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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #26740]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
+
+BY
+
+OSCAR WILDE
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
+
+HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
+
+PARIS
+
+ON SALE AT YE OLD PARIS BOOKE SHOPPE
+
+11 RUE DE CHÂTEAUDUN
+
+_Registered at Stationers' Hall and protected
+under the Copyright Law Act.
+
+First published in complete book form in 1891 by
+Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co. (London),
+
+First printed in this Edition April 1913,
+Reprinted June 1913, September 1913,
+June 1914, January 1916
+October 1916._
+
+_See the Bibliographical Note on certain Pirated and Mutilated
+Editions of "Dorian Gray" at the end of this present volume._
+
+
+
+
+THE PREFACE
+
+
+The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal
+the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another
+manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
+
+The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of
+autobiography.
+
+Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without
+being charming. This is a fault.
+
+Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the
+cultivated. For these there is hope.
+
+They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
+
+There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well
+written, or badly written. That is all.
+
+The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing
+his own face in a glass.
+
+The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not
+seeing his own face in a glass.
+
+The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist,
+but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect
+medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true
+can be proved.
+
+No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an
+unpardonable mannerism of style.
+
+No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
+
+Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
+
+Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
+
+From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of
+the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is
+the type.
+
+All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface
+do so at their peril.
+
+Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
+
+It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of
+opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and
+vital.
+
+When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
+
+We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not
+admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one
+admires it intensely.
+
+All art is quite useless.
+
+OSCAR WILDE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light
+summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through
+the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume
+of the pink-flowering thorn.
+
+From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was
+lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
+Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
+blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to
+bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then
+the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
+tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
+producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
+those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an
+art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness
+and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through
+the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the
+dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the
+stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon
+note of a distant organ.
+
+In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the
+full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,
+and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
+himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
+caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many
+strange conjectures.
+
+As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so
+skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his
+face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and,
+closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought
+to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he
+might awake.
+
+"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said
+Lord Henry, languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the
+Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone
+there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able
+to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have
+not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is
+really the only place."
+
+"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head
+back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at
+Oxford. "No: I won't send it anywhere."
+
+Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through
+the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls
+from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear
+fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You
+do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one,
+you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only
+one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not
+being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the
+young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are
+ever capable of any emotion."
+
+"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit
+it. I have put too much of myself into it."
+
+Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
+
+"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."
+
+"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were
+so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your
+rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who
+looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear
+Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an
+intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends
+where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode
+of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
+sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something
+horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
+How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But
+then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age
+of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as
+a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your
+mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose
+picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that.
+He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in
+winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer
+when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter
+yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."
+
+"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am
+not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to
+look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth.
+There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the
+sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps
+of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly
+and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their
+ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at
+least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live,
+undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin
+upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth,
+Harry; my brains, such as they are--my art, whatever it may be worth;
+Dorian Gray's good looks--we shall all suffer for what the gods have
+given us, suffer terribly."
+
+"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
+studio towards Basil Hallward.
+
+"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their
+names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
+love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life
+mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one
+only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am
+going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
+daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
+one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
+
+"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You seem
+to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it
+makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
+never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
+When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
+down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
+most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact,
+than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But
+when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she
+would; but she merely laughs at me."
+
+"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
+Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I
+believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are
+thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow.
+You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
+cynicism is simply a pose."
+
+"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
+cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
+garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
+stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the
+polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
+
+After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
+going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your answering
+a question I put to you some time ago."
+
+"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
+
+"You know quite well."
+
+"I do not, Harry."
+
+"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
+won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."
+
+"I told you the real reason."
+
+"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
+in it. Now, that is childish."
+
+"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
+portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
+of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
+not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on
+the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
+picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
+soul."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
+
+"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came
+over his face.
+
+"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.
+
+"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter;
+"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly
+believe it."
+
+Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
+the grass, and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," he
+replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, "and
+as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is
+quite incredible."
+
+The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms,
+with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A
+grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long
+thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt
+as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what
+was coming.
+
+"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two
+months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists
+have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the
+public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as
+you told me once, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for
+being civilised. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes,
+talking to huge over-dressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I
+suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned
+halfway round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes
+met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came
+over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere
+personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would
+absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not
+want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how
+independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at
+least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then---- but I don't know
+how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the
+verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate
+had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid,
+and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so;
+it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to
+escape."
+
+"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
+is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
+
+"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either.
+However, whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for I used
+to be very proud--I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I
+stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon,
+Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
+
+"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
+pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.
+
+"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people
+with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladles with gigantic tiaras and
+parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her
+once before, but she took it into her head to lionise me. I believe some
+picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been
+chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century
+standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the
+young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite
+close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I
+asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so
+reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to
+each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me
+so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other."
+
+"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his
+companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid _précis_ of all her
+guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
+gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my
+ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to
+everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I
+like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests
+exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them
+entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants
+to know."
+
+"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward,
+listlessly.
+
+"My dear fellow, she tried to found a _salon_, and only succeeded in
+opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she
+say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
+
+"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely
+inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do
+anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?'
+Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
+
+"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
+the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
+
+Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
+Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like
+everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone."
+
+"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,
+and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy
+white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer
+sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between
+people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for
+their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
+cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one
+who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and
+consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it
+is rather vain."
+
+"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
+merely an acquaintance."
+
+"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
+
+"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
+and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
+
+"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
+
+"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
+relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand
+other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathise
+with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices
+of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
+immorality should be their own special property, and that if anyone of
+us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
+Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite
+magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent. of the
+proletariat live correctly."
+
+"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more,
+Harry, I feel sure you don't either."
+
+Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his
+patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are,
+Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one
+puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always a rash thing to do--he
+never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only
+thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.
+Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
+sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are
+that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will
+the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his
+wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to
+discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons
+better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better
+than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How
+often do you see him?"
+
+"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
+absolutely necessary to me."
+
+"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
+art."
+
+"He is all my art to me now," said the painter, gravely. "I sometimes
+think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
+world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
+and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What
+the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs
+was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day
+be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch
+from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me
+than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with
+what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot
+express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that
+the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best
+work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder will you understand
+me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,
+an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them
+differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me,
+before. 'A dream of form in days of thought:'--who is it who says that?
+I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible
+presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
+he is really over twenty--his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can
+you realise all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
+lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
+of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
+The harmony of soul and body--how much that is! We in our madness have
+separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an
+ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to
+me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such
+a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
+things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting
+it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to
+me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
+wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."
+
+"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."
+
+Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden. After
+some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply
+a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
+He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.
+He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
+curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain
+colours. That is all."
+
+"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
+
+"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
+all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
+cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
+anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my
+soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under
+their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry--too
+much of myself!"
+
+"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
+for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
+
+"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful
+things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an
+age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of
+autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I
+will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall
+never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
+
+"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only
+the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very
+fond of you?"
+
+The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered,
+after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully.
+I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be
+sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in
+the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is
+horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me
+pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to
+someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit
+of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."
+
+"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
+"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
+of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That
+accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate
+ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something
+that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the
+silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that
+is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is
+a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust,
+with everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire
+first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will
+seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of
+colour, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart,
+and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time
+he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great
+pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a
+romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of
+any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."
+
+"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
+Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change too
+often."
+
+"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
+faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
+know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
+case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied
+air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
+chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the
+blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How
+pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's
+emotions were!--much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.
+One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends--those were the
+fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement
+the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
+Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's he would have been sure to have met
+Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about
+the feeding of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses.
+Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for
+whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would
+have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the
+dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he
+thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to
+Hallward, and said, "My dear fellow, I have just remembered."
+
+"Remembered what, Harry?"
+
+"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
+
+"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
+
+"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. She told
+me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her
+in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state
+that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation
+of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very
+earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a
+creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping
+about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend."
+
+"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't want you to meet him."
+
+"You don't want me to meet him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
+the garden.
+
+"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
+
+The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
+"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments." The man
+bowed, and went up the walk.
+
+Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he
+said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right
+in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him.
+Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous
+people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art
+whatever charm it possesses; my life as an artist depends on him. Mind,
+Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung
+out of him almost against his will.
+
+"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward
+by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with
+his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's
+"Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. "I want to
+learn them. They are perfectly charming."
+
+"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."
+
+"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of
+myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a
+wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
+blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your
+pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had anyone with you."
+
+"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have
+just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have
+spoiled everything."
+
+"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord
+Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has often
+spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid,
+one of her victims also."
+
+"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian, with a
+funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with
+her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to have
+played a duet together--three duets, I believe. I don't know what she
+will say to me. I am far too frightened to call."
+
+"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you.
+And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The
+audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to
+the piano she makes quite enough noise for two people."
+
+"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian,
+laughing.
+
+Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,
+with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold
+hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once.
+All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate
+purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No
+wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.
+
+"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too
+charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan, and opened
+his cigarette-case.
+
+The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes
+ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last
+remark he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry,
+I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of
+me if I asked you to go away?"
+
+Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky
+moods; and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell
+me why I should not go in for philanthropy."
+
+"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a
+subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly
+shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really
+mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your sitters
+to have someone to chat to."
+
+Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
+Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."
+
+Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil,
+but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.
+Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I
+am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are
+coming. I should be sorry to miss you."
+
+"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes 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."
+
+"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing
+intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am
+working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for
+my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay."
+
+"But what about my man at the Orleans?"
+
+The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about
+that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,
+and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry
+says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single
+exception of myself."
+
+Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek
+martyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he
+had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful
+contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said
+to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as
+Basil says?"
+
+"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
+immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because 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 someone else's music, an actor of a
+part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is
+self-development. To realise 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. And yet----"
+
+"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
+boy," said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look
+had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
+
+"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with
+that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him,
+and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were
+to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every
+feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe
+that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would
+forget all the maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic
+ideal--to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.
+But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of
+the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our
+lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to
+strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has
+done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains
+then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The
+only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and
+your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
+itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and
+unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place
+in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great
+sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with
+your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions
+that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror,
+day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek
+with shame----"
+
+"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what
+to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak.
+Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think."
+
+For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips, and
+eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
+influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come
+really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to
+him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
+them--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
+but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.
+
+Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But
+music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another
+chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were!
+How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet
+what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a
+plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as
+sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real
+as words?
+
+Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.
+He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It
+seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?
+
+With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
+psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested.
+He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and,
+remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which
+had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered
+whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had
+merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating
+the lad was!
+
+Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had
+the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes
+only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.
+
+"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray, suddenly. "I must go
+out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here."
+
+"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of
+anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
+have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips, and the bright
+look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he
+has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he
+has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a word that he
+says."
+
+"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
+reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
+
+"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
+dreamy, languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is
+horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
+something with strawberries in it."
+
+"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
+tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I
+will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in
+better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
+masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands."
+
+Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his
+face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
+perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him, and put his hand
+upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured.
+"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
+senses but the soul."
+
+The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had
+tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There
+was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
+suddenly awakened. His finely-chiselled nostrils quivered, and some
+hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.
+
+"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of
+life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
+of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
+you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
+
+Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking
+the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic
+olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was
+something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His
+cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved,
+as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But
+he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left
+for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for
+months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly
+there had come someone across his life who seemed to have disclosed to
+him life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not
+a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.
+
+"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has brought
+out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare you will be
+quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
+allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming."
+
+"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the
+seat at the end of the garden.
+
+"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
+worth having."
+
+"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."
+
+"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and
+ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
+branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will
+feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it
+always be so?... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't
+frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than
+Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the
+world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters
+of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has
+its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
+You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say
+sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least
+it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of
+wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The
+true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr.
+Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they
+quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really,
+perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it,
+and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for
+you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the
+memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as
+it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of
+you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become
+sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly....
+Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of
+your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
+failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
+vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live!
+Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be
+always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
+Hedonism--that is what our century wants. You might be its visible
+symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The
+world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that
+you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really
+might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must
+tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if
+you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will
+last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they
+blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In
+a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year
+the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never
+get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes
+sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous
+puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much
+afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to
+yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but
+youth!"
+
+Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell
+from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for
+a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of
+the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial
+things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid,
+or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find
+expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to
+the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He
+saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The
+flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.
+
+Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio, and made
+staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other, and
+smiled.
+
+"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
+you can bring your drinks."
+
+They rose up, and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
+butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of
+the garden a thrush began to sing.
+
+"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at
+him.
+
+"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?"
+
+"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.
+Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to
+make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only
+difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice
+lasts a little longer."
+
+As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's
+arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured,
+flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
+resumed his pose.
+
+Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him.
+The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that
+broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to
+look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed
+through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent
+of the roses seemed to brood over everything.
+
+After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a
+long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,
+biting the end of one of his huge brushes, and frowning. "It is quite
+finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long
+vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.
+
+Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a
+wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
+
+"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the
+finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at
+yourself."
+
+The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really
+finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
+
+"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day.
+I am awfully obliged to you."
+
+"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"
+
+Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture,
+and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks
+flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as
+if he had recognised himself for the first time. He stood there
+motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to
+him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own
+beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil
+Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming
+exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them,
+forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord
+Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning
+of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
+gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the
+description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face
+would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of
+his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his
+lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his
+soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.
+
+As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a
+knife, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes
+deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as
+if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.
+
+"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's
+silence, not understanding what it meant.
+
+"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is
+one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you
+like to ask for it. I must have it."
+
+"It is not my property, Harry."
+
+"Whose property is it?"
+
+"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.
+
+"He is a very lucky fellow."
+
+"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon
+his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and
+dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be
+older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other
+way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was
+to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is
+nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
+that!"
+
+"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work."
+
+"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.
+
+Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You
+like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green
+bronze figure. Hardly as much, I daresay."
+
+The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like
+that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and
+his cheeks burning.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your
+silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till
+I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses
+one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your
+picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth
+is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I
+shall kill myself."
+
+Hallward turned pale, and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he cried,
+"don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I
+shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things,
+are you?--you who are finer than any of them!"
+
+"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of
+the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must
+lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives
+something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could
+change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It
+will mock me some day--mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his
+eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he
+buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.
+
+"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter, bitterly.
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray--that is
+all."
+
+"It is not."
+
+"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"
+
+"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.
+
+"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.
+
+"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between
+you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
+done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will
+not let it come across our three lives and mar them."
+
+Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face
+and tear-stained eyes looked at him, as he walked over to the deal
+painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was
+he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin
+tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long
+palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at
+last. He was going to rip up the canvas.
+
+With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
+Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the
+studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!"
+
+"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter,
+coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you
+would."
+
+"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I
+feel that."
+
+"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
+sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked
+across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of
+course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
+pleasures?"
+
+"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge
+of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What
+absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as
+a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man
+is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all:
+though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had
+much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want
+it, and I really do."
+
+"If you let anyone have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!"
+cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy."
+
+"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
+existed."
+
+"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't
+really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."
+
+"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."
+
+"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."
+
+There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden
+tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle
+of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two
+globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went
+over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the
+table, and examined what was under the covers.
+
+"Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to
+be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's, but it
+is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am
+ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent
+engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have
+all the surprise of candour."
+
+"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward.
+"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
+
+"Yes," answered Lord Henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth
+century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only
+real colour-element left in modern life."
+
+"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."
+
+"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
+in the picture?"
+
+"Before either."
+
+"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
+lad.
+
+"Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won't you?"
+
+"I can't really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do."
+
+"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."
+
+"I should like that awfully."
+
+The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I
+shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
+
+"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
+across to him. "Am I really like that?"
+
+"Yes; you are just like that."
+
+"How wonderful, Basil!"
+
+"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,"
+sighed Hallward. "That is something."
+
+"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why,
+even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to
+do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old
+men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."
+
+"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and
+dine with me."
+
+"I can't, Basil."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."
+
+"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
+breaks his own. I beg you not to go."
+
+Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
+
+"I entreat you."
+
+The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them
+from the tea-table with an amused smile.
+
+"I must go, Basil," he answered.
+
+"Very well," said Hallward; and he went over and laid down his cup on
+the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better
+lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
+Come to-morrow."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You won't forget?"
+
+"No, of course not," cried Dorian.
+
+"And... Harry!"
+
+"Yes, Basil?"
+
+"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."
+
+"I have forgotten it."
+
+"I trust you."
+
+"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr.
+Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.
+Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."
+
+As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a
+sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon
+Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if
+somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called
+selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was
+considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His
+father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and
+Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplomatic Service in a
+capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at
+Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by
+reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his despatches,
+and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his
+father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
+foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months
+later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great
+aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
+houses, but preferred to live in chambers, as it was less trouble, and
+took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the
+management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself
+for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of
+having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of
+burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when
+the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them
+for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied
+him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.
+Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the
+country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but
+there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
+
+When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
+shooting coat, smoking a cheroot, and grumbling over _The Times_. "Well,
+Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I thought
+you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."
+
+"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
+something out of you."
+
+"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. "Well, sit down
+and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is
+everything."
+
+"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and
+when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only
+people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
+mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly
+upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and
+consequently they never bother me. What I want is information; not
+useful information, of course; useless information."
+
+"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry,
+although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in
+the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now
+by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug
+from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough,
+and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books, Uncle George," said Lord
+Henry, languidly.
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
+white eyebrows.
+
+"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who
+he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux;
+Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was
+she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your
+time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray
+at present. I have only just met him."
+
+"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman.--"Kelso's grandson!... Of
+course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
+christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret
+Devereux; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless
+young fellow; a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or
+something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
+happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa, a few
+months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said
+Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his
+son-in-law in public; paid him, sir, to do it, paid him; and that the
+fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed
+up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time
+afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she
+never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died
+too; died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten
+that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother he must be a
+good-looking chap."
+
+"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.
+
+"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "He
+should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing
+by him. His mother had money too. All the Selby property came to her,
+through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean
+dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was
+ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was
+always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a
+story of it. I didn't dare to show my face at Court for a month. I hope
+he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."
+
+"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well
+off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And...
+his mother was very beautiful?"
+
+"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry.
+What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could
+understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad
+after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were.
+The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington
+went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and
+there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. And by
+the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your
+father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't
+English girls good enough for him?"
+
+"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."
+
+"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor,
+striking the table with his fist.
+
+"The betting is on the Americans."
+
+"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.
+
+"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a
+steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a
+chance."
+
+"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?"
+
+Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing
+their parents as English women are at concealing their past," he said,
+rising to go.
+
+"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"
+
+"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that
+pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
+politics."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
+secret of their charm."
+
+"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are
+always telling us that it is the Paradise for women."
+
+"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively
+anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I
+shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the
+information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new
+friends, and nothing about my old ones."
+
+"Where are you lunching, Harry?"
+
+"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest
+_protégé_."
+
+"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her
+charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I
+have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."
+
+"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
+Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
+distinguishing characteristic."
+
+The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his
+servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street, and
+turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.
+
+So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been
+told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange,
+almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad
+passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
+treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in
+pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
+the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting
+background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind
+every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds
+had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how
+charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes
+and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at
+the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening
+wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
+violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was
+something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other
+activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and
+let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views
+echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to
+convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid
+or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most
+satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
+age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
+He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
+had met in Basil's studio; or could be fashioned into a marvellous type,
+at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
+such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could
+not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
+that such beauty was destined to fade!... And Basil? From a
+psychological point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in
+art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
+merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent
+spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field,
+suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul
+who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to
+which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns
+of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
+symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other
+and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all
+was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that
+artist in thought, who had first analysed it? Was it not Buonarotti who
+had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our
+own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray
+what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned
+the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him--had already,
+indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
+was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.
+
+Suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had
+passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back.
+When he entered the somewhat sombre hall the butler told him that they
+had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick, and
+passed into the dining-room.
+
+"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
+
+He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to
+her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from
+the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.
+Opposite was the Duchess of Harley; a lady of admirable good-nature and
+good temper, much liked by everyone who knew her, and of those ample
+architectural proportions that in women who are not Duchesses are
+described by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, on
+her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who
+followed his leader in public life, and in private life followed the
+best cooks, dining with the Tories, and thinking with the Liberals, in
+accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
+occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable
+charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,
+having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had
+to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one
+of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so
+dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
+Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most
+intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a Ministerial statement
+in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely
+earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once
+himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of
+them ever quite escape.
+
+"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the Duchess,
+nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really
+marry this fascinating young person?"
+
+"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."
+
+"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, someone should
+interfere."
+
+"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
+dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
+
+"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas."
+
+"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the Duchess, raising her
+large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb.
+
+"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.
+
+The Duchess looked puzzled.
+
+"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means
+anything that he says."
+
+"When America was discovered," said the Radical member, and he began to
+give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a subject,
+he exhausted his listeners. The Duchess sighed, and exercised her
+privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been
+discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance
+nowadays. It is most unfair."
+
+"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr.
+Erskine. "I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
+
+"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the
+Duchess, vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely
+pretty. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I
+wish I could afford to do the same."
+
+"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir
+Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.
+
+"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the
+Duchess.
+
+"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.
+
+Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against
+that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over
+it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are
+extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it."
+
+"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr.
+Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."
+
+Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his
+shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them.
+The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely
+reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes,
+Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no
+nonsense about the Americans."
+
+"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute
+reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It
+is hitting below the intellect."
+
+"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
+
+"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
+
+"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet.
+
+"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it
+was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we
+must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can
+judge them."
+
+"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can
+make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
+you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the
+East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
+playing."
+
+"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
+down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
+
+"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha.
+
+"I can sympathise with everything, except suffering," said Lord Henry,
+shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly,
+too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
+modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the
+beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
+
+"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas,
+with a grave shake of the head.
+
+"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and
+we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
+
+The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?"
+he asked.
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England except
+the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic
+contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through
+an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal
+to Science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that
+they lead us astray, and the advantage of Science is that it is not
+emotional."
+
+"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur,
+timidly.
+
+"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.
+
+Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too
+seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how
+to laugh, History would have been different."
+
+"You are really very comforting," warbled the Duchess. "I have always
+felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
+interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look
+her in the face without a blush."
+
+"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.
+
+"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself
+blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me
+how to become young again."
+
+He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you
+committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across
+the table.
+
+"A great many, I fear," she cried.
+
+"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's
+youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
+
+"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice."
+
+"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha
+shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays
+most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it
+is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
+
+A laugh ran round the table.
+
+He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and
+transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with
+fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
+soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and
+catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her
+wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the
+hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled
+before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge
+press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round
+her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
+the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary
+improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,
+and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose
+temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and
+to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic,
+irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they
+followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but
+sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and
+wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
+
+At last, liveried in the costume of the age, Reality entered the room in
+the shape of a servant to tell the Duchess that her carriage was
+waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried.
+"I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to
+some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the
+chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a
+scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.
+No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite
+delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to
+say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night.
+Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?"
+
+"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.
+
+"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you
+come;" and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the
+other ladies.
+
+When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking
+a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
+
+"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?"
+
+"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I
+should like to write a novel certainly; a novel that would be as lovely
+as a Persian carpet, and as unreal. But there is no literary public in
+England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopædias. Of
+all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty
+of literature."
+
+"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used to have
+literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young
+friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
+meant all that you said to us at lunch?"
+
+"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?"
+
+"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if
+anything happens to our good Duchess we shall all look on you as being
+primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The
+generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are
+tired of London, come down to Treadley, and expound to me your
+philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate
+enough to possess."
+
+"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
+has a perfect host, and a perfect library."
+
+"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman, with a courteous
+bow. "And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at
+the Athenæum. It is the hour when we sleep there."
+
+"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"
+
+"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
+Academy of Letters."
+
+Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the Park," he cried.
+
+As he was passing out of the door Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
+"Let me come with you," he murmured.
+
+"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,"
+answered Lord Henry.
+
+"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let
+me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so
+wonderfully as you do."
+
+"Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling.
+"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me,
+if you care to."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious
+arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair. It
+was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high-panelled
+wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling
+of raised plaster-work, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk
+long-fringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette
+by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of "_Les Cent Nouvelles_," bound
+for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies
+that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars and
+parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantel-shelf, and through the small
+leaded panels of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a
+summer day in London.
+
+Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his
+principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was
+looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages
+of an elaborately-illustrated edition of "_Manon Lescaut_" that he had
+found in one of the bookcases. The formal monotonous ticking of the
+Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going
+away.
+
+At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How late you are,
+Harry!" he murmured.
+
+"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.
+
+He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I
+thought----"
+
+"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me
+introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my
+husband has got seventeen of them."
+
+"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"
+
+"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the
+Opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her
+vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always
+looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.
+She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never
+returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque,
+but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a
+perfect mania for going to church.
+
+"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?"
+
+"Yes; it was at dear 'Lohengrin.' I like Wagner's music better than
+anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other
+people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage: don't you think
+so, Mr. Gray?"
+
+The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
+fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
+
+Dorian smiled, and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so, Lady
+Henry. I never talk during music, at least, during good music. If one
+hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."
+
+"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? I always hear
+Harry's views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of
+them. But you must not think I don't like good music. I adore it, but I
+am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped
+pianists--two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it
+is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
+ain't they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after
+a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to
+art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to any
+of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford
+orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
+look so picturesque. But here is Harry!--Harry, I came in to look for
+you, to ask you something--I forget what it was--and I found Mr. Gray
+here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite the
+same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been
+most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen him."
+
+"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his
+dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused
+smile. "So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old
+brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays
+people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
+
+"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward
+silence with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with the
+Duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are dining out, I
+suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's."
+
+"I daresay, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her, as,
+looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain,
+she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then
+he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on the sofa.
+
+"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said, after a
+few puffs.
+
+"Why, Harry?"
+
+"Because they are so sentimental."
+
+"But I like sentimental people."
+
+"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women,
+because they are curious; both are disappointed."
+
+"I don't think I am likely to marry, Henry. I am too much in love. That
+is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
+everything that you say."
+
+"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry, after a pause.
+
+"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace
+_début_."
+
+"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Her name is Sibyl Vane."
+
+"Never heard of her."
+
+"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."
+
+"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They
+never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent
+the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of
+mind over morals."
+
+"Harry, how can you?"
+
+"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at the present,
+so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was.
+I find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain
+and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a
+reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to
+supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake,
+however. They paint in order to try and look young. Our grandmothers
+painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. _Rouge_ and _esprit_ used
+to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman can look ten
+years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for
+conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and
+two of these can't be admitted into decent society. However, tell me
+about your genius. How long have you known her?"
+
+"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."
+
+"Never mind that. How long have you known her?"
+
+"About three weeks."
+
+"And where did you come across her?"
+
+"I will tell you, Harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.
+After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled
+me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I
+met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the
+Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who
+passed me, and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they
+led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was
+an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for sensations.... Well,
+one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to go out in search of
+some adventure. I felt that this grey, monstrous London of ours, with
+its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you
+once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a
+thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I
+remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we
+first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret
+of life. I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered
+eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black,
+grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little
+theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous
+Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was
+standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets,
+and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. 'Have a
+box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an
+air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that
+amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I
+really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the
+present day I can't make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn't--my dear
+Harry, if I hadn't, I should have missed the greatest romance of my
+life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!"
+
+"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you
+should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the
+first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will
+always be in love with love. A _grande passion_ is the privilege of
+people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes
+of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for
+you. This is merely the beginning."
+
+"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.
+
+"No; I think your nature so deep."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really
+the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I
+call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
+Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of
+the intellect--simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must
+analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many
+things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might
+pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story."
+
+"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a
+vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the
+curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
+cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding cake. The gallery and pit were
+fairy full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there
+was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
+Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible
+consumption of nuts going on."
+
+"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."
+
+"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what
+on earth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you
+think the play was, Harry?"
+
+"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.' Our fathers used
+to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the
+more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not
+good enough for us. In art, as in politics, _les grandpères ont toujours
+tort_."
+
+"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and Juliet.' I
+must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare
+done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a
+sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There
+was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a
+cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was
+drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with
+corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel.
+Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had
+introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit.
+They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had
+come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
+seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek
+head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells
+of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the
+loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that
+pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your
+eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the
+mist of tears that came across me. And her voice--I never heard such a
+voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to
+fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded
+like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the
+tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are
+singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of
+violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
+Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my
+eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don't
+know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her.
+She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
+One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have
+seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from
+her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of
+Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She
+has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given
+him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent,
+and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I
+have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never
+appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No
+glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one
+knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in
+any of them. They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at
+tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile, and
+their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How
+different an actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only
+thing worth loving is an actress?"
+
+"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."
+
+"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
+
+"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary
+charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.
+
+"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."
+
+"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you
+will tell me everything you do."
+
+"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
+You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would
+come and confess it to you. You would understand me."
+
+"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes,
+Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now
+tell me--reach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks:--what are your
+actual relations with Sibyl Vane?"
+
+Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
+"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
+
+"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
+Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why should
+you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is
+in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends
+by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know
+her, at any rate, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
+horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and
+offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was
+furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of
+years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think,
+from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that
+I had taken too much champagne, or something."
+
+"I am not surprised."
+
+"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I
+never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and
+confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy
+against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."
+
+"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other
+hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all
+expensive."
+
+"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed Dorian.
+"By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre,
+and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
+recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the
+place again. When he saw me he made me a low bow, and assured me that I
+was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he
+had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an
+air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to 'The
+Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a
+distinction."
+
+"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian--a great distinction. Most people
+become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of
+life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. But when did
+you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"
+
+"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going
+round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me; at least
+I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined
+to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know
+her, wasn't it?"
+
+"No; I don't think so."
+
+"My dear Harry, why?"
+
+"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl."
+
+"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There is something of a child
+about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what
+I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her
+power. I think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning
+at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about
+us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. He would
+insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not
+anything of the kind. She said quite simply to me, 'You look more like a
+prince. I must call you Prince Charming.'"
+
+"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."
+
+"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person in
+a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded
+tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
+dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better
+days."
+
+"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, examining his
+rings.
+
+"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
+me."
+
+"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about
+other people's tragedies."
+
+"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came
+from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and
+entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every
+night she is more marvellous."
+
+"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I
+thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but it is
+not quite what I expected."
+
+"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have
+been to the Opera with you several times," said Dorian, opening his blue
+eyes in wonder.
+
+"You always come dreadfully late."
+
+"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is
+only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think
+of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I
+am filled with awe."
+
+"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
+
+He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow
+night she will be Juliet."
+
+"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one.
+She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has
+genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the
+secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to
+make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
+laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their
+dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry,
+how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke.
+Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.
+
+Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he
+was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's
+studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of
+scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and
+Desire had come to meet it on the way.
+
+"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.
+
+"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I have
+not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge her
+genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound to him
+for three years--at least for two years and eight months--from the
+present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When all
+that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out
+properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me."
+
+"That would be impossible, my dear boy?"
+
+"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her,
+but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is
+personalities, not principles, that move the age."
+
+"Well, what night shall we go?"
+
+"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
+to-morrow."
+
+"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."
+
+"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
+curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets
+Romeo."
+
+"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or
+reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before
+seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to
+him?"
+
+"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid
+of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame,
+specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the
+picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I
+delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see
+him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."
+
+Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they need
+most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
+
+"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit
+of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."
+
+"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his
+work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his
+prejudices, his principles, and his common-sense. The only artists I
+have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good
+artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly
+uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is
+the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely
+fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look.
+The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a
+man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The
+others write the poetry that they dare not realise."
+
+"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some
+perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that stood
+on the table. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is
+waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye."
+
+As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to
+think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian
+Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused him not
+the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It
+made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the
+methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that
+science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun
+by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human
+life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared
+to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one
+watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not
+wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from
+troubling the brain, and making the imagination turbid with monstrous
+fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know
+their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
+strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand
+their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful
+the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of
+passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect--to observe
+where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in
+unison, and at what point they were at discord--there was a delight in
+that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a
+price for any sensation.
+
+He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
+brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical
+words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to
+this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the
+lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something.
+Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to
+the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the
+veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly
+of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and
+the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and
+assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art,
+Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or
+sculpture, or painting.
+
+Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was
+yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was
+becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
+beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It
+was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one
+of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be
+remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose
+wounds are like red roses.
+
+Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was
+animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
+The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say
+where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the physical impulse began? How
+shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And
+yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools!
+Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really
+in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from
+matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery
+also.
+
+He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a
+science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it
+was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
+Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to
+their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of
+warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation
+of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow
+and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in
+experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.
+All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as
+our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would
+do many times, and with joy.
+
+It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by
+which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and
+certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to
+promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane
+was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt
+that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new
+experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
+What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been
+transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something
+that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for
+that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose
+origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our
+weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often
+happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
+really experimenting on ourselves.
+
+While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door,
+and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner.
+He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into
+scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed
+like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He
+thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life, and wondered how it
+was all going to end.
+
+When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram
+lying on the hall table. He opened it, and found it was from Dorian
+Gray. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl
+Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Mother, mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in
+the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the
+shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their
+dingy sitting-room contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you
+must be happy too!"
+
+Mrs. Vane winced, and put her thin bismuth-whitened hands on her
+daughter's head. "Happy!" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I
+see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr. Isaacs
+has been very good to us, and we owe him money."
+
+The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, mother?" she cried, "what does
+money matter? Love is more than money."
+
+"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts, and to
+get a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty
+pounds is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."
+
+"He is not a gentleman, mother, and I hate the way he talks to me," said
+the girl, rising to her feet, and going over to the window.
+
+"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
+woman, querulously.
+
+Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him any more,
+mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now." Then she paused. A rose
+shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the
+petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept
+over her, and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him," she
+said, simply.
+
+"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.
+The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the
+words.
+
+The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. Her
+eyes caught the melody, and echoed it in radiance; then closed for a
+moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a
+dream had passed across them.
+
+Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence,
+quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common
+sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison of passion. Her
+prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on Memory to
+remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought
+him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm
+with his breath.
+
+Then Wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. This
+young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against
+the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of
+craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.
+
+Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
+"Mother, mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know why I
+love him. I love him because he is like what Love himself should be. But
+what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet--why, I cannot
+tell--though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble. I feel
+proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love Prince
+Charming?"
+
+The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her
+cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sibyl rushed to
+her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "Forgive me, mother.
+I know it pains you to talk about our father. But it only pains you
+because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad. I am as happy to-day
+as you were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy for ever!"
+
+"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. Besides,
+what do you know of this young man? You don't even know his name. The
+whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going away
+to Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you should
+have shown more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is
+rich...."
+
+"Ah! Mother, mother, let me be happy!"
+
+Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical
+gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player,
+clasped her in her arms. At this moment the door opened, and a young lad
+with rough brown hair came into the room. He was thick-set of figure,
+and his hands and feet were large, and somewhat clumsy in movement. He
+was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly have guessed the
+close relationship that existed between them. Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes
+on him, and intensified the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the
+dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the _tableau_ was
+interesting.
+
+"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," said the
+lad, with a good-natured grumble.
+
+"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a
+dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.
+
+James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "I want you to
+come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever see
+this horrid London again. I am sure I don't want to."
+
+"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up
+a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She
+felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would
+have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.
+
+"Why not, mother? I mean it."
+
+"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a
+position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the
+Colonies, nothing that I would call society; so when you have made your
+fortune you must come back and assert yourself in London."
+
+"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that.
+I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the stage. I
+hate it."
+
+"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! But are you really
+going for a walk with me? That will be nice! I was afraid you were going
+to say good-bye to some of your friends--to Tom Hardy, who gave you that
+hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is
+very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go?
+Let us go to the Park."
+
+"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the
+Park."
+
+"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
+
+He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last, "but don't be
+too long dressing." She danced out of the door. One could hear her
+singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.
+
+He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned to the
+still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?" he asked.
+
+"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on her work. For
+some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this
+rough, stern son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled when
+their eyes met. She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The
+silence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.
+She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, just as
+they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. "I hope you will be
+contented, James, with your sea-faring life," she said. "You must
+remember that it is your own choice. You might have entered a
+solicitor's office. Solicitors are a very respectable class, and in the
+country often dine with the best families."
+
+"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite
+right. I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't
+let her come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."
+
+"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl."
+
+"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre, and goes behind to
+talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"
+
+"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the
+profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying
+attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was
+when acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at
+present whether her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt
+that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most
+polite to me. Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the
+flowers he sends are lovely."
+
+"You don't know his name, though," said the lad, harshly.
+
+"No," answered his mother, with a placid expression in her face. "He has
+not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic of him. He
+is probably a member of the aristocracy."
+
+James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch
+over her."
+
+"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special
+care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why
+she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the
+aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a
+most brilliant marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple.
+His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."
+
+The lad muttered something to himself, and drummed on the window-pane
+with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something, when
+the door opened, and Sibyl ran in.
+
+"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
+Good-bye, mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is
+packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."
+
+"Good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of strained stateliness.
+
+She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there
+was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.
+
+"Kiss me, mother," said the girl. Her flower-like lips touched the
+withered cheek, and warmed its frost.
+
+"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
+search of an imaginary gallery.
+
+"Come, Sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. He hated his mother's
+affectations.
+
+They went out into the flickering wind-blown sunlight, and strolled down
+the dreary Euston Road. The passers-by glanced in wonder at the sullen,
+heavy youth, who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of
+such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a common gardener
+walking with a rose.
+
+Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of
+some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at which comes on
+geniuses late in life, and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, however,
+was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her love was
+trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming,
+and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of him
+but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to sail, about
+the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful heiress whose life
+he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. For he was not
+to remain a sailor, or a super-cargo, or whatever he was going to be.
+Oh, no! A sailor's existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a
+horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a
+black wind blowing the masts down, and tearing the sails into long
+screaming ribands! He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite
+good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a
+week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, the
+largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it down to the
+coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were
+to attack them three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. Or,
+no. He was not to go to the gold-fields at all. They were horrid places,
+where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used
+bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he
+was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off
+by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course
+she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get
+married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. Yes,
+there were delightful things in store for him. But he must be very good,
+and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. She was only a
+year older than he was, but she knew so much more of life. He must be
+sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his prayers each
+night before he went to sleep. God was very good, and would watch over
+him. She would pray for him, too, and in a few years he would come back
+quite rich and happy.
+
+The lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer. He was heart-sick
+at leaving home.
+
+Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.
+Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger
+of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was making love to her could
+mean her no good. He was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated
+him through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account,
+and which for that reason was all the more dominant within him. He was
+conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature, and
+in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness. Children
+begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them;
+sometimes they forgive them.
+
+His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that
+he had brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase that he
+had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears
+one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of
+horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a
+hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like
+furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his under-lip.
+
+"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I
+am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say something."
+
+"What do you want me to say?"
+
+"Oh! that you will be a good boy, and not forget us," she answered,
+smiling at him.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me, than I am
+to forget you, Sibyl."
+
+She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.
+
+"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me
+about him? He means you no good."
+
+"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him. I
+love him."
+
+"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he? I
+have a right to know."
+
+"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name? Oh! you silly
+boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him, you would think
+him the most wonderful person in the world. Some day you will meet him:
+when you come back from Australia. You will like him so much. Everybody
+likes him, and I... love him. I wish you could come to the theatre
+to-night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh! how I
+shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To have him
+sitting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I may frighten the
+company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass one's
+self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers
+at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will announce me
+as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, Prince
+Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor beside
+him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door,
+love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want re-writing. They
+were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think,
+a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said the lad, sullenly.
+
+"A Prince!" she cried, musically. "What more do you want?"
+
+"He wants to enslave you."
+
+"I shudder at the thought of being free."
+
+"I want you to beware of him."
+
+"To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him."
+
+"Sibyl, you are mad about him."
+
+She laughed, and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as if you
+were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will
+know what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to think
+that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I have ever
+been before. Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and
+difficult. But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
+and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the
+smart people go by."
+
+They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds across
+the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust, tremulous
+cloud of orris-root it seemed, hung in the panting air. The
+brightly-coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
+
+She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He spoke
+slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other as players at a
+game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not communicate her
+joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all the echo she could
+win. After some time she became silent. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of
+golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open carriage with two ladies
+Dorian Gray drove past.
+
+She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.
+
+"Who?" said Jim Vane.
+
+"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.
+
+He jumped up, and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me. Which
+is he? Point him out. I must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that moment
+the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when it had left
+the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the Park.
+
+"He is gone," murmured Sibyl, sadly. "I wish you had seen him."
+
+"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
+you any wrong I shall kill him."
+
+She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air
+like a dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close to
+her tittered.
+
+"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly, as
+she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.
+
+When they reached the Achilles Statue she turned round. There was pity
+in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her head at him.
+"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all.
+How can you say such horrible things? You don't know what you are
+talking about. You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would
+fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said was wicked."
+
+"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. Mother is no
+help to you. She doesn't understand how to look after you. I wish now
+that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
+the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn't been signed."
+
+"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those
+silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not going
+to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect
+happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never harm anyone I love,
+would you?"
+
+"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.
+
+"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.
+
+"And he?"
+
+"For ever, too!"
+
+"He had better."
+
+She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. He
+was merely a boy.
+
+At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to
+their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock, and
+Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
+that she should do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when
+their mother was not present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he
+detested scenes of every kind.
+
+In Sibyl's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart,
+and a fierce, murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
+had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,
+and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened, and kissed her
+with real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.
+
+His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality,
+as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The
+flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the stained cloth.
+Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he
+could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left to him.
+
+After some time, he thrust away his plate, and put his head in his
+hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to
+him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother
+watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace
+handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got
+up, and went to the door. Then he turned back, and looked at her. Their
+eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.
+
+"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered
+vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth. I have a
+right to know. Were you married to my father?"
+
+She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
+the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,
+had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed in some measure it
+was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question
+called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up
+to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
+
+"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
+
+"My father was a scoundrel then?" cried the lad, clenching his fists.
+
+She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other very
+much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don't speak
+against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed he was
+highly connected."
+
+An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," he exclaimed,
+"but don't let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love
+with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose."
+
+For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her
+head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "Sibyl has a
+mother," she murmured; "I had none."
+
+The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down he kissed
+her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father," he
+said, "but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye. Don't forget
+that you will only have one child now to look after, and believe me that
+if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down,
+and kill him like a dog. I swear it."
+
+The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that
+accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid to
+her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more freely, and
+for the first time for many months she really admired her son. She would
+have liked to have continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but
+he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down, and mufflers looked
+for. The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the
+bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details. It
+was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the tattered
+lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. She was
+conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She consoled herself
+by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she
+had only one child to look after. She remembered the phrase. It had
+pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and
+dramatically expressed. She felt that they would all laugh at it some
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that
+evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
+where dinner had been laid for three.
+
+"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
+waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don't interest
+me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth
+painting; though many of them would be the better for a little
+white-washing."
+
+"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him as
+he spoke.
+
+Hallward started, and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he
+cried. "Impossible!"
+
+"It is perfectly true."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To some little actress or other."
+
+"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."
+
+"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
+Basil."
+
+"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."
+
+"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry, languidly. "But I didn't say
+he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great
+difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
+no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I
+never was engaged."
+
+"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
+absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
+
+"If you want to make him marry this girl tell him that, Basil. He is
+sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
+is always from the noblest motives."
+
+"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some
+vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."
+
+"Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry,
+sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is
+beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
+portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
+appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst
+others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
+appointment."
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
+be more serious than I am at the present moment."
+
+"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and
+down the room, and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it, possibly.
+It is some silly infatuation."
+
+"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
+attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our
+moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and
+I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality
+fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is
+absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful
+girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded
+Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a
+champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one
+unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack
+individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage
+makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other
+egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more
+highly organised, and to be highly organised is, I should fancy, the
+object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and,
+whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
+hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore
+her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by someone else.
+He would be a wonderful study."
+
+"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If
+Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself.
+You are much better than you pretend to be."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of others
+is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer
+terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour
+with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to
+us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good
+qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I
+mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for
+optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth
+is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
+As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and
+more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage
+them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian
+himself. He will tell you more than I can."
+
+"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the
+lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and
+shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been so
+happy. Of course it is sudden; all really delightful things are. And
+yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my
+life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
+extraordinarily handsome.
+
+"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I
+don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.
+You let Harry know."
+
+"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord
+Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder, and smiling as he spoke.
+"Come, let us sit down and try what the new _chef_ here is like, and
+then you will tell us how it all came about."
+
+"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian, as they took their
+seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. After I
+left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
+little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and
+went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind.
+Of course the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl!
+You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes she was
+perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
+cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green
+cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined
+with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all
+the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your
+studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round
+a pale rose. As for her acting--well, you shall see her to-night. She is
+simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I
+forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away
+with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the
+performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her. As we were sitting
+together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen
+there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't
+describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my
+life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She
+trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung
+herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell
+you all this, but I can't help it. Of course our engagement is a dead
+secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my
+guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I
+shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I
+have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to
+find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to
+speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of
+Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."
+
+"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward, slowly.
+
+"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall
+find her in an orchard in Verona."
+
+Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "At what
+particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what did
+she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."
+
+"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
+not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said
+she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is
+nothing to me compared with her."
+
+"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry--"much more
+practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say
+anything about marriage, and they always remind us."
+
+Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have annoyed
+Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon
+anyone. His nature is too fine for that."
+
+Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me,"
+he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the
+only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question--simple
+curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to
+us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in
+middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern."
+
+Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite incorrigible,
+Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you
+see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a
+beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how anyone can wish
+to shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a
+pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.
+What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't
+mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me
+faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all
+that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me
+to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me
+forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful
+theories."
+
+"And those are...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.
+
+"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
+about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."
+
+"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered,
+in his slow, melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory
+as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test,
+her sign of approval. When we are happy we are always good, but when we
+are good we are not always happy."
+
+"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.
+
+"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Lord
+Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the
+centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
+
+"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching
+the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord
+is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life--that is
+the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes
+to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them,
+but they are not one's concern. Besides, Individualism has really the
+higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's
+age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of
+his age is a form of the grossest immorality."
+
+"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
+terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
+
+"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that
+the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but
+self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of
+the rich."
+
+"One has to pay in other ways but money."
+
+"What sort of ways, Basil?"
+
+"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the
+consciousness of degradation."
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediæval art is
+charming, but mediæval emotions are out of date. One can use them in
+fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction
+are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no
+civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever
+knows what a pleasure is."
+
+"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore someone."
+
+"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with
+some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as
+Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us
+to do something for them."
+
+"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
+us," murmured the lad, gravely. "They create Love in our natures. They
+have a right to demand it back."
+
+"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.
+
+"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.
+
+"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women give
+to men the very gold of their lives."
+
+"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very
+small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once put
+it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us
+from carrying them out."
+
+"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."
+
+"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some
+coffee, you fellows?--Waiter, bring coffee, and _fine-champagne_, and
+some cigarettes. No: don't mind the cigarettes; I have some. Basil, I
+can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette
+is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it
+leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will
+always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had
+the courage to commit."
+
+"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a
+fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
+"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
+have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you
+have never known."
+
+"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
+eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
+that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
+girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
+Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but
+there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a
+hansom."
+
+They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The
+painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could
+not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many
+other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all
+passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
+watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A
+strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would
+never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come
+between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets
+became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it
+seemed to him that he had grown years older.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
+Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an
+oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of
+pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking at the top
+of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he
+had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,
+upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and
+insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assuring him that he was proud
+to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a
+poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The
+heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a
+monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery
+had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side.
+They talked to each other across the theatre, and shared their oranges
+with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in
+the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of
+the popping of corks came from the bar.
+
+"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
+
+"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine
+beyond all living things. When she acts you will forget everything.
+These common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,
+become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and
+watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them
+as responsive as a violin. She spiritualises them, and one feels that
+they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
+
+"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord
+Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
+opera-glass.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
+understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love
+must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must
+be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age--that is something worth
+doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
+if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
+sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend
+them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your
+adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
+right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made
+Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."
+
+"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew that
+you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here
+is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
+minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am
+going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good
+in me."
+
+A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
+applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly
+lovely to look at--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
+that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace
+and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror
+of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded,
+enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed
+to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
+Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord
+Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"
+
+The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
+dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as
+it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through the
+crowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
+creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a
+plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a
+white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.
+
+Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes
+rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak--
+
+    Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
+    Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
+    For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
+    And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--
+
+with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly
+artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
+of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away
+all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.
+
+Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious.
+Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them
+to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.
+
+Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
+the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was
+nothing in her.
+
+She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be
+denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse
+as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She
+over-emphasised everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage--
+
+    Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
+    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
+    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
+
+was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
+taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
+leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--
+
+                      Although I joy in thee,
+    I have no joy of this contract to-night:
+    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
+    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
+    Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
+    This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
+    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--
+
+she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
+not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
+self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
+
+Even the common, uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
+interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to
+whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
+dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
+the girl herself.
+
+When the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord
+Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "She is quite
+beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act. Let us go."
+
+"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard,
+bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening,
+Harry. I apologise to you both."
+
+"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
+Hallward. "We will come some other night."
+
+"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply
+callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great
+artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress."
+
+"Don't talk like that about anyone you love, Dorian. Love is a more
+wonderful thing than Art."
+
+"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. "But do
+let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for
+one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't suppose you will want
+your wife to act. So what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a
+wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life
+as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There are
+only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know
+absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. Good
+heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The secret of remaining
+young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Come to the club
+with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty
+of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you want?"
+
+"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must
+go. Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to
+his eyes. His lips trembled, and, rushing to the back of the box, he
+leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
+
+"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry, with a strange tenderness in his
+voice; and the two young men passed out together.
+
+A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose
+on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and
+proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable.
+Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots, and laughing.
+The whole thing was a _fiasco_. The last act was played to almost empty
+benches. The curtain went down on a titter, and some groans.
+
+As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
+greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on
+her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance
+about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.
+
+When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
+came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.
+
+"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement--"horribly! It was
+dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea
+what I suffered."
+
+The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with
+long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to
+the red petals of her mouth--"Dorian, you should have understood. But
+you understand now, don't you?"
+
+"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.
+
+"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never
+act well again."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you
+shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I
+was bored."
+
+She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An
+ecstasy of happiness dominated her.
+
+"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
+reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought
+that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other.
+The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine
+also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me
+seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew
+nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came--oh, my beautiful
+love!--and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality
+really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the
+hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had
+always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the
+Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the
+orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had
+to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say.
+You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a
+reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! my
+love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You
+are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the
+puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how
+it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going to
+be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my
+soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them
+hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? Take
+me away, Dorian--take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I
+hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot
+mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand
+now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation
+for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that."
+
+He flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face. "You have
+killed my love," he muttered.
+
+She looked at him in wonder, and laughed. He made no answer. She came
+across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt
+down and pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a shudder
+ran through him.
+
+Then he leaped up, and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have
+killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir
+my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you
+were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you
+realised the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
+shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.
+My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are
+nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of
+you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what you were to me,
+once. Why, once.... Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never
+laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little
+you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art you
+are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The
+world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. What
+are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face."
+
+The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and
+her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?"
+she murmured. "You are acting."
+
+"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.
+
+She rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expression of pain in her
+face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm, and
+looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he cried.
+
+A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet, and lay
+there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
+whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all
+the time. But I will try--indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across
+me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not
+kissed me--if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
+Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My
+brother.... No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest.... But
+you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try
+to improve. Don't be cruel to me because I love you better than anything
+in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you.
+But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an
+artist. It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't
+leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She
+crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his
+beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in
+exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the
+emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him
+to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
+
+"I am going," he said at last, in his calm, clear voice. "I don't wish
+to be unkind, but I can't see you again. You have disappointed me."
+
+She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little
+hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He
+turned on his heel, and left the room. In a few moments he was out of
+the theatre.
+
+Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through
+dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
+houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after
+him. Drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves like
+monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon doorsteps,
+and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
+
+As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden.
+The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed
+itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
+rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with
+the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an
+anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market, and watched the men
+unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some
+cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any
+money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked
+at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long
+line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red
+roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge
+jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey
+sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
+waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging
+doors of the coffee-house in the Piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped
+and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
+Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked,
+and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
+
+After a little while, he hailed a hansom, and drove home. For a few
+moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent
+Square with its blank, close-shuttered windows, and its staring blinds.
+The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
+silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was
+rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
+
+In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that hung
+from the ceiling of the great oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were
+still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they
+seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out, and, having thrown
+his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the
+door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that,
+in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for
+himself, and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been
+discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning
+the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward
+had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. Then he went on
+into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken the
+buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally he came back,
+went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light
+that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared
+to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One
+would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was
+certainly strange.
+
+He turned round, and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The
+bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky
+corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he
+had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be
+more intensified even. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the
+lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking
+into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
+
+He winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory
+Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into
+its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it
+mean?
+
+He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
+again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual
+painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had
+altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly
+apparent.
+
+He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there
+flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
+day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He
+had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
+portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
+face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that
+the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and
+thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of
+his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled?
+Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them.
+And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
+the mouth.
+
+Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had
+dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
+had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been
+shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
+him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child.
+He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been
+made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had
+suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted,
+he had lived centuries of pain, æon upon æon of torture. His life was
+well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her
+for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men.
+They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When
+they took lovers, it was merely to have someone with whom they could
+have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what
+women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to
+him now.
+
+But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his
+life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty.
+Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it
+again?
+
+No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The
+horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly
+there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men
+mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so.
+
+Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
+smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met
+his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted
+image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter
+more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would
+die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its
+fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would
+be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation.
+He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at any rate, listen to
+those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's garden had
+first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. He would go
+back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again.
+Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had.
+Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that
+she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together.
+His life with her would be beautiful and pure.
+
+He got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the
+portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!" he murmured to
+himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he
+stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning
+air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of
+Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name
+over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched
+garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times
+on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what
+made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded, and
+Victor came softly in with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a
+small tray of old Sèvres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains,
+with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall
+windows.
+
+"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
+
+"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray, drowsily.
+
+"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."
+
+How late it was! He sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over his
+letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand
+that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The
+others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of
+cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of
+charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable young
+men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill, for
+a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had not yet had the
+courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned
+people and did not realise that we live in an age when unnecessary
+things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously
+worded communiations from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to
+advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable
+rates of interest.
+
+After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate
+dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
+onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep.
+He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of
+having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but
+there was the unreality of a dream about it.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a
+light French breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round
+table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
+seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in, and buzzed round the
+blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before
+him. He felt perfectly happy.
+
+Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
+portrait, and he started.
+
+"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
+table. "I shut the window?"
+
+Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.
+
+Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply
+his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had
+been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing
+was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would
+make him smile.
+
+And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in
+the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of
+cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the
+room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the
+portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes
+had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell
+him to remain. As the door was closing behind him he called him back.
+The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a moment.
+"I am not at home to anyone, Victor," he said, with a sigh. The man
+bowed and retired.
+
+Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on
+a luxuriously-cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The screen
+was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a
+rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously, wondering
+if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.
+
+Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What was
+the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it was
+not true, why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier
+chance, eyes other than his spied behind, and saw the horrible change?
+What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own
+picture? Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to be
+examined, and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful state
+of doubt.
+
+He got up, and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he
+looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside, and
+saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
+altered.
+
+As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he
+found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost
+scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place was
+incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle affinity
+between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form and colour
+on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what
+that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they made true?
+Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He shuddered, and felt
+afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture
+in sickened horror.
+
+One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him
+conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not
+too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His
+unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be
+transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would
+be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the
+fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could
+lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the
+degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men
+brought upon their souls.
+
+Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime,
+but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet
+threads of life, and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way
+through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
+wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he
+went over to the table, and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
+loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. He
+covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of
+pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we
+feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not
+the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the
+letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.
+
+Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's voice
+outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. I can't bear
+your shutting yourself up like this."
+
+He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking
+still continued, and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry
+in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel
+with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was
+inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,
+and unlocked the door.
+
+"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry, as he entered. "But
+you must not think too much about it."
+
+"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.
+
+"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly
+pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, from one point of view,
+but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her, after
+the play was over?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"
+
+"I was brutal, Harry--perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am
+not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
+myself better."
+
+"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I would
+find you plunged in remorse, and tearing that nice curly hair of yours."
+
+"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head, and
+smiling. "I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin
+with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.
+Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more--at least not before me. I want to be
+good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."
+
+"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
+on it. But how are you going to begin?"
+
+"By marrying Sibyl Vane."
+
+"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up, and looking at him
+in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian----"
+
+"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful about
+marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to me again.
+Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to break my word
+to her. She is to be my wife!"
+
+"Your wife! Dorian!... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
+morning, and sent the note down, by my own man."
+
+"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I was
+afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. You cut life
+to pieces with your epigrams."
+
+"You know nothing then?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray,
+took both his hands in his own, and held them tightly. "Dorian," he
+said, "my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane
+is dead."
+
+A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
+tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead! It is
+not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"
+
+"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the
+morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see anyone till I
+came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be
+mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in
+London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's
+_début_ with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to
+one's old age. I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If
+they don't, it is all right. Did anyone see you going round to her room?
+That is an important point."
+
+Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
+Finally he stammered in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
+inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl----? Oh, Harry, I can't
+bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."
+
+"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put
+in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the theatre
+with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
+forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did
+not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor
+of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake, some
+dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was, but it
+had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it was
+prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."
+
+"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
+
+"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
+up in it. I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen. I should have
+thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
+seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this
+thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards
+we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be
+there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women
+with her."
+
+"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to
+himself--"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with
+a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing
+just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and
+then go on to the Opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
+extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
+Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
+happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here
+is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.
+Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed
+to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we
+call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I
+loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
+Then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?--when she
+played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to me.
+It was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her
+shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell
+you what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I
+felt I had done wrong. And now she is dead. My God! my God! Harry, what
+shall I do? You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to
+keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to
+kill herself. It was selfish of her."
+
+"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case,
+and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever
+reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible
+interest in life. If you had married this girl you would have been
+wretched. Of course you would have treated her kindly. One can always be
+kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would have soon
+found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman
+finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy,
+or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay
+for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been
+abject, which, of course, I would not have allowed, but I assure you
+that in any case the whole thing would have been an absolute failure."
+
+"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room,
+and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty. It is not my
+fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right.
+I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good
+resolutions--that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were."
+
+"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
+laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely _nil_.
+They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions
+that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for
+them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no
+account."
+
+"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
+"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I don't
+think I am heartless. Do you?"
+
+"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be
+entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, with
+his sweet, melancholy smile.
+
+The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined,
+"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind.
+I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened
+does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a
+wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of
+a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I
+have not been wounded."
+
+"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an exquisite
+pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism--"an extremely
+interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this. It
+often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an
+inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
+absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of
+style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an
+impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes,
+however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses
+our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply
+appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no
+longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are
+both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls
+us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Someone
+has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an
+experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my
+life. The people who have adored me--there have not been very many, but
+there have been some--have always insisted on living on, long after I
+had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become
+stout and tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for
+reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is!
+And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb
+the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details
+are always vulgar."
+
+"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
+
+"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
+poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore
+nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
+mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did
+die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice
+the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one
+with the terror of eternity. Well--would you believe it?--a week ago, at
+Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in
+question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and
+digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my romance
+in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again, and assured me that I
+had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous
+dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
+showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women
+never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act,
+and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to
+continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have
+a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are
+charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. You are more
+fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I
+have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary
+women always console themselves. Some of them do it by going in for
+sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her
+age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
+always means that they have a history. Others find a great consolation
+in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They
+flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most
+fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the
+charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me; and I can quite understand
+it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a
+sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end
+to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not
+mentioned the most important one."
+
+"What is that, Harry?" said the lad, listlessly.
+
+"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking someone else's admirer when one
+loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
+really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
+women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
+death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They
+make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as
+romance, passion, and love."
+
+"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
+
+"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than
+anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have
+emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all
+the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have
+never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how
+delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day
+before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,
+but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to
+everything."
+
+"What was that, Harry?"
+
+"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
+romance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that
+if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."
+
+"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
+face in his hands.
+
+"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you
+must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a
+strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene
+from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived,
+and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a
+dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them
+lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music
+sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life,
+she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for
+Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was
+strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio
+died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than
+they are."
+
+There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and
+with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours
+faded wearily out of things.
+
+After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me to myself,
+Harry," he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief. "I felt all
+that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not
+express it to myself. How well you know me! But we will not talk again
+of what has happened. It has been a marvellous experience. That is all.
+I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous."
+
+"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
+you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
+
+"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
+then?"
+
+"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go--"then, my dear Dorian, you
+would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to
+you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
+much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot
+spare you. And now you had better dress, and drive down to the club. We
+are rather late, as it is."
+
+"I think I shall join you at the Opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
+anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"
+
+"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name
+on the door. But I am sorry you won't come and dine."
+
+"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian, listlessly. "But I am awfully
+obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly my
+best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have."
+
+"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord
+Henry, shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before
+nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."
+
+As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a
+few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He
+waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an interminable
+time over everything.
+
+As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. No;
+there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news of
+Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious
+of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred
+the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment
+that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it
+indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed
+within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the
+change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.
+
+Poor Sibyl! what a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked death
+on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her, and taken her with
+him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed him, as
+she died? No; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a
+sacrament to him now. She had atoned for everything, by the sacrifice
+she had made of her life. He would not think any more of what she had
+made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he
+thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the
+world's stage to show the supreme reality of Love. A wonderful tragic
+figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and
+winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away
+hastily, and looked again at the picture.
+
+He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his
+choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him--life, and
+his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion,
+pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins--he was to have
+all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that
+was all.
+
+A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that
+was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of
+Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that
+now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat before
+the portrait, wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it
+seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which he
+yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden
+away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so
+often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? The pity
+of it! the pity of it!
+
+For a moment he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that
+existed between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in
+answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain
+unchanged. And, yet, who, that knew anything about Life, would surrender
+the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance
+might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?
+Besides, was it really under his control? Had it indeed been prayer that
+had produced the substitution? Might there not be some curious
+scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence
+upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon
+dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire,
+might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods
+and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love of strange affinity?
+But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt by a
+prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter.
+That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?
+
+For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to
+follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him
+the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so
+it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he
+would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
+When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of
+chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one
+blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life
+would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and
+fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured
+image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
+
+He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,
+smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was
+already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the Opera, and Lord
+Henry was leaning over his chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
+into the room.
+
+"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said, gravely. "I called
+last night, and they told me you were at the Opera. Of course I knew
+that was impossible. But I wish you had left word where you had really
+gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might
+be followed by another. I think you might have telegraphed for me when
+you heard of it first. I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of
+_The Globe_, that I picked up at the club. I came here at once, and was
+miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heartbroken I am
+about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. But where were you?
+Did you go down and see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of
+following you there. They gave the address in the paper. Somewhere in
+the Euston Road, isn't it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
+that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must be in! And
+her only child, too! What did she say about it all?"
+
+"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
+pale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass,
+and looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the Opera. You should have come
+on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first time. We
+were in her box. She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely.
+Don't talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn't talk about a thing, it
+has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives
+reality to things. I may mention that she was not the woman's only
+child. There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on
+the stage. He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about yourself
+and what you are painting."
+
+"You went to the Opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly, and with a
+strained touch of pain in his voice. "You went to the Opera while Sibyl
+Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other
+women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you
+loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are
+horrors in store for that little white body of hers!"
+
+"Stop, Basil! I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet. "You
+must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is
+past."
+
+"You call yesterday the past?"
+
+"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow
+people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master
+of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I
+don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to
+enjoy them, and to dominate them."
+
+"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You
+look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come
+down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural,
+and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole
+world. Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you had
+no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. I see that."
+
+The lad flushed up, and, going to the window, looked out for a few
+moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "I owe a great deal
+to Harry, Basil," he said, at last--"more than I owe to you. You only
+taught me to be vain."
+
+"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "I
+don't know what you want. What do you want?"
+
+"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist, sadly.
+
+"Basil," said the lad, going over to him, and putting his hand on his
+shoulder, "you have come too late. Yesterday when I heard that Sibyl
+Vane had killed herself----"
+
+"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried
+Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
+
+"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? Of
+course she killed herself."
+
+The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful," he muttered,
+and a shudder ran through him.
+
+"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. It is one of
+the great romantic tragedies of the age. As a rule, people who act lead
+the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives,
+or something tedious. You know what I mean--middle-class virtue, and all
+that kind of thing. How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest
+tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last night she played--the night
+you saw her--she acted badly because she had known the reality of love.
+When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She
+passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr
+about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all
+its wasted beauty. But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not
+suffered. If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment--about
+half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to six--you would have found me in
+tears. Even Harry, who was here, who brought me the news, in fact, had
+no idea what I was going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed
+away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.
+And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me.
+That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How
+like a sympathetic person! You remind me of a story Harry told me about
+a certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to
+get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law altered--I forget
+exactly what it was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his
+disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of _ennui_,
+and became a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, if
+you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has
+happened, or to see it from the proper artistic point of view. Was it
+not Gautier who used to write about _la consolation des arts_? I
+remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day
+and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young
+man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man
+who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries
+of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old
+brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite
+surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is much to be got from all these. But
+the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is
+still more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry
+says, is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my
+talking to you like this. You have not realised how I have developed. I
+was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions,
+new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less.
+I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course I am very fond
+of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not
+stronger--you are too much afraid of life--but you are better. And how
+happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel
+with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."
+
+The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him,
+and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art. He
+could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his
+indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. There was
+so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.
+
+"Well, Dorian," he said, at length, with a sad smile, "I won't speak to
+you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. I only trust your
+name won't be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take
+place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?"
+
+Dorian shook his head and a look of annoyance passed over his face at
+the mention of the word "inquest." There was something so crude and
+vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name," he
+answered.
+
+"But surely she did?"
+
+"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to
+anyone. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who
+I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. It
+was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should
+like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and
+some broken pathetic words."
+
+"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you
+must come and sit to me yourself again. I can't get on without you."
+
+"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!" he exclaimed,
+starting back.
+
+The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "Do
+you mean to say you don't like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have
+you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the best
+thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply
+disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room
+looked different as I came in."
+
+"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let
+him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes--that
+is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait."
+
+"Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for
+it. Let me see it." And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room.
+
+A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between the
+painter and the screen. "Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must
+not look at it. I don't wish you to."
+
+"Not look at my own work! you are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at
+it?" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
+
+"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never
+speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don't offer
+any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you
+touch this screen, everything is over between us."
+
+Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute
+amazement. He had never seen him like this before. The lad was actually
+pallid with rage. His hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes
+were like disks of blue fire. He was trembling all over.
+
+"Dorian!"
+
+"Don't speak!"
+
+"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want
+me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over
+towards the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I
+shouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in
+Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of
+varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?"
+
+"To exhibit it? You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a
+strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be
+shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That
+was impossible. Something--he did not know what--had to be done at once.
+
+"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that. George Petit is going to
+collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
+Sèze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only
+be away a month. I should think you could easily spare it for that time.
+In fact, you are sure to be out of town. And if you keep it always
+behind a screen, you can't care much about it."
+
+Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of
+perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible
+danger. "You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he
+cried. "Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being
+consistent have just as many moods as others have. The only difference
+is that your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that
+you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you
+to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing." He
+stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered
+that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest,
+"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you
+why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it
+was a revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He
+would ask him and try.
+
+"Basil," he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in
+the face, "we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours and I shall
+tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my
+picture?"
+
+The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you, you
+might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I
+could not bear your doing either of those two things. If you wish me
+never to look at your picture again, I am content. I have always you to
+look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden from
+the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame
+or reputation."
+
+"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray. "I think I have a
+right to know." His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had
+taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery.
+
+"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. "Let us
+sit down. And just answer me one question. Have you noticed in the
+picture something curious?--something that probably at first did not
+strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?"
+
+"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
+hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.
+
+"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say.
+Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
+extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power
+by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal
+whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped
+you. I grew jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you
+all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away
+from me you were still present in my art.... Of course I never let you
+know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not
+have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I
+had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become
+wonderful to my eyes--too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships
+there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
+keeping them.... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more
+absorbed in you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris
+in dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished
+boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of
+Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leant over
+the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent
+silver the marvel of your own face. And it had all been what art should
+be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes
+think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually
+are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your
+own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder
+of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or
+veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and
+film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that
+others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too
+much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I
+resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little
+annoyed; but then you did not realise all that it meant to me. Harry, to
+whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the
+picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was
+right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon
+as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it
+seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen
+anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking, and that
+I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to
+think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the
+work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and
+colour tell us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me
+that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals
+him. And so when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your
+portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me
+that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture cannot
+be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told
+you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped."
+
+Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, and
+a smile played about his lips. The peril was over. He was safe for the
+time. Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who
+had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself
+would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry
+had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was too
+clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be someone
+who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things
+that life had in store?
+
+"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
+have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?"
+
+"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very
+curious."
+
+"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"
+
+Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
+possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
+
+"You will some day, surely?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been
+the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I
+have done that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don't know what it cost me
+to tell you all that I have told you."
+
+"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you
+felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment."
+
+"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I
+have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should
+never put one's worship into words."
+
+"It was a very disappointing confession."
+
+"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else in the
+picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?"
+
+"No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn't talk
+about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must
+always remain so."
+
+"You have got Harry," said the painter, sadly.
+
+"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends his
+days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is
+improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I
+don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go
+to you, Basil."
+
+"You will sit to me again?"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man came across
+two ideal things. Few come across one."
+
+"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
+There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I
+will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant."
+
+"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward, regretfully. "And
+now good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once
+again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel about
+it."
+
+As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! how
+little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead
+of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost
+by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange
+confession explained to him! The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his
+wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences--he
+understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be
+something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.
+
+He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all
+costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad
+of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room
+to which any of his friends had access.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if
+he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite
+impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked
+over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of
+Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There
+was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his
+guard.
+
+Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted
+to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of
+his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room
+his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his
+own fancy?
+
+After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
+mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He
+asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
+
+"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of
+dust. I must get it arranged, and put straight before you go into it. It
+is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."
+
+"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
+
+"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it
+hasn't been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died."
+
+He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of
+him. "That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the
+place--that is all. Give me the key."
+
+"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
+of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "Here is the key. I'll
+have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living up
+there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"
+
+"No, no," he cried, petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."
+
+She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
+the household. He sighed, and told her to manage things as she thought
+best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
+
+As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round
+the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
+embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
+Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
+Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps
+served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
+had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
+itself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What
+the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on
+the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They
+would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still
+live on. It would be always alive.
+
+He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
+the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would
+have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more
+poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that
+he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was not
+noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of
+beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire.
+It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and
+Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.
+But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret,
+denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
+There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams
+that would make the shadow of their evil real.
+
+He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered
+it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face
+on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged;
+and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and
+rose-red lips--they all were there. It was simply the expression that
+had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw
+in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl
+Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul
+was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment. A
+look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the
+picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his
+servant entered.
+
+"The persons are here, Monsieur."
+
+He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed
+to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly
+about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the
+writing-table, he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him
+round something to read, and reminding him that they were to meet at
+eight-fifteen that evening.
+
+"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
+here."
+
+In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
+himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with
+a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid,
+red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably
+tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who
+dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people
+to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian
+Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a
+pleasure even to see him.
+
+"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
+hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
+person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a
+sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited
+for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."
+
+"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
+Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I don't
+go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a
+picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I
+thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
+
+"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to
+you. Which is the work of art, sir?"
+
+"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it,
+covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going
+upstairs."
+
+"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
+beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the
+long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we
+carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
+perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top
+of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."
+
+He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
+began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
+picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
+protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
+of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
+so as to help them.
+
+"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man, when they
+reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
+
+"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the
+door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
+secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
+
+He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
+since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
+as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
+well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
+Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
+to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
+desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
+changed. There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its
+fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
+he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase
+filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging
+the same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen were
+playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying
+hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all!
+Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked
+round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it
+seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be
+hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that
+was in store for him!
+
+But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
+this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple
+pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
+unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not
+see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept
+his youth--that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow
+finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full
+of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and
+shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit
+and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them
+their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would
+have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to
+the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
+
+No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon
+the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but
+the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become
+hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's-feet would creep round the fading eyes
+and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth
+would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men
+are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands,
+the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so
+stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was
+no help for it.
+
+"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I
+am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."
+
+"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
+was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
+
+"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
+lean it against the wall. Thanks."
+
+"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
+
+Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
+keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap upon him and fling him
+to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed
+the secret of his life. "I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much
+obliged for your kindness in coming round."
+
+"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you,
+sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who
+glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely
+face. He had never seen anyone so marvellous.
+
+When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door,
+and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would ever look
+upon the horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his shame.
+
+On reaching the library he found that it was just after five o'clock,
+and that the tea had been already brought up. On a little table of dark
+perfumed wood thickly encrusted with nacre, a present from Lady Radley,
+his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid, who had spent the
+preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside
+it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the
+edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's Gazette_
+had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
+returned. He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
+leaving the house, and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
+He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,
+while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
+back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he
+might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
+room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He had heard
+of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who
+had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with
+an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of
+crumpled lace.
+
+He sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
+note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and
+a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
+eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through
+it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew
+attention to the following paragraph:--
+
+     "INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the
+     Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on
+     the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the
+     Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was
+     returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the
+     deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own
+     evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem
+     examination of the deceased."
+
+He frowned, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
+flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real
+ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
+having sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of him to have
+marked it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The man knew more
+than enough English for that.
+
+Perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something. And, yet,
+what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death?
+There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.
+
+His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was
+it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal
+stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
+Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
+himself into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a
+few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had
+ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
+delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
+show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made
+real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
+revealed.
+
+It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being,
+indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who
+spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the
+passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
+own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
+which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
+artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
+as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The
+style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and
+obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
+expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of
+some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_. There
+were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour.
+The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
+philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
+spiritual ecstasies of some mediæval saint or the morbid confessions of
+a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense
+seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
+cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as
+it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced
+in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of
+reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling
+day and creeping shadows.
+
+Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
+through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no
+more. Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
+lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed
+the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
+bedside, and began to dress for dinner.
+
+It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
+Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
+
+"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.
+That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was
+going."
+
+"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
+chair.
+
+"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a
+great difference."
+
+"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed
+into the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this
+book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought
+to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than nine
+large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different
+colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing
+fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost
+entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom
+the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended,
+became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the
+whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written
+before he had lived it.
+
+In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. He
+never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat
+grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
+water, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was
+occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently,
+been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in
+nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its
+place--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really
+tragic, if somewhat over-emphasised, account of the sorrow and despair
+of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had
+most dearly valued.
+
+For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many
+others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard
+the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange rumours
+about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of
+the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw
+him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from
+the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered
+the room. There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked
+them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the
+innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming and
+graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at
+once sordid and sensual.
+
+Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged
+absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were
+his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
+upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left
+him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and ageing face on
+the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from
+the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken
+his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own
+beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He
+would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
+terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead,
+or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which
+were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would
+place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,
+and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
+
+There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
+delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little
+ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in
+disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he
+had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant
+because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. That
+curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they
+sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with
+gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad
+hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
+
+Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society.
+Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday
+evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world his
+beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to
+charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners, in
+the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted as much
+for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the
+exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle
+symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and
+antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially
+among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian
+Gray the true realisation of a type of which they had often dreamed in
+Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real
+culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect
+manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company
+of those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make themselves
+perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom
+"the visible world existed."
+
+And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the
+arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
+Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment
+universal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert
+the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for
+him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
+time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of
+the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in
+everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
+his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
+
+For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
+immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a
+subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London
+of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the
+"Satyricon" once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be
+something more than a mere _arbiter elegantiarum_, to be consulted on
+the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of
+a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
+its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
+spiritualising of the senses its highest realisation.
+
+The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been
+decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and
+sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
+conscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existence.
+But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had
+never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal
+merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to
+kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new
+spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant
+characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through History, he
+was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to
+such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous
+forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose
+result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied
+degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape,
+Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with
+the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of
+the field as his companions.
+
+Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that
+was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely
+puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was
+to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to
+accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode
+of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself,
+and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of
+the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that
+dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to
+concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
+moment.
+
+There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
+after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
+death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
+the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
+itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
+and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
+might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
+with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the
+curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb
+shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside,
+there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
+going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
+from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it
+feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from
+her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
+degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
+watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan
+mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we
+had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been
+studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the
+letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
+Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
+comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where
+we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the
+necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
+stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might
+open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the
+darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh
+shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in
+which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
+in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of
+joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.
+
+It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray
+to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his
+search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and
+possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he
+would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
+alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
+then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
+intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
+is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that indeed,
+according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.
+
+It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic
+communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction
+for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices
+of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of
+the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its
+elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to
+symbolise. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch
+the priest, in his stiff flowered vestment, slowly and with white hands
+moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled
+lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one
+would fain think, is indeed the "_panis cælestis_," the bread of angels,
+or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host
+into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming
+censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the
+air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he
+passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and
+long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women
+whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.
+
+But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual
+development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of
+mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for
+the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are
+no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous
+power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle
+antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season;
+and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the
+_Darwinismus_ movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in
+tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the
+brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of
+the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,
+morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him
+before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared
+with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
+intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
+He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual
+mysteries to reveal.
+
+And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their
+manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums
+from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
+its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their
+true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one
+mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
+that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the
+brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to
+elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
+influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, or
+aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that
+sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be
+able to expel melancholy from the soul.
+
+At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
+latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
+olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad
+gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled
+Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
+grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching
+upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed
+or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and
+horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
+barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
+beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
+unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
+the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
+dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
+with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
+mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
+allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been
+subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
+Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones
+such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers
+that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness.
+He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were
+shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the performer does
+not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh _ture_ of the
+Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in
+high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three
+leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and
+is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from
+the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung
+in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the
+skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went
+with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has
+left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these
+instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought
+that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and
+with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would
+sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening
+in rapt pleasure to "Tannhäuser," and seeing in the prelude to that
+great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
+
+On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a
+costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered
+with five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years,
+and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often spend a
+whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that
+he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by
+lamp-light, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the
+pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
+carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red
+cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their
+alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of the
+sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow
+of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
+extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la
+vieille roche_ that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
+
+He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's
+"Clericalis Disciplina" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real
+jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of
+Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with
+collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There was a gem in the
+brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of
+golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a
+magical sleep, and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de
+Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India
+made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth
+provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The
+garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her
+colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
+that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
+Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a
+newly-killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The
+bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
+that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the
+aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any
+danger by fire.
+
+The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
+at the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the
+Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
+inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable
+were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold
+might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's strange
+romance "A Margarite of America" it was stated that in the chamber of
+the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased
+out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles,
+sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of
+Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. A
+sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to
+King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over
+its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it
+away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever found again, though the
+Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.
+The King of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian a rosary of three
+hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.
+
+When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.
+of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantôme,
+and his cap had double rows of rubles that threw out a great light.
+Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
+twenty-one diamonds. Richard II. had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
+marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII.,
+on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket
+of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich
+stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The
+favourites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.
+Edward II. gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with
+jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
+skull-cap _parsemé_ with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves
+reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and
+fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last
+Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls, and
+studded with sapphires.
+
+How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
+decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
+
+Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries that
+performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the Northern
+nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--and he always had an
+extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in
+whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
+ruin that Time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
+rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils
+bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of
+their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained
+his flower-like bloom. How different it was with material things! Where
+had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
+the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls
+for the pleasure of Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had
+stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on
+which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn
+by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
+wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the
+dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth
+of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic
+robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were
+figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,
+hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;" and the
+coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were
+embroidered the verses of a song beginning "_Madame, je suis tout
+joyeux_," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
+thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
+pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
+for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen
+hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
+king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
+were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
+in gold." Catherine de Médicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black
+velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask,
+with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground,
+and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a
+room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
+cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet
+high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was
+made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from
+the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and
+profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken
+from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had
+stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.
+
+And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
+specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
+the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates, and
+stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
+from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
+"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
+elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
+blue silks, and wrought with _fleurs de lys_, birds, and images; veils
+of _lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
+Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese
+_Foukousas_ with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged
+birds.
+
+He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
+he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
+long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored
+away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of
+the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that
+she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering
+that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possessed a
+gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a
+repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal
+blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought
+in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing
+scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was
+figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the
+fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with
+heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed
+white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread
+and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread
+raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk,
+and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom
+was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and
+blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold,
+figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ,
+and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
+white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and
+_fleurs de lys_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and
+many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to
+which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
+imagination.
+
+For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely
+house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could
+escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be
+almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room
+where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own
+hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real
+degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the
+purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he would not go there,
+would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
+his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.
+Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to
+dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
+until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the
+picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times,
+with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin,
+and smiling with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to
+bear the burden that should have been his own.
+
+After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and
+gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as
+well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
+than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from the picture
+that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his
+absence someone might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate
+bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
+
+He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was true
+that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness
+of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
+from that? He would laugh at anyone who tried to taunt him. He had not
+painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked?
+Even if he told them, would they believe it?
+
+Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
+Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank
+who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton
+luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly
+leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not been
+tampered with, and that the picture was still there. What if it should
+be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely the world
+would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it.
+
+For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
+He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and
+social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said
+that on one occasion when he was brought by a friend into the
+smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman
+got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current
+about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It was rumoured
+that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the
+distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and
+coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary
+absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in
+society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a
+sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were
+determined to discover his secret.
+
+Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,
+and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his
+charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth
+that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer
+to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about
+him. It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most
+intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who had
+wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and
+set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
+horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
+
+Yet these whispered scandals only increased, in the eyes of many, his
+strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of
+security. Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to
+believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
+fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance
+than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much
+less value than the possession of a good _chef_. And, after all, it is a
+very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad
+dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the
+cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold _entrées_, as Lord Henry
+remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a
+good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are,
+or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely
+essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as
+its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic
+play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is
+insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by
+which we can multiply our personalities.
+
+Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the
+shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing
+simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being
+with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature
+that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and
+whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He
+loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country
+house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in
+his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, in
+his "Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James," as one
+who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept him not
+long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had
+some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached
+his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so
+suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's
+studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here, in
+gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and
+wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black armour
+piled at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of
+Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame?
+Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared
+to realise? Here, from the fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth
+Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.
+A flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an enamelled collar
+of white and damask roses. On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an
+apple. There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He
+knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her lovers.
+Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval heavy-lidded eyes
+seemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his
+powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
+saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with
+disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were
+so over-laden with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth
+century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
+second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest
+days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.
+Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and
+insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked
+upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star
+of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of
+his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred
+within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady
+Hamilton face, and her moist wine-dashed lips--he knew what he had got
+from her. He had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty
+of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were
+vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled from the cup she was
+holding. The carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were
+still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to
+follow him wherever he went.
+
+Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,
+nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with
+an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were
+times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was
+merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and
+circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had
+been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them
+all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of
+the world and made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety. It
+seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.
+
+The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
+himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how,
+crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
+Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
+Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him, and the
+flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
+caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
+an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
+wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
+with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
+days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _tædium vitæ_, that comes
+on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
+emerald at the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of
+pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
+Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero
+Cæsar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
+colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
+from Carthage, and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
+
+Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
+two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
+tapestries or cunningly-wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
+beautiful forms of those whom Vice and Blood and Weariness had made
+monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted
+her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the
+dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the
+Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
+whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
+price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase
+living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot
+who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding
+beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro
+Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of
+Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who
+received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk,
+filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at
+the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured
+only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as
+other men have for red wine--the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and
+one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his
+own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent,
+and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a
+Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord
+of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
+who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este
+in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan
+church for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his
+brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was
+coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange,
+could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love
+and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and
+acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his
+bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,
+as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him
+could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed
+him.
+
+There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and
+they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
+strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch,
+by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by
+an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were
+moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could
+realise his conception of the beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
+birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.
+
+He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had
+been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
+foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a man
+passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of his
+grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognised him.
+It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not
+account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went on
+quickly in the direction of his own house.
+
+But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the
+pavement, and then hurrying after him. In a few moments his hand was on
+his arm.
+
+"Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for
+you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your
+tired servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to
+Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before
+I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me.
+But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognise me?"
+
+"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognise Grosvenor
+Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at
+all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen
+you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?"
+
+"No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a
+studio in Paris, and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture
+I have in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to talk.
+Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something
+to say to you."
+
+"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray,
+languidly, as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
+latch-key.
+
+The lamp-light struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
+watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till
+twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
+the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any
+delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with
+me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes."
+
+Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter
+to travel! A Gladstone bag, and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get
+into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing
+is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be."
+
+Hallward shook his head as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
+library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth.
+The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with
+some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little
+marqueterie table.
+
+"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
+everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a
+most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you
+used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?"
+
+Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's
+maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
+_Anglomanie_ is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly
+of the French, doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad
+servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One
+often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted
+to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another
+brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
+hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room."
+
+"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap
+and coat off, and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the
+corner. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
+Don't frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me."
+
+"What is it all about?" cried Dorian, in his petulant way, flinging
+himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of
+myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."
+
+"It is about yourself," answered Hallward, in his grave, deep voice,
+"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour."
+
+Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured.
+
+"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
+sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the
+most dreadful things are being said against you in London."
+
+"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other
+people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got
+the charm of novelty."
+
+"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his
+good name. You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and
+degraded. Of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all
+that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind
+you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe
+them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's
+face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
+There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself
+in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his
+hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name, but you know him--came
+to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen him before,
+and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard
+a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There
+was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I know now that
+I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But
+you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous
+untroubled youth--I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see
+you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I
+am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are
+whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that
+a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter
+it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your
+house nor invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord
+Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up
+in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the
+exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip, and said that you
+might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no
+pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman
+should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of
+yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out
+before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
+young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed
+suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had
+to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable.
+What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord
+Kent's only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St.
+James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the
+young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman
+would associate with him?"
+
+"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
+said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
+in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
+is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
+anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
+his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
+I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
+son takes his wife from the streets what is that to me? If Adrian
+Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I
+know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
+prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
+call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that
+they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they
+slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and
+brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of
+lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
+fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
+
+"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
+enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
+I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
+of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all
+sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
+madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them
+there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are
+smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are
+inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not
+have made his sister's name a by-word."
+
+"Take care, Basil. You go too far."
+
+"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
+Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
+single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the Park?
+Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
+other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of
+dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in
+London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I
+laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your
+country house, and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know
+what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to
+you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into
+an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then
+proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to
+lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have
+a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful
+people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't
+be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good,
+not for evil. They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become
+intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for
+shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or
+not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it
+seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest
+friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to
+him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was
+implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that
+it was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable
+of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I
+could answer that, I should have to see your soul."
+
+"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
+turning almost white from fear.
