y, don't change."

Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good
actions yesterday."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."

"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the
country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people
who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised. Civilisation is not
by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by
which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being
corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they
stagnate."

"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of
both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I
have altered."

"You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you
had done more than one?" asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate
a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a
perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.

"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone else. I
spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was
quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How long
ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She
was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure
that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been
having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept
tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone
away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her
as flower-like as I had found her."

"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish
your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That
was the beginning of your reformation."

"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's
heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is no
disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in h