Do you wonder that I snatch at any pleasure ?" He turned and looked at me all shaken; I saw the tears pouring down his cheeks.
"I cannot talk any more, Frank," he said in a broken voice, "I must go." I called a cab.

My heart was so heavy within me, so sore, that I said nothing to stop him.

He lifted his hand to me in sign of farewell, and I turned again to walk home alone, understanding, for the first time in my life, the full significance of the marvellous line in which Shakespeare summed up his impeachment of the world and his own justification: the only justification of any of us mortals: "A man more sinn'd against than sinning." FOOTNOTES: [22] This was the sum promised by the whole Queensberry family and by Lord Alfred Douglas in particular to Oscar to defray the costs of that first action for libel which they persuaded him to bring against Lord Queensberry.

Ross has since stated in court that it was never paid.

The history of the monies promised and supplied to Oscar at that time is so extraordinary and so characteristic of the age that it might well furnish a chapter to itself.