He seemed broken with shame and sorrow.
What about the young Duke of Perth?
What sort of life has he got now?
What gentleman would associate with him?"
"Stop, Basil.
You are talking about things of which you know nothing," said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt in his voice.
"You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine.
With such blood as he has in his veins, how could his record be clean?
You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.
Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery?
If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets what is that to me?
If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper?
I know how people chatter in England.
The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they slander.
In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves?
My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad enough, I know, and English society is all wrong.
That is the reason why I want you to be fine.
You have not been fine.
One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.
Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity.
You have filled them with a madness for pleasure.
They have gone down into the depths.
You led them there.
Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now.
And there is worse behind.
I know you and Harry are inseparable.
Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a by-word."
"Take care, Basil.
You go too far."
"I must speak, and you must listen.
You shall listen.
When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her.
Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the Park?
Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her.
Then there are other stories—stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.
Are they true?
Can they be true?
When I first heard them, I laughed.
I hear them now, and they make me shudder.
What about your country house, and the life that is led there?
Dorian, you don't know what is said about you.
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.