“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?”

“Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to him.  He knows nothing about it.  He will never know anything about it.  But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes.  My heart shall never be put under their microscope.  There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry,—­too much of myself!”

“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.  They know how useful passion is for publication.  Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”

“I hate them for it.  An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.  We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.  We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.  If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

“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?”

Hallward 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.  I give myself away.  As a rule, he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in arm, or 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.  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, and everything priced above its proper value.  I think you will tire first, all the same.  Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of color, 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 [11] perfectly cold and indifferent.  It will be a great pity, for it will alter you.  The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”