“I never told you the worst thing that befell me.  When they took me from Wandsworth to Reading, we had to stop at Clapham Junction.  We were nearly an hour waiting for the train.  There we sat on the platform.  I was in the hideous prison clothes, handcuffed between two warders.  You know how the trains come in every minute.  Almost at once I was recognised, and there passed before me a continual stream of men and boys, and one after the other offered some foul sneer or gibe or scoff.  They stood before me, Frank, calling me names and spitting on the ground—­an eternity of torture.”

My heart bled for him.

“I wonder if any punishment will teach humanity to such people, or understanding of their own baseness?”

After walking a few paces he turned to me: 

“Don’t reproach me, Frank, even in thought.  You have no right to.  You don’t know me yet.  Some day you will know more and then you will be sorry, so sorry that there will be no room for any reproach of me.  If I could tell you what I suffered this winter!”

“This winter!” I cried.  “In Naples?”

“Yes, in gay, happy Naples.  It was last autumn that I really fell to ruin.  I had come out of prison filled with good intentions, with all good resolutions.  My wife had promised to come back to me.  I hoped she would come very soon.  If she had come at once, if she only had, it might all have been different.  But she did not come.  I have no doubt she was right from her point of view.  She has always been right.

“But I was alone there in Berneval, and Bosie kept on calling me, calling, and as you know I went to him.  At first it was all wonderful.  The bruised leaves began to unfold in the light and warmth of affection; the sore feeling began to die out of me.

“But at once my allowance from my wife was stopped.  Yes, Frank,” he said, with a touch of the old humour, “they took it away when they should have doubled it.  I did not care.  When I had money I gave it to him without counting, so when I could not pay I thought Bosie would pay, and I was content.  But at once I discovered that he expected me to find the money.  I did what I could; but when my means were exhausted, the evil days began.  He expected me to write plays and get money for us both as in the past; but I couldn’t; I simply could not.  When we were dunned his temper went to pieces.  He has never known what it is to want really.  You have no conception of the wretchedness of it all.  He has a terrible, imperious, irritable temper.”

“He’s the son of his father,” I interjected.

“Yes,” said Oscar, “I am afraid that’s the truth, Frank; he is the son of his father; violent, and irritable, with a tongue like a lash.  As soon as the means of life were straitened, he became sullen and began reproaching me; why didn’t I write?  Why didn’t I earn money?  What was the good of me?  As if I could write under such conditions.  No man, Frank, has ever suffered worse shame and humiliation.