though he seemed slightly embarrassed. I resumed my seat, which was almost
opposite him, and pretended to be absorbed in the game. To my astonishment he
was talking as well as if he had had a picked audience; talking, if you please,
about the Olympic games, telling how the youths wrestled and were scraped with
strigulae and threw the discus and ran races and won the myrtle-wreath. His
impassioned eloquence brought the sun-bathed palaestra before one with a magic
of representment. Suddenly the younger of the boys asked:

"Did you sy they was niked?"

"Of course," Oscar replied, "nude, clothed only in sunshine and beauty."

"Oh, my," giggled the lad in his unspeakable Cockney way. I could not stand it.

"I am in an impossible position," I said to my opponent, who was the amateur
chess player, Montagu Gattie. "Come along and let us have some dinner." With a
nod to Oscar I left the place. On the way out Gattie said to me:

"So that's the famous Oscar Wilde."

"Yes," I replied, "that's Oscar, but I never saw him in such company before."

"Didn't you?" remarked Gattie quietly; "he was well known at Oxford. I was at
the 'Varsity with him. His reputation was always rather--"'high,'" shall we
call it?"

I wanted to forget the scene and blot it out of my memory, and remember my
friend as I knew him at his best. But that Cockney boy would not be banned;
he leered there with rosy cheeks, hair plastered down in a love-lock on his
forehead, and low cunning eyes. I felt uncomfortable. I would not think of