صفحة 340 من 490

I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to

get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Don't shrug

your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a

wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil. They say

that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and

that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of

some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or not.

How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that

it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my

greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife

had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at

Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession

I ever read. I told him that it was absurd-that I knew you

thoroughly, and that you were incapable of anything of the kind.

Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I

should have to see your soul."