regrets are one's mistakes."

A laugh ran round the table.

He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into
the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it;
made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox.
The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy,
and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad
music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained
robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills
of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober.
Facts fled before her like frightened forest things.
Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits,
till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves
of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black,
dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation.
He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,
and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was
one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give
his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination.
He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed
his listeners out of themselves, and they followed
his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze
off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing
each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his
darkening eyes.

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in
the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting.