Secretly, Henry is just as happy to not talk any more than he must about Dorian's portrait; the revelations he has been vouchsafed since arriving in Keeliai are discomfiting and he is also too discreet to say much about it to a relative stranger. Basil, who still exists in the present tense for Henry, is an easier subject, recent disappearance notwithstanding.

"We met at Oxford, Basil and I. A singular fellow with a real genius for painting and no small feeling for music, and thus precisely the sort of fellow one wishes to cultivate as a friend, particularly at twenty. Yes, we were quite close."

Well, at least until Dorian Gray entered their lives.