+
+"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
+voice--"to see your soul. But only God can do that."
+
+A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You
+shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the
+table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it?
+You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody
+would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the
+better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate
+about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about
+corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face."
+
+There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his
+foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible
+joy at the thought that someone else was to share his secret, and that
+the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his
+shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous
+memory of what he had done.
+
+"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into
+his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that
+you fancy only God can see."
+
+Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must
+not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don't mean
+anything."
+
+"You think so?" He laughed again.
+
+"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good.
+You know I have been always a staunch friend to you."
+
+"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."
+
+A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for a
+moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right
+had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of
+what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he
+straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood
+there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes and their
+throbbing cores of flame.
+
+"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man, in a hard, clear voice.
+
+He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give
+me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. If
+you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I
+shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am
+going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and
+shameful."
+
+Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come
+upstairs, Basil," he said, quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from day
+to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
+show it to you if you come with me."
+
+"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my
+train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to
+read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."
+
+"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will
+not have to read long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward
+following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at
+night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A
+rising wind made some of the windows rattle.
+
+When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the
+floor, and taking out the key turned it in the lock. "You insist on
+knowing, Basil?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat harshly,
+"You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything
+about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think:" and,
+taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of
+air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky
+orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he
+placed the lamp on the table.
+
+Hallward glanced round him, with a puzzled expression. The room looked
+as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a
+curtained picture, an old Italian _cassone_, and an almost empty
+bookcase--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a
+table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was
+standing on the mantel-shelf, he saw that the whole place was covered
+with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling
+behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.
+
+"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that
+curtain back, and you will see mine."
+
+The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or
+playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.
+
+"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man; and he tore
+the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground.
+
+An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the
+dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was
+something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
+Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The
+horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous
+beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet
+on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the
+loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed
+away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian
+himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognise his own brush-work,
+and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt
+afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the
+left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright
+vermilion.
+
+It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never
+done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if
+his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own
+picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at
+Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his
+parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across
+his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.
+
+The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with
+that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
+absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither
+real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the
+spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken
+the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.
+
+"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded
+shrill and curious in his ears.
+
+"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in
+his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good
+looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to
+me the wonder of youth, and you finished the portrait of me that
+revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I
+don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would
+call it a prayer...."
+
+"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible.
+The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had
+some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is
+impossible."
+
+"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
+window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
+
+"You told me you had destroyed it."
+
+"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."
+
+"I don't believe it is my picture."
+
+"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.
+
+"My ideal, as you call it...."
+
+"As you called it."
+
+"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an
+ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."
+
+"It is the face of my soul."
+
+"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
+devil."
+
+"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian, with a
+wild gesture of despair.
+
+Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. "My God! if it
+is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,
+why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to
+be!" He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The
+surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was
+from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through
+some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly
+eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not
+so fearful.
+
+His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and
+lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he
+flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
+buried his face in his hands.
+
+"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" There was no
+answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray,
+Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in
+one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash
+away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride
+has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.
+I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself
+too much. We are both punished."
+
+Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed
+eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.
+
+"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
+remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
+as scarlet; yet I will make them as white as snow'?"
+
+"Those words mean nothing to me now."
+
+"Hush! don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God!
+don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"
+
+Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable
+feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
+been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear
+by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred
+within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more
+than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
+around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced
+him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had
+brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten
+to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as
+he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round.
+Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at
+him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear,
+crushing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.
+
+There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of someone choking
+with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively,
+waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice
+more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor.
+He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the
+knife on the table, and listened.
+
+He could hear nothing but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He
+opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely
+quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the
+balustrade, and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.
+Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as
+he did so.
+
+The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with
+bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been
+for the red jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that was
+slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was
+simply asleep.
+
+How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking
+over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind
+had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail,
+starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down, and saw the
+policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on
+the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom
+gleamed at the corner, and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl
+was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and
+then she stopped, and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse
+voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She
+stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the Square. The
+gas-lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their
+black iron branches to and fro. He shivered, and went back, closing the
+window behind him.
+
+Having reached the door, he turned the key, and opened it. He did not
+even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole
+thing was not to realise the situation. The friend who had painted the
+fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his
+life. That was enough.
+
+Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish
+workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished
+steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by
+his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment,
+then he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing
+the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands
+looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.
+
+Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The
+woodwork creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped
+several times, and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the
+sound of his own footsteps.
+
+When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They
+must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in
+the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and
+put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled
+out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two.
+
+He sat down, and began to think. Every year--every month, almost--men
+were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness
+of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth....
+And yet what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the
+house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants
+were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to
+Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had
+intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before
+any suspicions would be aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed
+long before then.
+
+A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat, and went
+out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the
+policeman on the pavement outside, and seeing the flash of the
+bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited, and held his breath.
+
+After a few moments he drew back the latch, and slipped out, shutting
+the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In
+about five minutes his valet appeared half dressed, and looking very
+drowsy.
+
+"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in;
+"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"
+
+"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
+blinking.
+
+"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
+to-morrow. I have some work to do."
+
+"All right, sir."
+
+"Did anyone call this evening?"
+
+"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
+catch his train."
+
+"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"
+
+"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
+find you at the club."
+
+"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
+
+Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table, and passed into the
+library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room biting
+his lip, and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the
+shelves, and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152,
+Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
+chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
+peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
+He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.
+
+The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he
+opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had
+been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His
+night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But
+youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
+
+He turned round, and, leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his
+chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky
+was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like
+a morning in May.
+
+Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent
+blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there
+with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
+suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for
+Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came
+back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still
+sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such
+hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.
+
+He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken
+or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory
+than in the doing of them; strange triumphs that gratified the pride
+more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of
+joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the
+senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of
+the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
+strangle one itself.
+
+When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
+then got up hastily, and dressed himself with even more than his usual
+care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
+scarf-pin, and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time
+also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
+about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
+servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of the
+letters he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several times
+over, and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face.
+"That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once said.
+
+After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
+with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
+table sat down and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
+other he handed to the valet.
+
+"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
+is out of town, get his address."
+
+As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upon a
+piece of paper, drawing first flowers, and bits of architecture, and
+then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
+seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and,
+getting up, went over to the bookcase and took out a volume at hazard.
+He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until
+it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.
+
+When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
+of the book. It was Gautier's "Émaux et Camées," Charpentier's
+Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of
+citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
+pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned
+over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the
+cold yellow hand "_du supplice encore mal lavée_," with its downy red
+hairs and its "_doigts de faune_." He glanced at his own white taper
+fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he
+came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:--
+
+    "Sur une gamme chromatique,
+      Le sein de perles ruisselant,
+    La Vénus de l'Adriatique
+      Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
+
+    "Les dômes, sur l'azur des ondes
+      Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
+    S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
+      Que soulève un soupir d'amour.
+
+    "L'esquif aborde et me dépose,
+      Jetant son amarre au pilier,
+    Devant une façade rose,
+      Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
+
+How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating
+down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black
+gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to
+him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one
+pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the
+gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall
+honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the
+dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept
+saying over and over to himself:--
+
+    "Devant une façade rose,
+      Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
+
+The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn
+that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to
+mad, delightful follies. There was romance in every place. But Venice,
+like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true
+romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. Basil had
+been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor
+Basil! what a horrible way for a man to die!
+
+He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He read of
+the swallows that fly in and out of the little café at Smyrna where the
+Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke
+their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of
+the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in
+its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered
+Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures
+with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl
+over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which,
+drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that
+Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "_monstre charmant_" that
+couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time the book
+fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came
+over him. What if Alan Campbell should be out of England? Days would
+elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come. What
+could he do then? Every moment was of vital importance. They had been
+great friends once, five years before--almost inseparable, indeed. Then
+the intimacy had come suddenly to an end. When they met in society now,
+it was only Dorian Gray who smiled; Alan Campbell never did.
+
+He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation
+of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry
+he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant
+intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he had spent a great
+deal of his time working in the Laboratory, and had taken a good class
+in the Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted
+to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own, in which he
+used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the annoyance of his
+mother, who had set her heart on his standing for Parliament, and had a
+vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. He was
+an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin and
+the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had
+first brought him and Dorian Gray together--music and that indefinable
+attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished,
+and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met
+at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after
+that used to be always seen together at the Opera, and wherever good
+music was going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell
+was always either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to
+many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful
+and fascinating in life. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place
+between them no one ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that they
+scarcely spoke when they met, and that Campbell seemed always to go away
+early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed,
+too--was strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike
+hearing music, and would never himself play, giving as his excuse, when
+he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no
+time left in which to practise. And this was certainly true. Every day
+he seemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared
+once or twice in some of the scientific reviews, in connection with
+certain curious experiments.
+
+This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he kept
+glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by he became horribly
+agitated. At last he got up, and began to pace up and down the room,
+looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long stealthy strides. His
+hands were curiously cold.
+
+The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with
+feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the
+jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting
+for him there; saw it indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands
+his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight,
+and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain
+had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made
+grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
+danced like some foul puppet on a stand, and grinned through moving
+masks. Then, suddenly, Time stopped for him. Yes: that blind,
+slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, Time being
+dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its
+grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him
+stone.
+
+At last the door opened, and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes
+upon him.
+
+"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.
+
+A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back
+to his cheeks.
+
+"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself
+again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.
+
+The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments Alan Campbell walked in,
+looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his
+coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.
+
+"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming."
+
+"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it
+was a matter of life and death." His voice was hard and cold. He spoke
+with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the steady
+searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands in the
+pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
+gesture with which he had been greeted.
+
+"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
+person. Sit down."
+
+Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The
+two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that
+what he was going to do was dreadful.
+
+After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very
+quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
+had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room
+to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
+He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, and don't look at me like
+that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not
+concern you. What you have to do is this----"
+
+"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether what you
+have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. I entirely decline
+to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
+They don't interest me any more."
+
+"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
+you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are
+the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
+matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about
+chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you
+have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs--to destroy it
+so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come
+into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in
+Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must
+be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and
+everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
+scatter in the air."
+
+"You are mad, Dorian."
+
+"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."
+
+"You are mad, I tell you--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to
+help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to
+do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my
+reputation for you? What is it to me what devil's work you are up to?"
+
+"It was suicide, Alan."
+
+"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."
+
+"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"
+
+"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I
+don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not be
+sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of
+all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have
+thought you knew more about people's characters. Your friend Lord Henry
+Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has
+taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have
+come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't come to me."
+
+"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had made me
+suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the
+marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the
+result was the same."
+
+"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not
+inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my stirring in
+the matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a crime
+without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it."
+
+"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment; listen to
+me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain
+scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
+horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous
+dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden
+table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through,
+you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not
+turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing anything wrong.
+On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the
+human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or
+gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. What I
+want you to do is merely what you have often done before. Indeed, to
+destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to
+work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If
+it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you
+help me."
+
+"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent
+to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me."
+
+"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you
+came I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some
+day. No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the
+scientific point of view. You don't inquire where the dead things on
+which you experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you too
+much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan."
+
+"Don't speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead."
+
+"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is
+sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan!
+if you don't come to my assistance I am ruined. Why, they will hang me,
+Alan! Don't you understand? They will hang me for what I have done."
+
+"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do
+anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me."
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I entreat you, Alan."
+
+"It is useless."
+
+The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes. Then he stretched
+out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He read
+it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table.
+Having done this, he got up, and went over to the window.
+
+Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and
+opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell back
+in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if
+his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.
+
+After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round, and
+came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no
+alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the
+address. If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't help me, I
+will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to
+help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you.
+You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh,
+offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me--no
+living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate
+terms."
+
+Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
+
+"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The
+thing is quite simple. Come, don't work yourself into this fever. The
+thing has to be done. Face it, and do it."
+
+A groan broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. The
+ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing
+Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
+borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his
+forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already
+come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead.
+It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.
+
+"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."
+
+"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter
+things.
+
+"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."
+
+He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"
+
+"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."
+
+"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."
+
+"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
+note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the
+things back to you."
+
+Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope
+to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he
+rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon
+as possible, and to bring the things with him.
+
+As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and, having got up
+from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a
+kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly
+buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the
+beat of a hammer.
+
+As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and, looking at Dorian
+Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in
+the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.
+"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.
+
+"Hush, Alan: you have saved my life," said Dorian.
+
+"Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from
+corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing
+what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life
+that I am thinking."
+
+"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian, with a sigh, "I wish you had a thousandth
+part of the pity for me that I have for you." He turned away as he
+spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.
+
+After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant
+entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil
+of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps.
+
+"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.
+
+"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another
+errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies
+Selby with orchids?"
+
+"Harden, sir."
+
+"Yes--Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden
+personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and
+to have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don't want any white
+ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty place,
+otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it."
+
+"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?"
+
+Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your experiment take, Alan?"
+he said, in a calm, indifferent voice. The presence of a third person in
+the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
+
+Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," he
+answered.
+
+"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
+Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have
+the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want
+you."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.
+
+"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is!
+I'll take it for you. You bring the other things." He spoke rapidly, and
+in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left
+the room together.
+
+When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it
+in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He
+shuddered. "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured.
+
+"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell, coldly.
+
+Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his
+portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn
+curtain was lying. He remembered that, the night before he had
+forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and
+was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.
+
+What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one
+of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it
+was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent
+thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose
+grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had
+not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.
+
+He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with
+half-closed eyes and averted head walked quickly in, determined that he
+would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down, and
+taking up the gold and purple hanging, he flung it right over the
+picture.
+
+There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed
+themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard
+Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other
+things that he had required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder if
+he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of
+each other.
+
+"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.
+
+He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been
+thrust back into the chair, and that Campbell was gazing into a
+glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs he heard the key
+being turned in the lock.
+
+It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library. He was
+pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what you asked me to do," he
+muttered. "And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again."
+
+"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," said Dorian,
+simply.
+
+As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible
+smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at
+the table was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
+buttonhole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
+Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing
+with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he
+bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps
+one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
+Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed
+that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our
+age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for
+sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He
+himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a
+moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.
+
+It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who
+was a very clever woman, with what Lord Henry used to describe as the
+remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife
+to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband
+properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and
+married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted
+herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and
+French _esprit_ when she could get it.
+
+Dorian was one of her special favourites, and she always told him that
+she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my
+dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
+"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most
+fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our
+bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to
+raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.
+However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully
+short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never
+sees anything."
+
+Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she
+explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married
+daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make
+matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is
+most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay
+with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman
+like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them
+up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure
+unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much
+to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.
+There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of
+Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You
+shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me."
+
+Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. Yes:
+it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen
+before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those
+middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,
+but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an
+over-dressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always
+trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to
+her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against
+her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and
+Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy
+dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces, that, once
+seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,
+white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the
+impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of
+ideas.
+
+He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the
+great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the
+mauve-draped mantel-shelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be
+so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance, and he promised
+faithfully not to disappoint me."
+
+It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door
+opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some
+insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.
+
+But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away
+untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an
+insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the _menu_ specially for you," and
+now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence
+and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass
+with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.
+
+"Dorian," said Lord Henry, at last, as the _chaud-froid_ was being
+handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out
+of sorts."
+
+"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is afraid
+to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly
+should."
+
+"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in
+love for a whole week--not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town."
+
+"How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady.
+"I really cannot understand it."
+
+"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl,
+Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us and
+your short frocks."
+
+"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I
+remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how _décolletée_
+she was then."
+
+"She is still _décolletée_," he answered, taking an olive in his long
+fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
+_édition de luxe_ of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and
+full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary.
+When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief."
+
+"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.
+
+"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third
+husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth."
+
+"Certainly, Lady Narborough."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it."
+
+"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends."
+
+"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether,
+like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at
+her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any
+hearts at all."
+
+"Four husbands! Upon my word that is _trop de zèle_."
+
+"_Trop d'audace_, I tell her," said Dorian.
+
+"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol
+like? I don't know him."
+
+"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,"
+said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
+
+Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all
+surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."
+
+"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows.
+"It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent
+terms."
+
+"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking
+her head.
+
+Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous,"
+he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things
+against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
+
+"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.
+
+"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really if you all worship
+Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so
+as to be in the fashion."
+
+"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You
+were far too happy. When a woman marries again it is because she
+detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he
+adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."
+
+"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.
+
+"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the
+rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them
+they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask
+me to dinner again, after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough; but
+it is quite true."
+
+"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your
+defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married.
+You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that
+would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors,
+and all the bachelors like married men."
+
+"_Fin de siècle_," murmured Lord Henry.
+
+"_Fin du globe_," answered his hostess.
+
+"I wish it were _fin du globe_," said Dorian, with a sigh. "Life is a
+great disappointment."
+
+"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell
+me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that one knows that
+Life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish
+that I had been; but you are made to be good--you look so good. I must
+find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray should
+get married?"
+
+"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.
+
+"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through
+Debrett carefully to-night, and draw out a list of all the eligible
+young ladies."
+
+"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian.
+
+"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done
+in a hurry. I want it to be what _The Morning Post_ calls a suitable
+alliance, and I want you both to be happy."
+
+"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry.
+"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."
+
+"Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair,
+and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again.
+You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew
+prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet,
+though. I want it to be a delightful gathering."
+
+"I like men who have a future, and women who have a past," he answered.
+"Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?"
+
+"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons,
+my dear Lady Ruxton," she added. "I didn't see you hadn't finished your
+cigarette."
+
+"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going
+to limit myself, for the future."
+
+"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal
+thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a
+feast."
+
+Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to
+me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she
+murmured, as she swept out of the room.
+
+"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal,"
+cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble
+upstairs."
+
+The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the
+table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat, and went and
+sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the
+situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The
+word _doctrinaire_--word full of terror to the British mind--reappeared
+from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served
+as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of
+Thought. The inherited stupidity of the race--sound English common sense
+he jovially termed it--was shown to be the proper bulwark for Society.
+
+A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at
+Dorian.
+
+"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of
+sorts at dinner."
+
+"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all."
+
+"You were charming last night. The little Duchess is quite devoted to
+you. She tells me she is going down to Selby."
+
+"She has promised to come on the twentieth."
+
+"Is Monmouth to be there too?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Harry."
+
+"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very
+clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of
+weakness. It is the feet of clay that makes the gold of the image
+precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White
+porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what
+fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences."
+
+"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.
+
+"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is
+ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity,
+with time thrown in. Who else is coming?"
+
+"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey
+Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian."
+
+"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find
+him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat over-dressed, by
+being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type."
+
+"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to
+Monte Carlo with his father."
+
+"Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come. By the
+way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven.
+What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?"
+
+Dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at
+last, "I did not get home till nearly three."
+
+"Did you go to the club?"
+
+"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I
+didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How
+inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been
+doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at
+half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my
+latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any
+corroborative evidence on the subject you can ask him."
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let
+us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman.
+Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not
+yourself to-night."
+
+"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come
+round and see you to-morrow or next day. Make my excuses to Lady
+Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home."
+
+"All right, Dorian. I daresay I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The
+Duchess is coming."
+
+"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove
+back to his own house he was conscious that the sense of terror he
+thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual
+questioning had made him lose his nerves for the moment, and he wanted
+his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He
+winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.
+
+Yet it had to be done. He realised that, and when he had locked the door
+of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust
+Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another
+log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was
+horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything.
+At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian
+pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead
+with a cool musk-scented vinegar.
+
+Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed
+nervously at his under-lip. Between two of the windows stood a large
+Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony, and inlaid with ivory and blue
+lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and
+make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet
+almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He
+lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the
+long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the
+cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying,
+went over to it, and, having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A
+triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively
+towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese
+box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides
+patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round
+crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside
+was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and
+persistent.
+
+He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his
+face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly
+hot, he drew himself up, and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes
+to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so,
+and went into his bedroom.
+
+As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray
+dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept
+quietly out of the house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good
+horse. He hailed it, and in a low voice gave the driver an address.
+
+The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.
+
+"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if
+you drive fast."
+
+"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and
+after his fare had got in he turned his horse round, and drove rapidly
+towards the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
+in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
+and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some
+of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards
+brawled and screamed.
+
+Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
+Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
+now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
+to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
+senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret.
+He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were
+opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the
+memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were
+new.
+
+The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a
+huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The
+gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the
+man lost his way, and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from
+the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The side-windows of the hansom
+were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.
+
+"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the
+soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to
+death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had
+been spilt. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no
+atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was
+possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out,
+to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed,
+what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made
+him a Judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful,
+horrible, not to be endured.
+
+On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
+step. He thrust up the trap, and called to the man to drive faster. The
+hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned, and
+his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse
+madly with his stick. The driver laughed, and whipped up. He laughed in
+answer, and the man was silent.
+
+The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
+sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and, as the mist
+thickened, he felt afraid.
+
+Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he
+could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like
+tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the
+darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut,
+then swerved aside, and broke into a gallop.
+
+After some time they left the clay road, and rattled again over
+rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
+fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamp-lit blind. He
+watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes, and made
+gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart.
+As they turned a corner a woman yelled something at them from an open
+door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The
+driver beat at them with his whip.
+
+It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with
+hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
+those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
+them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
+intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
+still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept
+the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's
+appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness
+that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became
+dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The
+coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life,
+the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their
+intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art,
+the dreamy shadows of Song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness.
+In three days he would be free.
+
+Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the
+low roofs and jagged chimney stacks of the houses rose the black masts
+of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.
+
+"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
+trap.
+
+Dorian started, and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and,
+having got out hastily, and given the driver the extra fare he had
+promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and
+there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light
+shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an
+outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a
+wet mackintosh.
+
+He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he
+was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small
+shabby house, that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of
+the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped, and gave a peculiar knock.
+
+After a little time he heard steps in the passage, and the chain being
+unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word
+to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as
+he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that
+swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the
+street. He dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked
+as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring
+gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them,
+were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed
+them, making quivering discs of light. The floor was covered with
+ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained
+with dark rings of spilt liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little
+charcoal stove playing with bone counters, and showing their white teeth
+as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a
+sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily-painted bar that ran
+across one complete side stood two haggard women mocking an old man who
+was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He
+thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed
+by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper.
+
+At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
+darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
+heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils
+quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow
+hair, who was bending over a lamp, lighting a long thin pipe, looked up
+at him, and nodded in a hesitating manner.
+
+"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.
+
+"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps
+will speak to me now."
+
+"I thought you had left England."
+
+"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at
+last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added,
+with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I
+think I have had too many friends."
+
+Dorian winced, and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
+fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the
+gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in
+what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
+teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he
+was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was
+eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
+Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The
+presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one
+would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
+
+"I am going on to the other place," he said, after a pause.
+
+"On the wharf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
+now."
+
+Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women
+who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better."
+
+"Much the same."
+
+"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
+something."
+
+"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.
+
+"Never mind."
+
+Adrian Singleton rose up wearily, and followed Dorian to the bar. A
+half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
+greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
+them. The women sidled up, and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back
+on them, and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.
+
+A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
+the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.
+
+"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
+the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me
+again."
+
+Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then
+flickered out, and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head, and
+raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
+watched her enviously.
+
+"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What
+does it matter? I am quite happy here."
+
+"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
+after a pause.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Good-night, then."
+
+"Good-night," answered the young man, passing up the steps, and wiping
+his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
+
+Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew
+the curtain aside a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
+woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!" she
+hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
+
+"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."
+
+She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called,
+ain't it?" she yelled after him.
+
+The drowsy sailor leapt to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
+round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He
+rushed out as if in pursuit.
+
+Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His
+meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
+if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
+Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his
+lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did
+it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of
+another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life, and
+paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so
+often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In
+her dealings with man Destiny never closed her accounts.
+
+There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
+for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of
+the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
+impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
+They move to their terrible end as automatons move, Choice is taken from
+them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but
+to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. For all
+sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of
+disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning-star of evil, fell
+from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
+
+Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
+rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
+as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
+short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
+suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself he
+was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.
+
+He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
+tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
+and saw the gleam of a polished barrel pointing straight at his head,
+and the dusky form of a short thick-set man facing him.
+
+"What do you want?" he gasped.
+
+"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you."
+
+"You are mad. What have I done to you?"
+
+"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane
+was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door.
+I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had
+no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were
+dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I
+heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you
+are going to die."
+
+Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I
+never heard of her. You are mad."
+
+"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
+are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what
+to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one
+minute to make your peace--no more. I go on board to-night for India,
+and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all."
+
+Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
+what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he
+cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!"
+
+"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years
+matter?"
+
+"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
+voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!"
+
+James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
+Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
+
+Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
+the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
+of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
+unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
+summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
+when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not
+the man who had destroyed her life.
+
+He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I
+would have murdered you!"
+
+Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of
+committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
+"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
+hands."
+
+"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I
+heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."
+
+"You had better go home, and put that pistol away, or you may get into
+trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel, and going slowly down the
+street.
+
+James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head
+to foot. After a little while a black shadow that had been creeping
+along the dripping wall, moved out into the light and came close to him
+with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round
+with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar.
+
+"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting her haggard face
+quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out
+from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money,
+and he's as bad as bad."
+
+"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's
+money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be nearly
+forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got
+his blood upon my hands."
+
+The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered.
+"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
+what I am."
+
+"You lie!" cried James Vane.
+
+She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth,"
+she cried.
+
+"Before God?"
+
+"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here.
+They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh
+on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I
+have though," she added, with a sickly leer.
+
+"You swear this?"
+
+"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give
+me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money
+for my night's lodging."
+
+He broke from her with an oath, and rushed to the corner of the street,
+but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had
+vanished also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal
+talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a
+jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and
+the mellow light of the huge lace-covered lamp that stood on the table
+lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which
+the Duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among
+the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian
+had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker
+chair looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough
+pretending to listen to the Duke's description of the last Brazilian
+beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate
+smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The
+house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to
+arrive on the next day.
+
+"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the
+table, and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my
+plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."
+
+"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the Duchess,
+looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my
+own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."
+
+"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are
+both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an
+orchid, for my buttonhole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
+effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one
+of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen
+of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad
+truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
+Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is
+with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The
+man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is
+the only thing he is fit for."
+
+"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.
+
+"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.
+
+"I recognise him in a flash," exclaimed the Duchess.
+
+"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a
+label there is no escape! I refuse the title."
+
+"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.
+
+"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I give the truths of to-morrow."
+
+"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.
+
+"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.
+
+"Of your shield, Harry: not of your spear."
+
+"I never tilt against Beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.
+
+"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much."
+
+"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
+beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready
+than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."
+
+"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the Duchess.
+"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"
+
+"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good
+Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
+virtues have made our England what she is."
+
+"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.
+
+"I live in it."
+
+"That you may censure it the better."
+
+"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.
+
+"What do they say of us?"
+
+"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."
+
+"Is that yours, Harry?"
+
+"I give it to you."
+
+"I could not use it. It is too true."
+
+"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognise a description."
+
+"They are practical."
+
+"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger,
+they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."
+
+"Still, we have done great things."
+
+"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."
+
+"We have carried their burden."
+
+"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."
+
+She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried.
+
+"It represents the survival of the pushing."
+
+"It has development."
+
+"Decay fascinates me more."
+
+"What of Art?" she asked.
+
+"It is a malady."
+
+"Love?"
+
+"An illusion."
+
+"Religion?"
+
+"The fashionable substitute for Belief."
+
+"You are a sceptic."
+
+"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."
+
+"What are you?"
+
+"To define is to limit."
+
+"Give me a clue."
+
+"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."
+
+"You bewilder me. Let us talk of someone else."
+
+"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince
+Charming."
+
+"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.
+
+"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the Duchess,
+colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
+scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
+butterfly."
+
+"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian.
+
+"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me."
+
+"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"
+
+"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I
+come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by
+half-past eight."
+
+"How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning."
+
+"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one
+I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is nice of you
+to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing. All good hats
+are made out of nothing."
+
+"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every
+effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a
+mediocrity."
+
+"Not with women," said the Duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule
+the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone
+says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you
+ever love at all."
+
+"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.
+
+"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the Duchess, with
+mock sadness.
+
+"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? Romance lives
+by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides,
+each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference
+of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies
+it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret
+of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
+
+"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the Duchess, after
+a pause.
+
+"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry.
+
+The Duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression
+in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired.
+
+Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed.
+"I always agree with Harry, Duchess."
+
+"Even when he is wrong?"
+
+"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."
+
+"And does his philosophy make you happy?"
+
+"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
+searched for pleasure."
+
+"And found it, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"Often. Too often."
+
+The Duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
+don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."
+
+"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his
+feet, and walking down the conservatory.
+
+"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
+cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating."
+
+"If he were not, there would be no battle."
+
+"Greek meets Greek, then?"
+
+"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman."
+
+"They were defeated."
+
+"There are worse things than capture," she answered.
+
+"You gallop with a loose rein."
+
+"Pace gives life," was the _riposte_.
+
+"I shall write it in my diary to-night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That a burnt child loves the fire."
+
+"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."
+
+"You use them for everything, except flight."
+
+"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us."
+
+"You have a rival."
+
+"Who?"
+
+He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him."
+
+"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to Antiquity is fatal to us
+who are romanticists."
+
+"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."
+
+"Men have educated us."
+
+"But not explained you."
+
+"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
+
+"Sphynxes without secrets."
+
+She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go
+and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."
+
+"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."
+
+"That would be a premature surrender."
+
+"Romantic Art begins with its climax."
+
+"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."
+
+"In the Parthian manner?"
+
+"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."
+
+"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he
+finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came
+a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody
+started up. The Duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his
+eyes Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray
+lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a death-like swoon.
+
+He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room, and laid upon one of
+the sofas. After a short time he came to himself, and looked round with
+a dazed expression.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?"
+He began to tremble.
+
+"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was
+all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to
+dinner. I will take your place."
+
+"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather
+come down. I must not be alone."
+
+He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety
+in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror
+ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of
+the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of
+James Vane watching him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
+time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
+indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
+tracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble
+in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the
+leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
+regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering
+through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its
+hand upon his heart.
+
+But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
+the night, and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual
+life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
+imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of
+sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
+brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the
+good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the
+weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
+house he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any
+footmarks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have
+reported it. Yes: it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's brother had not
+come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some
+winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not
+know who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved
+him.
+
+And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
+that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible
+form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be, if
+day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent
+corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat
+at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the
+thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air
+seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of
+madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the
+scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with
+added horror. Out of the black cave of Time, terrible and swathed in
+scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six
+o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.
+
+It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was
+something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
+seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it
+was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused
+the change. His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish
+that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle
+and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions
+must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die.
+Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that
+are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides, he had
+convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken
+imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and
+not a little of contempt.
+
+After breakfast he walked with the Duchess for an hour in the garden,
+and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp
+frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue
+metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat reed-grown lake.
+
+At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey Clouston,
+the Duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. He
+jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home,
+made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough
+undergrowth.
+
+"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.
+
+"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open.
+I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground."
+
+Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown and
+red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters
+ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that
+followed, fascinated him, and filled him with a sense of delightful
+freedom. He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high
+indifference of joy.
+
+Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass, some twenty yards in front
+of them, with black-tipped ears erect, and long hinder limbs throwing it
+forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir Geoffrey
+put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the animal's
+grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out
+at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live."
+
+"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
+into the thicket he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry of a hare
+in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is worse.
+
+"Good heavens! I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. "What an
+ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting there!" he
+called out at the top of his voice. "A man is hurt."
+
+The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
+
+"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time the firing
+ceased along the line.
+
+"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey, angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
+"Why on earth don't you keep your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the
+day."
+
+Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
+lithe, swinging branches aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging
+a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It seemed
+to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey
+ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the
+keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces.
+There was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. A
+great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the boughs overhead.
+
+After a few moments, that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
+endless hours of pain, he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started,
+and looked round.
+
+"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is
+stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."
+
+"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered, bitterly. "The
+whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man...?"
+
+He could not finish the sentence.
+
+"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of shot
+in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come; let us go
+home."
+
+They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty
+yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry, and said, with
+a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."
+
+"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this accident, I suppose. My dear
+fellow, it can't be helped. It was the man's own fault. Why did he get
+in front of the guns? Besides, it's nothing to us. It is rather awkward
+for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It makes
+people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he shoots
+very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter."
+
+Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something
+horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps," he
+added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.
+
+The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is _ennui_,
+Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. But we
+are not likely to suffer from it, unless these fellows keep chattering
+about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be
+tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does
+not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides,
+what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the
+world that a man can want. There is no one who would not be delighted to
+change places with you."
+
+"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don't laugh
+like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just
+died is better off than I am. I have no terror of Death. It is the
+coming of Death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in
+the leaden air around me. Good heavens! don't you see a man moving
+behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"
+
+Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
+was pointing. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for
+you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the
+table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must
+come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."
+
+Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The
+man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
+manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. "Her
+Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.
+
+Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am coming
+in," he said, coldly. The man turned round, and went rapidly in the
+direction of the house.
+
+"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It
+is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt
+with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
+
+"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present
+instance you are quite astray. I like the Duchess very much, but I don't
+love her."
+
+"And the Duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are
+excellently matched."
+
+"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
+scandal."
+
+"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
+lighting a cigarette.
+
+"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."
+
+"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.
+
+"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray, with a deep note of pathos in
+his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion, and forgotten the
+desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
+become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was
+silly of me to come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to
+Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."
+
+"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what
+it is? You know I would help you."
+
+"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered, sadly. "And I dare say it is
+only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a
+horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the Duchess,
+looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come back,
+Duchess."
+
+"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey is
+terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
+How curious!"
+
+"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. Some whim,
+I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am sorry
+they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."
+
+"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no
+psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
+purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know someone who
+had committed a real murder."
+
+"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the Duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
+Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint."
+
+Dorian drew himself up with an effort, and smiled. "It is nothing,
+Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is
+all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what Harry
+said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must
+go and lie down. You will excuse me, won't you?"
+
+They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
+conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian,
+Lord Henry turned and looked at the Duchess with his slumberous eyes.
+"Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "I
+wish I knew," she said at last.
+
+He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty
+that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
+
+"One may lose one's way."
+
+"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Disillusion."
+
+"It was my _début_ in life," she sighed.
+
+"It came to you crowned."
+
+"I am tired of strawberry leaves."
+
+"They become you."
+
+"Only in public."
+
+"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.
+
+"I will not part with a petal."
+
+"Monmouth has ears."
+
+"Old age is dull of hearing."
+
+"Has he never been jealous?"
+
+"I wish he had been."
+
+He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking
+for?" she inquired.
+
+"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."
+
+She laughed. "I have still the mask."
+
+"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.
+
+She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.
+
+Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
+in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become too
+hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky
+beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
+prefigure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at what Lord
+Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
+
+At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
+pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
+at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
+night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in
+the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
+
+Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
+town to consult his doctor, and asking him to entertain his guests in
+his absence. As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the
+door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him.
+He frowned, and bit his lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after some
+moments' hesitation.
+
+As soon as the man entered Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer,
+and spread it out before him.
+
+"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning,
+Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.
+
+"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?" asked
+Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left in
+want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."
+
+"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of coming
+to you about."
+
+"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean?
+Wasn't he one of your men?"
+
+"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."
+
+The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart had
+suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out. "Did you say a
+sailor?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both
+arms, and that kind of thing."
+
+"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
+looking at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell his
+name?"
+
+"Some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
+kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor, we
+think."
+
+Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He
+clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he exclaimed. "Quick! I must
+see it at once."
+
+"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don't like to
+have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad
+luck."
+
+"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to
+bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I'll go to the stables myself. It
+will save time."
+
+In less than a quarter of an hour Dorian Gray was galloping down the
+long avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him
+in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
+path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
+He lashed her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air
+like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.
+
+At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He
+leapt from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. In the
+farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him
+that the body was there, and he hurried to the door, and put his hand
+upon the latch.
+
+There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a
+discovery that would either make or mar his life. Then he thrust the
+door open, and entered.
+
+On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man
+dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. A spotted
+handkerchief had been placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a
+bottle, sputtered beside it.
+
+Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take
+the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to
+come to him.
+
+"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at
+the doorpost for support.
+
+When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of joy
+broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was James
+Vane.
+
+He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode
+home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried
+Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with
+rose-water. "You're quite perfect. Pray, don't change."
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
+things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good
+actions yesterday."
+
+"Where were you yesterday?"
+
+"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."
+
+"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the
+country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people
+who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised. Civilisation is not
+by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by
+which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being
+corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they
+stagnate."
+
+"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of
+both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
+together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I
+have altered."
+
+"You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you
+had done more than one?" asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate
+a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a
+perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.
+
+"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone else. I
+spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was
+quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
+which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How long
+ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She
+was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure
+that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been
+having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
+Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept
+tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone
+away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her
+as flower-like as I had found her."
+
+"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
+of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish
+your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That
+was the beginning of your reformation."
+
+"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's
+heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is no
+disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and
+marigold."
+
+"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
+leant back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
+boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now
+with anyone of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a
+rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you,
+and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be
+wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of
+your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how
+do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some
+star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?"
+
+"I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the
+most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you
+say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode
+past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a
+spray of jasmine. Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to
+persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first
+little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.
+I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about
+yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for
+days."
+
+"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."
+
+"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
+Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.
+
+"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and
+the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having
+more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate
+lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell's
+suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.
+Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for
+Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and
+the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I
+suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in
+San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said
+to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess
+all the attractions of the next world."
+
+"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his
+Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could
+discuss the matter so calmly.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is
+no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him.
+Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it."
+
+"Why?" said the younger man, wearily.
+
+"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
+trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays
+except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the
+nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee
+in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom
+my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very
+fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course married
+life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even
+of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such
+an essential part of one's personality."
+
+Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table and, passing into the next
+room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white
+and black ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he
+stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever
+occur to you that Basil was murdered?"
+
+Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury
+watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to
+have enemies. Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a
+man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was
+really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he
+told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, and that you
+were the dominant motive of his art."
+
+"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian, with a note of sadness in his
+voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?"
+
+"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all
+probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
+the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his
+chief defect."
+
+"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
+said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.
+
+"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
+doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
+It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your
+vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
+exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
+degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
+a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."
+
+"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who
+has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
+Don't tell me that."
+
+"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of life. I
+should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never
+do any thing that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass
+from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a
+really romantic end as you suggest; but I can't. I dare say he fell into
+the Seine off an omnibus, and that the conductor hushed up the scandal.
+Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his back
+under those dull-green waters with the heavy barges floating over him,
+and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would
+have done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting
+had gone off very much."
+
+Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began
+to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird,
+with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch.
+As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of
+crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and began to sway backwards
+and forwards.
+
+"Yes," he continued, turning round, and taking his handkerchief out of
+his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
+lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great
+friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I
+suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores
+have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of
+you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I
+remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby,
+and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back?
+What a pity! It was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it.
+I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then, his
+work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that
+always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did
+you advertise for it? You should."
+
+"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it.
+I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why
+do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some
+play--'Hamlet,' I think--how do they run?--
+
+        "'Like the painting of a sorrow,
+    A face without a heart.'
+
+Yes: that is what it was like."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
+heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano.
+"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
+heart.'"
+
+The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the
+way, Dorian," he said, after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he
+gain the whole world and lose'--how does the quotation run?--'his own
+soul'?"
+
+The music jarred and Dorian Gray started, and stared at his friend. "Why
+do you ask me that, Harry?"
+
+"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,
+"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
+That is all. I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close by the
+Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people
+listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the
+man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being
+rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A
+wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white
+faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase
+flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lips--it was really very good
+in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that
+Art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not
+have understood me."
+
+"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and
+sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a
+soul in each one of us. I know it."
+
+"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely
+certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the
+lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have
+you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up
+our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian,
+and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.
+You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I
+am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You
+have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of
+the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and
+absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in
+appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I
+would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or
+be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of
+the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now
+with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front
+of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I
+always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their
+opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the
+opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in
+everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are
+playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea
+weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes?
+It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art
+left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It
+seems to me that you are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas
+listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know
+nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one
+is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how
+happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk
+deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate.
+Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more
+than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."
+
+"I am not the same, Harry."
+
+"Yes: you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
+Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.
+Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
+shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
+yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question
+of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides
+itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe, and
+think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a
+morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that
+brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you
+had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had
+ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that
+our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own
+senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of
+_lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the
+strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with
+you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always
+worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the
+age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad
+that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a
+picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your
+art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."
+
+Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair.
+"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have
+the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to
+me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even
+you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."
+
+"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne
+over again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the
+dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will
+come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the club, then. It has
+been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some
+one at White's who wants immensely to know you--young Lord Poole,
+Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has
+begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful, and rather
+reminds me of you."
+
+"I hope not," said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired
+to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I
+want to go to bed early."
+
+"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
+in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
+heard from it before."
+
+"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling, "I am a
+little changed already."
+
+"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will
+always be friends."
+
+"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry,
+promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm."
+
+"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be
+going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
+against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too
+delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are,
+and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is
+no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates
+the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
+calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
+But we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to
+ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
+afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to
+consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you
+come. Or shall we lunch with our little Duchess? She says she never sees
+you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her
+clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at
+eleven."
+
+"Must I really come, Harry?"
+
+"Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been
+such lilacs since the year I met you."
+
+"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good-night,
+Harry." As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had
+something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and
+did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
+smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He
+heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He
+remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared
+at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the
+charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that
+no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom he had lured to
+love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her
+once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and answered that
+wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she
+had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her
+cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
+everything that he had lost.
+
+When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent
+him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began
+to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.
+
+Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing
+for the unstained purity of his boyhood--his rose-white boyhood, as Lord
+Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled
+his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had
+been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in
+being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been
+the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame.
+But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?
+
+Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that
+the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the
+unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to
+that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure,
+swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not
+"Forgive us our sins," but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the
+prayer of a man to a most just God.
+
+The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many
+years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids
+laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night
+of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and
+with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some
+one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending
+with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made
+of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases
+came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.
+Then he loathed his own beauty, and, flinging the mirror on the floor,
+crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty
+that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.
+But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His
+beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was
+youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods and
+sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.
+
+It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was
+of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was
+hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had shot
+himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret
+that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over
+Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It was already
+waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of
+Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death
+of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that
+had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait
+that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were
+unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been
+simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had
+been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.
+
+A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for.
+Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any
+rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
+
+As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the
+locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had
+been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every
+sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had
+already gone away. He would go and look.
+
+He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the
+door a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and
+lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the
+hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to
+him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.
+
+He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and
+dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and
+indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the
+eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of
+the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if
+possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed
+brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. Then he trembled. Had it been
+merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for
+a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or
+that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than
+we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain
+larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease
+over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as
+though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held
+the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself
+up, and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was
+monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? There
+was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him
+had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs.
+The world would simply say that he was mad. They would shut him up if he
+persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer
+public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called
+upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that
+he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He
+shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little
+to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror,
+this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity?
+Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that?
+There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could
+tell?... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared
+her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's
+sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognised that now.
+
+But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
+burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only
+one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself--that was
+evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had
+given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had
+felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been
+away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon
+it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had
+marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it
+had been conscience. He would destroy it.
+
+He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He
+had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was
+bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill
+the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and
+when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous
+soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He
+seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
+
+There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony
+that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. Two
+gentlemen, who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and looked up
+at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman, and
+brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no
+answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all
+dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and
+watched.
+
+"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.
+
+They looked at each other, as they walked away and sneered. One of them
+was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.
+
+Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were
+talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and
+wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.
+
+After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the
+footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They
+called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force
+the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. The
+windows yielded easily; their bolts were old.
+
+When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait
+of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his
+exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
+evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and
+loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that
+they recognised who it was.
