life. So, at least, I am always told at the club by people who are
bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his

own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful
instinct about things. They can discover everything except the

obvious.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Arthur, I couldn't tell my wife. When could I

have told her? Not last night. It would have made a life-long
separation between us, and I would have lost the love of the one

woman in the world I worship, of the only woman who has ever stirred
love within me. Last night it would have been quite impossible. She

would have turned from me in horror . . . in horror and in contempt.
LORD GORING. Is Lady Chiltern as perfect as all that?

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Yes; my wife is as perfect as all that.
LORD GORING. [Taking off his left-hand glove.] What a pity! I beg

your pardon, my dear fellow, I didn't quite mean that. But if what
you tell me is true, I should like to have a serious talk about life

with Lady Chiltern.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. It would be quite useless.

LORD GORING. May I try?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Yes; but nothing could make her alter her

views.
LORD GORING. Well, at the worst it would simply be a psychological

experiment.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. All such experiments are terribly dangerous.

LORD GORING. Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't
so, life wouldn't be worth living. . . . Well, I am bound to say that

I think you should have told her years ago.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When? When we were engaged? Do you think she

would have married me if she had known that the origin of my fortune
is such as it is, the basis of my career such as it is, and that I

had done a thing that I suppose most men would call shameful and
dishonourable?

LORD GORING. [Slowly.] Yes; most men would call it ugly names.
There is no doubt of that.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Bitterly.] Men who every day do something of
the same kind themselves. Men who, each one of them, have worse

secrets in their own lives.
LORD GORING. That is the reason they are so pleased to find out

other people's secrets. It distracts public attention from their
own.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did?
No one.

LORD GORING. [Looking at him steadily.] Except yourself, Robert.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [After a pause.] Of course I had private

information about a certain transaction contemplated by the
Government of the day, and I acted on it. Private information is

practically the source of every large modern fortune.
LORD GORING. [Tapping his boot with his cane.] And public scandal

invariably the result.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Pacing up and down the room.] Arthur, do you

think that what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up
against me now? Do you think it fair that a man's whole career

should be ruined for a fault done in one's boyhood almost? I was
twenty-two at the time, and I had the double misfortune of being

well-born and poor, two unforgiveable things nowadays. Is it fair
that the folly, the sin of one's youth, if men choose to call it a

sin, should wreck a life like mine, should place me in the pillory,
should shatter all that I have worked for, all that I have built up.

Is it fair, Arthur?
LORD GORING. Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good

thing for most of us that it is not.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Every man of ambition has to fight his century

with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God
of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all

costs one must have wealth.
LORD GORING. You underrate yourself, Robert. Believe me, without

wealth you could have succeeded just as well.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When I was old, perhaps. When I had lost my

passion for power, or could not use it. When I was tired, worn out,
disappointed. I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the

time for success. I couldn't wait.
LORD GORING. Well, you certainly have had your success while you are

still young. No one in our day has had such a brilliant success.
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the age of forty - that's good

enough for any one, I should think.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And if it is all taken away from me now? If I

lose everything over a horriblescandal? If I am hounded from public
life?

LORD GORING. Robert, how could you have sold yourself for money?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Excitedly.] I did not sell myself for money.

I bought success at a great price. That is all.
LORD GORING. [Gravely.] Yes; you certainly paid a great price for

it. But what first made you think of doing such a thing?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Baron Arnheim.

LORD GORING. Damned scoundrel!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined

intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the
most intellectual men I ever met.

LORD GORING. Ah! I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more
to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a

great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I
suppose. But how did he do it? Tell me the whole thing.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Throws himself into an armchair by the
writing-table.] One night after dinner at Lord Radley's the Baron

began talking about success in modern life as something that one
could reduce to an absolutelydefinite science. With that

wonderfully fascinating quiet voice of his he expounded to us the
most terrible of all philosophies, the philosophy of power, preached

to us the most marvellous of all gospels, the gospel of gold. I
think he saw the effect he had produced on me, for some days

afterwards he wrote and asked me to come and see him. He was living
then in Park Lane, in the house Lord Woolcomb has now. I remember so

well how, with a strange smile on his pale, curved lips, he led me
through his wonderful picture gallery, showed me his tapestries, his

enamels, his jewels, his carved ivories, made me wonder at the
strange loveliness of the luxury in which he lived; and then told me

that luxury was nothing but a background, a painted scene in a play,
and that power, power over other men, power over the world, was the

one thing worth having, the one supreme pleasure worth knowing, the
one joy one never tired of, and that in our century only the rich

possessed it.
LORD GORING. [With great deliberation.] A thoroughlyshallow creed.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Rising.] I didn't think so then. I don't
think so now. Wealth has given me enormous power. It gave me at the

very outset of my life freedom, and freedom is everything. You have
never been poor, and never known what ambition is. You cannot

understand what a wonderful chance the Baron gave me. Such a chance
as few men get.

LORD GORING. Fortunately for them, if one is to judge by results.
But tell me definitely, how did the Baron finally persuade you to -

well, to do what you did?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When I was going away he said to me that if I

ever could give him any private information of real value he would
make me a very rich man. I was dazed at the prospect he held out to