“’Well, I will accept the letter back.  You can thank Mr. Allen for me.’

“I gave Cliburn half a sovereign for his trouble, and said to him: 

“‘I am afraid you are leading a desperately wicked life.’

“‘There’s good and bad in every one of us,’ he replied.  I said something about his being a philosopher, and he went away.  That’s the whole story, Frank.”

“But the letter?” I questioned.

“The letter is nothing,” Oscar replied; “a prose poem.  I will give you a copy of it.”

Here is the letter: 

“MY OWN BOY,—­Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.  Your slim-gilt soul walks between passion and poetry.  No Hyacinthus followed Love so madly as you in Greek days.  Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury?  Do go there and cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things.  Come here whenever you like.  It is a lovely place and only lacks you.  Do go to Salisbury first.  Always with undying love,

     Yours,

     OSCAR.”

* * * * *

This letter startled me; “slim-gilt” and the “madness of kissing” were calculated to give one pause; but after all, I thought, it may be merely an artist’s letter, half pose, half passionate admiration.  Another thought struck me.

“But how did such a letter,” I cried, “ever get into the hands of a blackmailer?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.  “Lord Alfred Douglas is very careless and inconceivably bold.  You should know him, Frank; he’s a delightful poet.”

“But how did he come to know a creature like Wood?” I persisted.

“How can I tell, Frank,” he answered a little shortly; and I let the matter drop, though it left in me a certain doubt, an uncomfortable suspicion.

The scandal grew from hour to hour, and the tide of hatred rose in surges.

One day I was lunching at the Savoy, and while talking to the head waiter, Cesari, who afterwards managed the Elysee Palace Hotel in Paris, I thought I saw Oscar and Douglas go out together.  Being a little short-sighted, I asked: 

“Isn’t that Mr. Oscar Wilde?”

“Yes,” said Cesari, “and Lord Alfred Douglas.  We wish they would not come here; it does us a lot of harm.”

“How do you mean?” I asked sharply.

“Some people don’t like them,” the quick Italian answered immediately.

“Oscar Wilde,” I remarked casually, “is a great friend of mine,” but the super-subtle Italian was already warned.

“A clever writer, I believe,” he said, smiling in bland acquiescence.

This incident gave me warning, strengthened again in me the exact apprehension and suspicion which the Douglas letter had bred.  Oscar I knew was too self-centred, went about too continually with admirers to have any understanding of popular feeling.  He would be the last man to realize how fiercely hate, malice and envy were raging against him.  I wanted to warn him; but hardly knew how to do it effectively and without offence:  I made up my mind to keep my eyes open and watch an opportunity.