Such was the power of his imagination that he did indeed win a moment’s suspension of the oppressive curse of Time: a moment of true and total freedom which promised to last… certainly not forever, and certainly not long enough, but at least for a little while.
He knew that it was up to him to use that little while as fully as he could, not merely here in the great wide world whose eyes were yet upon him and whose ears were eager for his every epigram and aphorism, but also in his private island covert: his garden; his folly; his Creation. Would the world ever see his like again, once he was gone? He was, of course, an imitation, but he was an imitation which had outshone its original. The first Oscar Wilde would have approved of that, just as he would have approved of the fact that in the company of Charlotte Holmes, he had reduced her to the role of a mere Watson, while he himself had played the master of deduction.
If only there were time enough, Oscar thought, to be a thousand men instead of one or two. What a wonder I might have made of myself, had my youth been truly eternal!
End of Book
Table of Contents
Front
Intermission One: A Lover in the Mother's Arms
Investigation: Act Two: Across Manhattan
Intermission Two: A Pioneer on the Furthest Shore
Investigation: Act Three: Across America
Intermission Three: A Mind at the End of Its Tether
Intermission Four: A Teacher and His Pupil
Investigation: Act Five: From Land to Sea
Intermission Five: A Failed God and His Creation
Finale: Eden Approached from the East
Epilogue: Happily Ever After