that I
have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."

"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
distinguishing characteristic."

The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his
servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street, and
turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.

So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been
told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange,
almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad
passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in
pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting
background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind
every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds
had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how
charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes
and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at
the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening
wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was
something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other
activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and
let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views
echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to
convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid
or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most
satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
had met in Basil's studio; or could be fashioned into a marvellous type,
at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could
not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
that such beauty was destined to fade!... And Basil? From a