s, for he knew he was safe.

CHAPTER 19

"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried
Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled
with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, 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 uncivilized.
Civilization 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 spilled 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 any one
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 flowerlike 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 a