something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It’s a habit bores have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I don’t think I have ever seen it since 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 armchair.
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?”