ince he
finished it. Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had
sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the
way. You never got it back? What a pity! it was really a
masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It
belonged to Basil's best period. Since then, his work was that curious
mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man
to be called a representative British artist. Did you advertise for
it? You should."

"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked
it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to
me. Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious
lines in some play--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?--

"Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart."

Yes: that is what it was like."

Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is
his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.

Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano.
"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
heart.'"

The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By
the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if
he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?--his own
soul'?"

The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.
"Why do you ask me that, Harry?"

"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,
"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by
the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people
listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the
man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being
rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind.
A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly
white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful
phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very
good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet
that art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he
would not have understood me."

"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and
sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned,