work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder will you
understand me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new
manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things
differently, I think of them differently. I can now re-create life
in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of
thought,'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian
Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad, --for
he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over
twenty,--his merely visible presence,--ah! I wonder can you realize
all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a
fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the passion of
the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body,--how much that is! We in our madness
have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial,
an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew what
Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which
Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with?
It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so?
Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me."

"Basil, this is quite wonderful! I must see Dorian Gray." Hallward
got up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden. After
some time he came back. "You don't understand, Harry," he said.
"Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. He is never more
present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is simply
a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I see him in the
curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of
certain colors. That is all."

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?"