d of you?"

The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered
after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him
dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I
know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to
me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and
then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real
delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away
my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put
in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a
summer's day."

"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That
accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate
ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have
something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and
facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly
well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the
thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a
bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above
its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day
you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little
out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something.
You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think
that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you
will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for
it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance
of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind
is that it leaves one so unromantic."

"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change
too often."

"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty
silver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and
satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was
a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green