“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. You are still the same.”
“I am not the same, Harry.”
“Yes, you are the same.I wonder what the rest of your life will be.Don’t spoil it by renunciations.At present you are a perfect type.Don’t make yourself incomplete.You are quite flawless now.You need not shake your head: you know you are.Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive yourself.Life is not governed by will or intention.Life is a question of nerves, and fibres,and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of _lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself!Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music.Your days are your sonnets.”
Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.“Yes, life has been exquisite,” he murmured,“but I am not going to have the same life, Harry.And you must not say these extravagant things to me.You don’t know everything about me.I think that if you did, even you would turn from me.You laugh. Don’t laugh.”
“Why have you stopped playing, Dorian?Go back and give me the nocturne over again.Look at that great,honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air.She is waiting for you to charm her,and if you play she will come closer to the earth. You won’t?Let us go to the club, then.It has been a charming evening,and we must end it charmingly.There is some one at White’s who wants immensely to know you—young Lord Poole,Bournemouth’s eldest son.He has already copied your neckties,and has begged me to introduce him to you.He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you.”
“I hope not,” said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes.“But I am tired to-night, Harry.I shan’t go to the club. It is nearly eleven,and I want to go to bed early.”
“Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night.There was something in your touch that was wonderful.It had more expression than I had ever heard from it before. ”
“It is because I am going to be good,” he answered,smiling. “I am a little changed already.”
“You cannot change to me, Dorian,” said Lord Henry.“You and I will always be friends.”
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once.I should not forgive that. Harry,promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm.”
“My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.You will soon be going about like the converted,and the revivalist,warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.You are much too delightful to do that. Besides,it is no use. You and I are what we are,and will be what we will be.As for being poisoned by a book,there is no such thing as that.Art has no influence upon action.It annihilates the desire to act.It is superbly sterile.The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. But we won’t discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our little duchess?She says she never sees you now.Perhaps you are tired of Gladys?I thought you would be.Her clever tongue gets on one’s nerves. Well,in any case, be here at eleven.”
“Must I really come, Harry?”
“Certainly. The park is quite lovely now.I don’t think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you. ”
“Very well. I shall be here at eleven,” said Dorian.“Good night, Harry.” As he reached the door,he hesitated for a moment,as if he had something more to say.Then he sighed and went out.
CHAPTER XX.
It was a lovely night,so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He heard one of them whisper to the other, “That is Dorian Gray.” He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she had!—just like a thrush singing.And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats!She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.