+
+THE END
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+PIRATED EDITIONS
+
+Owing to the number of unauthorised editions of "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN
+GRAY" issued at various times both in America and on the Continent of
+Europe, it has become necessary to indicate which are the only
+authorised editions of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece.
+
+Many of the pirated editions are incomplete in that they omit the
+Preface and seven additional chapters which were first published in the
+London edition of 1891. In other cases certain passages have been
+mutilated, and faulty spellings and misprints are numerous.
+
+
+AUTHORISED EDITIONS
+
+(I) First published in _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_, July, 1890.
+London: Ward, Lock & Co. _Copyrighted in London_.
+
+Published _simultaneously_ in America. Philadelphia: J.-B. Lippincott
+Co. _Copyrighted in the United States of America_.
+
+(II) A Preface to "Dorian Gray." _Fortnightly Review_, March 1, 1891.
+London: Chapman & Hall. (_All rights reserved._)
+
+(III) With the Preface and Seven additional chapters. London, New York,
+and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. (n. d.).
+
+(Of this edition 250 copies were issued on L.P., _dated_ 1891.)
+
+(IV) The same. London, New York, and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Bowden. (n.
+d.).
+
+(Published 1894 or 1895.) See Stuart Mason's "Art and Morality" (page
+153).
+
+
+THE FOLLOWING EDITIONS
+
+were issued by Charles Carrington, _Publisher and Literary Agent_, late
+of 13 Faubourg Montmartre, Paris, and 10 _Rue de la Tribune_, BRUSSELS
+(Belgium), to whom the Copyright belongs.
+
+(V) Small 8vo, vii 334 pages, printed on English antique wove paper,
+silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1901.
+
+(VI) The same, vii 327 pages, silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1905.
+
+Of this edition 100 copies were issued on hand-made paper.
+
+(VII) 4to, vi 312 pages, broad margins, claret-coloured paper wrappers,
+title on label on the outside. 250 copies. Price 10_s_. 6_d_. 1908
+(February).
+
+(VIII) Cr. 8vo, uniform with Methuen's (London) complete edition of
+Wilde's _Works_. xi 362 pages, printed on hand-made paper, white cloth,
+gilt extra.
+
+1000 copies. Price 12_s._ 6_d._ 1908 (April 16).
+
+Of this edition 80 further copies were printed on Imperial Japanese
+vellum, full vellum binding, gilt extra. Price 42_s_.
+
+(IX) Illustrated edition. Containing seven fullpaged illustrations by
+Paul Thirlat, engraved on Wood by Eugène Dété (both of Paris), and
+artistically printed by Brendon & Son, Ltd. (of Plymouth), 4to, vi 312
+pages, half parchment bound, with corners, and _fleur-de-lys_ on side.
+1908-9. Price 15_s._
+
+(X) Small edition, uniform with Messrs. Methuen's Issue of "Oscar
+Wilde's Works" at same price. 12mo, xii and 352 pages. 2000 copies.
+Bound in green cloth. 1910. Price 5_s._
+
+It follows from all this that, with the exception of the version in
+_Lippincott's Magazine_ only those editions are authorised to be sold in
+Great Britain and her Colonies which bear the imprimatur of Ward, Lock &
+Co., London, or Charles Carrington, Paris and Brussels; and that all
+other editions, whether American, Continental (_save Carrington's Paris
+editions above specified_) or otherwise, may not be sold within British
+jurisdiction without infringing the _Berne_ law of literary copyright
+and incurring the disagreements that may therefrom result.
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #26740]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="f2">THE PICTURE</p>
+
+<p class="f4">OF</p>
+
+<p class="f3">DORIAN GRAY</p>
+
+<p class="c">BY</p>
+
+<p class="f5">OSCAR WILDE</p>
+
+
+<h3 class="top5">LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />
+HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.</h3>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Paris</span><br />
+ON SALE AT YE OLD PARIS BOOKE SHOPPE<br />
+<span class="smcap">11 Rue de Ch&acirc;teaudun</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="c"><i>Registered at Stationers' Hall and protected<br />
+under the Copyright Law Act.</i></p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>First published in complete book form in 1891 by<br />
+Messrs. Ward, Lock &amp; Co. (London),</i></p>
+
+<p class="c"><i>First printed in this Edition April 1913,<br />
+Reprinted June 1913, September 1913,<br />
+June 1914, January 1916<br />
+October 1916.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><i>See the <a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE">Bibliographical Note</a> on certain<br />Pirated and Mutilated
+Editions of "Dorian<br />Gray" at the end of this present volume.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="c n"><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER: I, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b> II, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b> III, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b> IV, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b> V, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b> VI, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b> VII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b> VIII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b> IX, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b> X, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b> XI, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b> XII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b> XIII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b> XIV, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b> XV, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b> XVI, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b> XVII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b> XVIII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b> XIX, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b> XX, </b></a></p>
+<p class="c n"><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE"><b>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</b></a><br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3 class="top15">THE PREFACE</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span class="smcap">The</span> artist is the creator of beautiful things.<br />
+
+To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.<br />
+
+The critic is he who can translate into another manner
+or a new material his impression of beautiful things.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">is a mode of autobiography.</span><br />
+
+Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are
+corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">Those who find beautiful meanings in</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">beautiful things are the cultivated. For</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">these there is hope.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They are the elect to whom beautiful things</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">mean only Beauty.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">book. Books are well written, or</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">badly written. That is all.</span><br />
+
+The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage
+of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">is the rage of Caliban not seeing</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">his own face in a glass.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of the artist, but the morality of art consists</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No artist desires to prove anything. Even</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">things that are true can be proved.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">mannerism of style.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">No artist is ever morbid. The artist</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">can express everything.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thought and language are to the artist instruments</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of an art.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Vice and virtue are to the artist materials</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">for an art.</span><br />
+
+From the point of view of form, the type of all the
+arts is the art of the musician. From the point of
+view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">All art is at once surface and symbol.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.</span><br />
+
+It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">that the work is new, complex, and vital.</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.</span><br />
+
+We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as
+long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for
+making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.<br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All art is quite useless.</span></p>
+
+<p class="r smcap">Oscar Wilde.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1 class="top15">THE PICTURE OF<br />
+DORIAN GRAY</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+
+<p>The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light
+summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through
+the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume
+of the pink-flowering thorn.</p>
+
+<p>From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was
+lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
+Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
+blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to
+bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then
+the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
+tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
+producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
+those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an
+art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness
+and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through
+the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the
+dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the
+stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon
+note of a distant organ.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the
+full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,
+and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
+himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
+caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many
+strange conjectures.</p>
+
+<p>As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so
+skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his
+face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and,
+closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought
+to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he
+might awake.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said
+Lord Henry, languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the
+Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone
+there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able
+to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have
+not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is
+really the only place."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head
+back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at
+Oxford. "No: I won't send it anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through
+the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls
+from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear
+fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You
+do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one,
+you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only
+one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not
+being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the
+young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are
+ever capable of any emotion."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit
+it. I have put too much of myself into it."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were
+so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your
+rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who
+looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear
+Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you&mdash;well, of course you have an
+intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends
+where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode
+of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
+sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something
+horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
+How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But
+then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age
+of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as
+a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your
+mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose
+picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that.
+He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in
+winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer
+when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter
+yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am
+not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to
+look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth.
+There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the
+sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps
+of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly
+and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their
+ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at
+least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live,
+undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin
+upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth,
+Harry; my brains, such as they are&mdash;my art, whatever it may be worth;
+Dorian Gray's good looks&mdash;we shall all suffer for what the gods have
+given us, suffer terribly."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
+studio towards Basil Hallward.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their
+names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
+love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life
+mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one
+only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am
+going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
+daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
+one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You seem
+to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it
+makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
+never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
+When we meet&mdash;we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
+down to the Duke's&mdash;we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
+most serious faces. My wife is very good at it&mdash;much better, in fact,
+than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But
+when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she
+would; but she merely laughs at me."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
+Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I
+believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are
+thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow.
+You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
+cynicism is simply a pose."</p>
+
+<p>"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
+cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
+garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
+stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the
+polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
+going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your answering
+a question I put to you some time ago."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"You know quite well."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
+won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you the real reason."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
+in it. Now, that is childish."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
+portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
+of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
+not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on
+the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
+picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
+soul."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came
+over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter;
+"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly
+believe it."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
+the grass, and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," he
+replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, "and
+as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is
+quite incredible."</p>
+
+<p>The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms,
+with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A
+grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long
+thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt
+as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what
+was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two
+months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists
+have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the
+public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as
+you told me once, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for
+being civilised. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes,
+talking to huge over-dressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I
+suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned
+halfway round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes
+met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came
+over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere
+personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would
+absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not
+want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how
+independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at
+least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then&mdash;&mdash; but I don't know
+how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the
+verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate
+had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid,
+and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so;
+it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to
+escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
+is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either.
+However, whatever was my motive&mdash;and it may have been pride, for I used
+to be very proud&mdash;I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I
+stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon,
+Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
+pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people
+with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladles with gigantic tiaras and
+parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her
+once before, but she took it into her head to lionise me. I believe some
+picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been
+chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century
+standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the
+young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite
+close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I
+asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so
+reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to
+each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me
+so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other."</p>
+
+<p>"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his
+companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> of all her
+guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
+gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my
+ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to
+everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I
+like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests
+exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them
+entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants
+to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward,
+listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, she tried to found a <i>salon</i>, and only succeeded in
+opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she
+say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy&mdash;poor dear mother and I absolutely
+inseparable. Quite forget what he does&mdash;afraid he&mdash;doesn't do
+anything&mdash;oh, yes, plays the piano&mdash;or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?'
+Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
+the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.</p>
+
+<p>Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
+Harry," he murmured&mdash;"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like
+everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone."</p>
+
+<p>"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,
+and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy
+white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer
+sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between
+people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for
+their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
+cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one
+who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and
+consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it
+is rather vain."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
+merely an acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
+and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
+relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand
+other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathise
+with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices
+of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
+immorality should be their own special property, and that if anyone of
+us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
+Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite
+magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent. of the
+proletariat live correctly."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more,
+Harry, I feel sure you don't either."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his
+patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are,
+Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one
+puts forward an idea to a true Englishman&mdash;always a rash thing to do&mdash;he
+never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only
+thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.
+Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
+sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are
+that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will
+the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his
+wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to
+discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons
+better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better
+than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How
+often do you see him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
+absolutely necessary to me."</p>
+
+<p>"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
+art."</p>
+
+<p>"He is all my art to me now," said the painter, gravely. "I sometimes
+think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
+world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
+and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What
+the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antino&uuml;s
+was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day
+be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch
+from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me
+than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with
+what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot
+express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that
+the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best
+work of my life. But in some curious way&mdash;I wonder will you understand
+me?&mdash;his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,
+an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them
+differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me,
+before. 'A dream of form in days of thought:'&mdash;who is it who says that?
+I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible
+presence of this lad&mdash;for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
+he is really over twenty&mdash;his merely visible presence&mdash;ah! I wonder can
+you realise all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
+lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
+of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
+The harmony of soul and body&mdash;how much that is! We in our madness have
+separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an
+ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to
+me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such
+a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
+things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting
+it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to
+me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
+wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."</p>
+
+<p>"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden. After
+some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply
+a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
+He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.
+He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
+curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain
+colours. That is all."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
+all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
+cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
+anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my
+soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under
+their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry&mdash;too
+much of myself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
+for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful
+things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an
+age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of
+autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I
+will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall
+never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only
+the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very
+fond of you?"</p>
+
+<p>The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered,
+after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully.
+I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be
+sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in
+the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is
+horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me
+pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to
+someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit
+of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."</p>
+
+<p>"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
+"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
+of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That
+accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate
+ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something
+that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the
+silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man&mdash;that
+is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is
+a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-&agrave;-brac shop, all monsters and dust,
+with everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire
+first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will
+seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of
+colour, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart,
+and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time
+he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great
+pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a
+romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of
+any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
+Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change too
+often."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
+faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
+know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
+case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied
+air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
+chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the
+blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How
+pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's
+emotions were!&mdash;much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.
+One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends&mdash;those were the
+fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement
+the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
+Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's he would have been sure to have met
+Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about
+the feeding of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses.
+Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for
+whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would
+have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the
+dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he
+thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to
+Hallward, and said, "My dear fellow, I have just remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"Remembered what, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. She told
+me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her
+in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state
+that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation
+of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very
+earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a
+creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping
+about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to meet him."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want me to meet him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
+"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments." The man
+bowed, and went up the walk.</p>
+
+<p>Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he
+said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right
+in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him.
+Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous
+people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art
+whatever charm it possesses; my life as an artist depends on him. Mind,
+Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung
+out of him almost against his will.</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward
+by the arm, he almost led him into the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+
+<p>As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with
+his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's
+"Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. "I want to
+learn them. They are perfectly charming."</p>
+
+<p>"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of
+myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a
+wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
+blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your
+pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had anyone with you."</p>
+
+<p>"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have
+just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have
+spoiled everything."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord
+Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has often
+spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid,
+one of her victims also."</p>
+
+<p>"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian, with a
+funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with
+her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to have
+played a duet together&mdash;three duets, I believe. I don't know what she
+will say to me. I am far too frightened to call."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you.
+And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The
+audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to
+the piano she makes quite enough noise for two people."</p>
+
+<p>"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,
+with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold
+hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once.
+All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate
+purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No
+wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray&mdash;far too
+charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan, and opened
+his cigarette-case.</p>
+
+<p>The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes
+ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last
+remark he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry,
+I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of
+me if I asked you to go away?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky
+moods; and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell
+me why I should not go in for philanthropy."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a
+subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly
+shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really
+mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your sitters
+to have someone to chat to."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
+Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil,
+but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.
+Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I
+am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are
+coming. I should be sorry to miss you."</p>
+
+<p>"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing
+intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am
+working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for
+my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about my man at the Orleans?"</p>
+
+<p>The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about
+that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,
+and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry
+says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single
+exception of myself."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek
+martyr, and made a little <i>moue</i> of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he
+had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful
+contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said
+to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as
+Basil says?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
+immoral&mdash;immoral from the scientific point of view."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because 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 someone else's music, an actor of a
+part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is
+self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly&mdash;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&mdash;these are the two things that govern us. And yet&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
+boy," said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look
+had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with
+that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him,
+and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were
+to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every
+feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream&mdash;I believe
+that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would
+forget all the maladies of medi&aelig;valism, and return to the Hellenic
+ideal&mdash;to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.
+But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of
+the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our
+lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to
+strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has
+done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains
+then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The
+only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and
+your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
+itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and
+unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place
+in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great
+sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with
+your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions
+that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror,
+day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek
+with shame&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what
+to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak.
+Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think."</p>
+
+<p>For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips, and
+eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
+influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come
+really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to
+him&mdash;words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
+them&mdash;had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
+but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.</p>
+
+<p>Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But
+music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another
+chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were!
+How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet
+what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a
+plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as
+sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real
+as words?</p>
+
+<p>Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.
+He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It
+seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?</p>
+
+<p>With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
+psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested.
+He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and,
+remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which
+had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered
+whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had
+merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating
+the lad was!</p>
+
+<p>Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had
+the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes
+only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray, suddenly. "I must go
+out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of
+anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
+have caught the effect I wanted&mdash;the half-parted lips, and the bright
+look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he
+has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he
+has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a word that he
+says."</p>
+
+<p>"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
+reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."</p>
+
+<p>"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
+dreamy, languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is
+horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
+something with strawberries in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
+tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I
+will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in
+better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
+masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his
+face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
+perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him, and put his hand
+upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured.
+"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
+senses but the soul."</p>
+
+<p>The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had
+tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There
+was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
+suddenly awakened. His finely-chiselled nostrils quivered, and some
+hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of
+life&mdash;to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
+of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
+you know, just as you know less than you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking
+the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic
+olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was
+something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His
+cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved,
+as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But
+he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left
+for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for
+months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly
+there had come someone across his life who seemed to have disclosed to
+him life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not
+a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has brought
+out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare you will be
+quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
+allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming."</p>
+
+<p>"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the
+seat at the end of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
+worth having."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and
+ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
+branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will
+feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it
+always be so?... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't
+frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius&mdash;is higher, indeed, than
+Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the
+world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters
+of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has
+its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
+You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say
+sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least
+it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of
+wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The
+true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr.
+Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they
+quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really,
+perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it,
+and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for
+you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the
+memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as
+it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of
+you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become
+sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly....
+Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of
+your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
+failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
+vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live!
+Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be
+always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
+Hedonism&mdash;that is what our century wants. You might be its visible
+symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The
+world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that
+you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really
+might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must
+tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if
+you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will
+last&mdash;such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they
+blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In
+a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year
+the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never
+get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes
+sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous
+puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much
+afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to
+yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but
+youth!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell
+from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for
+a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of
+the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial
+things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid,
+or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find
+expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to
+the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He
+saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The
+flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio, and made
+staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other, and
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
+you can bring your drinks."</p>
+
+<p>They rose up, and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
+butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of
+the garden a thrush began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.
+Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to
+make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only
+difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice
+lasts a little longer."</p>
+
+<p>As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's
+arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured,
+flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
+resumed his pose.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him.
+The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that
+broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to
+look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed
+through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent
+of the roses seemed to brood over everything.</p>
+
+<p>After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a
+long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,
+biting the end of one of his huge brushes, and frowning. "It is quite
+finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long
+vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a
+wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the
+finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really
+finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day.
+I am awfully obliged to you."</p>
+
+<p>"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture,
+and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks
+flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as
+if he had recognised himself for the first time. He stood there
+motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to
+him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own
+beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil
+Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming
+exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them,
+forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord
+Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning
+of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
+gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the
+description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face
+would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of
+his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his
+lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his
+soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.</p>
+
+<p>As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a
+knife, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes
+deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as
+if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's
+silence, not understanding what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is
+one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you
+like to ask for it. I must have it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my property, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose property is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a very lucky fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon
+his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and
+dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be
+older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other
+way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was
+to grow old! For that&mdash;for that&mdash;I would give everything! Yes, there is
+nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work."</p>
+
+<p>"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You
+like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green
+bronze figure. Hardly as much, I daresay."</p>
+
+<p>The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like
+that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and
+his cheeks burning.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your
+silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till
+I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses
+one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your
+picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth
+is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I
+shall kill myself."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward turned pale, and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he cried,
+"don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I
+shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things,
+are you?&mdash;you who are finer than any of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of
+the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must
+lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives
+something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could
+change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It
+will mock me some day&mdash;mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his
+eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he
+buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.</p>
+
+<p>"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray&mdash;that is
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between
+you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
+done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will
+not let it come across our three lives and mar them."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face
+and tear-stained eyes looked at him, as he walked over to the deal
+painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was
+he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin
+tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long
+palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at
+last. He was going to rip up the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
+Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the
+studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter,
+coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you
+would."</p>
+
+<p>"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I
+feel that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
+sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked
+across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of
+course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
+pleasures?"</p>
+
+<p>"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge
+of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What
+absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as
+a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man
+is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all:
+though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had
+much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want
+it, and I really do."</p>
+
+<p>"If you let anyone have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!"
+cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy."</p>
+
+<p>"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
+existed."</p>
+
+<p>"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't
+really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."</p>
+
+<p>There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden
+tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle
+of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two
+globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went
+over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the
+table, and examined what was under the covers.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to
+be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's, but it
+is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am
+ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent
+engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have
+all the surprise of candour."</p>
+
+<p>"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward.
+"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Lord Henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth
+century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only
+real colour-element left in modern life."</p>
+
+<p>"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
+in the picture?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before either."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
+lad.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like that awfully."</p>
+
+<p>The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I
+shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
+across to him. "Am I really like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you are just like that."</p>
+
+<p>"How wonderful, Basil!"</p>
+
+<p>"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,"
+sighed Hallward. "That is something."</p>
+
+<p>"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why,
+even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to
+do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old
+men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and
+dine with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, Basil."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."</p>
+
+<p>"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
+breaks his own. I beg you not to go."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I entreat you."</p>
+
+<p>The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them
+from the tea-table with an amused smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go, Basil," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Hallward; and he went over and laid down his cup on
+the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better
+lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
+Come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't forget?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not," cried Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"And... Harry!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Basil?"</p>
+
+<p>"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I have forgotten it."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr.
+Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.
+Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a
+sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+
+<p>At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon
+Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if
+somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called
+selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was
+considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His
+father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and
+Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplomatic Service in a
+capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at
+Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by
+reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his despatches,
+and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his
+father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
+foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months
+later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great
+aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
+houses, but preferred to live in chambers, as it was less trouble, and
+took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the
+management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself
+for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of
+having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of
+burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when
+the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them
+for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied
+him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.
+Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the
+country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but
+there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
+shooting coat, smoking a cheroot, and grumbling over <i>The Times</i>. "Well,
+Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I thought
+you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."</p>
+
+<p>"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
+something out of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. "Well, sit down
+and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and
+when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only
+people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
+mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly
+upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and
+consequently they never bother me. What I want is information; not
+useful information, of course; useless information."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry,
+although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in
+the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now
+by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug
+from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough,
+and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books, Uncle George," said Lord
+Henry, languidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
+white eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who
+he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux;
+Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was
+she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your
+time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray
+at present. I have only just met him."</p>
+
+<p>"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman.&mdash;"Kelso's grandson!... Of
+course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
+christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret
+Devereux; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless
+young fellow; a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or
+something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
+happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa, a few
+months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said
+Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his
+son-in-law in public; paid him, sir, to do it, paid him; and that the
+fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed
+up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time
+afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she
+never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died
+too; died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten
+that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother he must be a
+good-looking chap."</p>
+
+<p>"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "He
+should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing
+by him. His mother had money too. All the Selby property came to her,
+through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean
+dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was
+ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was
+always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a
+story of it. I didn't dare to show my face at Court for a month. I hope
+he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well
+off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And...
+his mother was very beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry.
+What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could
+understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad
+after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were.
+The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington
+went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and
+there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. And by
+the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your
+father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't
+English girls good enough for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor,
+striking the table with his fist.</p>
+
+<p>"The betting is on the Americans."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a
+steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a
+chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing
+their parents as English women are at concealing their past," he said,
+rising to go.</p>
+
+<p>"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that
+pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
+politics."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
+secret of their charm."</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are
+always telling us that it is the Paradise for women."</p>
+
+<p>"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively
+anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I
+shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the
+information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new
+friends, and nothing about my old ones."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you lunching, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest
+<i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her
+charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I
+have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
+Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
+distinguishing characteristic."</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his
+servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street, and
+turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.</p>
+
+<p>So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been
+told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange,
+almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad
+passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
+treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in
+pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
+the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting
+background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind
+every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds
+had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how
+charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes
+and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at
+the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening
+wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
+violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was
+something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other
+activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and
+let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views
+echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to
+convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid
+or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that&mdash;perhaps the most
+satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
+age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
+He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
+had met in Basil's studio; or could be fashioned into a marvellous type,
+at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
+such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could
+not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
+that such beauty was destined to fade!... And Basil? From a
+psychological point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in
+art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
+merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent
+spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field,
+suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul
+who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to
+which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns
+of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
+symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other
+and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all
+was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that
+artist in thought, who had first analysed it? Was it not Buonarotti who
+had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our
+own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray
+what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned
+the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him&mdash;had already,
+indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
+was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had
+passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back.
+When he entered the somewhat sombre hall the butler told him that they
+had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick, and
+passed into the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.</p>
+
+<p>He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to
+her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from
+the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.
+Opposite was the Duchess of Harley; a lady of admirable good-nature and
+good temper, much liked by everyone who knew her, and of those ample
+architectural proportions that in women who are not Duchesses are
+described by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, on
+her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who
+followed his leader in public life, and in private life followed the
+best cooks, dining with the Tories, and thinking with the Liberals, in
+accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
+occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable
+charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,
+having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had
+to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one
+of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so
+dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
+Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most
+intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a Ministerial statement
+in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely
+earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once
+himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of
+them ever quite escape.</p>
+
+<p>"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the Duchess,
+nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really
+marry this fascinating young person?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, someone should
+interfere."</p>
+
+<p>"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
+dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.</p>
+
+<p>"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas."</p>
+
+<p>"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the Duchess, raising her
+large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb.</p>
+
+<p>"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means
+anything that he says."</p>
+
+<p>"When America was discovered," said the Radical member, and he began to
+give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a subject,
+he exhausted his listeners. The Duchess sighed, and exercised her
+privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been
+discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance
+nowadays. It is most unfair."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr.
+Erskine. "I myself would say that it had merely been detected."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the
+Duchess, vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely
+pretty. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I
+wish I could afford to do the same."</p>
+
+<p>"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir
+Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the
+Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against
+that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over
+it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are
+extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it."</p>
+
+<p>"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr.
+Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his
+shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them.
+The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely
+reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes,
+Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no
+nonsense about the Americans."</p>
+
+<p>"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute
+reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It
+is hitting below the intellect."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it
+was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we
+must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can
+judge them."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can
+make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
+you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the
+East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
+playing."</p>
+
+<p>"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
+down the table and caught a bright answering glance.</p>
+
+<p>"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha.</p>
+
+<p>"I can sympathise with everything, except suffering," said Lord Henry,
+shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly,
+too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
+modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the
+beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas,
+with a grave shake of the head.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and
+we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."</p>
+
+<p>The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England except
+the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic
+contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through
+an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal
+to Science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that
+they lead us astray, and the advantage of Science is that it is not
+emotional."</p>
+
+<p>"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur,
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too
+seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how
+to laugh, History would have been different."</p>
+
+<p>"You are really very comforting," warbled the Duchess. "I have always
+felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
+interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look
+her in the face without a blush."</p>
+
+<p>"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself
+blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me
+how to become young again."</p>
+
+<p>He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you
+committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"A great many, I fear," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's
+youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."</p>
+
+<p>"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice."</p>
+
+<p>"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha
+shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays
+most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it
+is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>A laugh ran round the table.</p>
+
+<p>He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and
+transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with
+fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
+soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and
+catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her
+wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the
+hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled
+before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge
+press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round
+her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
+the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary
+improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,
+and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose
+temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and
+to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic,
+irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they
+followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but
+sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and
+wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At last, liveried in the costume of the age, Reality entered the room in
+the shape of a servant to tell the Duchess that her carriage was
+waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried.
+"I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to
+some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the
+chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a
+scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.
+No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite
+delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to
+say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night.
+Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?"</p>
+
+<p>"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you
+come;" and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the
+other ladies.</p>
+
+<p>When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking
+a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I
+should like to write a novel certainly; a novel that would be as lovely
+as a Persian carpet, and as unreal. But there is no literary public in
+England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclop&aelig;dias. Of
+all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty
+of literature."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used to have
+literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young
+friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
+meant all that you said to us at lunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if
+anything happens to our good Duchess we shall all look on you as being
+primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The
+generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are
+tired of London, come down to Treadley, and expound to me your
+philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate
+enough to possess."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
+has a perfect host, and a perfect library."</p>
+
+<p>"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman, with a courteous
+bow. "And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at
+the Athen&aelig;um. It is the hour when we sleep there."</p>
+
+<p>"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
+Academy of Letters."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the Park," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>As he was passing out of the door Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
+"Let me come with you," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,"
+answered Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let
+me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so
+wonderfully as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling.
+"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me,
+if you care to."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+
+<p>One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious
+arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair. It
+was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high-panelled
+wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling
+of raised plaster-work, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk
+long-fringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette
+by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of "<i>Les Cent Nouvelles</i>," bound
+for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies
+that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars and
+parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantel-shelf, and through the small
+leaded panels of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a
+summer day in London.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his
+principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was
+looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages
+of an elaborately-illustrated edition of "<i>Manon Lescaut</i>" that he had
+found in one of the bookcases. The formal monotonous ticking of the
+Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going
+away.</p>
+
+<p>At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How late you are,
+Harry!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I
+thought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me
+introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my
+husband has got seventeen of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the
+Opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her
+vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always
+looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.
+She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never
+returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque,
+but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a
+perfect mania for going to church.</p>
+
+<p>"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it was at dear 'Lohengrin.' I like Wagner's music better than
+anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other
+people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage: don't you think
+so, Mr. Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
+fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian smiled, and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so, Lady
+Henry. I never talk during music, at least, during good music. If one
+hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? I always hear
+Harry's views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of
+them. But you must not think I don't like good music. I adore it, but I
+am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped
+pianists&mdash;two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it
+is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
+ain't they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after
+a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to
+art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to any
+of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford
+orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
+look so picturesque. But here is Harry!&mdash;Harry, I came in to look for
+you, to ask you something&mdash;I forget what it was&mdash;and I found Mr. Gray
+here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite the
+same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been
+most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his
+dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused
+smile. "So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old
+brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays
+people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward
+silence with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with the
+Duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are dining out, I
+suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her, as,
+looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain,
+she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then
+he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said, after a
+few puffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because they are so sentimental."</p>
+
+<p>"But I like sentimental people."</p>
+
+<p>"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women,
+because they are curious; both are disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I am likely to marry, Henry. I am too much in love. That
+is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
+everything that you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace
+<i>d&eacute;but</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her name is Sibyl Vane."</p>
+
+<p>"Never heard of her."</p>
+
+<p>"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They
+never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent
+the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of
+mind over morals."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, how can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at the present,
+so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was.
+I find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain
+and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a
+reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to
+supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake,
+however. They paint in order to try and look young. Our grandmothers
+painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. <i>Rouge</i> and <i>esprit</i> used
+to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman can look ten
+years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for
+conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and
+two of these can't be admitted into decent society. However, tell me
+about your genius. How long have you known her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind that. How long have you known her?"</p>
+
+<p>"About three weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"And where did you come across her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you, Harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.
+After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled
+me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I
+met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the
+Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who
+passed me, and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they
+led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was
+an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for sensations.... Well,
+one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to go out in search of
+some adventure. I felt that this grey, monstrous London of ours, with
+its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you
+once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a
+thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I
+remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we
+first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret
+of life. I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered
+eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black,
+grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little
+theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous
+Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was
+standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets,
+and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. 'Have a
+box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an
+air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that
+amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I
+really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the
+present day I can't make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn't&mdash;my dear
+Harry, if I hadn't, I should have missed the greatest romance of my
+life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you
+should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the
+first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will
+always be in love with love. A <i>grande passion</i> is the privilege of
+people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes
+of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for
+you. This is merely the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I think your nature so deep."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really
+the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I
+call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
+Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of
+the intellect&mdash;simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must
+analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many
+things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might
+pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a
+vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the
+curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
+cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding cake. The gallery and pit were
+fairy full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there
+was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
+Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible
+consumption of nuts going on."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."</p>
+
+<p>"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what
+on earth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you
+think the play was, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.' Our fathers used
+to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the
+more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not
+good enough for us. In art, as in politics, <i>les grandp&egrave;res ont toujours
+tort</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and Juliet.' I
+must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare
+done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a
+sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There
+was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a
+cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was
+drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with
+corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel.
+Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had
+introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit.
+They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had
+come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
+seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek
+head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells
+of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the
+loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that
+pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your
+eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the
+mist of tears that came across me. And her voice&mdash;I never heard such a
+voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to
+fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded
+like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the
+tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are
+singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of
+violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
+Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my
+eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don't
+know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her.
+She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
+One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have
+seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from
+her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of
+Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She
+has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given
+him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent,
+and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I
+have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never
+appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No
+glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one
+knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in
+any of them. They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at
+tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile, and
+their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How
+different an actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only
+thing worth loving is an actress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary
+charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."</p>
+
+<p>"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you
+will tell me everything you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
+You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would
+come and confess it to you. You would understand me."</p>
+
+<p>"People like you&mdash;the wilful sunbeams of life&mdash;don't commit crimes,
+Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now
+tell me&mdash;reach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks:&mdash;what are your
+actual relations with Sibyl Vane?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
+"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
+Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why should
+you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is
+in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends
+by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know
+her, at any rate, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
+horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and
+offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was
+furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of
+years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think,
+from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that
+I had taken too much champagne, or something."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not surprised."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I
+never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and
+confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy
+against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."</p>
+
+<p>"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other
+hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all
+expensive."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed Dorian.
+"By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre,
+and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
+recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the
+place again. When he saw me he made me a low bow, and assured me that I
+was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he
+had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an
+air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to 'The
+Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a
+distinction."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian&mdash;a great distinction. Most people
+become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of
+life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. But when did
+you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"</p>
+
+<p>"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going
+round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me; at least
+I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined
+to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know
+her, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I don't think so."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Harry, why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There is something of a child
+about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what
+I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her
+power. I think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning
+at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about
+us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. He would
+insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not
+anything of the kind. She said quite simply to me, 'You look more like a
+prince. I must call you Prince Charming.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person in
+a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded
+tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
+dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, examining his
+rings.</p>
+
+<p>"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about
+other people's tragedies."</p>
+
+<p>"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came
+from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and
+entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every
+night she is more marvellous."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I
+thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but it is
+not quite what I expected."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have
+been to the Opera with you several times," said Dorian, opening his blue
+eyes in wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"You always come dreadfully late."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is
+only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think
+of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I
+am filled with awe."</p>
+
+<p>"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow
+night she will be Juliet."</p>
+
+<p>"When is she Sibyl Vane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one.
+She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has
+genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the
+secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to
+make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
+laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their
+dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry,
+how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke.
+Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he
+was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's
+studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of
+scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and
+Desire had come to meet it on the way.</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I have
+not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge her
+genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound to him
+for three years&mdash;at least for two years and eight months&mdash;from the
+present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When all
+that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out
+properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be impossible, my dear boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her,
+but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is
+personalities, not principles, that move the age."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what night shall we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."</p>
+
+<p>"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
+curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets
+Romeo."</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or
+reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before
+seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid
+of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame,
+specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the
+picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I
+delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see
+him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they need
+most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit
+of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."</p>
+
+<p>"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his
+work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his
+prejudices, his principles, and his common-sense. The only artists I
+have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good
+artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly
+uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is
+the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely
+fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look.
+The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a
+man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The
+others write the poetry that they dare not realise."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some
+perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that stood
+on the table. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is
+waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to
+think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian
+Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused him not
+the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It
+made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the
+methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that
+science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun
+by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human
+life&mdash;that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared
+to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one
+watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not
+wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from
+troubling the brain, and making the imagination turbid with monstrous
+fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know
+their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
+strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand
+their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful
+the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of
+passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect&mdash;to observe
+where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in
+unison, and at what point they were at discord&mdash;there was a delight in
+that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a
+price for any sensation.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious&mdash;and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
+brown agate eyes&mdash;that it was through certain words of his, musical
+words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to
+this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the
+lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something.
+Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to
+the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the
+veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly
+of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and
+the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and
+assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art,
+Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or
+sculpture, or painting.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was
+yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was
+becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
+beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It
+was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one
+of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be
+remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose
+wounds are like red roses.</p>
+
+<p>Soul and body, body and soul&mdash;how mysterious they were! There was
+animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
+The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say
+where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the physical impulse began? How
+shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And
+yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools!
+Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really
+in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from
+matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery
+also.</p>
+
+<p>He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a
+science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it
+was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
+Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to
+their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of
+warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation
+of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow
+and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in
+experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.
+All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as
+our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would
+do many times, and with joy.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by
+which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and
+certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to
+promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane
+was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt
+that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new
+experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
+What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been
+transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something
+that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for
+that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose
+origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our
+weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often
+happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
+really experimenting on ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door,
+and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner.
+He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into
+scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed
+like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He
+thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life, and wondered how it
+was all going to end.</p>
+
+<p>When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram
+lying on the hall table. He opened it, and found it was from Dorian
+Gray. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl
+Vane.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in
+the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the
+shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their
+dingy sitting-room contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you
+must be happy too!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vane winced, and put her thin bismuth-whitened hands on her
+daughter's head. "Happy!" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I
+see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr. Isaacs
+has been very good to us, and we owe him money."</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, mother?" she cried, "what does
+money matter? Love is more than money."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts, and to
+get a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty
+pounds is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not a gentleman, mother, and I hate the way he talks to me," said
+the girl, rising to her feet, and going over to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
+woman, querulously.</p>
+
+<p>Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him any more,
+mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now." Then she paused. A rose
+shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the
+petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept
+over her, and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him," she
+said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.
+The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the
+words.</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. Her
+eyes caught the melody, and echoed it in radiance; then closed for a
+moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a
+dream had passed across them.</p>
+
+<p>Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence,
+quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common
+sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison of passion. Her
+prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on Memory to
+remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought
+him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm
+with his breath.</p>
+
+<p>Then Wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. This
+young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against
+the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of
+craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
+"Mother, mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know why I
+love him. I love him because he is like what Love himself should be. But
+what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet&mdash;why, I cannot
+tell&mdash;though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble. I feel
+proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love Prince
+Charming?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her
+cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sibyl rushed to
+her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "Forgive me, mother.
+I know it pains you to talk about our father. But it only pains you
+because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad. I am as happy to-day
+as you were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy for ever!"</p>
+
+<p>"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. Besides,
+what do you know of this young man? You don't even know his name. The
+whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going away
+to Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you should
+have shown more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is
+rich...."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Mother, mother, let me be happy!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical
+gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player,
+clasped her in her arms. At this moment the door opened, and a young lad
+with rough brown hair came into the room. He was thick-set of figure,
+and his hands and feet were large, and somewhat clumsy in movement. He
+was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly have guessed the
+close relationship that existed between them. Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes
+on him, and intensified the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the
+dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the <i>tableau</i> was
+interesting.</p>
+
+<p>"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," said the
+lad, with a good-natured grumble.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a
+dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.</p>
+
+<p>James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "I want you to
+come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever see
+this horrid London again. I am sure I don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up
+a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She
+felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would
+have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, mother? I mean it."</p>
+
+<p>"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a
+position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the
+Colonies, nothing that I would call society; so when you have made your
+fortune you must come back and assert yourself in London."</p>
+
+<p>"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that.
+I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the stage. I
+hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! But are you really
+going for a walk with me? That will be nice! I was afraid you were going
+to say good-bye to some of your friends&mdash;to Tom Hardy, who gave you that
+hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is
+very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go?
+Let us go to the Park."</p>
+
+<p>"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the
+Park."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last, "but don't be
+too long dressing." She danced out of the door. One could hear her
+singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.</p>
+
+<p>He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned to the
+still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on her work. For
+some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this
+rough, stern son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled when
+their eyes met. She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The
+silence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.
+She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, just as
+they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. "I hope you will be
+contented, James, with your sea-faring life," she said. "You must
+remember that it is your own choice. You might have entered a
+solicitor's office. Solicitors are a very respectable class, and in the
+country often dine with the best families."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite
+right. I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't
+let her come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."</p>
+
+<p>"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl."</p>
+
+<p>"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre, and goes behind to
+talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the
+profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying
+attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was
+when acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at
+present whether her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt
+that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most
+polite to me. Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the
+flowers he sends are lovely."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know his name, though," said the lad, harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered his mother, with a placid expression in her face. "He has
+not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic of him. He
+is probably a member of the aristocracy."</p>
+
+<p>James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch
+over her."</p>
+
+<p>"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special
+care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why
+she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the
+aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a
+most brilliant marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple.
+His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."</p>
+
+<p>The lad muttered something to himself, and drummed on the window-pane
+with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something, when
+the door opened, and Sibyl ran in.</p>
+
+<p>"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
+Good-bye, mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is
+packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of strained stateliness.</p>
+
+<p>She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there
+was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me, mother," said the girl. Her flower-like lips touched the
+withered cheek, and warmed its frost.</p>
+
+<p>"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
+search of an imaginary gallery.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. He hated his mother's
+affectations.</p>
+
+<p>They went out into the flickering wind-blown sunlight, and strolled down
+the dreary Euston Road. The passers-by glanced in wonder at the sullen,
+heavy youth, who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of
+such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a common gardener
+walking with a rose.</p>
+
+<p>Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of
+some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at which comes on
+geniuses late in life, and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, however,
+was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her love was
+trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming,
+and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of him
+but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to sail, about
+the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful heiress whose life
+he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. For he was not
+to remain a sailor, or a super-cargo, or whatever he was going to be.
+Oh, no! A sailor's existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a
+horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a
+black wind blowing the masts down, and tearing the sails into long
+screaming ribands! He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite
+good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a
+week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, the
+largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it down to the
+coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were
+to attack them three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. Or,
+no. He was not to go to the gold-fields at all. They were horrid places,
+where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used
+bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he
+was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off
+by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course
+she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get
+married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. Yes,
+there were delightful things in store for him. But he must be very good,
+and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. She was only a
+year older than he was, but she knew so much more of life. He must be
+sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his prayers each
+night before he went to sleep. God was very good, and would watch over
+him. She would pray for him, too, and in a few years he would come back
+quite rich and happy.</p>
+
+<p>The lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer. He was heart-sick
+at leaving home.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.
+Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger
+of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was making love to her could
+mean her no good. He was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated
+him through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account,
+and which for that reason was all the more dominant within him. He was
+conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature, and
+in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness. Children
+begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them;
+sometimes they forgive them.</p>
+
+<p>His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that
+he had brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase that he
+had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears
+one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of
+horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a
+hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like
+furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his under-lip.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I
+am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say something."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that you will be a good boy, and not forget us," she answered,
+smiling at him.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me, than I am
+to forget you, Sibyl."</p>
+
+<p>She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me
+about him? He means you no good."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him. I
+love him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he? I
+have a right to know."</p>
+
+<p>"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name? Oh! you silly
+boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him, you would think
+him the most wonderful person in the world. Some day you will meet him:
+when you come back from Australia. You will like him so much. Everybody
+likes him, and I... love him. I wish you could come to the theatre
+to-night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh! how I
+shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To have him
+sitting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I may frighten the
+company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass one's
+self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers
+at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will announce me
+as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, Prince
+Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor beside
+him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door,
+love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want re-writing. They
+were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think,
+a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a gentleman," said the lad, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"A Prince!" she cried, musically. "What more do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"He wants to enslave you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shudder at the thought of being free."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to beware of him."</p>
+
+<p>"To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him."</p>
+
+<p>"Sibyl, you are mad about him."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as if you
+were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will
+know what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to think
+that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I have ever
+been before. Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and
+difficult. But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
+and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the
+smart people go by."</p>
+
+<p>They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds across
+the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust, tremulous
+cloud of orris-root it seemed, hung in the panting air. The
+brightly-coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He spoke
+slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other as players at a
+game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not communicate her
+joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all the echo she could
+win. After some time she became silent. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of
+golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open carriage with two ladies
+Dorian Gray drove past.</p>
+
+<p>She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" said Jim Vane.</p>
+
+<p>"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up, and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me. Which
+is he? Point him out. I must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that moment
+the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when it had left
+the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the Park.</p>
+
+<p>"He is gone," murmured Sibyl, sadly. "I wish you had seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
+you any wrong I shall kill him."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air
+like a dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close to
+her tittered.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly, as
+she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the Achilles Statue she turned round. There was pity
+in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her head at him.
+"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all.
