18
"I do."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but you painting — your art, I should say. Art sounds better, doesn't it?"
"He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the history of the world art, the first is the appearance of a new medium in art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality in art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the facebeauty of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the facebeauty of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint for him, draw from him, model for him. Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms he has sat on the prow of Adrian's barge looking into the green turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the wonder of his own beauty.face. But he is much more to me than that. I won't tell you
