express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that
the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best
work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder will you understand
me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,
an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them
differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me
before. 'A dream of form in days of thought'--who is it who says that? I
forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible
presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
he is really over twenty-- his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can
you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body-- how much that is! We in our madness have
separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an
ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to
me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such
a huge price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting
it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to
me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
wonder I had always looked for and always missed."

"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."

Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After
some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply a
motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He
is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He
is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain
colours. That is all."

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.

"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall 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," cried Hallward. "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. Some day 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?"

The painter 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. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we 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," murmured Lord Henry.
"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,
with everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire
first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will
seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of
colour, 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 perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great
pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a
romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of
any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."

"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change too
often."

"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied
air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue
cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How
pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's
emotions were!-- much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to
him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends--those were the


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