“I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry.  “But I can finish your idyl for you.  You gave her good advice, and broke her heart.  That was the beginning of your reformation.”

“Harry, you are horrible!  You mustn’t say these dreadful things.  Hetty’s heart is not broken.  Of course she cried, and all that.  But there is no disgrace upon her.  She can live, like Perdita, in her garden.”

“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord Henry, laughing.  “My dear Dorian, you have the most curious boyish moods.  Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank?  I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman.  Well, having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched.  From a moral point of view I really don’t think much of your great renunciation. [95] Even as a beginning, it is poor.  Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in some mill-pond, with water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?”

“I can’t bear this, Harry!  You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies.  I am sorry I told you now.  I don’t care what you say to me, I know I was right in acting as I did.  Poor Hetty!  As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine.  Don’t let me talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.  I want to be better.  I am going to be better.  Tell me something about yourself.  What is going on in town?  I have not been to the club for days.”

“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s disappearance.”

“I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,” said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.

“My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months.  They have been very fortunate lately, however.  They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell’s suicide.  Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.  Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the gray ulster who left Victoria by the midnight train on the 7th of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all.  I suppose in about a fortnight we will be told that he has been seen in San Francisco.  It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.  It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly.