I won’t tell you that I don’t want to preach to you.
I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word.
I do want to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with.
Don’t shrug your shoulders like that. Don’t be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil.
They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don’t know whether it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you.
I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it was absurd—that I knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”
“To see my soul!” muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear.
“Yes,” answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice, “to see your soul. But only God can do that.”
A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.