“I have not the slightest idea.  If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine.  If he is dead, I don’t want to think about him.  Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.  I hate it.  One can survive everything nowadays except that.  Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.  Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian.  You must play Chopin to me.  The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely.  Poor Victoria!  I was very fond of her.  The house is rather lonely without her.”

Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and, passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the keys.  After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said, “Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?”

Lord Henry yawned.  “Basil had no enemies, and always wore a Waterbury watch.  Why should he be murdered?  He was not clever enough to have enemies.  Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting.  But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible.  Basil was really rather dull.  He only interested me once, [96] and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you.”

“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes.  “But don’t people say that he was murdered?”

“Oh, some of the papers do.  It does not seem to be probable.  I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them.  He had no curiosity.  It was his chief defect.  Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.  You must have some secret.  I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and bald, and yellow.  You are really wonderful, Dorian.  You have never looked more charming than you do to-night.  You remind me of the day I saw you first.  You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.  You have changed, of course, but not in appearance.  I wish you would tell me your secret.  To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.  Youth!  There is nothing like it.  It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only people whose opinions I listen to now with any respect are people much younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to them her last wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.  I do it on principle.  If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks and knew absolutely nothing.  How lovely that thing you are playing is!  I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes?  It is marvelously