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