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"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from

his case and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a

woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that

he loses all possible interest in life. If you had married this

girl, you would have been wretched. Of course, you would have

treated her kindly. One can always be kind to people about whom

one cares nothing. But she would have soon found out that you

were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that

out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or

wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to

pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have

been abject-which, of course, I would not have allowed-but I

assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an

absolute failure."