or made perfect. There
is a soul in each one of us. I know it."

"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"

"Quite sure."

"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely
certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the
lesson of romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have
you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given
up our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne,
Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept
your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than
you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really
wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do
to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather
cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of
course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take
exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing
like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only
people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much
younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to
them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.
I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that
happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in
1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew
absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I
wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the
villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously
romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that
is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me
that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you.
I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The
tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am
amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are!
What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of
everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing
has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the
sound of music. It has not marred you. Yo