+How can you say such horrible things? You don't know what you are
+talking about. You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would
+fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said was wicked."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. Mother is no
+help to you. She doesn't understand how to look after you. I wish now
+that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
+the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn't been signed."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those
+silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not going
+to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect
+happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never harm anyone I love,
+would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"And he?"</p>
+
+<p>"For ever, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"He had better."</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. He
+was merely a boy.</p>
+
+<p>At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to
+their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock, and
+Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
+that she should do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when
+their mother was not present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he
+detested scenes of every kind.</p>
+
+<p>In Sibyl's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart,
+and a fierce, murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
+had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,
+and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened, and kissed her
+with real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality,
+as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The
+flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the stained cloth.
+Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he
+could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left to him.</p>
+
+<p>After some time, he thrust away his plate, and put his head in his
+hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to
+him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother
+watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace
+handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got
+up, and went to the door. Then he turned back, and looked at her. Their
+eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered
+vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth. I have a
+right to know. Were you married to my father?"</p>
+
+<p>She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
+the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,
+had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed in some measure it
+was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question
+called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up
+to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.</p>
+
+<p>"My father was a scoundrel then?" cried the lad, clenching his fists.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other very
+much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don't speak
+against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed he was
+highly connected."</p>
+
+<p>An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," he exclaimed,
+"but don't let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love
+with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her
+head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "Sibyl has a
+mother," she murmured; "I had none."</p>
+
+<p>The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down he kissed
+her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father," he
+said, "but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye. Don't forget
+that you will only have one child now to look after, and believe me that
+if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down,
+and kill him like a dog. I swear it."</p>
+
+<p>The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that
+accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid to
+her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more freely, and
+for the first time for many months she really admired her son. She would
+have liked to have continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but
+he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down, and mufflers looked
+for. The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the
+bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details. It
+was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the tattered
+lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. She was
+conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She consoled herself
+by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she
+had only one child to look after. She remembered the phrase. It had
+pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and
+dramatically expressed. She felt that they would all laugh at it some
+day.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+
+<p>"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that
+evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
+where dinner had been laid for three.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
+waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don't interest
+me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth
+painting; though many of them would be the better for a little
+white-washing."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him as
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Hallward started, and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he
+cried. "Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is perfectly true."</p>
+
+<p>"To whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"To some little actress or other."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
+Basil."</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry, languidly. "But I didn't say
+he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great
+difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
+no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I
+never was engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
+absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to make him marry this girl tell him that, Basil. He is
+sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
+is always from the noblest motives."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some
+vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is better than good&mdash;she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry,
+sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is
+beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
+portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
+appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst
+others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
+appointment."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
+be more serious than I am at the present moment."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and
+down the room, and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it, possibly.
+It is some silly infatuation."</p>
+
+<p>"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
+attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our
+moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and
+I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality
+fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is
+absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful
+girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded
+Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a
+champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one
+unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack
+individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage
+makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other
+egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more
+highly organised, and to be highly organised is, I should fancy, the
+object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and,
+whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
+hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore
+her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by someone else.
+He would be a wonderful study."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If
+Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself.
+You are much better than you pretend to be."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of others
+is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer
+terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour
+with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to
+us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good
+qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I
+mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for
+optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth
+is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
+As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and
+more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage
+them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian
+himself. He will tell you more than I can."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the
+lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and
+shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been so
+happy. Of course it is sudden; all really delightful things are. And
+yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my
+life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
+extraordinarily handsome.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I
+don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.
+You let Harry know."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord
+Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder, and smiling as he spoke.
+"Come, let us sit down and try what the new <i>chef</i> here is like, and
+then you will tell us how it all came about."</p>
+
+<p>"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian, as they took their
+seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. After I
+left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
+little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and
+went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind.
+Of course the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl!
+You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes she was
+perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
+cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green
+cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined
+with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all
+the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your
+studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round
+a pale rose. As for her acting&mdash;well, you shall see her to-night. She is
+simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I
+forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away
+with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the
+performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her. As we were sitting
+together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen
+there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't
+describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my
+life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She
+trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung
+herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell
+you all this, but I can't help it. Of course our engagement is a dead
+secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my
+guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I
+shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I
+have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to
+find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to
+speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of
+Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall
+find her in an orchard in Verona."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "At what
+particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what did
+she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
+not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said
+she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is
+nothing to me compared with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry&mdash;"much more
+practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say
+anything about marriage, and they always remind us."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have annoyed
+Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon
+anyone. His nature is too fine for that."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me,"
+he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the
+only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question&mdash;simple
+curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to
+us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in
+middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite incorrigible,
+Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you
+see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a
+beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how anyone can wish
+to shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a
+pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.
+What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't
+mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me
+faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all
+that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me
+to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me
+forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful
+theories."</p>
+
+<p>"And those are...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
+about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered,
+in his slow, melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory
+as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test,
+her sign of approval. When we are happy we are always good, but when we
+are good we are not always happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Lord
+Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the
+centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching
+the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord
+is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life&mdash;that is
+the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes
+to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them,
+but they are not one's concern. Besides, Individualism has really the
+higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's
+age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of
+his age is a form of the grossest immorality."</p>
+
+<p>"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
+terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that
+the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but
+self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of
+the rich."</p>
+
+<p>"One has to pay in other ways but money."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of ways, Basil?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the
+consciousness of degradation."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, medi&aelig;val art is
+charming, but medi&aelig;val emotions are out of date. One can use them in
+fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction
+are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no
+civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever
+knows what a pleasure is."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore someone."</p>
+
+<p>"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with
+some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as
+Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us
+to do something for them."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
+us," murmured the lad, gravely. "They create Love in our natures. They
+have a right to demand it back."</p>
+
+<p>"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women give
+to men the very gold of their lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very
+small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once put
+it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us
+from carrying them out."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."</p>
+
+<p>"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some
+coffee, you fellows?&mdash;Waiter, bring coffee, and <i>fine-champagne</i>, and
+some cigarettes. No: don't mind the cigarettes; I have some. Basil, I
+can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette
+is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it
+leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will
+always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had
+the courage to commit."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a
+fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
+"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
+have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you
+have never known."</p>
+
+<p>"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
+eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
+that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
+girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
+Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but
+there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a
+hansom."</p>
+
+<p>They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The
+painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could
+not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many
+other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all
+passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
+watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A
+strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would
+never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come
+between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets
+became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it
+seemed to him that he had grown years older.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+
+<p>For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
+Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an
+oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of
+pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking at the top
+of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he
+had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,
+upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and
+insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assuring him that he was proud
+to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a
+poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The
+heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a
+monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery
+had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side.
+They talked to each other across the theatre, and shared their oranges
+with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in
+the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of
+the popping of corks came from the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine
+beyond all living things. When she acts you will forget everything.
+These common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,
+become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and
+watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them
+as responsive as a violin. She spiritualises them, and one feels that
+they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."</p>
+
+<p>"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord
+Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
+opera-glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
+understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love
+must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must
+be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age&mdash;that is something worth
+doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
+if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
+sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend
+them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your
+adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
+right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made
+Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew that
+you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here
+is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
+minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am
+going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good
+in me."</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
+applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly
+lovely to look at&mdash;one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
+that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace
+and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror
+of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded,
+enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed
+to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
+Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord
+Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"</p>
+
+<p>The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
+dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as
+it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through the
+crowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
+creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a
+plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a
+white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes
+rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which mannerly devotion shows in this;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly
+artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
+of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away
+all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious.
+Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them
+to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
+the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was
+nothing in her.</p>
+
+<p>She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be
+denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse
+as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She
+over-emphasised everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
+taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
+leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Although I joy in thee,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I have no joy of this contract to-night:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">This bud of love by summer's ripening breath</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
+not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
+self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.</p>
+
+<p>Even the common, uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
+interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to
+whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
+dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
+the girl herself.</p>
+
+<p>When the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord
+Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "She is quite
+beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act. Let us go."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard,
+bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening,
+Harry. I apologise to you both."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
+Hallward. "We will come some other night."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply
+callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great
+artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk like that about anyone you love, Dorian. Love is a more
+wonderful thing than Art."</p>
+
+<p>"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. "But do
+let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for
+one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't suppose you will want
+your wife to act. So what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a
+wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life
+as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There are
+only two kinds of people who are really fascinating&mdash;people who know
+absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. Good
+heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The secret of remaining
+young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Come to the club
+with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty
+of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must
+go. Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to
+his eyes. His lips trembled, and, rushing to the back of the box, he
+leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry, with a strange tenderness in his
+voice; and the two young men passed out together.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose
+on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and
+proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable.
+Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots, and laughing.
+The whole thing was a <i>fiasco</i>. The last act was played to almost empty
+benches. The curtain went down on a titter, and some groans.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
+greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on
+her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance
+about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
+came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement&mdash;"horribly! It was
+dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea
+what I suffered."</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with
+long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to
+the red petals of her mouth&mdash;"Dorian, you should have understood. But
+you understand now, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never
+act well again."</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you
+shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I
+was bored."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An
+ecstasy of happiness dominated her.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
+reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought
+that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other.
+The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine
+also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me
+seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew
+nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came&mdash;oh, my beautiful
+love!&mdash;and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality
+really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the
+hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had
+always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the
+Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the
+orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had
+to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say.
+You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a
+reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! my
+love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You
+are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the
+puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how
+it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going to
+be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my
+soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them
+hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? Take
+me away, Dorian&mdash;take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I
+hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot
+mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand
+now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation
+for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that."</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face. "You have
+killed my love," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in wonder, and laughed. He made no answer. She came
+across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt
+down and pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a shudder
+ran through him.</p>
+
+<p>Then he leaped up, and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have
+killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir
+my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you
+were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you
+realised the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
+shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.
+My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are
+nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of
+you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what you were to me,
+once. Why, once.... Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never
+laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little
+you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art you
+are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The
+world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. What
+are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face."</p>
+
+<p>The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and
+her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?"
+she murmured. "You are acting."</p>
+
+<p>"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expression of pain in her
+face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm, and
+looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet, and lay
+there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
+whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all
+the time. But I will try&mdash;indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across
+me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not
+kissed me&mdash;if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
+Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My
+brother.... No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest.... But
+you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try
+to improve. Don't be cruel to me because I love you better than anything
+in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you.
+But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an
+artist. It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't
+leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She
+crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his
+beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in
+exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the
+emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him
+to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going," he said at last, in his calm, clear voice. "I don't wish
+to be unkind, but I can't see you again. You have disappointed me."</p>
+
+<p>She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little
+hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He
+turned on his heel, and left the room. In a few moments he was out of
+the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through
+dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
+houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after
+him. Drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves like
+monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon doorsteps,
+and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.</p>
+
+<p>As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden.
+The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed
+itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
+rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with
+the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an
+anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market, and watched the men
+unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some
+cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any
+money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked
+at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long
+line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red
+roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge
+jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey
+sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
+waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging
+doors of the coffee-house in the Piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped
+and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
+Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked,
+and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.</p>
+
+<p>After a little while, he hailed a hansom, and drove home. For a few
+moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent
+Square with its blank, close-shuttered windows, and its staring blinds.
+The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
+silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was
+rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.</p>
+
+<p>In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that hung
+from the ceiling of the great oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were
+still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they
+seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out, and, having thrown
+his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the
+door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that,
+in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for
+himself, and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been
+discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning
+the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward
+had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. Then he went on
+into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken the
+buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally he came back,
+went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light
+that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared
+to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One
+would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was
+certainly strange.</p>
+
+<p>He turned round, and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The
+bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky
+corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he
+had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be
+more intensified even. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the
+lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking
+into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.</p>
+
+<p>He winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory
+Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into
+its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it
+mean?</p>
+
+<p>He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
+again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual
+painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had
+altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly
+apparent.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there
+flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
+day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He
+had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
+portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
+face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that
+the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and
+thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of
+his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled?
+Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them.
+And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
+the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had
+dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
+had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been
+shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
+him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child.
+He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been
+made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had
+suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted,
+he had lived centuries of pain, &aelig;on upon &aelig;on of torture. His life was
+well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her
+for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men.
+They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When
+they took lovers, it was merely to have someone with whom they could
+have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what
+women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to
+him now.</p>
+
+<p>But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his
+life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty.
+Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it
+again?</p>
+
+<p>No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The
+horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly
+there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men
+mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
+smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met
+his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted
+image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter
+more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would
+die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its
+fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would
+be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation.
+He would not see Lord Henry any more&mdash;would not, at any rate, listen to
+those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's garden had
+first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. He would go
+back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again.
+Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had.
+Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that
+she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together.
+His life with her would be beautiful and pure.</p>
+
+<p>He got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the
+portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!" he murmured to
+himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he
+stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning
+air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of
+Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name
+over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched
+garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times
+on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what
+made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded, and
+Victor came softly in with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a
+small tray of old S&egrave;vres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains,
+with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray, drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>How late it was! He sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over his
+letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand
+that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The
+others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of
+cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of
+charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable young
+men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill, for
+a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had not yet had the
+courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned
+people and did not realise that we live in an age when unnecessary
+things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously
+worded communiations from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to
+advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable
+rates of interest.</p>
+
+<p>After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate
+dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
+onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep.
+He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of
+having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but
+there was the unreality of a dream about it.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a
+light French breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round
+table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
+seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in, and buzzed round the
+blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before
+him. He felt perfectly happy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
+portrait, and he started.</p>
+
+<p>"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
+table. "I shut the window?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply
+his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had
+been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing
+was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would
+make him smile.</p>
+
+<p>And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in
+the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of
+cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the
+room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the
+portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes
+had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell
+him to remain. As the door was closing behind him he called him back.
+The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a moment.
+"I am not at home to anyone, Victor," he said, with a sigh. The man
+bowed and retired.</p>
+
+<p>Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on
+a luxuriously-cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The screen
+was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a
+rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously, wondering
+if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.</p>
+
+<p>Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What was
+the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it was
+not true, why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier
+chance, eyes other than his spied behind, and saw the horrible change?
+What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own
+picture? Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to be
+examined, and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful state
+of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>He got up, and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he
+looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside, and
+saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
+altered.</p>
+
+<p>As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he
+found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost
+scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place was
+incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle affinity
+between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form and colour
+on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what
+that soul thought, they realized?&mdash;that what it dreamed, they made true?
+Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He shuddered, and felt
+afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture
+in sickened horror.</p>
+
+<p>One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him
+conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not
+too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His
+unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be
+transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would
+be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the
+fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could
+lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the
+degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men
+brought upon their souls.</p>
+
+<p>Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime,
+but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet
+threads of life, and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way
+through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
+wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he
+went over to the table, and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
+loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. He
+covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of
+pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we
+feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not
+the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the
+letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's voice
+outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. I can't bear
+your shutting yourself up like this."</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking
+still continued, and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry
+in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel
+with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was
+inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,
+and unlocked the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry, as he entered. "But
+you must not think too much about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly
+pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, from one point of view,
+but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her, after
+the play was over?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was brutal, Harry&mdash;perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am
+not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
+myself better."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I would
+find you plunged in remorse, and tearing that nice curly hair of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head, and
+smiling. "I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin
+with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.
+Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more&mdash;at least not before me. I want to be
+good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."</p>
+
+<p>"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
+on it. But how are you going to begin?"</p>
+
+<p>"By marrying Sibyl Vane."</p>
+
+<p>"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up, and looking at him
+in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful about
+marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to me again.
+Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to break my word
+to her. She is to be my wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your wife! Dorian!... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
+morning, and sent the note down, by my own man."</p>
+
+<p>"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I was
+afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. You cut life
+to pieces with your epigrams."</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing then?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray,
+took both his hands in his own, and held them tightly. "Dorian," he
+said, "my letter&mdash;don't be frightened&mdash;was to tell you that Sibyl Vane
+is dead."</p>
+
+<p>A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
+tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead! It is
+not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the
+morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see anyone till I
+came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be
+mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in
+London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's
+<i>d&eacute;but</i> with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to
+one's old age. I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If
+they don't, it is all right. Did anyone see you going round to her room?
+That is an important point."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
+Finally he stammered in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
+inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl&mdash;&mdash;? Oh, Harry, I can't
+bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put
+in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the theatre
+with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
+forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did
+not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor
+of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake, some
+dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was, but it
+had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it was
+prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
+up in it. I see by <i>The Standard</i> that she was seventeen. I should have
+thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
+seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this
+thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards
+we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be
+there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women
+with her."</p>
+
+<p>"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to
+himself&mdash;"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with
+a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing
+just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and
+then go on to the Opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
+extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
+Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
+happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here
+is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.
+Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed
+to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we
+call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I
+loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
+Then came that dreadful night&mdash;was it really only last night?&mdash;when she
+played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to me.
+It was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her
+shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell
+you what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I
+felt I had done wrong. And now she is dead. My God! my God! Harry, what
+shall I do? You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to
+keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to
+kill herself. It was selfish of her."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case,
+and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever
+reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible
+interest in life. If you had married this girl you would have been
+wretched. Of course you would have treated her kindly. One can always be
+kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would have soon
+found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman
+finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy,
+or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay
+for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been
+abject, which, of course, I would not have allowed, but I assure you
+that in any case the whole thing would have been an absolute failure."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room,
+and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty. It is not my
+fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right.
+I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good
+resolutions&mdash;that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were."</p>
+
+<p>"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
+laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely <i>nil</i>.
+They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions
+that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for
+them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no
+account."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
+"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I don't
+think I am heartless. Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be
+entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, with
+his sweet, melancholy smile.</p>
+
+<p>The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined,
+"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind.
+I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened
+does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a
+wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of
+a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I
+have not been wounded."</p>
+
+<p>"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an exquisite
+pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism&mdash;"an extremely
+interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this. It
+often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an
+inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
+absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of
+style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an
+impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes,
+however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses
+our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply
+appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no
+longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are
+both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls
+us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Someone
+has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an
+experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my
+life. The people who have adored me&mdash;there have not been very many, but
+there have been some&mdash;have always insisted on living on, long after I
+had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become
+stout and tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for
+reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is!
+And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb
+the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details
+are always vulgar."</p>
+
+<p>"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
+poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore
+nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
+mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did
+die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice
+the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one
+with the terror of eternity. Well&mdash;would you believe it?&mdash;a week ago, at
+Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in
+question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and
+digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my romance
+in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again, and assured me that I
+had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous
+dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
+showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women
+never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act,
+and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to
+continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have
+a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are
+charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. You are more
+fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I
+have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary
+women always console themselves. Some of them do it by going in for
+sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her
+age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
+always means that they have a history. Others find a great consolation
+in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They
+flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most
+fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the
+charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me; and I can quite understand
+it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a
+sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end
+to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not
+mentioned the most important one."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that, Harry?" said the lad, listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking someone else's admirer when one
+loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
+really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
+women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
+death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They
+make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as
+romance, passion, and love."</p>
+
+<p>"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than
+anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have
+emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all
+the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have
+never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how
+delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day
+before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,
+but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"What was that, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
+romance&mdash;that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that
+if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."</p>
+
+<p>"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
+face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you
+must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a
+strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene
+from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived,
+and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a
+dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them
+lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music
+sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life,
+she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for
+Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was
+strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio
+died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than
+they are."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and
+with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours
+faded wearily out of things.</p>
+
+<p>After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me to myself,
+Harry," he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief. "I felt all
+that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not
+express it to myself. How well you know me! But we will not talk again
+of what has happened. It has been a marvellous experience. That is all.
+I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous."</p>
+
+<p>"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
+you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go&mdash;"then, my dear Dorian, you
+would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to
+you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
+much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot
+spare you. And now you had better dress, and drive down to the club. We
+are rather late, as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I shall join you at the Opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
+anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name
+on the door. But I am sorry you won't come and dine."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian, listlessly. "But I am awfully
+obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly my
+best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have."</p>
+
+<p>"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord
+Henry, shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before
+nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."</p>
+
+<p>As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a
+few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He
+waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an interminable
+time over everything.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. No;
+there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news of
+Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious
+of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred
+the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment
+that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it
+indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed
+within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the
+change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Sibyl! what a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked death
+on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her, and taken her with
+him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed him, as
+she died? No; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a
+sacrament to him now. She had atoned for everything, by the sacrifice
+she had made of her life. He would not think any more of what she had
+made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he
+thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the
+world's stage to show the supreme reality of Love. A wonderful tragic
+figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and
+winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away
+hastily, and looked again at the picture.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his
+choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him&mdash;life, and
+his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion,
+pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins&mdash;he was to have
+all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that
+was all.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that
+was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of
+Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that
+now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat before
+the portrait, wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it
+seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which he
+yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden
+away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so
+often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? The pity
+of it! the pity of it!</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that
+existed between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in
+answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain
+unchanged. And, yet, who, that knew anything about Life, would surrender
+the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance
+might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?
+Besides, was it really under his control? Had it indeed been prayer that
+had produced the substitution? Might there not be some curious
+scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence
+upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon
+dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire,
+might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods
+and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love of strange affinity?
+But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt by a
+prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter.
+That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?</p>
+
+<p>For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to
+follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him
+the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so
+it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he
+would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
+When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of
+chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one
+blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life
+would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and
+fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured
+image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.</p>
+
+<p>He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,
+smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was
+already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the Opera, and Lord
+Henry was leaning over his chair.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+
+<p>As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said, gravely. "I called
+last night, and they told me you were at the Opera. Of course I knew
+that was impossible. But I wish you had left word where you had really
+gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might
+be followed by another. I think you might have telegraphed for me when
+you heard of it first. I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of
+<i>The Globe</i>, that I picked up at the club. I came here at once, and was
+miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heartbroken I am
+about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. But where were you?
+Did you go down and see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of
+following you there. They gave the address in the paper. Somewhere in
+the Euston Road, isn't it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
+that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must be in! And
+her only child, too! What did she say about it all?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
+pale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass,
+and looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the Opera. You should have come
+on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first time. We
+were in her box. She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely.
+Don't talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn't talk about a thing, it
+has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives
+reality to things. I may mention that she was not the woman's only
+child. There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on
+the stage. He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about yourself
+and what you are painting."</p>
+
+<p>"You went to the Opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly, and with a
+strained touch of pain in his voice. "You went to the Opera while Sibyl
+Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other
+women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you
+loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are
+horrors in store for that little white body of hers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Basil! I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet. "You
+must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is
+past."</p>
+
+<p>"You call yesterday the past?"</p>
+
+<p>"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow
+people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master
+of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I
+don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to
+enjoy them, and to dominate them."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You
+look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come
+down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural,
+and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole
+world. Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you had
+no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. I see that."</p>
+
+<p>The lad flushed up, and, going to the window, looked out for a few
+moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "I owe a great deal
+to Harry, Basil," he said, at last&mdash;"more than I owe to you. You only
+taught me to be vain."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian&mdash;or shall be some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "I
+don't know what you want. What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Basil," said the lad, going over to him, and putting his hand on his
+shoulder, "you have come too late. Yesterday when I heard that Sibyl
+Vane had killed herself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried
+Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? Of
+course she killed herself."</p>
+
+<p>The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful," he muttered,
+and a shudder ran through him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. It is one of
+the great romantic tragedies of the age. As a rule, people who act lead
+the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives,
+or something tedious. You know what I mean&mdash;middle-class virtue, and all
+that kind of thing. How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest
+tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last night she played&mdash;the night
+you saw her&mdash;she acted badly because she had known the reality of love.
+When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She
+passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr
+about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all
+its wasted beauty. But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not
+suffered. If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment&mdash;about
+half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to six&mdash;you would have found me in
+tears. Even Harry, who was here, who brought me the news, in fact, had
+no idea what I was going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed
+away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.
+And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me.
+That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How
+like a sympathetic person! You remind me of a story Harry told me about
+a certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to
+get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law altered&mdash;I forget
+exactly what it was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his
+disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of <i>ennui</i>,
+and became a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, if
+you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has
+happened, or to see it from the proper artistic point of view. Was it
+not Gautier who used to write about <i>la consolation des arts</i>? I
+remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day
+and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young
+man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man
+who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries
+of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old
+brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite
+surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is much to be got from all these. But
+the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is
+still more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry
+says, is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my
+talking to you like this. You have not realised how I have developed. I
+was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions,
+new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less.
+I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course I am very fond
+of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not
+stronger&mdash;you are too much afraid of life&mdash;but you are better. And how
+happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel
+with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."</p>
+
+<p>The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him,
+and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art. He
+could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his
+indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. There was
+so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Dorian," he said, at length, with a sad smile, "I won't speak to
+you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. I only trust your
+name won't be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take
+place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shook his head and a look of annoyance passed over his face at
+the mention of the word "inquest." There was something so crude and
+vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But surely she did?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to
+anyone. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who
+I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. It
+was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should
+like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and
+some broken pathetic words."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you
+must come and sit to me yourself again. I can't get on without you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!" he exclaimed,
+starting back.</p>
+
+<p>The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "Do
+you mean to say you don't like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have
+you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the best
+thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply
+disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room
+looked different as I came in."</p>
+
+<p>"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let
+him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes&mdash;that
+is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait."</p>
+
+<p>"Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for
+it. Let me see it." And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room.</p>
+
+<p>A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between the
+painter and the screen. "Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must
+not look at it. I don't wish you to."</p>
+
+<p>"Not look at my own work! you are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at
+it?" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never
+speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don't offer
+any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you
+touch this screen, everything is over between us."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute
+amazement. He had never seen him like this before. The lad was actually
+pallid with rage. His hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes
+were like disks of blue fire. He was trembling all over.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want
+me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over
+towards the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I
+shouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in
+Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of
+varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"To exhibit it? You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a
+strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be
+shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That
+was impossible. Something&mdash;he did not know what&mdash;had to be done at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that. George Petit is going to
+collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
+S&egrave;ze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only
+be away a month. I should think you could easily spare it for that time.
+In fact, you are sure to be out of town. And if you keep it always
+behind a screen, you can't care much about it."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of
+perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible
+danger. "You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he
+cried. "Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being
+consistent have just as many moods as others have. The only difference
+is that your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that
+you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you
+to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing." He
+stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered
+that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest,
+"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you
+why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it
+was a revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He
+would ask him and try.</p>
+
+<p>"Basil," he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in
+the face, "we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours and I shall
+tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my
+picture?"</p>
+
+<p>The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you, you
+might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I
+could not bear your doing either of those two things. If you wish me
+never to look at your picture again, I am content. I have always you to
+look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden from
+the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame
+or reputation."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray. "I think I have a
+right to know." His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had
+taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. "Let us
+sit down. And just answer me one question. Have you noticed in the
+picture something curious?&mdash;something that probably at first did not
+strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
+hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say.
+Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
+extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power
+by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal
+whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped
+you. I grew jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you
+all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away
+from me you were still present in my art.... Of course I never let you
+know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not
+have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I
+had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become
+wonderful to my eyes&mdash;too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships
+there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
+keeping them.... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more
+absorbed in you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris
+in dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished
+boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of
+Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leant over
+the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent
+silver the marvel of your own face. And it had all been what art should
+be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes
+think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually
+are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your
+own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder
+of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or
+veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and
+film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that
+others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too
+much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I
+resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little
+annoyed; but then you did not realise all that it meant to me. Harry, to
+whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the
+picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was
+right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon
+as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it
+seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen
+anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking, and that
+I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to
+think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the
+work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and
+colour tell us of form and colour&mdash;that is all. It often seems to me
+that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals
+him. And so when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your
+portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me
+that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture cannot
+be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told
+you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, and
+a smile played about his lips. The peril was over. He was safe for the
+time. Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who
+had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself
+would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry
+had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was too
+clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be someone
+who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things
+that life had in store?</p>
+
+<p>"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
+have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very
+curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
+possibly let you stand in front of that picture."</p>
+
+<p>"You will some day, surely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been
+the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I
+have done that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don't know what it cost me
+to tell you all that I have told you."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you
+felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I
+have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should
+never put one's worship into words."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a very disappointing confession."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else in the
+picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn't talk
+about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must
+always remain so."</p>
+
+<p>"You have got Harry," said the painter, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends his
+days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is
+improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I
+don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go
+to you, Basil."</p>
+
+<p>"You will sit to me again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man came across
+two ideal things. Few come across one."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
+There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I
+will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward, regretfully. "And
+now good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once
+again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! how
+little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead
+of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost
+by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange
+confession explained to him! The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his
+wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences&mdash;he
+understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be
+something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all
+costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad
+of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room
+to which any of his friends had access.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+
+<p>When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if
+he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite
+impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked
+over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of
+Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There
+was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his
+guard.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted
+to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of
+his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room
+his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his
+own fancy?</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
+mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He
+asked her for the key of the schoolroom.</p>
+
+<p>"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of
+dust. I must get it arranged, and put straight before you go into it. It
+is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it
+hasn't been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died."</p>
+
+<p>He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of
+him. "That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the
+place&mdash;that is all. Give me the key."</p>
+
+<p>"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
+of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "Here is the key. I'll
+have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living up
+there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he cried, petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."</p>
+
+<p>She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
+the household. He sighed, and told her to manage things as she thought
+best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.</p>
+
+<p>As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round
+the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
+embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
+Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
+Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps
+served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
+had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
+itself&mdash;something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What
+the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on
+the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They
+would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still
+live on. It would be always alive.</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
+the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would
+have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more
+poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that
+he bore him&mdash;for it was really love&mdash;had nothing in it that was not
+noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of
+beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire.
+It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and
+Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.
+But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret,
+denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
+There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams
+that would make the shadow of their evil real.</p>
+
+<p>He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered
+it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face
+on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged;
+and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and
+rose-red lips&mdash;they all were there. It was simply the expression that
+had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw
+in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl
+Vane had been!&mdash;how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul
+was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment. A
+look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the
+picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his
+servant entered.</p>
+
+<p>"The persons are here, Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed
+to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly
+about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the
+writing-table, he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him
+round something to read, and reminding him that they were to meet at
+eight-fifteen that evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
+here."</p>
+
+<p>In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
+himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with
+a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid,
+red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably
+tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who
+dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people
+to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian
+Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a
+pleasure even to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
+hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
+person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a
+sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited
+for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
+Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame&mdash;though I don't
+go in much at present for religious art&mdash;but to-day I only want a
+picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I
+thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."</p>
+
+<p>"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to
+you. Which is the work of art, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it,
+covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going
+upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
+beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the
+long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we
+carry it to, Mr. Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
+perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top
+of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."</p>
+
+<p>He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
+began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
+picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
+protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
+of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
+so as to help them.</p>
+
+<p>"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man, when they
+reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the
+door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
+secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.</p>
+
+<p>He had not entered the place for more than four years&mdash;not, indeed,
+since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
+as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
+well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
+Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
+to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
+desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
+changed. There was the huge Italian <i>cassone</i>, with its
+fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
+he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase
+filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging
+the same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen were
+playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying
+hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all!
+Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked
+round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it
+seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be
+hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that
+was in store for him!</p>
+
+<p>But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
+this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple
+pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
+unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not
+see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept
+his youth&mdash;that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow
+finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full
+of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and
+shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit
+and in flesh&mdash;those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them
+their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would
+have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to
+the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon
+the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but
+the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become
+hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's-feet would creep round the fading eyes
+and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth
+would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men
+are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands,
+the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so
+stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was
+no help for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I
+am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."</p>
+
+<p>"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
+was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
+lean it against the wall. Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
+keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap upon him and fling him
+to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed
+the secret of his life. "I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much
+obliged for your kindness in coming round."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you,
+sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who
+glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely
+face. He had never seen anyone so marvellous.</p>
+
+<p>When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door,
+and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would ever look
+upon the horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his shame.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the library he found that it was just after five o'clock,
+and that the tea had been already brought up. On a little table of dark
+perfumed wood thickly encrusted with nacre, a present from Lady Radley,
+his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid, who had spent the
+preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside
+it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the
+edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of <i>The St. James's Gazette</i>
+had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
+returned. He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
+leaving the house, and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
+He would be sure to miss the picture&mdash;had no doubt missed it already,
+while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
+back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he
+might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
+room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He had heard
+of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who
+had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with
+an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of
+crumpled lace.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
+note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and
+a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
+eight-fifteen. He opened <i>The St. James's</i> languidly, and looked through
+it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew
+attention to the following paragraph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="top3">"<span class="smcap">Inquest on an Actress.</span>&mdash;An inquest was held this morning at the
+Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on
+the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the
+Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was
+returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the
+deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own
+evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem
+examination of the deceased."</p>
+
+<p class="top3">He frowned, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
+flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real
+ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
+having sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of him to have
+marked it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The man knew more
+than enough English for that.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something. And, yet,
+what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death?
+There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.</p>
+
+<p>His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was
+it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal
+stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
+Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
+himself into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a
+few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had
+ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
+delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
+show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made
+real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being,
+indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who
+spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the
+passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
+own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
+which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
+artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
+as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The
+style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and
+obscure at once, full of <i>argot</i> and of archaisms, of technical
+expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of
+some of the finest artists of the French school of <i>Symbolistes</i>. There
+were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour.
+The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
+philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
+spiritual ecstasies of some medi&aelig;val saint or the morbid confessions of
+a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense
+seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
+cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as
+it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced
+in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of
+reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling
+day and creeping shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
+through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no
+more. Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
+lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed
+the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
+bedside, and began to dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
+Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.
+That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was
+going."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a
+great difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed
+into the dining-room.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+
+<p>For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this
+book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought
+to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than nine
+large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different
+colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing
+fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost
+entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom
+the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended,
+became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the
+whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written
+before he had lived it.</p>
+
+<p>In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. He
+never knew&mdash;never, indeed, had any cause to know&mdash;that somewhat
+grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
+water, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was
+occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently,
+been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy&mdash;and perhaps in
+nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its
+place&mdash;that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really
+tragic, if somewhat over-emphasised, account of the sorrow and despair
+of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had
+most dearly valued.</p>
+
+<p>For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many
+others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard
+the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange rumours
+about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of
+the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw
+him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from
+the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered
+the room. There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked
+them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the
+innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming and
+graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at
+once sordid and sensual.</p>
+
+<p>Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged
+absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were
+his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
+upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left
+him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and ageing face on
+the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from
+the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken
+his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own
+beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He
+would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
+terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead,
+or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which
+were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would
+place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,
+and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
+delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little
+ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in
+disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he
+had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant
+because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. That
+curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they
+sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with
+gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad
+hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society.
+Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday
+evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world his
+beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to
+charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners, in
+the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted as much
+for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the
+exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle
+symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and
+antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially
+among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian
+Gray the true realisation of a type of which they had often dreamed in
+Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real
+culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect
+manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company
+of those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make themselves
+perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom
+"the visible world existed."</p>
+
+<p>And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the
+arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
+Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment
+universal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert
+the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for
+him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
+time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of
+the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in
+everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
+his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.</p>
+
+<p>For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
+immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a
+subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London
+of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the
+"Satyricon" once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be
+something more than a mere <i>arbiter elegantiarum</i>, to be consulted on
+the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of
+a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
+its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
+spiritualising of the senses its highest realisation.</p>
+
+<p>The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been
+decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and
+sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
+conscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existence.
+But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had
+never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal
+merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to
+kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new
+spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant
+characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through History, he
+was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to
+such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous
+forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose
+result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied
+degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape,
+Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with
+the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of
+the field as his companions.</p>
+
+<p>Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that
+was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely
+puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was
+to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to
+accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode
+of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself,
+and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of
+the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that
+dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to
+concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
+after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
+death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
+the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
+itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
+and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
+might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
+with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the
+curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb
+shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside,
+there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
+going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
+from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it
+feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from
+her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
+degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
+watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan
+mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we
+had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been
+studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the
+letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
+Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
+comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where
+we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the
+necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
+stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might
+open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the
+darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh
+shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in
+which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
+in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of
+joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.</p>
+
+<p>It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray
+to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his
+search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and
+possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he
+would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
+alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
+then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
+intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
+is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that indeed,
+according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic
+communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction
+for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices
+of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of
+the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its
+elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to
+symbolise. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch
+the priest, in his stiff flowered vestment, slowly and with white hands
+moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled
+lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one
+would fain think, is indeed the "<i>panis c&aelig;lestis</i>," the bread of angels,
+or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host
+into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming
+censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the
+air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he
+passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and
+long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women
+whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual
+development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of
+mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for
+the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are
+no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous
+power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle
+antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season;
+and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the
+<i>Darwinismus</i> movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in
+tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the
+brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of
+the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,
+morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him
+before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared
+with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
+intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
+He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual
+mysteries to reveal.</p>
+
+<p>And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their
+manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums
+from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
+its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their
+true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one
+mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
+that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the
+brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to
+elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
+influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, or
+aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that
+sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be
+able to expel melancholy from the soul.</p>
+
+<p>At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
+latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
+olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad
+gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled
+Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
+grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching
+upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed
+or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and
+horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
+barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
+beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
+unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
+the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
+dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
+with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
+mysterious <i>juruparis</i> of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
+allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been
+subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
+Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones
+such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers
+that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness.
+He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were
+shaken; the long <i>clarin</i> of the Mexicans, into which the performer does
+not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh <i>ture</i> of the
+Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in
+high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three
+leagues; the <i>teponaztli</i>, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and
+is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from
+the milky juice of plants; the <i>yotl</i>-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung
+in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the
+skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went
+with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has
+left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these
+instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought
+that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and
+with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would
+sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening
+in rapt pleasure to "Tannh&auml;user," and seeing in the prelude to that
+great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a
+costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered
+with five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years,
+and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often spend a
+whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that
+he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by
+lamp-light, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the
+pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
+carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red
+cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their
+alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of the
+sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow
+of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
+extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise <i>de la
+vieille roche</i> that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.</p>
+
+<p>He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's
+"Clericalis Disciplina" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real
+jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of
+Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with
+collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There was a gem in the
+brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of
+golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a
+magical sleep, and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de
+Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India
+made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth
+provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The
+garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her
+colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
+that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
+Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a
+newly-killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The
+bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
+that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the
+aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any
+danger by fire.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
+at the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the
+Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
+inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable
+were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold
+might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's strange
+romance "A Margarite of America" it was stated that in the chamber of
+the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased
+out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles,
+sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of
+Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. A
+sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to
+King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over
+its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it
+away&mdash;Procopius tells the story&mdash;nor was it ever found again, though the
+Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.
+The King of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian a rosary of three
+hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.</p>
+
+<p>When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.
+of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brant&ocirc;me,
+and his cap had double rows of rubles that threw out a great light.
+Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
+twenty-one diamonds. Richard II. had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
+marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII.,
+on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket
+of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich
+stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The
+favourites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.
+Edward II. gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with
+jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
+skull-cap <i>parsem&eacute;</i> with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves
+reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and
+fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last
+Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls, and
+studded with sapphires.</p>
+
+<p>How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
+decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries that
+performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the Northern
+nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject&mdash;and he always had an
+extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in
+whatever he took up&mdash;he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
+ruin that Time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
+rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils
+bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of
+their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained
+his flower-like bloom. How different it was with material things! Where
+had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
+the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls
+for the pleasure of Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had
+stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on
+which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn
+by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
+wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the
+dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth
+of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic
+robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were
+figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,
+hunters&mdash;all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;" and the
+coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were
+embroidered the verses of a song beginning "<i>Madame, je suis tout
+joyeux</i>," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
+thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
+pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
+for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen
+hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
+king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
+were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
+in gold." Catherine de M&eacute;dicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black
+velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask,
+with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground,
+and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a
+room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
+cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet
+high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was
+made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from
+the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and
+profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken
+from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had
+stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.</p>
+
+<p>And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
+specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
+the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates, and
+stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
+from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
+"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
+elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
+blue silks, and wrought with <i>fleurs de lys</i>, birds, and images; veils
+of <i>lacis</i> worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
+Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese
+<i>Foukousas</i> with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged
+birds.</p>
+
+<p>He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
+he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
+long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored
+away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of
+the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that
+she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering
+that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possessed a
+gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a
+repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal
+blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought
+in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing
+scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was
+figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the
+fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with
+heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed
+white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread
+and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread
+raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk,
+and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom
+was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and
+blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold,
+figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ,
+and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
+white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and
+<i>fleurs de lys</i>; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and
+many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to
+which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely
+house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could
+escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be
+almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room
+where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own
+hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real
+degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the
+purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he would not go there,
+would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
+his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.
+Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to
+dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
+until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the
+picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times,
+with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin,
+and smiling with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to
+bear the burden that should have been his own.</p>
+
+<p>After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and
+gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as
+well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
+than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from the picture
+that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his
+absence someone might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate
+bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was true
+that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness
+of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
+from that? He would laugh at anyone who tried to taunt him. He had not
+painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked?
+Even if he told them, would they believe it?</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
+Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank
+who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton
+luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly
+leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not been
+tampered with, and that the picture was still there. What if it should
+be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely the world
+would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it.</p>
+
+<p>For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
+He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and
+social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said
+that on one occasion when he was brought by a friend into the
+smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman
+got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current
+about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It was rumoured
+that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the
+distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and
+coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary
+absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in
+society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a
+sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were
+determined to discover his secret.</p>
+
+<p>Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,
+and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his
+charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth
+that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer
+to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about
+him. It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most
+intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who had
+wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and
+set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
+horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>Yet these whispered scandals only increased, in the eyes of many, his
+strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of
+security. Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to
+believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
+fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance
+than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much
+less value than the possession of a good <i>chef</i>. And, after all, it is a
+very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad
+dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the
+cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold <i>entr&eacute;es</i>, as Lord Henry
+remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a
+good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are,
+or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely
+essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as
+its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic
+play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is
+insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by
+which we can multiply our personalities.</p>
+
+<p>Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the
+shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing
+simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being
+with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature
+that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and
+whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He
+loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country
+house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in
+his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, in
+his "Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James," as one
+who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept him not
+long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had
+some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached
+his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so
+suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's
+studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here, in
+gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and
+wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black armour
+piled at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of
+Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame?
+Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared
+to realise? Here, from the fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth
+Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.
+A flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an enamelled collar
+of white and damask roses. On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an
+apple. There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He
+knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her lovers.
+Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval heavy-lidded eyes
+seemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his
+powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
+saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with
+disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were
+so over-laden with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth
+century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
+second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest
+days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.
+Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and
+insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked
+upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star
+of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of
+his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred
+within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady
+Hamilton face, and her moist wine-dashed lips&mdash;he knew what he had got
+from her. He had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty
+of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were
+vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled from the cup she was
+holding. The carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were
+still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to
+follow him wherever he went.</p>
+
+<p>Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,
+nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with
+an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were
+times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was
+merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and
+circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had
+been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them
+all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of
+the world and made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety. It
+seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
+himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how,
+crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
+Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
+Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him, and the
+flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
+caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
+an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
+wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
+with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
+days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible <i>t&aelig;dium vit&aelig;</i>, that comes
+on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
+emerald at the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of
+pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
+Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero
+C&aelig;sar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
+colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
+from Carthage, and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
+two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
+tapestries or cunningly-wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
+beautiful forms of those whom Vice and Blood and Weariness had made
+monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted
+her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the
+dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the
+Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
+whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
+price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase
+living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot
+who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding
+beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro
+Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of
+Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who
+received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk,
+filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at
+the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured
+only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as
+other men have for red wine&mdash;the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and
+one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his
+own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent,
+and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a
+Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord
+of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
+who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este
+in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan
+church for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his
+brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was
+coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange,
+could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love
+and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and
+acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his
+bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,
+as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him
+could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and
+they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
+strange manners of poisoning&mdash;poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch,
+by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by
+an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were
+moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could
+realise his conception of the beautiful.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
+birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had
+been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
+foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a man
+passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of his
+grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognised him.
+It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not
+account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went on
+quickly in the direction of his own house.</p>
+
+<p>But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the
+pavement, and then hurrying after him. In a few moments his hand was on
+his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for
+you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your
+tired servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to
+Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before
+I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me.
+But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognise me?"</p>
+
+<p>"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognise Grosvenor
+Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at
+all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen
+you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a
+studio in Paris, and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture
+I have in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to talk.
+Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something
+to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray,
+languidly, as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
+latch-key.</p>
+
+<p>The lamp-light struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
+watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till
+twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
+the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any
+delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with
+me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter
+to travel! A Gladstone bag, and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get
+into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing
+is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward shook his head as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
+library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth.
+The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with
+some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little
+marqueterie table.</p>
+
+<p>"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
+everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a
+most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you
+used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's
+maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
+<i>Anglomanie</i> is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly
+of the French, doesn't it? But&mdash;do you know?&mdash;he was not at all a bad
+servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One
+often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted
+to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another
+brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
+hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap
+and coat off, and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the
+corner. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
+Don't frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it all about?" cried Dorian, in his petulant way, flinging
+himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of
+myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."</p>
+
+<p>"It is about yourself," answered Hallward, in his grave, deep voice,
+"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
+sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the
+most dreadful things are being said against you in London."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other
+people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got
+the charm of novelty."</p>
+
+<p>"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his
+good name. You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and
+degraded. Of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all
+that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind
+you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe
+them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's
+face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
+There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself
+in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his
+hands even. Somebody&mdash;I won't mention his name, but you know him&mdash;came
+to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen him before,
+and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard
+a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There
+was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I know now that
+I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But
+you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous
+untroubled youth&mdash;I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see
+you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I
+am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are
+whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that
+a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter
+it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your
+house nor invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord
+Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up
+in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the
+exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip, and said that you
+might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no
+pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman
+should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of
+yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out
+before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
+young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed
+suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had
+to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable.
+What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord
+Kent's only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St.
+James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the
+young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman
+would associate with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
+said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
+in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
+is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
+anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
+his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
+I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
+son takes his wife from the streets what is that to me? If Adrian
+Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I
+know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
+prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
+call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that
+they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they
+slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and
+brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of
+lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
+fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
+enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
+I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
+of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all
+sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
+madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them
+there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are
+smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are
+inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not
+have made his sister's name a by-word."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, Basil. You go too far."</p>
+
+<p>"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
+Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
+single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the Park?
+Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
+other stories&mdash;stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of
+dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in
+London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I
+laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your
+country house, and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know
+what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to
+you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into
+an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then
+proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to
+lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have
+a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful
+people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't
+be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good,
+not for evil. They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become
+intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for
+shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or
+not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it
+seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest
+friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to
+him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was
+implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that
+it was absurd&mdash;that I knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable
+of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I
+could answer that, I should have to see your soul."</p>
+
+<p>"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
+turning almost white from fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
+voice&mdash;"to see your soul. But only God can do that."</p>
+
+<p>A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You
+shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the
+table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it?
+You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody
+would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the
+better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate
+about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about
+corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face."</p>
+
+<p>There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his
+foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible
+joy at the thought that someone else was to share his secret, and that
+the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his
+shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous
+memory of what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into
+his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that
+you fancy only God can see."</p>
+
+<p>Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must
+not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don't mean
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so?" He laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good.
+You know I have been always a staunch friend to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."</p>
+
+<p>A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for a
+moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right
+had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of
+what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he
+straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood
+there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes and their
+throbbing cores of flame.</p>
+
+<p>"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man, in a hard, clear voice.</p>
+
+<p>He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give
+me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. If
+you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I
+shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am
+going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and
+shameful."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come
+upstairs, Basil," he said, quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from day
+to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
+show it to you if you come with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my
+train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to
+read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."</p>
+
+<p>"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will
+not have to read long."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward
+following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at
+night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A
+rising wind made some of the windows rattle.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the
+floor, and taking out the key turned it in the lock. "You insist on
+knowing, Basil?" he asked, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat harshly,
+"You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything
+about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think:" and,
+taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of
+air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky
+orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he
+placed the lamp on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Hallward glanced round him, with a puzzled expression. The room looked
+as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a
+curtained picture, an old Italian <i>cassone</i>, and an almost empty
+bookcase&mdash;that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a
+table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was
+standing on the mantel-shelf, he saw that the whole place was covered
+with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling
+behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.</p>
+
+<p>"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that
+curtain back, and you will see mine."</p>
+
+<p>The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or
+playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man; and he tore
+the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the
+dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was
+something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
+Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The
+horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous
+beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet
+on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the
+loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed
+away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian
+himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognise his own brush-work,
+and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt
+afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the
+left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright
+vermilion.</p>
+
+<p>It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never
+done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if
+his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own
+picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at
+Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his
+parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across
+his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.</p>
+
+<p>The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with
+that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
+absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither
+real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the
+spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken
+the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded
+shrill and curious in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in
+his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good
+looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to
+me the wonder of youth, and you finished the portrait of me that
+revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I
+don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would
+call it a prayer...."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible.
+The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had
+some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is
+impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
+window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.</p>
+
+<p>"You told me you had destroyed it."</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it is my picture."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"My ideal, as you call it...."</p>
+
+<p>"As you called it."</p>
+
+<p>"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an
+ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the face of my soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
+devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian, with a
+wild gesture of despair.</p>
+
+<p>Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. "My God! if it
+is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,
+why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to
+be!" He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The
+surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was
+from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through
+some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly
+eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not
+so fearful.</p>
+
+<p>His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and
+lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he
+flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
+buried his face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" There was no
+answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray,
+Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in
+one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash
+away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride
+has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.
+I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself
+too much. We are both punished."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed
+eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
+remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
+as scarlet; yet I will make them as white as snow'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those words mean nothing to me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God!
+don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable
+feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
+been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear
+by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred
+within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more
+than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
+around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced
+him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had
+brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten
+to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as
+he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round.
+Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at
+him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear,
+crushing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.</p>
+
+<p>There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of someone choking
+with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively,
+waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice
+more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor.
+He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the
+knife on the table, and listened.</p>
+
+<p>He could hear nothing but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He
+opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely
+quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the
+balustrade, and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.
+Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as
+he did so.</p>
+
+<p>The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with
+bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been
+for the red jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that was
+slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was
+simply asleep.</p>
+
+<p>How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking
+over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind
+had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail,
+starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down, and saw the
+policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on
+the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom
+gleamed at the corner, and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl
+was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and
+then she stopped, and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse
+voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She
+stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the Square. The
+gas-lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their
+black iron branches to and fro. He shivered, and went back, closing the
+window behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Having reached the door, he turned the key, and opened it. He did not
+even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole
+thing was not to realise the situation. The friend who had painted the
+fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his
+life. That was enough.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish
+workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished
+steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by
+his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment,
+then he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing
+the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands
+looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.</p>
+
+<p>Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The
+woodwork creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped
+several times, and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the
+sound of his own footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They
+must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in
+the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and
+put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled
+out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, and began to think. Every year&mdash;every month, almost&mdash;men
+were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness
+of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth....
+And yet what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the
+house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants
+were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to
+Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had
+intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before
+any suspicions would be aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed
+long before then.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat, and went
+out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the
+policeman on the pavement outside, and seeing the flash of the
+bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited, and held his breath.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments he drew back the latch, and slipped out, shutting
+the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In
+about five minutes his valet appeared half dressed, and looking very
+drowsy.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in;
+"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
+blinking.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
+to-morrow. I have some work to do."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did anyone call this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
+catch his train."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
+find you at the club."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table, and passed into the
+library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room biting
+his lip, and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the
+shelves, and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152,
+Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+
+<p>At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
+chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
+peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
+He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.</p>
+
+<p>The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he
+opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had
+been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His
+night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But
+youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.</p>
+
+<p>He turned round, and, leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his
+chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky
+was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like
+a morning in May.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent
+blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there
+with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
+suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for
+Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came
+back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still
+sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such
+hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken
+or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory
+than in the doing of them; strange triumphs that gratified the pride
+more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of
+joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the
+senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of
+the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
+strangle one itself.</p>
+
+<p>When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
+then got up hastily, and dressed himself with even more than his usual
+care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
+scarf-pin, and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time
+also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
+about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
+servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of the
+letters he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several times
+over, and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face.
+"That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once said.</p>
+
+<p>After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
+with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
+table sat down and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
+other he handed to the valet.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
+is out of town, get his address."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upon a
+piece of paper, drawing first flowers, and bits of architecture, and
+then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
+seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and,
+getting up, went over to the bookcase and took out a volume at hazard.
+He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until
+it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.</p>
+
+<p>When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
+of the book. It was Gautier's "&Eacute;maux et Cam&eacute;es," Charpentier's
+Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of
+citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
+pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned
+over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the
+cold yellow hand "<i>du supplice encore mal lav&eacute;e</i>," with its downy red
+hairs and its "<i>doigts de faune</i>." He glanced at his own white taper
+fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he
+came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Sur une gamme chromatique,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Le sein de perles ruisselant,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">La V&eacute;nus de l'Adriatique</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Les d&ocirc;mes, sur l'azur des ondes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Suivant la phrase au pur contour,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">S'enflent comme des gorges rondes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Que soul&egrave;ve un soupir d'amour.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"L'esquif aborde et me d&eacute;pose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Jetant son amarre au pilier,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Devant une fa&ccedil;ade rose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sur le marbre d'un escalier."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating
+down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black
+gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to
+him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one
+pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the
+gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall
+honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the
+dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept
+saying over and over to himself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Devant une fa&ccedil;ade rose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sur le marbre d'un escalier."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn
+that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to
+mad, delightful follies. There was romance in every place. But Venice,
+like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true
+romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. Basil had
+been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor
+Basil! what a horrible way for a man to die!</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He read of
+the swallows that fly in and out of the little caf&eacute; at Smyrna where the
+Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke
+their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of
+the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in
+its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered
+Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures
+with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl
+over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which,
+drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that
+Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "<i>monstre charmant</i>" that
+couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time the book
+fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came
+over him. What if Alan Campbell should be out of England? Days would
+elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come. What
+could he do then? Every moment was of vital importance. They had been
+great friends once, five years before&mdash;almost inseparable, indeed. Then
+the intimacy had come suddenly to an end. When they met in society now,
+it was only Dorian Gray who smiled; Alan Campbell never did.</p>
+
+<p>He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation
+of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry
+he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant
+intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he had spent a great
+deal of his time working in the Laboratory, and had taken a good class
+in the Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted
+to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own, in which he
+used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the annoyance of his
+mother, who had set her heart on his standing for Parliament, and had a
+vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. He was
+an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin and
+the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had
+first brought him and Dorian Gray together&mdash;music and that indefinable
+attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished,
+and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met
+at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after
+that used to be always seen together at the Opera, and wherever good
+music was going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell
+was always either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to
+many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful
+and fascinating in life. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place
+between them no one ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that they
+scarcely spoke when they met, and that Campbell seemed always to go away
+early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed,
+too&mdash;was strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike
+hearing music, and would never himself play, giving as his excuse, when
+he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no
+time left in which to practise. And this was certainly true. Every day
+he seemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared
+once or twice in some of the scientific reviews, in connection with
+certain curious experiments.</p>
+
+<p>This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he kept
+glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by he became horribly
+agitated. At last he got up, and began to pace up and down the room,
+looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long stealthy strides. His
+hands were curiously cold.</p>
+
+<p>The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with
+feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the
+jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting
+for him there; saw it indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands
+his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight,
+and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain
+had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made
+grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
+danced like some foul puppet on a stand, and grinned through moving
+masks. Then, suddenly, Time stopped for him. Yes: that blind,
+slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, Time being
+dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its
+grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him
+stone.</p>
+
+<p>At last the door opened, and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back
+to his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself
+again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments Alan Campbell walked in,
+looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his
+coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming."</p>
+
+<p>"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it
+was a matter of life and death." His voice was hard and cold. He spoke
+with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the steady
+searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands in the
+pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
+gesture with which he had been greeted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
+person. Sit down."</p>
+
+<p>Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The
+two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that
+what he was going to do was dreadful.</p>
+
+<p>After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very
+quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
+had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room
+to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
+He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, and don't look at me like
+that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not
+concern you. What you have to do is this&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether what you
+have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. I entirely decline
+to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
+They don't interest me any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
+you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are
+the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
+matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about
+chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you
+have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs&mdash;to destroy it
+so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come
+into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in
+Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must
+be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and
+everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
+scatter in the air."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad, Dorian."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad, I tell you&mdash;mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to
+help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to
+do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my
+reputation for you? What is it to me what devil's work you are up to?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was suicide, Alan."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I
+don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not be
+sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of
+all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have
+thought you knew more about people's characters. Your friend Lord Henry
+Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has
+taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have
+come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't come to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had made me
+suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the
+marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the
+result was the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not
+inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my stirring in
+the matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a crime
+without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment; listen to
+me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain
+scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
+horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous
+dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden
+table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through,
+you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not
+turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing anything wrong.
+On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the
+human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or
+gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. What I
+want you to do is merely what you have often done before. Indeed, to
+destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to
+work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If
+it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you
+help me."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent
+to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you
+came I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some
+day. No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the
+scientific point of view. You don't inquire where the dead things on
+which you experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you too
+much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead."</p>
+
+<p>"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is
+sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan!
+if you don't come to my assistance I am ruined. Why, they will hang me,
+Alan! Don't you understand? They will hang me for what I have done."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do
+anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me."</p>
+
+<p>"You refuse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I entreat you, Alan."</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless."</p>
+
+<p>The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes. Then he stretched
+out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He read
+it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table.
+Having done this, he got up, and went over to the window.</p>
+
+<p>Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and
+opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell back
+in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if
+his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.</p>
+
+<p>After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round, and
+came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no
+alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the
+address. If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't help me, I
+will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to
+help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you.
+You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh,
+offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me&mdash;no
+living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate
+terms."</p>
+
+<p>Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The
+thing is quite simple. Come, don't work yourself into this fever. The
+thing has to be done. Face it, and do it."</p>
+
+<p>A groan broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. The
+ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing
+Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
+borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his
+forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already
+come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead.
+It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter
+things.</p>
+
+<p>"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
+note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the
+things back to you."</p>
+
+<p>Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope
+to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he
+rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon
+as possible, and to bring the things with him.</p>
+
+<p>As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and, having got up
+from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a
+kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly
+buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the
+beat of a hammer.</p>
+
+<p>As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and, looking at Dorian
+Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in
+the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.
+"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Alan: you have saved my life," said Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from
+corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing
+what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life
+that I am thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian, with a sigh, "I wish you had a thousandth
+part of the pity for me that I have for you." He turned away as he
+spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant
+entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil
+of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another
+errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies
+Selby with orchids?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harden, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden
+personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and
+to have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don't want any white
+ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty place,
+otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it."</p>
+
+<p>"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your experiment take, Alan?"
+he said, in a calm, indifferent voice. The presence of a third person in
+the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.</p>
+
+<p>Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
+Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have
+the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is!
+I'll take it for you. You bring the other things." He spoke rapidly, and
+in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left
+the room together.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it
+in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He
+shuddered. "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his
+portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn
+curtain was lying. He remembered that, the night before he had
+forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and
+was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one
+of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it
+was!&mdash;more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent
+thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose
+grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had
+not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.</p>
+
+<p>He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with
+half-closed eyes and averted head walked quickly in, determined that he
+would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down, and
+taking up the gold and purple hanging, he flung it right over the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed
+themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard
+Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other
+things that he had required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder if
+he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been
+thrust back into the chair, and that Campbell was gazing into a
+glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs he heard the key
+being turned in the lock.</p>
+
+<p>It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library. He was
+pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what you asked me to do," he
+muttered. "And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again."</p>
+
+<p>"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," said Dorian,
+simply.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible
+smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at
+the table was gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3>
+
+
+<p>That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
+buttonhole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
+Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing
+with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he
+bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps
+one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
+Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed
+that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our
+age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for
+sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He
+himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a
+moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who
+was a very clever woman, with what Lord Henry used to describe as the
+remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife
+to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband
+properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and
+married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted
+herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and
+French <i>esprit</i> when she could get it.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian was one of her special favourites, and she always told him that
+she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my
+dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
+"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most
+fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our
+bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to
+raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.
+However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully
+short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never
+sees anything."</p>
+
+<p>Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she
+explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married
+daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make
+matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is
+most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay
+with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman
+like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them
+up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure
+unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much
+to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.
+There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of
+Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You
+shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. Yes:
+it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen
+before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those
+middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,
+but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an
+over-dressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always
+trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to
+her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against
+her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and
+Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy
+dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces, that, once
+seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,
+white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the
+impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of
+ideas.</p>
+
+<p>He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the
+great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the
+mauve-draped mantel-shelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be
+so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance, and he promised
+faithfully not to disappoint me."</p>
+
+<p>It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door
+opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some
+insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.</p>
+
+<p>But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away
+untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an
+insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the <i>menu</i> specially for you," and
+now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence
+and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass
+with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian," said Lord Henry, at last, as the <i>chaud-froid</i> was being
+handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out
+of sorts."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is afraid
+to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly
+should."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in
+love for a whole week&mdash;not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town."</p>
+
+<p>"How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady.
+"I really cannot understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl,
+Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us and
+your short frocks."</p>
+
+<p>"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I
+remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how <i>d&eacute;collet&eacute;e</i>
+she was then."</p>
+
+<p>"She is still <i>d&eacute;collet&eacute;e</i>," he answered, taking an olive in his long
+fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
+<i>&eacute;dition de luxe</i> of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and
+full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary.
+When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third
+husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Lady Narborough."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe a word of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether,
+like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at
+her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any
+hearts at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Four husbands! Upon my word that is <i>trop de z&egrave;le</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Trop d'audace</i>, I tell her," said Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol
+like? I don't know him."</p>
+
+<p>"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,"
+said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all
+surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."</p>
+
+<p>"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows.
+"It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent
+terms."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous,"
+he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things
+against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really if you all worship
+Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so
+as to be in the fashion."</p>
+
+<p>"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You
+were far too happy. When a woman marries again it is because she
+detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he
+adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."</p>
+
+<p>"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the
+rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them
+they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask
+me to dinner again, after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough; but
+it is quite true."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your
+defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married.
+You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that
+would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors,
+and all the bachelors like married men."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fin de si&egrave;cle</i>," murmured Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fin du globe</i>," answered his hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it were <i>fin du globe</i>," said Dorian, with a sigh. "Life is a
+great disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell
+me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that one knows that
+Life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish
+that I had been; but you are made to be good&mdash;you look so good. I must
+find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray should
+get married?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through
+Debrett carefully to-night, and draw out a list of all the eligible
+young ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done
+in a hurry. I want it to be what <i>The Morning Post</i> calls a suitable
+alliance, and I want you both to be happy."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry.
+"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair,
+and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again.
+You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew
+prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet,
+though. I want it to be a delightful gathering."</p>
+
+<p>"I like men who have a future, and women who have a past," he answered.
+"Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons,
+my dear Lady Ruxton," she added. "I didn't see you hadn't finished your
+cigarette."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going
+to limit myself, for the future."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal
+thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a
+feast."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to
+me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she
+murmured, as she swept out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal,"
+cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble
+upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the
+table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat, and went and
+sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the
+situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The
+word <i>doctrinaire</i>&mdash;word full of terror to the British mind&mdash;reappeared
+from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served
+as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of
+Thought. The inherited stupidity of the race&mdash;sound English common sense
+he jovially termed it&mdash;was shown to be the proper bulwark for Society.</p>
+
+<p>A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at
+Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of
+sorts at dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all."</p>
+
+<p>"You were charming last night. The little Duchess is quite devoted to
+you. She tells me she is going down to Selby."</p>
+
+<p>"She has promised to come on the twentieth."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Monmouth to be there too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very
+clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of
+weakness. It is the feet of clay that makes the gold of the image
+precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White
+porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what
+fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences."</p>
+
+<p>"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is
+ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity,
+with time thrown in. Who else is coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey
+Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian."</p>
+
+<p>"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find
+him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat over-dressed, by
+being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to
+Monte Carlo with his father."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come. By the
+way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven.
+What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at
+last, "I did not get home till nearly three."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you go to the club?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I
+didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How
+inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been
+doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at
+half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my
+latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any
+corroborative evidence on the subject you can ask him."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let
+us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman.
+Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not
+yourself to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come
+round and see you to-morrow or next day. Make my excuses to Lady
+Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Dorian. I daresay I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The
+Duchess is coming."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove
+back to his own house he was conscious that the sense of terror he
+thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual
+questioning had made him lose his nerves for the moment, and he wanted
+his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He
+winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it had to be done. He realised that, and when he had locked the door
+of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust
+Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another
+log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was
+horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything.
+At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian
+pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead
+with a cool musk-scented vinegar.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed
+nervously at his under-lip. Between two of the windows stood a large
+Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony, and inlaid with ivory and blue
+lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and
+make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet
+almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He
+lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the
+long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the
+cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying,
+went over to it, and, having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A
+triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively
+towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese
+box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides
+patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round
+crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside
+was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and
+persistent.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his
+face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly
+hot, he drew himself up, and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes
+to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so,
+and went into his bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray
+dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept
+quietly out of the house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good
+horse. He hailed it, and in a low voice gave the driver an address.</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if
+you drive fast."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and
+after his fare had got in he turned his horse round, and drove rapidly
+towards the river.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3>
+
+
+<p>A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
+in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
+and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some
+of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards
+brawled and screamed.</p>
+
+<p>Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
+Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
+now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
+to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
+senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret.
+He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were
+opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the
+memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were
+new.</p>
+
+<p>The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a
+huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The
+gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the
+man lost his way, and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from
+the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The side-windows of the hansom
+were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.</p>
+
+<p>"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the
+soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to
+death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had
+been spilt. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no
+atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was
+possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out,
+to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed,
+what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made
+him a Judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful,
+horrible, not to be endured.</p>
+
+<p>On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
+step. He thrust up the trap, and called to the man to drive faster. The
+hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned, and
+his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse
+madly with his stick. The driver laughed, and whipped up. He laughed in
+answer, and the man was silent.</p>
+
+<p>The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
+sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and, as the mist
+thickened, he felt afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he
+could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like
+tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the
+darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut,
+then swerved aside, and broke into a gallop.</p>
+
+<p>After some time they left the clay road, and rattled again over
+rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
+fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamp-lit blind. He
+watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes, and made
+gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart.
+As they turned a corner a woman yelled something at them from an open
+door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The
+driver beat at them with his whip.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with
+hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
+those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
+them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
+intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
+still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept
+the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's
+appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness
+that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became
+dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The
+coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life,
+the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their
+intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art,
+the dreamy shadows of Song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness.
+In three days he would be free.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the
+low roofs and jagged chimney stacks of the houses rose the black masts
+of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
+trap.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian started, and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and,
+having got out hastily, and given the driver the extra fare he had
+promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and
+there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light
+shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an
+outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a
+wet mackintosh.</p>
+
+<p>He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he
+was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small
+shabby house, that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of
+the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped, and gave a peculiar knock.</p>
+
+<p>After a little time he heard steps in the passage, and the chain being
+unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word
+to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as
+he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that
+swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the
+street. He dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked
+as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring
+gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them,
+were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed
+them, making quivering discs of light. The floor was covered with
+ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained
+with dark rings of spilt liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little
+charcoal stove playing with bone counters, and showing their white teeth
+as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a
+sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily-painted bar that ran
+across one complete side stood two haggard women mocking an old man who
+was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He
+thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed
+by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
+darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
+heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils
+quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow
+hair, who was bending over a lamp, lighting a long thin pipe, looked up
+at him, and nodded in a hesitating manner.</p>
+
+<p>"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps
+will speak to me now."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had left England."</p>
+
+<p>"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at
+last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added,
+with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I
+think I have had too many friends."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian winced, and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
+fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the
+gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in
+what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
+teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he
+was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was
+eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
+Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The
+presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one
+would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going on to the other place," he said, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"On the wharf?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
+now."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women
+who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better."</p>
+
+<p>"Much the same."</p>
+
+<p>"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind."</p>
+
+<p>Adrian Singleton rose up wearily, and followed Dorian to the bar. A
+half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
+greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
+them. The women sidled up, and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back
+on them, and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.</p>
+
+<p>A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
+the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
+the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then
+flickered out, and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head, and
+raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
+watched her enviously.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What
+does it matter? I am quite happy here."</p>
+
+<p>"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
+after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," answered the young man, passing up the steps, and wiping
+his parched mouth with a handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew
+the curtain aside a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
+woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!" she
+hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."</p>
+
+<p>She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called,
+ain't it?" she yelled after him.</p>
+
+<p>The drowsy sailor leapt to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
+round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He
+rushed out as if in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His
+meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
+if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
+Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his
+lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did
+it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of
+another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life, and
+paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so
+often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In
+her dealings with man Destiny never closed her accounts.</p>
+
+<p>There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
+for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of
+the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
+impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
+They move to their terrible end as automatons move, Choice is taken from
+them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but
+to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. For all
+sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of
+disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning-star of evil, fell
+from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.</p>
+
+<p>Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
+rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
+as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
+short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
+suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself he
+was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.</p>
+
+<p>He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
+tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
+and saw the gleam of a polished barrel pointing straight at his head,
+and the dusky form of a short thick-set man facing him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad. What have I done to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane
+was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door.
+I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had
+no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were
+dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I
+heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you
+are going to die."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I
+never heard of her. You are mad."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
+are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what
+to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one
+minute to make your peace&mdash;no more. I go on board to-night for India,
+and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
+what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he
+cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
+voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!"</p>
+
+<p>James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
+Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.</p>
+
+<p>Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
+the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
+of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
+unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
+summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
+when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not
+the man who had destroyed her life.</p>
+
+<p>He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I
+would have murdered you!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of
+committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
+"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
+hands."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I
+heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go home, and put that pistol away, or you may get into
+trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel, and going slowly down the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head
+to foot. After a little while a black shadow that had been creeping
+along the dripping wall, moved out into the light and came close to him
+with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round
+with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting her haggard face
+quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out
+from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money,
+and he's as bad as bad."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's
+money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be nearly
+forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got
+his blood upon my hands."</p>
+
+<p>The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered.
+"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
+what I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You lie!" cried James Vane.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth,"
+she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Before God?"</p>
+
+<p>"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here.
+They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh
+on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I
+have though," she added, with a sickly leer.</p>
+
+<p>"You swear this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give
+me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money
+for my night's lodging."</p>
+
+<p>He broke from her with an oath, and rushed to the corner of the street,
+but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had
+vanished also.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h3>
+
+
+<p>A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal
+talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a
+jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and
+the mellow light of the huge lace-covered lamp that stood on the table
+lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which
+the Duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among
+the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian
+had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker
+chair looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough
+pretending to listen to the Duke's description of the last Brazilian
+beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate
+smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The
+house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to
+arrive on the next day.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the
+table, and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my
+plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the Duchess,
+looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my
+own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are
+both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an
+orchid, for my buttonhole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
+effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one
+of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen
+of <i>Robinsoniana</i>, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad
+truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
+Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is
+with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The
+man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is
+the only thing he is fit for."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"I recognise him in a flash," exclaimed the Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a
+label there is no escape! I refuse the title."</p>
+
+<p>"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I give the truths of to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Of your shield, Harry: not of your spear."</p>
+
+<p>"I never tilt against Beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
+beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready
+than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the Duchess.
+"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good
+Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
+virtues have made our England what she is."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I live in it."</p>
+
+<p>"That you may censure it the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"What do they say of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that yours, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"I give it to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I could not use it. It is too true."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognise a description."</p>
+
+<p>"They are practical."</p>
+
+<p>"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger,
+they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, we have done great things."</p>
+
+<p>"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."</p>
+
+<p>"We have carried their burden."</p>
+
+<p>"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"It represents the survival of the pushing."</p>
+
+<p>"It has development."</p>
+
+<p>"Decay fascinates me more."</p>
+
+<p>"What of Art?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a malady."</p>
+
+<p>"Love?"</p>
+
+<p>"An illusion."</p>
+
+<p>"Religion?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fashionable substitute for Belief."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a sceptic."</p>
+
+<p>"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To define is to limit."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a clue."</p>
+
+<p>"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."</p>
+
+<p>"You bewilder me. Let us talk of someone else."</p>
+
+<p>"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince
+Charming."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.</p>
+
+<p>"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the Duchess,
+colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
+scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
+butterfly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I
+come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by
+half-past eight."</p>
+
+<p>"How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning."</p>
+
+<p>"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one
+I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is nice of you
+to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing. All good hats
+are made out of nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every
+effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a
+mediocrity."</p>
+
+<p>"Not with women," said the Duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule
+the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone
+says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you
+ever love at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the Duchess, with
+mock sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? Romance lives
+by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides,
+each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference
+of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies
+it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret
+of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the Duchess, after
+a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression
+in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed.
+"I always agree with Harry, Duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"Even when he is wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"And does his philosophy make you happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
+searched for pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"And found it, Mr. Gray?"</p>
+
+<p>"Often. Too often."</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
+don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his
+feet, and walking down the conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
+cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating."</p>
+
+<p>"If he were not, there would be no battle."</p>
+
+<p>"Greek meets Greek, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"They were defeated."</p>
+
+<p>"There are worse things than capture," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"You gallop with a loose rein."</p>
+
+<p>"Pace gives life," was the <i>riposte</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall write it in my diary to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"That a burnt child loves the fire."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."</p>
+
+<p>"You use them for everything, except flight."</p>
+
+<p>"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a rival."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him."</p>
+
+<p>"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to Antiquity is fatal to us
+who are romanticists."</p>
+
+<p>"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."</p>
+
+<p>"Men have educated us."</p>
+
+<p>"But not explained you."</p>
+
+<p>"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"Sphynxes without secrets."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go
+and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be a premature surrender."</p>
+
+<p>"Romantic Art begins with its climax."</p>
+
+<p>"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."</p>
+
+<p>"In the Parthian manner?"</p>
+
+<p>"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he
+finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came
+a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody
+started up. The Duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his
+eyes Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray
+lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a death-like swoon.</p>
+
+<p>He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room, and laid upon one of
+the sofas. After a short time he came to himself, and looked round with
+a dazed expression.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?"
+He began to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was
+all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to
+dinner. I will take your place."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather
+come down. I must not be alone."</p>
+
+<p>He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety
+in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror
+ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of
+the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of
+James Vane watching him.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h3>
+
+
+<p>The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
+time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
+indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
+tracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble
+in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the
+leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
+regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering
+through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its
+hand upon his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
+the night, and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual
+life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
+imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of
+sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
+brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the
+good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the
+weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
+house he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any
+footmarks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have
+reported it. Yes: it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's brother had not
+come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some
+winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not
+know who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved
+him.</p>
+
+<p>And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
+that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible
+form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be, if
+day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent
+corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat
+at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the
+thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air
+seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of
+madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the
+scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with
+added horror. Out of the black cave of Time, terrible and swathed in
+scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six
+o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was
+something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
+seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it
+was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused
+the change. His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish
+that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle
+and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions
+must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die.
+Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that
+are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides, he had
+convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken
+imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and
+not a little of contempt.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast he walked with the Duchess for an hour in the garden,
+and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp
+frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue
+metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat reed-grown lake.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey Clouston,
+the Duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. He
+jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home,
+made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough
+undergrowth.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open.
+I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown and
+red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters
+ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that
+followed, fascinated him, and filled him with a sense of delightful
+freedom. He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high
+indifference of joy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass, some twenty yards in front
+of them, with black-tipped ears erect, and long hinder limbs throwing it
+forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir Geoffrey
+put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the animal's
+grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out
+at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
+into the thicket he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry of a hare
+in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens! I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. "What an
+ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting there!" he
+called out at the top of his voice. "A man is hurt."</p>
+
+<p>The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time the firing
+ceased along the line.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey, angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
+"Why on earth don't you keep your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the
+day."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
+lithe, swinging branches aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging
+a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It seemed
+to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey
+ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the
+keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces.
+There was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. A
+great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the boughs overhead.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments, that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
+endless hours of pain, he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started,
+and looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is
+stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered, bitterly. "The
+whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man...?"</p>
+
+<p>He could not finish the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of shot
+in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come; let us go
+home."</p>
+
+<p>They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty
+yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry, and said, with
+a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."</p>
+
+<p>"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this accident, I suppose. My dear
+fellow, it can't be helped. It was the man's own fault. Why did he get
+in front of the guns? Besides, it's nothing to us. It is rather awkward
+for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It makes
+people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he shoots
+very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something
+horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps," he
+added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.</p>
+
+<p>The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is <i>ennui</i>,
+Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. But we
+are not likely to suffer from it, unless these fellows keep chattering
+about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be
+tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does
+not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides,
+what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the
+world that a man can want. There is no one who would not be delighted to
+change places with you."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don't laugh
+like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just
+died is better off than I am. I have no terror of Death. It is the
+coming of Death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in
+the leaden air around me. Good heavens! don't you see a man moving
+behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
+was pointing. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for
+you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the
+table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must
+come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The
+man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
+manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. "Her
+Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am coming
+in," he said, coldly. The man turned round, and went rapidly in the
+direction of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It
+is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt
+with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."</p>
+
+<p>"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present
+instance you are quite astray. I like the Duchess very much, but I don't
+love her."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are
+excellently matched."</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
+scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
+lighting a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."</p>
+
+<p>"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray, with a deep note of pathos in
+his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion, and forgotten the
+desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
+become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was
+silly of me to come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to
+Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."</p>
+
+<p>"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what
+it is? You know I would help you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered, sadly. "And I dare say it is
+only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a
+horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the Duchess,
+looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come back,
+Duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey is
+terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
+How curious!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. Some whim,
+I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am sorry
+they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."</p>
+
+<p>"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no
+psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
+purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know someone who
+had committed a real murder."</p>
+
+<p>"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the Duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
+Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian drew himself up with an effort, and smiled. "It is nothing,
+Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is
+all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what Harry
+said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must
+go and lie down. You will excuse me, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
+conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian,
+Lord Henry turned and looked at the Duchess with his slumberous eyes.
+"Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "I
+wish I knew," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty
+that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"One may lose one's way."</p>
+
+<p>"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Disillusion."</p>
+
+<p>"It was my <i>d&eacute;but</i> in life," she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"It came to you crowned."</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired of strawberry leaves."</p>
+
+<p>"They become you."</p>
+
+<p>"Only in public."</p>
+
+<p>"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not part with a petal."</p>
+
+<p>"Monmouth has ears."</p>
+
+<p>"Old age is dull of hearing."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he never been jealous?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he had been."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking
+for?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. "I have still the mask."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
+in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become too
+hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky
+beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
+prefigure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at what Lord
+Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
+pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
+at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
+night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in
+the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.</p>
+
+<p>Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
+town to consult his doctor, and asking him to entertain his guests in
+his absence. As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the
+door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him.
+He frowned, and bit his lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after some
+moments' hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the man entered Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer,
+and spread it out before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning,
+Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?" asked
+Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left in
+want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of coming
+to you about."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean?
+Wasn't he one of your men?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart had
+suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out. "Did you say a
+sailor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both
+arms, and that kind of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
+looking at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell his
+name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some money, sir&mdash;not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
+kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor, we
+think."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He
+clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he exclaimed. "Quick! I must
+see it at once."</p>
+
+<p>"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don't like to
+have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad
+luck."</p>
+
+<p>"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to
+bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I'll go to the stables myself. It
+will save time."</p>
+
+<p>In less than a quarter of an hour Dorian Gray was galloping down the
+long avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him
+in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
+path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
+He lashed her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air
+like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He
+leapt from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. In the
+farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him
+that the body was there, and he hurried to the door, and put his hand
+upon the latch.</p>
+
+<p>There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a
+discovery that would either make or mar his life. Then he thrust the
+door open, and entered.</p>
+
+<p>On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man
+dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. A spotted
+handkerchief had been placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a
+bottle, sputtered beside it.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take
+the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to
+come to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at
+the doorpost for support.</p>
+
+<p>When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of joy
+broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was James
+Vane.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode
+home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h3>
+
+
+<p>"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried
+Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with
+rose-water. "You're quite perfect. Pray, don't change."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
+things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good
+actions yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the
+country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people
+who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised. Civilisation is not
+by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by
+which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being
+corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they
+stagnate."</p>
+
+<p>"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of
+both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
+together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I
+have altered."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you
+had done more than one?" asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate
+a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a
+perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone else. I
+spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was
+quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
+which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How long
+ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She
+was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure
+that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been
+having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
+Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept
+tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone
+away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her
+as flower-like as I had found her."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
+of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish
+your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That
+was the beginning of your reformation."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's
+heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is no
+disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and
+marigold."</p>
+
+<p>"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
+leant back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
+boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now
+with anyone of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a
+rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you,
+and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be
+wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of
+your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how
+do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some
+star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the
+most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you
+say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode
+past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a
+spray of jasmine. Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to
+persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first
+little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.
+I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about
+yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
+Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and
+the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having
+more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate
+lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell's
+suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.
+Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for
+Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and
+the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I
+suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in
+San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said
+to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess
+all the attractions of the next world."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his
+Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could
+discuss the matter so calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is
+no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him.
+Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said the younger man, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
+trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays
+except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the
+nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee
+in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom
+my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very
+fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course married
+life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even
+of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such
+an essential part of one's personality."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table and, passing into the next
+room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white
+and black ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he
+stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever
+occur to you that Basil was murdered?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury
+watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to
+have enemies. Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a
+man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was
+really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he
+told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, and that you
+were the dominant motive of his art."</p>
+
+<p>"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian, with a note of sadness in his
+voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all
+probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
+the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his
+chief defect."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
+said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
+doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
+It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your
+vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
+exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
+degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
+a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."</p>
+
+<p>"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who
+has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
+Don't tell me that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of life. I
+should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never
+do any thing that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass
+from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a
+really romantic end as you suggest; but I can't. I dare say he fell into
+the Seine off an omnibus, and that the conductor hushed up the scandal.
+Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his back
+under those dull-green waters with the heavy barges floating over him,
+and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would
+have done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting
+had gone off very much."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began
+to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird,
+with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch.
+As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of
+crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and began to sway backwards
+and forwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he continued, turning round, and taking his handkerchief out of
+his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
+lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great
+friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I
+suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores
+have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of
+you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I
+remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby,
+and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back?
+What a pity! It was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it.
+I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then, his
+work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that
+always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did
+you advertise for it? You should."</p>
+
+<p>"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it.
+I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why
+do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some
+play&mdash;'Hamlet,' I think&mdash;how do they run?&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"'Like the painting of a sorrow,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A face without a heart.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Yes: that is what it was like."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
+heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano.
+"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
+heart.'"</p>
+
+<p>The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the
+way, Dorian," he said, after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he
+gain the whole world and lose'&mdash;how does the quotation run?&mdash;'his own
+soul'?"</p>
+
+<p>The music jarred and Dorian Gray started, and stared at his friend. "Why
+do you ask me that, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,
+"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
+That is all. I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close by the
+Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people
+listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the
+man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being
+rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A
+wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white
+faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase
+flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lips&mdash;it was really very good
+in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that
+Art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not
+have understood me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and
+sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a
+soul in each one of us. I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely
+certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the
+lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have
+you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up
+our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian,
+and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.
+You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I
+am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You
+have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of
+the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and
+absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in
+appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I
+would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or
+be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of
+the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now
+with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front
+of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I
+always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their
+opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the
+opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in
+everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are
+playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea
+weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes?
+It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art
+left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It
+seems to me that you are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas
+listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know
+nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one
+is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how
+happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk
+deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate.
+Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more
+than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not the same, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
+Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.
+Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
+shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
+yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question
+of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides
+itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe, and
+think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a
+morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that
+brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you
+had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had
+ceased to play&mdash;I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that
+our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own
+senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of
+<i>lilas blanc</i> passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the
+strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with
+you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always
+worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the
+age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad
+that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a
+picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your
+art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."</p>
+
+<p>Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair.
+"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have
+the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to
+me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even
+you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne
+over again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the
+dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will
+come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the club, then. It has
+been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some
+one at White's who wants immensely to know you&mdash;young Lord Poole,
+Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has
+begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful, and rather
+reminds me of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not," said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired
+to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I
+want to go to bed early."</p>
+
+<p>"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
+in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
+heard from it before."</p>
+
+<p>"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling, "I am a
+little changed already."</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will
+always be friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry,
+promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be
+going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
+against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too
+delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are,
+and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is
+no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates
+the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
+calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
+But we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to
+ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
+afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to
+consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you
+come. Or shall we lunch with our little Duchess? She says she never sees
+you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her
+clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at
+eleven."</p>
+
+<p>"Must I really come, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been
+such lilacs since the year I met you."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good-night,
+Harry." As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had
+something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and
+did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
+smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He
+heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He
+remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared
+at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the
+charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that
+no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom he had lured to
+love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her
+once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and answered that
+wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she
+had!&mdash;just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her
+cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
+everything that he had lost.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent
+him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began
+to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.</p>
+
+<p>Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing
+for the unstained purity of his boyhood&mdash;his rose-white boyhood, as Lord
+Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled
+his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had
+been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in
+being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been
+the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame.
+But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?</p>
+
+<p>Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that
+the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the
+unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to
+that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure,
+swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not
+"Forgive us our sins," but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the
+prayer of a man to a most just God.</p>
+
+<p>The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many
+years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids
+laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night
+of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and
+with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some
+one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending
+with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made
+of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases
+came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.
+Then he loathed his own beauty, and, flinging the mirror on the floor,
+crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty
+that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.
+But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His
+beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was
+youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods and
+sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.</p>
+
+<p>It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was
+of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was
+hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had shot
+himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret
+that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over
+Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It was already
+waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of
+Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death
+of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that
+had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait
+that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were
+unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been
+simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had
+been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.</p>
+
+<p>A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for.
+Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any
+rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.</p>
+
+<p>As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the
+locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had
+been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every
+sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had
+already gone away. He would go and look.</p>
+
+<p>He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the
+door a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and
+lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the
+hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to
+him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.</p>
+
+<p>He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and
+dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and
+indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the
+eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of
+the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome&mdash;more loathsome, if
+possible, than before&mdash;and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed
+brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. Then he trembled. Had it been
+merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for
+a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or
+that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than
+we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain
+larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease
+over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as
+though the thing had dripped&mdash;blood even on the hand that had not held
+the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself
+up, and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was
+monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? There
+was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him
+had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs.
