all the same. And
now tell me--reach me the matches, like a good boy--thanks--what are
your actual relations with Sibyl Vane?"

Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"

"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why
should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one
always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a
romance. You know her, at any rate, I suppose?"

"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over and
offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was
furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds
of years and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I
think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the
impression that I had taken too much champagne, or something."

"I am not surprised."

"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I
never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and
confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy
against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."

"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other
hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all
expensive."

"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed Dorian.
"By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre,
and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the
place again. When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that
I was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute,
though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me
once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely
due to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think
it a distinction."

"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian--a great distinction. Most
people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose
of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. But when
did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"

"The third night.