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

video;

[chiot]

Y'gotta spit on it, too. Then it's real.

video;

[epigrammatical]

Of course—just as I remember when I was a boy.

[Henry wouldn't take that from anyone else.]

video;

[chiot]

Yeah, see? Y'think you're so fancy, you're just onna us! That's why I think you're pretty good, huh?

video;

[epigrammatical]

I did not come into this world an adult fully-formed, you know; I was a boy once myself.