VIII. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!

[epigrammatical]

[AUDIO, public. The morning after the event ends and Tu Vishan starts moving again.]

I am not alone, I gather, in detecting a change in the air here. It is rather like waking on the very first day of the Season, with all the possibility that lies ahead—or waking the morning after the last day, with the happy knowledge that one need not be at home to anyone that day. We have, I suppose, escaped the fate of Des Esseintes's tortoise.

---

[AUDIO, private to Dorian Gray.]

I have finished Mr Findley's novel, Dorian. A most marvellous book; quite gorgeous and affecting.

But I must ask you, dear boy—is what he writes about Oscar true?

[He's already guessed that it is. This is less a real question than the confirmation of a sense of creeping dread.]

Comments

audio; private

[depicted]

[Yes, for Lord Henry, it's the past traded off for the future. For Dorian, it's all the past. Harry's presence here is just a lie. An illusion sustained by Harry's own ignorance. And when Lord Henry catches up with his future, Dorian wonders: will the illusion break?]

Then . . . whenever it pleases you, Harry.

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

[It is possible that Henry is slowly coming to grasp the extent of that which he does not know—and more importantly, does not understand. This desire to know his own future, then, is an attempt to learn these things. It may prove disastrous. But it seems the least thorny path that his examinations of himself have revealed to him, and so he shall proceed.]

Later this week, perhaps?

audio; private

[depicted]

I'll see you then.