, but I shall slip out as soon as you
whistle.'

"The guard touched his cap and went. I said something, I don't know
what; I was a little embarrassed.

"'You will write to me, Oscar, won't you, and tell me about
everything?'

"'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'as soon as I get settled down, you know. There
will be such a lot to do at first, and I am wild to see everything. I
wonder how the professors will treat me. I do hope they will not be
fools or prigs; what a pity it is that all professors are not
poets....' And so I went on merrily, when suddenly the whistle sounded
and a moment afterwards the train began to move.

"'You must go now,' I said to him.

"'Yes,' he replied, in a queer muffled voice, while standing with his
hand on the door of the carriage. Suddenly he turned to me and cried:

"'Oh, Oscar,' and before I knew what he was doing he had caught my
face in his hot hands, and kissed me on the lips. The next moment he
had slipped out of the door and was gone....

"I sat there all shaken. Suddenly I became aware of cold, sticky drops
trickling down my face--his tears. They affected me strangely. As I
wiped them off I said to myself in amaze:

"'This is love: this is what he meant--love.'...

"I was trembling all over. For a long while I sat, unable to think,
all shaken with wonder and remorse."

CHAPTER III

Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college,
where the competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October
19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward
Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was
already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," and
he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a
likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more
characteristic as the years went on.

"He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older
squares, known as Botany Bay. These rooms were exceedingly grimy and
ill-kept. He never entertained there. On the rare occasions when
visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on
the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. He would
invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way
that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us who had seen his
work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at Portora
were not likely to be deceived in the matter....

"His