who
later married and divorced May Yohe, but who at the time showed an
absurd interest in stocks. Someone else entered and Hope asked what
was new in the City. "Money is very tight," came the reply. "Ah,
yes," Wilde cut in. "And of a tightness that has been felt even in
Tite street. Believe me, I passed the forenoon at the British Museum
looking at a gold-piece in a case."

Afterward we drove to Chelsea. It was a vile night, bleak and bitter.
On alighting, a man came up to me. He wore a short jacket which he
opened. From neck to waist he was bare. I gave him a shilling. Then
came the rebuke. With entire simplicity Wilde took off his overcoat
and put it about the man.

But the simplicity seemed to me too Hugoesque and I said: "Why didn't
you ask him in to dinner?"

Wilde gestured. "Dinner is not a feast, it is a ceremony."

Subsequently that ceremony must have been contemplated, for Mrs. Wilde
was kind enough to invite me. The invitation reached me sometime in
advance and I took it of course that there would be other guests. But
on the appointed evening, or what I thought was the appointed
evening, when I reached this house--on which Oscar objected to paying
taxes because, as he told the astonished assessors, he was so seldom
at home--when I reached it, it seemed to me that I must be the only
guest. Then, presently, in the dreary drawing-room, Oscar appeared.
"This is delightful of you," he told me. "I have been late for dinner
a half hour, again a whole hour; you are late an entire week. That is
what I call originality."

I put a bold face on it. "Come to my shop," I said, "and have dinner
with me. Though," I added, "I don't know what I can give you."

"Oh, anything," Wilde replied. "Anything, no matter what. I have the
simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

He was not boasting. One evening he dined on his "Sphinx."
Subsequently I supped with him on "Salome."

That was in the Regent street restaurant where, apropos of nothing, or
rather with what to me at the time was curious irrelevance, Oscar,
while tossing off glass after glass of liquor, spoke of Pheme, a
goddess rare even in mythology, who, after appearing twice in Homer,
flashed through a verse of Hesiod and vanished behind a page of
Herodotos. In telling of her, suddenly his eyes lifted, his mouth
contracted, a spasm of pain--or was it dread?--had gripped him. A
moment only. His face relaxed. It had gone.

I have since wondered, coul