disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and
marigold."

"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content 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, the fact of 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 cannot say that I think much
of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides,
how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some
starlit mill-pond, with lovely 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 us 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 British 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 grey ulster who left for
Paris by the midnight train on the ninth 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 shall 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.

"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."

"Why?" said the younger man wearily.

"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "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. Of course, married
life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even
of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such
an essential part of one's personality."

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 white
and black ivory of 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 was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury
watch. Why should he have been 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, and that was when he
told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you
were the dominant motive of his art."

"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his
voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?"

"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all
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."

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your
vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."

"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who
has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
Don't tell me that."



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