I never even read them.  He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were all to be bought.”

“I believe he was quite right there.  But, on the other hand, most of them are not at all expensive.”