 quite true, I never talk when I am working, and
never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate
sitters. I beg you to stay.«
    »But what about my man at the Orleans?«
    The painter laughed. »I don't think there will be any difficulty about that.
Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move
about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad
influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself.«
    Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr,
and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken
a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he had
such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, »Have you really a
very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?«
    »There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view.«
    »Why?«
    »Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not
think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are
not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He
becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been
written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature
perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of
themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty
that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the
hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.
Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of
society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of
religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet -«
    »Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy,«
said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into
the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
    »And yet