+The world would simply say that he was mad. They would shut him up if he
+persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer
+public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called
+upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that
+he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He
+shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little
+to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror,
+this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity?
+Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that?
+There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could
+tell?... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared
+her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's
+sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognised that now.</p>
+
+<p>But this murder&mdash;was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
+burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only
+one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself&mdash;that was
+evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had
+given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had
+felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been
+away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon
+it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had
+marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it
+had been conscience. He would destroy it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He
+had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was
+bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill
+the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and
+when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous
+soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He
+seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony
+that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. Two
+gentlemen, who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and looked up
+at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman, and
+brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no
+answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all
+dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and
+watched.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other, as they walked away and sneered. One of them
+was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were
+talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and
+wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.</p>
+
+<p>After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the
+footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They
+called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force
+the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. The
+windows yielded easily; their bolts were old.</p>
+
+<p>When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait
+of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his
+exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
+evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and
+loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that
+they recognised who it was.</p>
+
+<p class="c smcap top15">the end</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3 class="top15"><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE" id="BIBLIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="c">PIRATED EDITIONS</p>
+
+<p class="n">Owing to the number of unauthorised editions of "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN
+GRAY" issued at various times both in America and on the Continent of
+Europe, it has become necessary to indicate which are the only
+authorised editions of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the pirated editions are incomplete in that they omit the
+Preface and seven additional chapters which were first published in the
+London edition of 1891. In other cases certain passages have been
+mutilated, and faulty spellings and misprints are numerous.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c">AUTHORISED EDITIONS</p>
+
+<p>(I) First published in <i>Lippincott's Monthly Magazine</i>, July, 1890.
+London: Ward, Lock &amp; Co. <i>Copyrighted in London</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Published <i>simultaneously</i> in America. Philadelphia: J.-B. Lippincott
+Co. <i>Copyrighted in the United States of America</i>.</p>
+
+<p>(II) A Preface to "Dorian Gray." <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, March 1, 1891.
+London: Chapman &amp; Hall. (<i>All rights reserved.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>(III) With the Preface and Seven additional chapters. London, New York,
+and Melbourne: Ward, Lock &amp; Co. (n. d.).</p>
+
+<p>(Of this edition 250 copies were issued on L.P., <i>dated</i> 1891.)</p>
+
+<p>(IV) The same. London, New York, and Melbourne: Ward, Lock &amp; Bowden. (n.
+d.).</p>
+
+<p>(Published 1894 or 1895.) See Stuart Mason's "Art and Morality" (page
+153).</p>
+
+
+<p class="c">THE FOLLOWING EDITIONS</p>
+
+<p class="n">were issued by Charles Carrington, <i>Publisher and Literary Agent</i>, late
+of 13 Faubourg Montmartre, Paris, and 10 <i>Rue de la Tribune</i>, <span class="smcap">Brussels</span>
+(Belgium), to whom the Copyright belongs.</p>
+
+<p>(V) Small 8vo, vii 334 pages, printed on English antique wove paper,
+silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1901.</p>
+
+<p>(VI) The same, vii 327 pages, silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1905.</p>
+
+<p>Of this edition 100 copies were issued on hand-made paper.</p>
+
+<p>(VII) 4to, vi 312 pages, broad margins, claret-coloured paper wrappers,
+title on label on the outside. 250 copies. Price 10<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. 1908
+(February).</p>
+
+<p>(VIII) Cr. 8vo, uniform with Methuen's (London) complete edition of
+Wilde's <i>Works</i>. xi 362 pages, printed on hand-made paper, white cloth,
+gilt extra.</p>
+
+<p>1000 copies. Price 12<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> 1908 (April 16).</p>
+
+<p>Of this edition 80 further copies were printed on Imperial Japanese
+vellum, full vellum binding, gilt extra. Price 42<i>s</i>.</p>
+
+<p>(IX) Illustrated edition. Containing seven fullpaged illustrations by
+Paul Thirlat, engraved on Wood by Eug&egrave;ne D&eacute;t&eacute; (both of Paris), and
+artistically printed by Brendon &amp; Son, Ltd. (of Plymouth), 4to, vi 312
+pages, half parchment bound, with corners, and <i>fleur-de-lys</i> on side.
+1908-9. Price 15<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>(X) Small edition, uniform with Messrs. Methuen's Issue of "Oscar
+Wilde's Works" at same price. 12mo, xii and 352 pages. 2000 copies.
+Bound in green cloth. 1910. Price 5<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p class="top3">It follows from all this that, with the exception of the version in
+<i>Lippincott's Magazine</i> only those editions are authorised to be sold in
+Great Britain and her Colonies which bear the imprimatur of Ward, Lock &amp;
+Co., London, or Charles Carrington, Paris and Brussels; and that all
+other editions, whether American, Continental (<i>save Carrington's Paris
+editions above specified</i>) or otherwise, may not be sold within British
+jurisdiction without infringing the <i>Berne</i> law of literary copyright
+and incurring the disagreements that may therefrom result.</p>
+
+<p class="c smcap">london: simpkin, marshall, hamilton, kent &amp; co., limited.</p>
+<hr />
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="c"><b>To possess a good edition<br />
+of SHAKESPEARE<br /><br />
+is surely the desire of every one.</b><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;">Simpkin's</span><br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;">THIN PAPER EDITION</span><br />
+<br />
+of<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;"><b>Shakespeare</b></span><br />
+<br />
+is a charming Edition, suitable for the pocket<br />
+or bookshelf. Size 6&frac34; &times; 4 &times; &frac34; inch thick.<br />
+Printed in large type on a thin but thoroughly<br />
+opaque paper, with photogravure frontispiece<br />
+and title-page to each volume on Japanese vellum.<br />
+<br />
+The 3 Volumes are<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:125%;"><b>Comedies, Histories, Tragedies.</b></span><br />
+<br />
+Cloth, 3/- each net. Lambskin, 3/6 each net<br />
+Polished Persian Levant in Case, 15/- net<br />
+&frac14; Vellum, gilt top, in Case, 15/- net<br />
+<br />
+<i>To be had from all Booksellers or the Publishers</i><br />
+<br />
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />
+HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="bbox2">
+<p class="c n">
+<span style="font-size:125%;"><b>How Interesting</b></span><br />
+<br />
+A Study or Hobby becomes when you have<br />
+the assistance of an Experienced Guide.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;"><b>GORDON'S</b></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:175%;"><b>OUR COUNTRY'S SERIES</b></span><br />
+<br />
+are reliable and safe guides for the professional or<br />
+amateur student of<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:175%;">NATURE STUDY.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Each volume contains 33 full-page Plates containing a<br />
+Coloured Illustration of every Species. Cloth 3/6 each net</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<table summary="books" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td><b>FLOWERS.</b></td><td style="border-left:1px solid black;padding-left:5%;"><b>SHELLS.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><b>BIRDS.</b></td><td style="border-left:1px solid black;padding-left:5%;"><b>FISHES.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><b>BUTTERFLIES&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;MOTHS.</b></td><td style="border-left:1px solid black;padding-left:5%;"><b>ANIMALS</b> (Mammals,&nbsp;Reptiles, and Amphibians).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top"><b>EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS.</b></td><td>(Being a Supplement to "<span class="smcap">our country's birds</span>".)&nbsp;<b>2/6&nbsp;net</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">With 16 <span class="smcap">full-page coloured plates</span>.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2"><b>MANUAL OF BRITISH GRASSES.</b> Crown 8vo. 6/-net</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">With an accurate coloured figure of every species, and outline drawings
+of the spikelets and florets of every genus.</td></tr>
+
+</table>
+<p class="c"><i>Ask your Bookseller to show you Gordon's Our Country's Series</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="c">LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="c n"><b>Have You<br />
+a friend who loves<br />
+"My Lady Nicotine?"<br />
+He would appreciate<br />
+<br />
+THE</b><br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;"><b>SMOKER BOOKS</b></span><br />
+<br />
+They form a comprehensive collection of<br />
+books for lovers of the "weed." In their<br />
+unique and original binding they make an<br />
+attractive novelty for a present.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Cigarettes in Fact and Fancy.</b> Collected and<br />
+edited by <span class="smcap">JOHN BAIN</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Tobacco in Song and Story.</b> Edited by<br />
+<span class="smcap">JOHN BAIN</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>A Smoker's Reveries, or Tobacco in Verse</b><br />
+and Rhyme. Compiled by <span class="smcap">JOSEPH KNIGHT</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Pipe and Pouch, or the Smoker's Own</b><br />
+Book of Poetry. Compiled by <span class="smcap">JOSEPH KNIGHT</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Bath Robes and Bachelors.</b> Compiled by<br />
+<span class="smcap">arthur gray</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="c n">Each book is bound in velvet Persian, tobacco<br />
+shade, and enclosed in a case closely<br />
+imitating a cigar box, with appropriate<br />
+labels. <b>Price 5s. net</b>. Postage 3d.<br />
+<br />
+<i>To be had from all Booksellers or the Publishers</i><br />
+<br />
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />
+HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="c n">
+<span style="font-size:200%;"><b>The Caxton Series</b></span><br />
+<br />
+ILLUSTRATED REPRINTS OF<br />
+FAMOUS CLASSICS.<br />
+<br />
+Printed in large, clear type on antique wove<br />
+paper, with Photogravure Frontispiece, and<br />
+from Ten to Fourteen Illustrations by the<br />
+best artists in black and white. Small foolscap<br />
+8vo, 6-1/2 by 4-1/2, Cloth limp, designed end-papers,<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size:200%;"><b>1/- net.</b></span></p>
+
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Undine, and Aslauga's Knight.</b> By <span class="smcap">LA MOTTE<br />
+FOUQU&Eacute;</span>. With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">HAROLD NELSON</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to</b><br />
+<b>that which is to Come.</b> By <span class="smcap">JOHN BUNYAN</span>. With<br />
+Illustrations by <span class="smcap">EDMUND J. SULLIVAN</span>. Two Volumes.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>In Memoriam.</b> By <span class="smcap">ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON</span>.<br />
+With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">A. GARTH JONES</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>The Serious Poems of Thomas Hood.</b> With<br />
+Illustrations by <span class="smcap">H. GRANVILLE FELL</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>A Book of Romantic Ballads.</b> Compiled<br />
+from various sources ranging from the Thirteenth<br />
+Century to the Present Day. With Illustrations by<br />
+<span class="smcap">REGINALD SAVAGE</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>The Sketch Book.</b> By WASHINGTON IRVING.<br />
+With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">EDMUND J. SULLIVAN</span>. TWO<br />
+Volumes.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Rosalynde.</b> By <span class="smcap">THOMAS LODGE</span>. With Illustrations<br />
+by <span class="smcap">EDMUND J. SULLIVAN</span>.<br />
+</p>
+<p class="hang">
+<b>Herrick's Hesperides and Noble Numbers.</b><br />
+With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">REGINALD SAVAGE</span>. Two<br />
+Volumes.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="c n">
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />
+HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9112 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #26740]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
+
+BY
+
+OSCAR WILDE
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
+
+HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
+
+PARIS
+
+ON SALE AT YE OLD PARIS BOOKE SHOPPE
+
+11 RUE DE CHATEAUDUN
+
+_Registered at Stationers' Hall and protected
+under the Copyright Law Act.
+
+First published in complete book form in 1891 by
+Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co. (London),
+
+First printed in this Edition April 1913,
+Reprinted June 1913, September 1913,
+June 1914, January 1916
+October 1916._
+
+_See the Bibliographical Note on certain Pirated and Mutilated
+Editions of "Dorian Gray" at the end of this present volume._
+
+
+
+
+THE PREFACE
+
+
+The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal
+the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another
+manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
+
+The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of
+autobiography.
+
+Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without
+being charming. This is a fault.
+
+Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the
+cultivated. For these there is hope.
+
+They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
+
+There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well
+written, or badly written. That is all.
+
+The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing
+his own face in a glass.
+
+The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not
+seeing his own face in a glass.
+
+The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist,
+but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect
+medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true
+can be proved.
+
+No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an
+unpardonable mannerism of style.
+
+No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
+
+Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
+
+Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
+
+From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of
+the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is
+the type.
+
+All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface
+do so at their peril.
+
+Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
+
+It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of
+opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and
+vital.
+
+When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
+
+We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not
+admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one
+admires it intensely.
+
+All art is quite useless.
+
+OSCAR WILDE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light
+summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through
+the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume
+of the pink-flowering thorn.
+
+From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was
+lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
+Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
+blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to
+bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then
+the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
+tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
+producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
+those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an
+art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness
+and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through
+the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the
+dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the
+stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon
+note of a distant organ.
+
+In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the
+full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,
+and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
+himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
+caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many
+strange conjectures.
+
+As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so
+skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his
+face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and,
+closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought
+to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he
+might awake.
+
+"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said
+Lord Henry, languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the
+Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone
+there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able
+to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have
+not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is
+really the only place."
+
+"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head
+back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at
+Oxford. "No: I won't send it anywhere."
+
+Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through
+the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls
+from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear
+fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You
+do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one,
+you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only
+one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not
+being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the
+young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are
+ever capable of any emotion."
+
+"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit
+it. I have put too much of myself into it."
+
+Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
+
+"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."
+
+"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were
+so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your
+rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who
+looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear
+Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an
+intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends
+where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode
+of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
+sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something
+horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
+How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But
+then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age
+of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as
+a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your
+mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose
+picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that.
+He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in
+winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer
+when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter
+yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."
+
+"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am
+not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to
+look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth.
+There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the
+sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps
+of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly
+and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their
+ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at
+least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live,
+undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin
+upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth,
+Harry; my brains, such as they are--my art, whatever it may be worth;
+Dorian Gray's good looks--we shall all suffer for what the gods have
+given us, suffer terribly."
+
+"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
+studio towards Basil Hallward.
+
+"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their
+names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
+love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life
+mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one
+only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am
+going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
+daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
+one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
+
+"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You seem
+to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it
+makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
+never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
+When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
+down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
+most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact,
+than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But
+when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she
+would; but she merely laughs at me."
+
+"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
+Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I
+believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are
+thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow.
+You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
+cynicism is simply a pose."
+
+"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
+cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
+garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
+stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the
+polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
+
+After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
+going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your answering
+a question I put to you some time ago."
+
+"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
+
+"You know quite well."
+
+"I do not, Harry."
+
+"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
+won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."
+
+"I told you the real reason."
+
+"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
+in it. Now, that is childish."
+
+"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
+portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
+of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
+not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on
+the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
+picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
+soul."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
+
+"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came
+over his face.
+
+"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.
+
+"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter;
+"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly
+believe it."
+
+Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
+the grass, and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," he
+replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, "and
+as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is
+quite incredible."
+
+The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms,
+with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A
+grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long
+thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt
+as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what
+was coming.
+
+"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two
+months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists
+have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the
+public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as
+you told me once, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for
+being civilised. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes,
+talking to huge over-dressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I
+suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned
+halfway round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes
+met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came
+over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere
+personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would
+absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not
+want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how
+independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at
+least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then---- but I don't know
+how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the
+verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate
+had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid,
+and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so;
+it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to
+escape."
+
+"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
+is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
+
+"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either.
+However, whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for I used
+to be very proud--I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I
+stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon,
+Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
+
+"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
+pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.
+
+"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people
+with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladles with gigantic tiaras and
+parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her
+once before, but she took it into her head to lionise me. I believe some
+picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been
+chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century
+standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the
+young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite
+close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I
+asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so
+reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to
+each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me
+so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other."
+
+"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his
+companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid _precis_ of all her
+guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
+gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my
+ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to
+everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I
+like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests
+exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them
+entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants
+to know."
+
+"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward,
+listlessly.
+
+"My dear fellow, she tried to found a _salon_, and only succeeded in
+opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she
+say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
+
+"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely
+inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do
+anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?'
+Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
+
+"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
+the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
+
+Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
+Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like
+everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone."
+
+"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,
+and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy
+white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer
+sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between
+people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for
+their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
+cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one
+who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and
+consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it
+is rather vain."
+
+"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
+merely an acquaintance."
+
+"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
+
+"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
+and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
+
+"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
+
+"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
+relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand
+other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathise
+with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices
+of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
+immorality should be their own special property, and that if anyone of
+us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
+Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite
+magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent. of the
+proletariat live correctly."
+
+"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more,
+Harry, I feel sure you don't either."
+
+Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his
+patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are,
+Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one
+puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always a rash thing to do--he
+never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only
+thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.
+Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
+sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are
+that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will
+the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his
+wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to
+discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons
+better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better
+than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How
+often do you see him?"
+
+"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
+absolutely necessary to me."
+
+"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
+art."
+
+"He is all my art to me now," said the painter, gravely. "I sometimes
+think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
+world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
+and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What
+the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoues
+was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day
+be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch
+from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me
+than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with
+what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot
+express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that
+the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best
+work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder will you understand
+me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,
+an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them
+differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me,
+before. 'A dream of form in days of thought:'--who is it who says that?
+I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible
+presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
+he is really over twenty--his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can
+you realise all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
+lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
+of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
+The harmony of soul and body--how much that is! We in our madness have
+separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an
+ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to
+me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such
+a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
+things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting
+it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to
+me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
+wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."
+
+"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."
+
+Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden. After
+some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply
+a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
+He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.
+He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
+curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain
+colours. That is all."
+
+"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
+
+"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
+all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
+cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
+anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my
+soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under
+their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry--too
+much of myself!"
+
+"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
+for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
+
+"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful
+things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an
+age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of
+autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I
+will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall
+never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
+
+"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only
+the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very
+fond of you?"
+
+The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered,
+after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully.
+I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be
+sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in
+the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is
+horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me
+pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to
+someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit
+of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."
+
+"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
+"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
+of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That
+accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate
+ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something
+that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the
+silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that
+is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is
+a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust,
+with everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire
+first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will
+seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of
+colour, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart,
+and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time
+he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great
+pity, for it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a
+romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of
+any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."
+
+"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
+Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change too
+often."
+
+"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
+faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
+know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
+case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied
+air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
+chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the
+blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How
+pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's
+emotions were!--much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.
+One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends--those were the
+fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement
+the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
+Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's he would have been sure to have met
+Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about
+the feeding of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses.
+Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for
+whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would
+have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the
+dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he
+thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to
+Hallward, and said, "My dear fellow, I have just remembered."
+
+"Remembered what, Harry?"
+
+"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
+
+"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
+
+"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. She told
+me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her
+in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state
+that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation
+of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very
+earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a
+creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping
+about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend."
+
+"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't want you to meet him."
+
+"You don't want me to meet him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
+the garden.
+
+"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
+
+The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
+"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments." The man
+bowed, and went up the walk.
+
+Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he
+said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right
+in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him.
+Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous
+people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art
+whatever charm it possesses; my life as an artist depends on him. Mind,
+Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung
+out of him almost against his will.
+
+"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward
+by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with
+his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's
+"Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. "I want to
+learn them. They are perfectly charming."
+
+"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."
+
+"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of
+myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a
+wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
+blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your
+pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had anyone with you."
+
+"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have
+just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have
+spoiled everything."
+
+"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord
+Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has often
+spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid,
+one of her victims also."
+
+"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian, with a
+funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with
+her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to have
+played a duet together--three duets, I believe. I don't know what she
+will say to me. I am far too frightened to call."
+
+"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you.
+And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The
+audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to
+the piano she makes quite enough noise for two people."
+
+"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian,
+laughing.
+
+Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,
+with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold
+hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once.
+All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate
+purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No
+wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.
+
+"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too
+charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan, and opened
+his cigarette-case.
+
+The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes
+ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last
+remark he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry,
+I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of
+me if I asked you to go away?"
+
+Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky
+moods; and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell
+me why I should not go in for philanthropy."
+
+"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a
+subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly
+shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really
+mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your sitters
+to have someone to chat to."
+
+Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
+Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."
+
+Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil,
+but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.
+Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I
+am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are
+coming. I should be sorry to miss you."
+
+"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes 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."
+
+"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing
+intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am
+working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for
+my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay."
+
+"But what about my man at the Orleans?"
+
+The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about
+that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,
+and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry
+says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single
+exception of myself."
+
+Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek
+martyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he
+had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful
+contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said
+to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as
+Basil says?"
+
+"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
+immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because 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 someone else's music, an actor of a
+part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is
+self-development. To realise 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. And yet----"
+
+"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
+boy," said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look
+had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
+
+"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with
+that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him,
+and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were
+to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every
+feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe
+that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would
+forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic
+ideal--to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.
+But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of
+the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our
+lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to
+strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has
+done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains
+then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The
+only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and
+your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
+itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and
+unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place
+in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great
+sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with
+your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions
+that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror,
+day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek
+with shame----"
+
+"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what
+to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak.
+Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think."
+
+For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips, and
+eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
+influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come
+really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to
+him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
+them--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
+but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.
+
+Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But
+music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another
+chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were!
+How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet
+what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a
+plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as
+sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real
+as words?
+
+Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.
+He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It
+seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?
+
+With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
+psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested.
+He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and,
+remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which
+had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered
+whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had
+merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating
+the lad was!
+
+Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had
+the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes
+only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.
+
+"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray, suddenly. "I must go
+out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here."
+
+"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of
+anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
+have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips, and the bright
+look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he
+has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he
+has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a word that he
+says."
+
+"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
+reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
+
+"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
+dreamy, languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is
+horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
+something with strawberries in it."
+
+"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
+tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I
+will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in
+better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
+masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands."
+
+Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his
+face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
+perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him, and put his hand
+upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured.
+"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
+senses but the soul."
+
+The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had
+tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There
+was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
+suddenly awakened. His finely-chiselled nostrils quivered, and some
+hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.
+
+"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of
+life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
+of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
+you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
+
+Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking
+the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic
+olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was
+something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His
+cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved,
+as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But
+he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left
+for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for
+months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly
+there had come someone across his life who seemed to have disclosed to
+him life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not
+a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.
+
+"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has brought
+out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare you will be
+quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
+allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming."
+
+"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the
+seat at the end of the garden.
+
+"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
+worth having."
+
+"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."
+
+"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and
+ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
+branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will
+feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it
+always be so?... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't
+frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than
+Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the
+world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters
+of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has
+its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
+You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say
+sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least
+it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of
+wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The
+true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr.
+Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they
+quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really,
+perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it,
+and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for
+you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the
+memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as
+it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of
+you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become
+sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly....
+Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of
+your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
+failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
+vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live!
+Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be
+always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
+Hedonism--that is what our century wants. You might be its visible
+symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The
+world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that
+you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really
+might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must
+tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if
+you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will
+last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they
+blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In
+a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year
+the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never
+get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes
+sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous
+puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much
+afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to
+yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but
+youth!"
+
+Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell
+from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for
+a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of
+the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial
+things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid,
+or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find
+expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to
+the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He
+saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The
+flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.
+
+Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio, and made
+staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other, and
+smiled.
+
+"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
+you can bring your drinks."
+
+They rose up, and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
+butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of
+the garden a thrush began to sing.
+
+"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at
+him.
+
+"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?"
+
+"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.
+Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to
+make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only
+difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice
+lasts a little longer."
+
+As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's
+arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured,
+flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
+resumed his pose.
+
+Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him.
+The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that
+broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to
+look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed
+through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent
+of the roses seemed to brood over everything.
+
+After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a
+long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,
+biting the end of one of his huge brushes, and frowning. "It is quite
+finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long
+vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.
+
+Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a
+wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
+
+"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the
+finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at
+yourself."
+
+The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really
+finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
+
+"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day.
+I am awfully obliged to you."
+
+"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"
+
+Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture,
+and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks
+flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as
+if he had recognised himself for the first time. He stood there
+motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to
+him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own
+beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil
+Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming
+exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them,
+forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord
+Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning
+of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
+gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the
+description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face
+would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of
+his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his
+lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his
+soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.
+
+As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a
+knife, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes
+deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as
+if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.
+
+"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's
+silence, not understanding what it meant.
+
+"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is
+one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you
+like to ask for it. I must have it."
+
+"It is not my property, Harry."
+
+"Whose property is it?"
+
+"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.
+
+"He is a very lucky fellow."
+
+"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon
+his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and
+dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be
+older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other
+way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was
+to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is
+nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
+that!"
+
+"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work."
+
+"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.
+
+Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You
+like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green
+bronze figure. Hardly as much, I daresay."
+
+The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like
+that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and
+his cheeks burning.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your
+silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till
+I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses
+one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your
+picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth
+is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I
+shall kill myself."
+
+Hallward turned pale, and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he cried,
+"don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I
+shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things,
+are you?--you who are finer than any of them!"
+
+"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of
+the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must
+lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives
+something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could
+change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It
+will mock me some day--mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his
+eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he
+buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.
+
+"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter, bitterly.
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray--that is
+all."
+
+"It is not."
+
+"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"
+
+"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.
+
+"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.
+
+"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between
+you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
+done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will
+not let it come across our three lives and mar them."
+
+Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face
+and tear-stained eyes looked at him, as he walked over to the deal
+painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was
+he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin
+tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long
+palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at
+last. He was going to rip up the canvas.
+
+With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
+Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the
+studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!"
+
+"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter,
+coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you
+would."
+
+"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I
+feel that."
+
+"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
+sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked
+across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of
+course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
+pleasures?"
+
+"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge
+of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What
+absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as
+a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man
+is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all:
+though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had
+much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want
+it, and I really do."
+
+"If you let anyone have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!"
+cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy."
+
+"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
+existed."
+
+"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't
+really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."
+
+"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."
+
+"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."
+
+There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden
+tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle
+of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two
+globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went
+over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the
+table, and examined what was under the covers.
+
+"Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to
+be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's, but it
+is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am
+ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent
+engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have
+all the surprise of candour."
+
+"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward.
+"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
+
+"Yes," answered Lord Henry, dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth
+century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only
+real colour-element left in modern life."
+
+"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."
+
+"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
+in the picture?"
+
+"Before either."
+
+"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
+lad.
+
+"Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won't you?"
+
+"I can't really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do."
+
+"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."
+
+"I should like that awfully."
+
+The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I
+shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
+
+"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
+across to him. "Am I really like that?"
+
+"Yes; you are just like that."
+
+"How wonderful, Basil!"
+
+"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,"
+sighed Hallward. "That is something."
+
+"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why,
+even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to
+do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old
+men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."
+
+"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and
+dine with me."
+
+"I can't, Basil."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."
+
+"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
+breaks his own. I beg you not to go."
+
+Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
+
+"I entreat you."
+
+The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them
+from the tea-table with an amused smile.
+
+"I must go, Basil," he answered.
+
+"Very well," said Hallward; and he went over and laid down his cup on
+the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better
+lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
+Come to-morrow."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You won't forget?"
+
+"No, of course not," cried Dorian.
+
+"And... Harry!"
+
+"Yes, Basil?"
+
+"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."
+
+"I have forgotten it."
+
+"I trust you."
+
+"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr.
+Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.
+Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."
+
+As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a
+sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon
+Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if
+somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called
+selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was
+considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His
+father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and
+Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplomatic Service in a
+capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at
+Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by
+reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his despatches,
+and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his
+father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
+foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months
+later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great
+aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
+houses, but preferred to live in chambers, as it was less trouble, and
+took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the
+management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself
+for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of
+having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of
+burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when
+the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them
+for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied
+him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.
+Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the
+country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but
+there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
+
+When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
+shooting coat, smoking a cheroot, and grumbling over _The Times_. "Well,
+Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I thought
+you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."
+
+"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
+something out of you."
+
+"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. "Well, sit down
+and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is
+everything."
+
+"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and
+when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only
+people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
+mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly
+upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and
+consequently they never bother me. What I want is information; not
+useful information, of course; useless information."
+
+"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry,
+although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in
+the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now
+by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug
+from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough,
+and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books, Uncle George," said Lord
+Henry, languidly.
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
+white eyebrows.
+
+"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who
+he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux;
+Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was
+she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your
+time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray
+at present. I have only just met him."
+
+"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman.--"Kelso's grandson!... Of
+course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
+christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret
+Devereux; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless
+young fellow; a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or
+something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
+happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa, a few
+months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said
+Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his
+son-in-law in public; paid him, sir, to do it, paid him; and that the
+fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed
+up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time
+afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she
+never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died
+too; died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten
+that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother he must be a
+good-looking chap."
+
+"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.
+
+"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "He
+should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing
+by him. His mother had money too. All the Selby property came to her,
+through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean
+dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was
+ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was
+always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a
+story of it. I didn't dare to show my face at Court for a month. I hope
+he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."
+
+"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well
+off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And...
+his mother was very beautiful?"
+
+"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry.
+What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could
+understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad
+after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were.
+The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington
+went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and
+there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. And by
+the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your
+father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't
+English girls good enough for him?"
+
+"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."
+
+"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor,
+striking the table with his fist.
+
+"The betting is on the Americans."
+
+"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.
+
+"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a
+steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a
+chance."
+
+"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?"
+
+Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing
+their parents as English women are at concealing their past," he said,
+rising to go.
+
+"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"
+
+"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that
+pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
+politics."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
+secret of their charm."
+
+"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are
+always telling us that it is the Paradise for women."
+
+"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively
+anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I
+shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the
+information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new
+friends, and nothing about my old ones."
+
+"Where are you lunching, Harry?"
+
+"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest
+_protege_."
+
+"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her
+charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I
+have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."
+
+"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
+Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
+distinguishing characteristic."
+
+The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his
+servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street, and
+turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.
+
+So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been
+told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange,
+almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad
+passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
+treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in
+pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
+the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting
+background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind
+every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds
+had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how
+charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes
+and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at
+the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening
+wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
+violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was
+something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other
+activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and
+let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views
+echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to
+convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid
+or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most
+satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
+age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
+He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
+had met in Basil's studio; or could be fashioned into a marvellous type,
+at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
+such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could
+not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
+that such beauty was destined to fade!... And Basil? From a
+psychological point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in
+art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
+merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent
+spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field,
+suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul
+who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to
+which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns
+of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
+symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other
+and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all
+was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that
+artist in thought, who had first analysed it? Was it not Buonarotti who
+had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our
+own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray
+what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned
+the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him--had already,
+indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
+was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.
+
+Suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had
+passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back.
+When he entered the somewhat sombre hall the butler told him that they
+had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick, and
+passed into the dining-room.
+
+"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
+
+He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to
+her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from
+the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.
+Opposite was the Duchess of Harley; a lady of admirable good-nature and
+good temper, much liked by everyone who knew her, and of those ample
+architectural proportions that in women who are not Duchesses are
+described by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, on
+her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who
+followed his leader in public life, and in private life followed the
+best cooks, dining with the Tories, and thinking with the Liberals, in
+accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
+occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable
+charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,
+having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had
+to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one
+of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so
+dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
+Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most
+intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a Ministerial statement
+in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely
+earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once
+himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of
+them ever quite escape.
+
+"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the Duchess,
+nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really
+marry this fascinating young person?"
+
+"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."
+
+"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, someone should
+interfere."
+
+"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
+dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
+
+"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas."
+
+"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the Duchess, raising her
+large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb.
+
+"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.
+
+The Duchess looked puzzled.
+
+"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means
+anything that he says."
+
+"When America was discovered," said the Radical member, and he began to
+give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a subject,
+he exhausted his listeners. The Duchess sighed, and exercised her
+privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been
+discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance
+nowadays. It is most unfair."
+
+"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr.
+Erskine. "I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
+
+"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the
+Duchess, vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely
+pretty. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I
+wish I could afford to do the same."
+
+"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir
+Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.
+
+"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the
+Duchess.
+
+"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.
+
+Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against
+that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over
+it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are
+extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it."
+
+"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr.
+Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."
+
+Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his
+shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them.
+The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely
+reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes,
+Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no
+nonsense about the Americans."
+
+"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute
+reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It
+is hitting below the intellect."
+
+"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
+
+"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
+
+"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet.
+
+"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it
+was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we
+must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can
+judge them."
+
+"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can
+make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
+you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the
+East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
+playing."
+
+"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
+down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
+
+"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha.
+
+"I can sympathise with everything, except suffering," said Lord Henry,
+shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly,
+too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
+modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the
+beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
+
+"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas,
+with a grave shake of the head.
+
+"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and
+we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
+
+The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?"
+he asked.
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England except
+the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic
+contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through
+an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal
+to Science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that
+they lead us astray, and the advantage of Science is that it is not
+emotional."
+
+"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur,
+timidly.
+
+"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.
+
+Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too
+seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how
+to laugh, History would have been different."
+
+"You are really very comforting," warbled the Duchess. "I have always
+felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
+interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look
+her in the face without a blush."
+
+"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.
+
+"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself
+blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me
+how to become young again."
+
+He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you
+committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across
+the table.
+
+"A great many, I fear," she cried.
+
+"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's
+youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
+
+"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice."
+
+"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha
+shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays
+most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it
+is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
+
+A laugh ran round the table.
+
+He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and
+transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with
+fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
+soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and
+catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her
+wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the
+hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled
+before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge
+press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round
+her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
+the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary
+improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,
+and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose
+temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and
+to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic,
+irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they
+followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but
+sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and
+wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
+
+At last, liveried in the costume of the age, Reality entered the room in
+the shape of a servant to tell the Duchess that her carriage was
+waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried.
+"I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to
+some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the
+chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a
+scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.
+No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite
+delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to
+say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night.
+Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?"
+
+"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.
+
+"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you
+come;" and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the
+other ladies.
+
+When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking
+a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
+
+"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?"
+
+"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I
+should like to write a novel certainly; a novel that would be as lovely
+as a Persian carpet, and as unreal. But there is no literary public in
+England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of
+all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty
+of literature."
+
+"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used to have
+literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young
+friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
+meant all that you said to us at lunch?"
+
+"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?"
+
+"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if
+anything happens to our good Duchess we shall all look on you as being
+primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The
+generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are
+tired of London, come down to Treadley, and expound to me your
+philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate
+enough to possess."
+
+"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
+has a perfect host, and a perfect library."
+
+"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman, with a courteous
+bow. "And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at
+the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there."
+
+"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"
+
+"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
+Academy of Letters."
+
+Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the Park," he cried.
+
+As he was passing out of the door Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
+"Let me come with you," he murmured.
+
+"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,"
+answered Lord Henry.
+
+"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let
+me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so
+wonderfully as you do."
+
+"Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling.
+"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me,
+if you care to."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious
+arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair. It
+was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high-panelled
+wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling
+of raised plaster-work, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk
+long-fringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette
+by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of "_Les Cent Nouvelles_," bound
+for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies
+that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars and
+parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantel-shelf, and through the small
+leaded panels of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a
+summer day in London.
+
+Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his
+principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was
+looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages
+of an elaborately-illustrated edition of "_Manon Lescaut_" that he had
+found in one of the bookcases. The formal monotonous ticking of the
+Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going
+away.
+
+At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How late you are,
+Harry!" he murmured.
+
+"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.
+
+He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I
+thought----"
+
+"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me
+introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my
+husband has got seventeen of them."
+
+"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"
+
+"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the
+Opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her
+vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always
+looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.
+She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never
+returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque,
+but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a
+perfect mania for going to church.
+
+"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?"
+
+"Yes; it was at dear 'Lohengrin.' I like Wagner's music better than
+anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other
+people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage: don't you think
+so, Mr. Gray?"
+
+The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
+fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
+
+Dorian smiled, and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so, Lady
+Henry. I never talk during music, at least, during good music. If one
+hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."
+
+"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? I always hear
+Harry's views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of
+them. But you must not think I don't like good music. I adore it, but I
+am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped
+pianists--two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it
+is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
+ain't they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after
+a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to
+art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to any
+of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford
+orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
+look so picturesque. But here is Harry!--Harry, I came in to look for
+you, to ask you something--I forget what it was--and I found Mr. Gray
+here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite the
+same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been
+most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen him."
+
+"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his
+dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused
+smile. "So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old
+brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays
+people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
+
+"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward
+silence with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with the
+Duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are dining out, I
+suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's."
+
+"I daresay, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her, as,
+looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain,
+she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then
+he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on the sofa.
+
+"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said, after a
+few puffs.
+
+"Why, Harry?"
+
+"Because they are so sentimental."
+
+"But I like sentimental people."
+
+"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women,
+because they are curious; both are disappointed."
+
+"I don't think I am likely to marry, Henry. I am too much in love. That
+is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
+everything that you say."
+
+"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry, after a pause.
+
+"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace
+_debut_."
+
+"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Her name is Sibyl Vane."
+
+"Never heard of her."
+
+"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."
+
+"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They
+never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent
+the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of
+mind over morals."
+
+"Harry, how can you?"
+
+"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at the present,
+so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was.
+I find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain
+and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a
+reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to
+supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake,
+however. They paint in order to try and look young. Our grandmothers
+painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. _Rouge_ and _esprit_ used
+to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman can look ten
+years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for
+conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and
+two of these can't be admitted into decent society. However, tell me
+about your genius. How long have you known her?"
+
+"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."
+
+"Never mind that. How long have you known her?"
+
+"About three weeks."
+
+"And where did you come across her?"
+
+"I will tell you, Harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.
+After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled
+me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I
+met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the
+Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who
+passed me, and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they
+led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was
+an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for sensations.... Well,
+one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to go out in search of
+some adventure. I felt that this grey, monstrous London of ours, with
+its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you
+once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a
+thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I
+remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we
+first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret
+of life. I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered
+eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black,
+grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little
+theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous
+Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was
+standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets,
+and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. 'Have a
+box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an
+air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that
+amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I
+really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the
+present day I can't make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn't--my dear
+Harry, if I hadn't, I should have missed the greatest romance of my
+life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!"
+
+"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you
+should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the
+first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will
+always be in love with love. A _grande passion_ is the privilege of
+people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes
+of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for
+you. This is merely the beginning."
+
+"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.
+
+"No; I think your nature so deep."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really
+the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I
+call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
+Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of
+the intellect--simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must
+analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many
+things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might
+pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story."
+
+"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a
+vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the
+curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
+cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding cake. The gallery and pit were
+fairy full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there
+was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
+Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible
+consumption of nuts going on."
+
+"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."
+
+"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what
+on earth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you
+think the play was, Harry?"
+
+"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.' Our fathers used
+to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the
+more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not
+good enough for us. In art, as in politics, _les grandperes ont toujours
+tort_."
+
+"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and Juliet.' I
+must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare
+done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a
+sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There
+was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a
+cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was
+drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with
+corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel.
+Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had
+introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit.
+They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had
+come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
+seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek
+head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells
+of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the
+loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that
+pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your
+eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the
+mist of tears that came across me. And her voice--I never heard such a
+voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to
+fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded
+like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the
+tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are
+singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of
+violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
+Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my
+eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don't
+know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her.
+She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
+One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have
+seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from
+her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of
+Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She
+has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given
+him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent,
+and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I
+have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never
+appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No
+glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one
+knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in
+any of them. They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at
+tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile, and
+their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How
+different an actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only
+thing worth loving is an actress?"
+
+"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."
+
+"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
+
+"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary
+charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.
+
+"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."
+
+"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you
+will tell me everything you do."
+
+"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
+You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would
+come and confess it to you. You would understand me."
+
+"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes,
+Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now
+tell me--reach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks:--what are your
+actual relations with Sibyl Vane?"
+
+Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
+"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
+
+"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
+Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why should
+you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is
+in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends
+by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know
+her, at any rate, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
+horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and
+offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was
+furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of
+years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think,
+from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that
+I had taken too much champagne, or something."
+
+"I am not surprised."
+
+"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I
+never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and
+confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy
+against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."
+
+"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other
+hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all
+expensive."
+
+"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed Dorian.
+"By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre,
+and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
+recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the
+place again. When he saw me he made me a low bow, and assured me that I
+was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he
+had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an
+air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to 'The
+Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a
+distinction."
+
+"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian--a great distinction. Most people
+become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of
+life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. But when did
+you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"
+
+"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going
+round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me; at least
+I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined
+to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know
+her, wasn't it?"
+
+"No; I don't think so."
+
+"My dear Harry, why?"
+
+"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl."
+
+"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There is something of a child
+about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what
+I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her
+power. I think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning
+at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about
+us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. He would
+insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not
+anything of the kind. She said quite simply to me, 'You look more like a
+prince. I must call you Prince Charming.'"
+
+"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."
+
+"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person in
+a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded
+tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
+dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better
+days."
+
+"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, examining his
+rings.
+
+"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
+me."
+
+"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about
+other people's tragedies."
+
+"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came
+from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and
+entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every
+night she is more marvellous."
+
+"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I
+thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but it is
+not quite what I expected."
+
+"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have
+been to the Opera with you several times," said Dorian, opening his blue
+eyes in wonder.
+
+"You always come dreadfully late."
+
+"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is
+only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think
+of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I
+am filled with awe."
+
+"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
+
+He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow
+night she will be Juliet."
+
+"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one.
+She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has
+genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the
+secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to
+make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
+laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their
+dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry,
+how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke.
+Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.
+
+Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he
+was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's
+studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of
+scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and
+Desire had come to meet it on the way.
+
+"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.
+
+"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I have
+not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge her
+genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound to him
+for three years--at least for two years and eight months--from the
+present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When all
+that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out
+properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me."
+
+"That would be impossible, my dear boy?"
+
+"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her,
+but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is
+personalities, not principles, that move the age."
+
+"Well, what night shall we go?"
+
+"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
+to-morrow."
+
+"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."
+
+"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
+curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets
+Romeo."
+
+"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or
+reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before
+seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to
+him?"
+
+"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid
+of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame,
+specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the
+picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I
+delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see
+him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."
+
+Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they need
+most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
+
+"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit
+of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."
+
+"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his
+work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his
+prejudices, his principles, and his common-sense. The only artists I
+have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good
+artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly
+uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is
+the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely
+fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look.
+The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a
+man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The
+others write the poetry that they dare not realise."
+
+"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some
+perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that stood
+on the table. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is
+waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye."
+
+As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to
+think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian
+Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused him not
+the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It
+made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the
+methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that
+science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun
+by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human
+life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared
+to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one
+watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not
+wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from
+troubling the brain, and making the imagination turbid with monstrous
+fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know
+their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
+strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand
+their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful
+the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of
+passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect--to observe
+where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in
+unison, and at what point they were at discord--there was a delight in
+that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a
+price for any sensation.
+
+He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
+brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical
+words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to
+this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the
+lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something.
+Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to
+the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the
+veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly
+of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and
+the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and
+assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art,
+Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or
+sculpture, or painting.
+
+Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was
+yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was
+becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
+beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It
+was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one
+of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be
+remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose
+wounds are like red roses.
+
+Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was
+animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
+The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say
+where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the physical impulse began? How
+shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And
+yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools!
+Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really
+in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from
+matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery
+also.
+
+He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a
+science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it
+was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
+Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to
+their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of
+warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation
+of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow
+and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in
+experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.
+All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as
+our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would
+do many times, and with joy.
+
+It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by
+which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and
+certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to
+promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane
+was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt
+that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new
+experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
+What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been
+transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something
+that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for
+that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose
+origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our
+weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often
+happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
+really experimenting on ourselves.
+
+While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door,
+and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner.
+He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into
+scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed
+like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He
+thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life, and wondered how it
+was all going to end.
+
+When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram
+lying on the hall table. He opened it, and found it was from Dorian
+Gray. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl
+Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Mother, mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in
+the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the
+shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their
+dingy sitting-room contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you
+must be happy too!"
