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 nor 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 en