It was his
chief defect."

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt
your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us,
simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."

"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who
has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
Don't tell me that."

"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord
Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of life.
I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should
never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us
pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such
a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell
into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the
scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now
on his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges
floating over him and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I
don't think he would have done much more good work. During the last
ten years his painting had gone off very much."

Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began
to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged
bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo
perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf
of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards
and forwards.

"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of
his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be
great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated
you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a
habit bores have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful
portrait he did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it s