w I never tell my people where I am
going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"

"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You seem
to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it
makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact,
than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But
when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she
would; but she merely laughs at me."

"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I
believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are
thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow.
You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
cynicism is simply a pose."

"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the
polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.

After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your answering
a question I put to you some time ago."

"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

"You know quite well."

"I do not, Harry."

"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."

"I told you the real reason."

"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
in it. Now, that is childish."

"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it