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Days would elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might

refuse to come. What could he do then? Every moment was of vital

importance.

They had been great friends once, five years before-almost

inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an

end. When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who

smiled: Alan Campbell never did.

He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real

appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of

the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from

Dorian. His dominant intellectual passion was for science. At

Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time working in the

laboratory, and had taken a good class in the Natural Science

Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted to the study of

chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own in which he used to

shut himself up all day long, greatly to the annoyance of his

mother, who had set her heart on his standing for Parliament and

had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up

prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, however, as well,

and played both the violin and the piano better than most

amateurs.