conspiracy of silence; but what can
one do? What should I do?"

"Join it," replied Oscar smiling.

Oscar's humour was for the most part intellectual, and something like
it can be found in others, though the happy fecundity and lightsome
gaiety of it belonged to the individual temperament and perished with
him. I remember once trying to give an idea of the different sides of
his humour, just to see how far it could be imitated.

I made believe to have met him at Paddington, after his release from
Reading, though he was brought to Pentonville in private clothes by a
warder on May 18th, and was released early the next morning, two years
to the hour from the commencement of the Sessions at which he was
convicted on May 25th. The Act says that you must be released from the
prison in which you are first confined. I pretended, however, that I had
met him. The train, I said, ran into Paddington Station early in the
morning. I went across to him as he got out of the carriage: grey dawn
filled the vast echoing space; a few porters could be seen scattered
about; it was all chill and depressing.

"Welcome, welcome, Oscar!" I cried holding out my hands. "I am sorry I'm
alone. You ought to have been met by troops of boys and girls
flower-crowned, but alas! you will have to content yourself with one
middle-aged admirer."

"Yes, it's really terrible, Frank," he replied gravely. "If England
persists in treating her criminals like this, she does not deserve to
have any...."

"Ah," said an old lady to him one day at lunch, "I know you people who
pretend to be a great deal worse than you are, I know you. I shouldn't
be afraid of you."

"Naturally we pretend to be bad, dear lady," he replied; "it is the only
way to make ourselves interesting to you. Everyone believes a man who
pretends to be good, he is such a bore; but no one believes a man who
says he is evil. That makes him interesting."

"Oh, you are too clever for me," replied the old lady nodding her head.
"You see in my day none of us went to Girton and Newnham. There were no
schools then for the higher education of women."

"How absurd such schools are, are they not?" cried Oscar. "Were I a
despot, I should immediately establish schools for the lower education
of women. That's what they need. It usually takes ten years living with
a man to complete a woman's education."

"Then what would you do," asked someone, "about the lower education of
man?"

"That's already pro