“Really the answers I get are idiotic. The entire correspondence of you and Robbie with me should be published. The best title would be Letters from Two Idiots to a Lunatic, I should fancy.”

“Oh, I love London Society! It has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.”

“I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”

“I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.”

“I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.”

“Ah, Robbie, when we are dead and buried in our porphyry tombs, and the trumpet of the Last Judgement is sounded, I shall turn and whisper to you, 'Robbie, Robbie, let us pretend we do not hear it.”

“Of course, I should have got rid of you. I should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his raiment a thing that has stung him.”