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 is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder.I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true.Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders.I don't blame them in the smallest degree.I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.""A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
Don't tell me that."
"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord Henry, laughing."That is one of the most important secrets of life.
I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake.One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.But let us pass from poor Basil.I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't.I dare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the scandal.Yes: I should fancy that was his end.I see him lying now on his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catching in his hair.Do you know, I don't think he would have done much more good work.During the last ten years his painting had gone off very much."Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch.As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards.
"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off.It seemed to me to have lost something.It had lost an ideal.When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist.What was it separated you?
I suppose he bored you.If so, he never forgave you.It's a habit bores have.By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it.Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way.You never got it back? What a pity! it was really a masterpiece.I remember I wanted to buy it.I wish I had now.It belonged to Basil's best period.Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.Did you advertise for it? You should.""I forget," said Dorian."I suppose I did.But I never really liked it.I am sorry I sat for it.The memory of the thing is hateful to me.Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some play-- Hamlet , I think--how do they run?--Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart.
Yes: that is what it was like."
Lord Henry laughed."If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano."'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a heart.'"The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes.
"By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?-- his own soul'?"The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.
"Why do you ask me that, Harry?"
"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, "I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
That is all.I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher.As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audience.It struck me as being rather dramatic.
London is very rich in curious effects of that kind.A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion.
I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not.I am afraid, however, he would not have understood me.""Don't, Harry.The soul is a terrible reality.It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away.It can be poisoned, 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."
