“What is it all about?” cried Dorian, in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa.  “I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired of myself to-night.  I should like to be somebody else.”

“It is about yourself,” answered Hallward, in his grave, deep voice, “and I must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour.”

Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette.  “Half an hour!” he murmured.

[79] “It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said about you in London,—­things that I could hardly repeat to you.”

“I don’t wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me.  They have not got the charm of novelty.”

“They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his good name.  You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded.  Of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind you, I don’t believe these rumors at all.  At least, I can’t believe them when I see you.  Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face.  It cannot be concealed.  People talk of secret vices.  There are no such things as secret vices.  If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.  Somebody—­ I won’t mention his name, but you know him—­came to me last year to have his portrait done.  I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since.  He offered an extravagant price.  I refused him.  There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated.  I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him.  His life is dreadful.  But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth,—­I can’t believe anything against you.  And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what to say.  Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it?  Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house nor invite you to theirs?  You used to be a friend of Lord Cawdor.  I met him at dinner last week.  Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley.  Cawdor curled his lip, and said that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with.  I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant.  He told me.