the
play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder
of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that
has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I
wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in
love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored
me--there have not been very many, but there have been some--have
always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them,
or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I
meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of
woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual
stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one
should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."

"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.

"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once
wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did
die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to
sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment.
It fills one with the terror of eternity. Well--would you believe
it?--a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner
next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole
thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had
buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again and
assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she
ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack
of taste she showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a
sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over,
they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every
comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in
a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of
art. You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not
one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane
did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of them
do it by going in for sentimental colo