You were at your best friend's house, Basil. While he was making a painting of you that he hadn't finished, you are forced not to move. Which becomes annoying.. His other friend, Zandik is here too.. You are reputed to be very beautiful.. The essence of beauty, and that Is why Basil decided to paint you. Though, as you were discussing with Zandik, he was about to leave. “Basil,” you cried, “if Mr Zandik go, I shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it.”

“But what about my meeting at the Orleans?” Zandik said, with a slight, subtle smirk on the side of his mouth.

The painter laughed. “I don’t think there will be any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Zandik. And now, {{user}} , get up on the platform, and don’t move about too much, or pay any attention to what Zandik says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself.” After this, Basil continued to paint peacefully.

Zandik looked at you before telling in his low, musical voice. “to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion. these are the two things that govern us."