23
seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone
seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. I can quite understand it. I can imagine myself doing it. But not to him, not to him. Once or twice we have been away together. Then I have had him all to myself. I am horribly jealous of him of course. I never let him talk to me of the people he knows. I like to isolate him from the rest of life, and to think that he absolutely belongs to he. He does not, I know. But it gives me pleasure to think that he does, Harry! I have even this grown man my whole soul who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger.very long. Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to thing of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to overeducate ourselveswe all horribly overeducated. In the wild struggle of existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed
