“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
and broke her heart. That was the beginning of
your reformation.”
“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t
say these dreadful things. Hetty’s heart
is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that.
But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live,
like Perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold.”
