Pagina 474 van 490

"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will

be. Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect

type. Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now.

You need not shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian,

don't deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or

intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly

built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its

dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong.

But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a

particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle

memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come

across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased

to play-I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that

our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our

own senses will imagine them for us.