You know I have been always a stanch friend to you." "Don't touch me.

Finish what you have to say." A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.

He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.

After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?
If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores of flame.
"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.
He turned round.

"What I have to say is this," he cried.