d? What about Lord
Kent's only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St.
James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the
young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman
would associate with him?"

"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
son takes his wife from the streets what is that to me? If Adrian
Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I
know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that
they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they
slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and
brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of
lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all
sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them
there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are
smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are
inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not
have made his sister's name a by-word."

"Take care, Basil. You go too far."

"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the Park?
Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
other stories--st