❝ How long will you like me? ❞

♡　Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It is the real Dorian Gray—that is all.”

♡　“This is your doing, Harry,” said the painter bitterly.

♡　“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.

♡　Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. “Dorian! Dorian!” he cried, “don’t talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things, are you?—you who are finer than any of them!”

♡　“Yes,” he continued, “I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

♡　The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning.

♡　Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. “I believe you would, Basil. You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say.”

♡　“I should object very strongly, Harry,” said Hallward.

♡　“You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “It would be rather hard lines on your work.”

♡　“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

♡　“He is a very lucky fellow.”

♡　“Dorian’s, of course,” answered the painter.

♡　“Whose property is it?”

♡　“It is not my property, Harry.”

♡　“Of course he likes it,” said Lord Henry. “Who wouldn’t like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.”

♡　“Don’t you like it?” cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad’s silence, not understanding what it meant.