"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.

"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 against you in London."

"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 rumours 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 sometimes of secret vices.
There are no such things. 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 or invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley.
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. Staveley 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. He told me right out
before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed
suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had
to leave England with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable.
What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's
only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James's
Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young
Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would
associate with him?"

"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian
Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I
know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that
they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they
slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and
brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of
lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all
sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them
there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are
smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are
inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not
have made his sister's name a by-word."

"Take care, Basil. You go too far."

"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park?
Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
other stories-- stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of
dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in
London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I
laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your
country-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know
what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to
you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into
an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then
proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to
lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have
a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful
people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't


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