Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/108

 and who is “as black as hell, as dark as night.” Then it is that he pens that great sonnet upon Lust (“Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame”), of which Mr Theodore Watts says rightly that it is the greatest sonnet ever written. And it is then, also, that he offers to mortgage his very life and genius to her if she will but restore to him that “sweetest friend” of whom she had robbed him.

To compass this end he abandons himself to her, feigns to be full of an absorbing and sensuous passion of possession, forges false words of love, lies to her, and tells her that he lies.

“My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are, At random from the truth vainly express’d; For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

Rather than suffer his friend to be treacherous to him, he will himself be treacherous to his friend. To shield his purity, he will himself be vile. He knew the weakness of the boy-actor’s nature, his susceptibility to praise, his inordinate love of admiration, and deliberately set himself to fascinate the woman who had come between them.