I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's
silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If
Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his
keeper? I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air
their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper
about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try
and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with
the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to
have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead
themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason
why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to
judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to
lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them
with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You
led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as
you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry
are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should
not have made his sister's name a by-word."

"Take care, Basil. You go too far."

"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met
Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there
a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the
park? Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then
there are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at
dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest
dens in London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard
them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What
about your country-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you
don't know what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want
to preach to you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who
turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by
saying that, and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach
to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the