opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in
everything, 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 marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art
left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It
seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas
listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know
nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one
is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how
happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk
deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate.
Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more
than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."

"I am not the same, Harry."

"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.
Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question
of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides
itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think
yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky,
a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle
memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across
again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play-- I
tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.
Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine
them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes
suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life
over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has
cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always
will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and
what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done
anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced
anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set
yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.
"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have
the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to
me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even
you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."

"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne
over again. Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that hangs in the
dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will
come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the club, then. It has
been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some
one at White's who wants immensely to know you--young Lord Poole,
Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has
begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful and rather
reminds me of you."

"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired
to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I
want to go to bed early."

"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
heard from it before."

"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "I am a
little changed already."

"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will
always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry,
promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm."

"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be
going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too
delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are,
and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is
no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates
the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
But we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to
ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to
consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you
come. Or shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees
you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her
clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at eleven."

"Must I really come, Harry?"

"Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been
such lilacs since the year I met you."

"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good night,
Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he had
something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.

CHAPTER 20



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