صفحة 15 من 490

"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord

Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.

"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and

people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic

tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I

had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to

lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great

success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the

penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of

immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young

man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite

close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of

me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it

was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We

would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am

sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we

were destined to know each other."