+
+Mrs. Vane winced, and put her thin bismuth-whitened hands on her
+daughter's head. "Happy!" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I
+see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr. Isaacs
+has been very good to us, and we owe him money."
+
+The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, mother?" she cried, "what does
+money matter? Love is more than money."
+
+"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts, and to
+get a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty
+pounds is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."
+
+"He is not a gentleman, mother, and I hate the way he talks to me," said
+the girl, rising to her feet, and going over to the window.
+
+"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
+woman, querulously.
+
+Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him any more,
+mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now." Then she paused. A rose
+shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the
+petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept
+over her, and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him," she
+said, simply.
+
+"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.
+The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the
+words.
+
+The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. Her
+eyes caught the melody, and echoed it in radiance; then closed for a
+moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a
+dream had passed across them.
+
+Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence,
+quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common
+sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison of passion. Her
+prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on Memory to
+remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought
+him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm
+with his breath.
+
+Then Wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. This
+young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against
+the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of
+craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.
+
+Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
+"Mother, mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know why I
+love him. I love him because he is like what Love himself should be. But
+what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet--why, I cannot
+tell--though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble. I feel
+proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love Prince
+Charming?"
+
+The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her
+cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sibyl rushed to
+her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "Forgive me, mother.
+I know it pains you to talk about our father. But it only pains you
+because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad. I am as happy to-day
+as you were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy for ever!"
+
+"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. Besides,
+what do you know of this young man? You don't even know his name. The
+whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going away
+to Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you should
+have shown more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is
+rich...."
+
+"Ah! Mother, mother, let me be happy!"
+
+Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical
+gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player,
+clasped her in her arms. At this moment the door opened, and a young lad
+with rough brown hair came into the room. He was thick-set of figure,
+and his hands and feet were large, and somewhat clumsy in movement. He
+was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly have guessed the
+close relationship that existed between them. Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes
+on him, and intensified the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the
+dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the _tableau_ was
+interesting.
+
+"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," said the
+lad, with a good-natured grumble.
+
+"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a
+dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.
+
+James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "I want you to
+come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever see
+this horrid London again. I am sure I don't want to."
+
+"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up
+a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She
+felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would
+have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.
+
+"Why not, mother? I mean it."
+
+"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a
+position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the
+Colonies, nothing that I would call society; so when you have made your
+fortune you must come back and assert yourself in London."
+
+"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that.
+I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the stage. I
+hate it."
+
+"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! But are you really
+going for a walk with me? That will be nice! I was afraid you were going
+to say good-bye to some of your friends--to Tom Hardy, who gave you that
+hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is
+very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go?
+Let us go to the Park."
+
+"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the
+Park."
+
+"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
+
+He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last, "but don't be
+too long dressing." She danced out of the door. One could hear her
+singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.
+
+He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned to the
+still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?" he asked.
+
+"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on her work. For
+some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this
+rough, stern son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled when
+their eyes met. She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The
+silence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.
+She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, just as
+they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. "I hope you will be
+contented, James, with your sea-faring life," she said. "You must
+remember that it is your own choice. You might have entered a
+solicitor's office. Solicitors are a very respectable class, and in the
+country often dine with the best families."
+
+"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite
+right. I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't
+let her come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."
+
+"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl."
+
+"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre, and goes behind to
+talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"
+
+"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the
+profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying
+attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was
+when acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at
+present whether her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt
+that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most
+polite to me. Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the
+flowers he sends are lovely."
+
+"You don't know his name, though," said the lad, harshly.
+
+"No," answered his mother, with a placid expression in her face. "He has
+not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic of him. He
+is probably a member of the aristocracy."
+
+James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch
+over her."
+
+"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special
+care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why
+she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the
+aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a
+most brilliant marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple.
+His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."
+
+The lad muttered something to himself, and drummed on the window-pane
+with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something, when
+the door opened, and Sibyl ran in.
+
+"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
+Good-bye, mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is
+packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."
+
+"Good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of strained stateliness.
+
+She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there
+was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.
+
+"Kiss me, mother," said the girl. Her flower-like lips touched the
+withered cheek, and warmed its frost.
+
+"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
+search of an imaginary gallery.
+
+"Come, Sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. He hated his mother's
+affectations.
+
+They went out into the flickering wind-blown sunlight, and strolled down
+the dreary Euston Road. The passers-by glanced in wonder at the sullen,
+heavy youth, who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of
+such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a common gardener
+walking with a rose.
+
+Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of
+some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at which comes on
+geniuses late in life, and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, however,
+was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her love was
+trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming,
+and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of him
+but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to sail, about
+the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful heiress whose life
+he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. For he was not
+to remain a sailor, or a super-cargo, or whatever he was going to be.
+Oh, no! A sailor's existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a
+horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a
+black wind blowing the masts down, and tearing the sails into long
+screaming ribands! He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite
+good-bye to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a
+week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, the
+largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it down to the
+coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were
+to attack them three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. Or,
+no. He was not to go to the gold-fields at all. They were horrid places,
+where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used
+bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he
+was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off
+by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course
+she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get
+married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. Yes,
+there were delightful things in store for him. But he must be very good,
+and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. She was only a
+year older than he was, but she knew so much more of life. He must be
+sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his prayers each
+night before he went to sleep. God was very good, and would watch over
+him. She would pray for him, too, and in a few years he would come back
+quite rich and happy.
+
+The lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer. He was heart-sick
+at leaving home.
+
+Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.
+Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger
+of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was making love to her could
+mean her no good. He was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated
+him through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account,
+and which for that reason was all the more dominant within him. He was
+conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature, and
+in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness. Children
+begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them;
+sometimes they forgive them.
+
+His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that
+he had brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase that he
+had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears
+one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of
+horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a
+hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like
+furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his under-lip.
+
+"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I
+am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say something."
+
+"What do you want me to say?"
+
+"Oh! that you will be a good boy, and not forget us," she answered,
+smiling at him.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me, than I am
+to forget you, Sibyl."
+
+She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.
+
+"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me
+about him? He means you no good."
+
+"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him. I
+love him."
+
+"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he? I
+have a right to know."
+
+"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name? Oh! you silly
+boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him, you would think
+him the most wonderful person in the world. Some day you will meet him:
+when you come back from Australia. You will like him so much. Everybody
+likes him, and I... love him. I wish you could come to the theatre
+to-night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh! how I
+shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To have him
+sitting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I may frighten the
+company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass one's
+self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers
+at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will announce me
+as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, Prince
+Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor beside
+him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door,
+love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want re-writing. They
+were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think,
+a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."
+
+"He is a gentleman," said the lad, sullenly.
+
+"A Prince!" she cried, musically. "What more do you want?"
+
+"He wants to enslave you."
+
+"I shudder at the thought of being free."
+
+"I want you to beware of him."
+
+"To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him."
+
+"Sibyl, you are mad about him."
+
+She laughed, and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as if you
+were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will
+know what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to think
+that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I have ever
+been before. Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and
+difficult. But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
+and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the
+smart people go by."
+
+They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds across
+the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust, tremulous
+cloud of orris-root it seemed, hung in the panting air. The
+brightly-coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
+
+She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He spoke
+slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other as players at a
+game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not communicate her
+joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all the echo she could
+win. After some time she became silent. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of
+golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open carriage with two ladies
+Dorian Gray drove past.
+
+She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.
+
+"Who?" said Jim Vane.
+
+"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.
+
+He jumped up, and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me. Which
+is he? Point him out. I must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that moment
+the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when it had left
+the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the Park.
+
+"He is gone," murmured Sibyl, sadly. "I wish you had seen him."
+
+"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
+you any wrong I shall kill him."
+
+She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air
+like a dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close to
+her tittered.
+
+"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly, as
+she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.
+
+When they reached the Achilles Statue she turned round. There was pity
+in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her head at him.
+"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all.
+How can you say such horrible things? You don't know what you are
+talking about. You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would
+fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said was wicked."
+
+"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. Mother is no
+help to you. She doesn't understand how to look after you. I wish now
+that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
+the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn't been signed."
+
+"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those
+silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not going
+to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect
+happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never harm anyone I love,
+would you?"
+
+"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.
+
+"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.
+
+"And he?"
+
+"For ever, too!"
+
+"He had better."
+
+She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. He
+was merely a boy.
+
+At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to
+their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock, and
+Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
+that she should do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when
+their mother was not present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he
+detested scenes of every kind.
+
+In Sibyl's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart,
+and a fierce, murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
+had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,
+and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened, and kissed her
+with real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.
+
+His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality,
+as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The
+flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the stained cloth.
+Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he
+could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left to him.
+
+After some time, he thrust away his plate, and put his head in his
+hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to
+him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother
+watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace
+handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got
+up, and went to the door. Then he turned back, and looked at her. Their
+eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.
+
+"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered
+vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth. I have a
+right to know. Were you married to my father?"
+
+She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
+the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,
+had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed in some measure it
+was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question
+called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up
+to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
+
+"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
+
+"My father was a scoundrel then?" cried the lad, clenching his fists.
+
+She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other very
+much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don't speak
+against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed he was
+highly connected."
+
+An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," he exclaimed,
+"but don't let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love
+with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose."
+
+For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her
+head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "Sibyl has a
+mother," she murmured; "I had none."
+
+The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down he kissed
+her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father," he
+said, "but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye. Don't forget
+that you will only have one child now to look after, and believe me that
+if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down,
+and kill him like a dog. I swear it."
+
+The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that
+accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid to
+her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more freely, and
+for the first time for many months she really admired her son. She would
+have liked to have continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but
+he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down, and mufflers looked
+for. The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the
+bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details. It
+was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the tattered
+lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. She was
+conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She consoled herself
+by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she
+had only one child to look after. She remembered the phrase. It had
+pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and
+dramatically expressed. She felt that they would all laugh at it some
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that
+evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
+where dinner had been laid for three.
+
+"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
+waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don't interest
+me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth
+painting; though many of them would be the better for a little
+white-washing."
+
+"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him as
+he spoke.
+
+Hallward started, and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he
+cried. "Impossible!"
+
+"It is perfectly true."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To some little actress or other."
+
+"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."
+
+"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
+Basil."
+
+"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."
+
+"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry, languidly. "But I didn't say
+he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great
+difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
+no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I
+never was engaged."
+
+"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
+absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
+
+"If you want to make him marry this girl tell him that, Basil. He is
+sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
+is always from the noblest motives."
+
+"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some
+vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."
+
+"Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry,
+sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is
+beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
+portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
+appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst
+others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
+appointment."
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
+be more serious than I am at the present moment."
+
+"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and
+down the room, and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it, possibly.
+It is some silly infatuation."
+
+"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
+attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our
+moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and
+I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality
+fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is
+absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful
+girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded
+Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a
+champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one
+unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack
+individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage
+makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other
+egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more
+highly organised, and to be highly organised is, I should fancy, the
+object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and,
+whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
+hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore
+her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by someone else.
+He would be a wonderful study."
+
+"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If
+Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself.
+You are much better than you pretend to be."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of others
+is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer
+terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour
+with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to
+us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good
+qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I
+mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for
+optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth
+is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
+As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and
+more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage
+them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian
+himself. He will tell you more than I can."
+
+"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the
+lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and
+shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been so
+happy. Of course it is sudden; all really delightful things are. And
+yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my
+life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
+extraordinarily handsome.
+
+"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I
+don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.
+You let Harry know."
+
+"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord
+Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder, and smiling as he spoke.
+"Come, let us sit down and try what the new _chef_ here is like, and
+then you will tell us how it all came about."
+
+"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian, as they took their
+seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. After I
+left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
+little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and
+went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind.
+Of course the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl!
+You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes she was
+perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
+cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green
+cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined
+with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all
+the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your
+studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round
+a pale rose. As for her acting--well, you shall see her to-night. She is
+simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I
+forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away
+with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the
+performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her. As we were sitting
+together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen
+there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't
+describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my
+life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She
+trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung
+herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell
+you all this, but I can't help it. Of course our engagement is a dead
+secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my
+guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I
+shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I
+have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to
+find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to
+speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of
+Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."
+
+"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward, slowly.
+
+"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall
+find her in an orchard in Verona."
+
+Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "At what
+particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what did
+she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."
+
+"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
+not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said
+she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is
+nothing to me compared with her."
+
+"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry--"much more
+practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say
+anything about marriage, and they always remind us."
+
+Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have annoyed
+Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon
+anyone. His nature is too fine for that."
+
+Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me,"
+he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the
+only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question--simple
+curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to
+us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in
+middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern."
+
+Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite incorrigible,
+Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you
+see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a
+beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how anyone can wish
+to shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a
+pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.
+What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't
+mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me
+faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all
+that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me
+to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me
+forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful
+theories."
+
+"And those are...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.
+
+"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
+about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."
+
+"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered,
+in his slow, melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory
+as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test,
+her sign of approval. When we are happy we are always good, but when we
+are good we are not always happy."
+
+"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.
+
+"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Lord
+Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the
+centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
+
+"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching
+the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord
+is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life--that is
+the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes
+to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them,
+but they are not one's concern. Besides, Individualism has really the
+higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's
+age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of
+his age is a form of the grossest immorality."
+
+"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
+terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
+
+"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that
+the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but
+self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of
+the rich."
+
+"One has to pay in other ways but money."
+
+"What sort of ways, Basil?"
+
+"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the
+consciousness of degradation."
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art is
+charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use them in
+fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction
+are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no
+civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever
+knows what a pleasure is."
+
+"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore someone."
+
+"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with
+some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as
+Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us
+to do something for them."
+
+"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
+us," murmured the lad, gravely. "They create Love in our natures. They
+have a right to demand it back."
+
+"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.
+
+"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.
+
+"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women give
+to men the very gold of their lives."
+
+"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very
+small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once put
+it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us
+from carrying them out."
+
+"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."
+
+"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some
+coffee, you fellows?--Waiter, bring coffee, and _fine-champagne_, and
+some cigarettes. No: don't mind the cigarettes; I have some. Basil, I
+can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette
+is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it
+leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will
+always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had
+the courage to commit."
+
+"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a
+fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
+"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
+have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you
+have never known."
+
+"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
+eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
+that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
+girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
+Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but
+there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a
+hansom."
+
+They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The
+painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could
+not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many
+other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all
+passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
+watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A
+strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would
+never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come
+between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets
+became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it
+seemed to him that he had grown years older.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
+Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an
+oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of
+pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking at the top
+of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he
+had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,
+upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and
+insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assuring him that he was proud
+to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a
+poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The
+heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a
+monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery
+had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side.
+They talked to each other across the theatre, and shared their oranges
+with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in
+the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of
+the popping of corks came from the bar.
+
+"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
+
+"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine
+beyond all living things. When she acts you will forget everything.
+These common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,
+become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and
+watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them
+as responsive as a violin. She spiritualises them, and one feels that
+they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
+
+"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord
+Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
+opera-glass.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
+understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love
+must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must
+be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age--that is something worth
+doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
+if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
+sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend
+them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your
+adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
+right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made
+Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."
+
+"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew that
+you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here
+is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
+minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am
+going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good
+in me."
+
+A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
+applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly
+lovely to look at--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
+that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace
+and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror
+of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded,
+enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed
+to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
+Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord
+Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"
+
+The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
+dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as
+it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through the
+crowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
+creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a
+plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a
+white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.
+
+Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes
+rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak--
+
+    Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
+    Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
+    For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
+    And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--
+
+with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly
+artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
+of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away
+all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.
+
+Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious.
+Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them
+to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.
+
+Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
+the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was
+nothing in her.
+
+She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be
+denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse
+as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She
+over-emphasised everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage--
+
+    Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
+    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
+    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
+
+was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
+taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
+leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--
+
+                      Although I joy in thee,
+    I have no joy of this contract to-night:
+    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
+    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
+    Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
+    This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
+    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--
+
+she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
+not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
+self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
+
+Even the common, uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
+interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to
+whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
+dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
+the girl herself.
+
+When the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord
+Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "She is quite
+beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act. Let us go."
+
+"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard,
+bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening,
+Harry. I apologise to you both."
+
+"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
+Hallward. "We will come some other night."
+
+"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply
+callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great
+artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress."
+
+"Don't talk like that about anyone you love, Dorian. Love is a more
+wonderful thing than Art."
+
+"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. "But do
+let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for
+one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't suppose you will want
+your wife to act. So what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a
+wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life
+as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There are
+only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know
+absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. Good
+heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The secret of remaining
+young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Come to the club
+with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty
+of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you want?"
+
+"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must
+go. Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to
+his eyes. His lips trembled, and, rushing to the back of the box, he
+leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
+
+"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry, with a strange tenderness in his
+voice; and the two young men passed out together.
+
+A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose
+on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and
+proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable.
+Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots, and laughing.
+The whole thing was a _fiasco_. The last act was played to almost empty
+benches. The curtain went down on a titter, and some groans.
+
+As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
+greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on
+her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance
+about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.
+
+When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
+came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.
+
+"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement--"horribly! It was
+dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea
+what I suffered."
+
+The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with
+long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to
+the red petals of her mouth--"Dorian, you should have understood. But
+you understand now, don't you?"
+
+"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.
+
+"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never
+act well again."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you
+shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I
+was bored."
+
+She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An
+ecstasy of happiness dominated her.
+
+"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
+reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought
+that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other.
+The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine
+also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me
+seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew
+nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came--oh, my beautiful
+love!--and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality
+really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the
+hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had
+always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the
+Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the
+orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had
+to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say.
+You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a
+reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! my
+love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You
+are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the
+puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how
+it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going to
+be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my
+soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them
+hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? Take
+me away, Dorian--take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I
+hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot
+mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand
+now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation
+for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that."
+
+He flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face. "You have
+killed my love," he muttered.
+
+She looked at him in wonder, and laughed. He made no answer. She came
+across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt
+down and pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a shudder
+ran through him.
+
+Then he leaped up, and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have
+killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir
+my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you
+were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you
+realised the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
+shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.
+My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are
+nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of
+you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what you were to me,
+once. Why, once.... Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never
+laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little
+you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art you
+are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The
+world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. What
+are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face."
+
+The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and
+her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?"
+she murmured. "You are acting."
+
+"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.
+
+She rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expression of pain in her
+face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm, and
+looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he cried.
+
+A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet, and lay
+there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
+whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all
+the time. But I will try--indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across
+me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not
+kissed me--if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
+Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My
+brother.... No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest.... But
+you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try
+to improve. Don't be cruel to me because I love you better than anything
+in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you.
+But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an
+artist. It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't
+leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She
+crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his
+beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in
+exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the
+emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him
+to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
+
+"I am going," he said at last, in his calm, clear voice. "I don't wish
+to be unkind, but I can't see you again. You have disappointed me."
+
+She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little
+hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He
+turned on his heel, and left the room. In a few moments he was out of
+the theatre.
+
+Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through
+dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
+houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after
+him. Drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves like
+monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon doorsteps,
+and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
+
+As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden.
+The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed
+itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
+rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with
+the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an
+anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market, and watched the men
+unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some
+cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any
+money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked
+at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long
+line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red
+roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge
+jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey
+sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
+waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging
+doors of the coffee-house in the Piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped
+and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
+Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked,
+and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
+
+After a little while, he hailed a hansom, and drove home. For a few
+moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent
+Square with its blank, close-shuttered windows, and its staring blinds.
+The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
+silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was
+rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
+
+In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that hung
+from the ceiling of the great oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were
+still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they
+seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out, and, having thrown
+his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the
+door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that,
+in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for
+himself, and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been
+discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning
+the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward
+had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. Then he went on
+into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken the
+buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally he came back,
+went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light
+that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared
+to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One
+would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was
+certainly strange.
+
+He turned round, and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The
+bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky
+corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he
+had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be
+more intensified even. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the
+lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking
+into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
+
+He winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory
+Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into
+its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it
+mean?
+
+He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
+again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual
+painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had
+altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly
+apparent.
+
+He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there
+flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
+day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He
+had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
+portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
+face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that
+the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and
+thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of
+his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled?
+Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them.
+And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
+the mouth.
+
+Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had
+dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
+had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been
+shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
+him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child.
+He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been
+made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had
+suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted,
+he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His life was
+well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her
+for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men.
+They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When
+they took lovers, it was merely to have someone with whom they could
+have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what
+women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to
+him now.
+
+But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his
+life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty.
+Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it
+again?
+
+No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The
+horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly
+there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men
+mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so.
+
+Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
+smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met
+his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted
+image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter
+more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would
+die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its
+fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would
+be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation.
+He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at any rate, listen to
+those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's garden had
+first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. He would go
+back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again.
+Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had.
+Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that
+she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together.
+His life with her would be beautiful and pure.
+
+He got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the
+portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!" he murmured to
+himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he
+stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning
+air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of
+Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name
+over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched
+garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times
+on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what
+made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded, and
+Victor came softly in with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a
+small tray of old Sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains,
+with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall
+windows.
+
+"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
+
+"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray, drowsily.
+
+"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."
+
+How late it was! He sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over his
+letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand
+that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The
+others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of
+cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of
+charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable young
+men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill, for
+a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had not yet had the
+courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned
+people and did not realise that we live in an age when unnecessary
+things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously
+worded communiations from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to
+advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable
+rates of interest.
+
+After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate
+dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
+onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep.
+He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of
+having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but
+there was the unreality of a dream about it.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a
+light French breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round
+table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
+seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in, and buzzed round the
+blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before
+him. He felt perfectly happy.
+
+Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
+portrait, and he started.
+
+"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
+table. "I shut the window?"
+
+Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.
+
+Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply
+his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had
+been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing
+was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would
+make him smile.
+
+And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in
+the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of
+cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the
+room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the
+portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes
+had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell
+him to remain. As the door was closing behind him he called him back.
+The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a moment.
+"I am not at home to anyone, Victor," he said, with a sigh. The man
+bowed and retired.
+
+Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on
+a luxuriously-cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The screen
+was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a
+rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously, wondering
+if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.
+
+Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What was
+the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it was
+not true, why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier
+chance, eyes other than his spied behind, and saw the horrible change?
+What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own
+picture? Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to be
+examined, and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful state
+of doubt.
+
+He got up, and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he
+looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside, and
+saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
+altered.
+
+As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he
+found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost
+scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place was
+incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle affinity
+between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form and colour
+on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what
+that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they made true?
+Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He shuddered, and felt
+afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture
+in sickened horror.
+
+One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him
+conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not
+too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His
+unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be
+transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would
+be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the
+fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could
+lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the
+degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men
+brought upon their souls.
+
+Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime,
+but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet
+threads of life, and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way
+through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
+wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he
+went over to the table, and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
+loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. He
+covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of
+pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we
+feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not
+the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the
+letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.
+
+Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's voice
+outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. I can't bear
+your shutting yourself up like this."
+
+He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking
+still continued, and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry
+in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel
+with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was
+inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,
+and unlocked the door.
+
+"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry, as he entered. "But
+you must not think too much about it."
+
+"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.
+
+"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly
+pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, from one point of view,
+but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her, after
+the play was over?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"
+
+"I was brutal, Harry--perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am
+not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
+myself better."
+
+"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I would
+find you plunged in remorse, and tearing that nice curly hair of yours."
+
+"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head, and
+smiling. "I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin
+with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.
+Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more--at least not before me. I want to be
+good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."
+
+"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
+on it. But how are you going to begin?"
+
+"By marrying Sibyl Vane."
+
+"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up, and looking at him
+in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian----"
+
+"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful about
+marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to me again.
+Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to break my word
+to her. She is to be my wife!"
+
+"Your wife! Dorian!... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
+morning, and sent the note down, by my own man."
+
+"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I was
+afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. You cut life
+to pieces with your epigrams."
+
+"You know nothing then?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray,
+took both his hands in his own, and held them tightly. "Dorian," he
+said, "my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane
+is dead."
+
+A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
+tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead! It is
+not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"
+
+"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the
+morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see anyone till I
+came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be
+mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in
+London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's
+_debut_ with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to
+one's old age. I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If
+they don't, it is all right. Did anyone see you going round to her room?
+That is an important point."
+
+Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
+Finally he stammered in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
+inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl----? Oh, Harry, I can't
+bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."
+
+"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put
+in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the theatre
+with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
+forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did
+not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor
+of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake, some
+dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was, but it
+had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it was
+prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."
+
+"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
+
+"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
+up in it. I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen. I should have
+thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
+seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this
+thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards
+we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be
+there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women
+with her."
+
+"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to
+himself--"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with
+a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing
+just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and
+then go on to the Opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
+extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
+Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
+happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here
+is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.
+Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed
+to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we
+call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I
+loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
+Then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?--when she
+played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to me.
+It was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her
+shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell
+you what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I
+felt I had done wrong. And now she is dead. My God! my God! Harry, what
+shall I do? You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to
+keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to
+kill herself. It was selfish of her."
+
+"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case,
+and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever
+reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible
+interest in life. If you had married this girl you would have been
+wretched. Of course you would have treated her kindly. One can always be
+kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would have soon
+found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman
+finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy,
+or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay
+for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been
+abject, which, of course, I would not have allowed, but I assure you
+that in any case the whole thing would have been an absolute failure."
+
+"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room,
+and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty. It is not my
+fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right.
+I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good
+resolutions--that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were."
+
+"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
+laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely _nil_.
+They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions
+that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for
+them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no
+account."
+
+"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
+"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I don't
+think I am heartless. Do you?"
+
+"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be
+entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, with
+his sweet, melancholy smile.
+
+The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined,
+"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind.
+I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened
+does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a
+wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of
+a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I
+have not been wounded."
+
+"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an exquisite
+pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism--"an extremely
+interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this. It
+often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an
+inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
+absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of
+style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an
+impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes,
+however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses
+our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply
+appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no
+longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are
+both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls
+us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Someone
+has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an
+experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my
+life. The people who have adored me--there have not been very many, but
+there have been some--have always insisted on living on, long after I
+had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become
+stout and tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for
+reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is!
+And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb
+the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details
+are always vulgar."
+
+"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
+
+"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
+poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore
+nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
+mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did
+die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice
+the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one
+with the terror of eternity. Well--would you believe it?--a week ago, at
+Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in
+question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and
+digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my romance
+in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again, and assured me that I
+had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous
+dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
+showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women
+never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act,
+and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to
+continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have
+a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are
+charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. You are more
+fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I
+have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary
+women always console themselves. Some of them do it by going in for
+sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her
+age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
+always means that they have a history. Others find a great consolation
+in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They
+flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most
+fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the
+charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me; and I can quite understand
+it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a
+sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end
+to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not
+mentioned the most important one."
+
+"What is that, Harry?" said the lad, listlessly.
+
+"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking someone else's admirer when one
+loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
+really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
+women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
+death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They
+make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as
+romance, passion, and love."
+
+"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
+
+"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than
+anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have
+emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all
+the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have
+never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how
+delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day
+before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,
+but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to
+everything."
+
+"What was that, Harry?"
+
+"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
+romance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that
+if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."
+
+"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
+face in his hands.
+
+"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you
+must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a
+strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene
+from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived,
+and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a
+dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them
+lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music
+sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life,
+she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for
+Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was
+strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio
+died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than
+they are."
+
+There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and
+with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours
+faded wearily out of things.
+
+After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me to myself,
+Harry," he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief. "I felt all
+that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not
+express it to myself. How well you know me! But we will not talk again
+of what has happened. It has been a marvellous experience. That is all.
+I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous."
+
+"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
+you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
+
+"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
+then?"
+
+"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go--"then, my dear Dorian, you
+would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to
+you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
+much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot
+spare you. And now you had better dress, and drive down to the club. We
+are rather late, as it is."
+
+"I think I shall join you at the Opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
+anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"
+
+"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name
+on the door. But I am sorry you won't come and dine."
+
+"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian, listlessly. "But I am awfully
+obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly my
+best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have."
+
+"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord
+Henry, shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before
+nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."
+
+As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a
+few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He
+waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an interminable
+time over everything.
+
+As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. No;
+there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news of
+Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious
+of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred
+the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment
+that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it
+indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed
+within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the
+change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.
+
+Poor Sibyl! what a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked death
+on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her, and taken her with
+him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed him, as
+she died? No; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a
+sacrament to him now. She had atoned for everything, by the sacrifice
+she had made of her life. He would not think any more of what she had
+made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he
+thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the
+world's stage to show the supreme reality of Love. A wonderful tragic
+figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and
+winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away
+hastily, and looked again at the picture.
+
+He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his
+choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him--life, and
+his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion,
+pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins--he was to have
+all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that
+was all.
+
+A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that
+was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of
+Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that
+now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat before
+the portrait, wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it
+seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which he
+yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden
+away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had so
+often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? The pity
+of it! the pity of it!
+
+For a moment he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that
+existed between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in
+answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain
+unchanged. And, yet, who, that knew anything about Life, would surrender
+the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance
+might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?
+Besides, was it really under his control? Had it indeed been prayer that
+had produced the substitution? Might there not be some curious
+scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence
+upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon
+dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire,
+might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods
+and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love of strange affinity?
+But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt by a
+prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter.
+That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?
+
+For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to
+follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him
+the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so
+it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he
+would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
+When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of
+chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one
+blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life
+would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and
+fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured
+image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
+
+He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,
+smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was
+already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the Opera, and Lord
+Henry was leaning over his chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
+into the room.
+
+"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said, gravely. "I called
+last night, and they told me you were at the Opera. Of course I knew
+that was impossible. But I wish you had left word where you had really
+gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might
+be followed by another. I think you might have telegraphed for me when
+you heard of it first. I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of
+_The Globe_, that I picked up at the club. I came here at once, and was
+miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heartbroken I am
+about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. But where were you?
+Did you go down and see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of
+following you there. They gave the address in the paper. Somewhere in
+the Euston Road, isn't it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
+that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must be in! And
+her only child, too! What did she say about it all?"
+
+"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
+pale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass,
+and looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the Opera. You should have come
+on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first time. We
+were in her box. She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely.
+Don't talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn't talk about a thing, it
+has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives
+reality to things. I may mention that she was not the woman's only
+child. There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on
+the stage. He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about yourself
+and what you are painting."
+
+"You went to the Opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly, and with a
+strained touch of pain in his voice. "You went to the Opera while Sibyl
+Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other
+women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you
+loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are
+horrors in store for that little white body of hers!"
+
+"Stop, Basil! I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet. "You
+must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is
+past."
+
+"You call yesterday the past?"
+
+"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow
+people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master
+of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I
+don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to
+enjoy them, and to dominate them."
+
+"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You
+look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come
+down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural,
+and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole
+world. Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you had
+no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. I see that."
+
+The lad flushed up, and, going to the window, looked out for a few
+moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "I owe a great deal
+to Harry, Basil," he said, at last--"more than I owe to you. You only
+taught me to be vain."
+
+"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "I
+don't know what you want. What do you want?"
+
+"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist, sadly.
+
+"Basil," said the lad, going over to him, and putting his hand on his
+shoulder, "you have come too late. Yesterday when I heard that Sibyl
+Vane had killed herself----"
+
+"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried
+Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
+
+"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? Of
+course she killed herself."
+
+The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful," he muttered,
+and a shudder ran through him.
+
+"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. It is one of
+the great romantic tragedies of the age. As a rule, people who act lead
+the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives,
+or something tedious. You know what I mean--middle-class virtue, and all
+that kind of thing. How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest
+tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last night she played--the night
+you saw her--she acted badly because she had known the reality of love.
+When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She
+passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr
+about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all
+its wasted beauty. But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not
+suffered. If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment--about
+half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to six--you would have found me in
+tears. Even Harry, who was here, who brought me the news, in fact, had
+no idea what I was going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed
+away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.
+And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me.
+That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How
+like a sympathetic person! You remind me of a story Harry told me about
+a certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to
+get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law altered--I forget
+exactly what it was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his
+disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of _ennui_,
+and became a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, if
+you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has
+happened, or to see it from the proper artistic point of view. Was it
+not Gautier who used to write about _la consolation des arts_? I
+remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day
+and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young
+man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man
+who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries
+of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old
+brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite
+surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is much to be got from all these. But
+the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is
+still more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry
+says, is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my
+talking to you like this. You have not realised how I have developed. I
+was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions,
+new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less.
+I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course I am very fond
+of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not
+stronger--you are too much afraid of life--but you are better. And how
+happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel
+with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."
+
+The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him,
+and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art. He
+could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his
+indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. There was
+so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.
+
+"Well, Dorian," he said, at length, with a sad smile, "I won't speak to
+you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. I only trust your
+name won't be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take
+place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?"
+
+Dorian shook his head and a look of annoyance passed over his face at
+the mention of the word "inquest." There was something so crude and
+vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name," he
+answered.
+
+"But surely she did?"
+
+"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to
+anyone. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who
+I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. It
+was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should
+like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and
+some broken pathetic words."
+
+"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you
+must come and sit to me yourself again. I can't get on without you."
+
+"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!" he exclaimed,
+starting back.
+
+The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "Do
+you mean to say you don't like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have
+you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the best
+thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply
+disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room
+looked different as I came in."
+
+"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let
+him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes--that
+is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait."
+
+"Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for
+it. Let me see it." And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room.
+
+A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between the
+painter and the screen. "Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must
+not look at it. I don't wish you to."
+
+"Not look at my own work! you are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at
+it?" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
+
+"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never
+speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don't offer
+any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you
+touch this screen, everything is over between us."
+
+Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute
+amazement. He had never seen him like this before. The lad was actually
+pallid with rage. His hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes
+were like disks of blue fire. He was trembling all over.
+
+"Dorian!"
+
+"Don't speak!"
+
+"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want
+me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over
+towards the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I
+shouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in
+Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of
+varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?"
+
+"To exhibit it? You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a
+strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be
+shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That
+was impossible. Something--he did not know what--had to be done at once.
+
+"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that. George Petit is going to
+collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
+Seze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only
+be away a month. I should think you could easily spare it for that time.
+In fact, you are sure to be out of town. And if you keep it always
+behind a screen, you can't care much about it."
+
+Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of
+perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible
+danger. "You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he
+cried. "Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being
+consistent have just as many moods as others have. The only difference
+is that your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that
+you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you
+to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing." He
+stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered
+that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest,
+"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you
+why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it
+was a revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He
+would ask him and try.
+
+"Basil," he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in
+the face, "we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours and I shall
+tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my
+picture?"
+
+The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you, you
+might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I
+could not bear your doing either of those two things. If you wish me
+never to look at your picture again, I am content. I have always you to
+look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden from
+the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame
+or reputation."
+
+"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray. "I think I have a
+right to know." His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had
+taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery.
+
+"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. "Let us
+sit down. And just answer me one question. Have you noticed in the
+picture something curious?--something that probably at first did not
+strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?"
+
+"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
+hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.
+
+"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say.
+Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
+extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power
+by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal
+whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped
+you. I grew jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you
+all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away
+from me you were still present in my art.... Of course I never let you
+know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not
+have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I
+had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become
+wonderful to my eyes--too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships
+there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
+keeping them.... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more
+absorbed in you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris
+in dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished
+boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of
+Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leant over
+the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent
+silver the marvel of your own face. And it had all been what art should
+be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes
+think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually
+are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your
+own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder
+of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or
+veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and
+film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that
+others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too
+much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I
+resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little
+annoyed; but then you did not realise all that it meant to me. Harry, to
+whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the
+picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was
+right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon
+as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it
+seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen
+anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking, and that
+I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to
+think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the
+work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and
+colour tell us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me
+that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals
+him. And so when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your
+portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me
+that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture cannot
+be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told
+you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped."
+
+Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, and
+a smile played about his lips. The peril was over. He was safe for the
+time. Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who
+had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself
+would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry
+had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was too
+clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be someone
+who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things
+that life had in store?
+
+"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
+have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?"
+
+"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very
+curious."
+
+"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"
+
+Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
+possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
+
+"You will some day, surely?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been
+the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I
+have done that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don't know what it cost me
+to tell you all that I have told you."
+
+"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you
+felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment."
+
+"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I
+have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should
+never put one's worship into words."
+
+"It was a very disappointing confession."
+
+"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else in the
+picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?"
+
+"No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn't talk
+about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must
+always remain so."
+
+"You have got Harry," said the painter, sadly.
+
+"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends his
+days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is
+improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I
+don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go
+to you, Basil."
+
+"You will sit to me again?"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man came across
+two ideal things. Few come across one."
+
+"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
+There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I
+will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant."
+
+"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward, regretfully. "And
+now good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once
+again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel about
+it."
+
+As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! how
+little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead
+of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost
+by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange
+confession explained to him! The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his
+wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences--he
+understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be
+something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.
+
+He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all
+costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad
+of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room
+to which any of his friends had access.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if
+he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite
+impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked
+over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of
+Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There
+was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his
+guard.
+
+Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted
+to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of
+his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room
+his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his
+own fancy?
+
+After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
+mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He
+asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
+
+"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of
+dust. I must get it arranged, and put straight before you go into it. It
+is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."
+
+"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
+
+"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it
+hasn't been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died."
+
+He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of
+him. "That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the
+place--that is all. Give me the key."
+
+"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
+of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "Here is the key. I'll
+have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living up
+there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"
+
+"No, no," he cried, petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."
+
+She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
+the household. He sighed, and told her to manage things as she thought
+best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
+
+As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round
+the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
+embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
+Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
+Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps
+served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
+had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
+itself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What
+the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on
+the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They
+would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still
+live on. It would be always alive.
+
+He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
+the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would
+have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more
+poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that
+he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was not
+noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of
+beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire.
+It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and
+Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.
+But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret,
+denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
+There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams
+that would make the shadow of their evil real.
+
+He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered
+it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face
+on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged;
+and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and
+rose-red lips--they all were there. It was simply the expression that
+had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw
+in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl
+Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul
+was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment. A
+look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the
+picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his
+servant entered.
+
+"The persons are here, Monsieur."
+
+He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed
+to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly
+about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the
+writing-table, he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him
+round something to read, and reminding him that they were to meet at
+eight-fifteen that evening.
+
+"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
+here."
+
+In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
+himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with
+a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid,
+red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably
+tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who
+dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people
+to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian
+Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a
+pleasure even to see him.
+
+"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
+hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
+person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a
+sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited
+for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."
+
+"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
+Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I don't
+go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a
+picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I
+thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
+
+"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to
+you. Which is the work of art, sir?"
+
+"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it,
+covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going
+upstairs."
+
+"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
+beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the
+long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we
+carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
+perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top
+of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."
+
+He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
+began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
+picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
+protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
+of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
+so as to help them.
+
+"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man, when they
+reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
+
+"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the
+door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
+secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
+
+He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
+since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
+as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
+well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
+Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
+to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
+desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
+changed. There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its
+fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
+he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase
+filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging
+the same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen were
+playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying
+hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all!
+Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked
+round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it
+seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be
+hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that
+was in store for him!
+
+But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
+this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple
+pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
+unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not
+see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept
+his youth--that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow
+finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full
+of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and
+shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit
+and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them
+their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would
+have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to
+the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
+
+No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon
+the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but
+the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become
+hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's-feet would creep round the fading eyes
+and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth
+would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men
+are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands,
+the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so
+stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was
+no help for it.
+
+"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I
+am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."
+
+"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
+was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
+
+"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
+lean it against the wall. Thanks."
+
+"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
+
+Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
+keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap upon him and fling him
+to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed
+the secret of his life. "I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much
+obliged for your kindness in coming round."
+
+"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you,
+sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who
+glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely
+face. He had never seen anyone so marvellous.
+
+When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door,
+and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would ever look
+upon the horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his shame.
+
+On reaching the library he found that it was just after five o'clock,
+and that the tea had been already brought up. On a little table of dark
+perfumed wood thickly encrusted with nacre, a present from Lady Radley,
+his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid, who had spent the
+preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside
+it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the
+edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's Gazette_
+had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
+returned. He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
+leaving the house, and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
+He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,
+while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
+back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he
+might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
+room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He had heard
+of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who
+had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with
+an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of
+crumpled lace.
+
+He sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
+note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and
+a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
+eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through
+it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew
+attention to the following paragraph:--
+
+     "INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the
+     Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on
+     the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the
+     Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was
+     returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the
+     deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own
+     evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem
+     examination of the deceased."
+
+He frowned, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
+flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real
+ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
+having sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of him to have
+marked it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The man knew more
+than enough English for that.
+
+Perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something. And, yet,
+what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death?
+There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.
+
+His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was
+it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal
+stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
+Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
+himself into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a
+few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had
+ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
+delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
+show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made
+real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
+revealed.
+
+It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being,
+indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who
+spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the
+passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
+own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
+which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
+artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
+as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The
+style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and
+obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
+expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of
+some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_. There
+were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour.
+The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
+philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
+spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of
+a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense
+seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
+cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as
+it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced
+in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of
+reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling
+day and creeping shadows.
+
+Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
+through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no
+more. Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
+lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed
+the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
+bedside, and began to dress for dinner.
+
+It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
+Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
+
+"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.
+That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was
+going."
+
+"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
+chair.
+
+"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a
+great difference."
+
+"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed
+into the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this
+book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought
+to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than nine
+large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different
+colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing
+fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost
+entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom
+the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended,
+became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the
+whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written
+before he had lived it.
+
+In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. He
+never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat
+grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
+water, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was
+occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently,
+been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in
+nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its
+place--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really
+tragic, if somewhat over-emphasised, account of the sorrow and despair
+of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had
+most dearly valued.
+
+For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many
+others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard
+the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange rumours
+about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of
+the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw
+him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from
+the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered
+the room. There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked
+them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the
+innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming and
+graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at
+once sordid and sensual.
+
+Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged
+absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were
+his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
+upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left
+him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
+Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and ageing face on
+the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from
+the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken
+his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own
+beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He
+would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
+terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead,
+or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which
+were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would
+place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,
+and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
+
+There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
+delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little
+ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in
+disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he
+had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant
+because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. That
+curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they
+sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with
+gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad
+hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
+
+Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society.
+Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday
+evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world his
+beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to
+charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners, in
+the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted as much
+for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the
+exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle
+symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and
+antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially
+among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian
+Gray the true realisation of a type of which they had often dreamed in
+Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real
+culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect
+manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company
+of those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make themselves
+perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom
+"the visible world existed."
+
+And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the
+arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
+Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment
+universal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert
+the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for
+him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
+time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of
+the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in
+everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
+his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
+
+For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
+immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a
+subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London
+of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the
+"Satyricon" once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be
+something more than a mere _arbiter elegantiarum_, to be consulted on
+the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of
+a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
+its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
+spiritualising of the senses its highest realisation.
+
+The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been
+decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and
+sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
+conscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existence.
+But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had
+never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal
+merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to
+kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new
+spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant
+characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through History, he
+was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to
+such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous
+forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose
+result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied
+degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape,
+Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with
+the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of
+the field as his companions.
+
+Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that
+was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely
+puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was
+to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to
+accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode
+of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself,
+and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of
+the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that
+dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to
+concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
+moment.
+
+There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
+after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
+death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
+the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
+itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
+and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
+might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
+with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the
+curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb
+shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside,
+there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
+going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
+from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it
+feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from
+her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
+degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
+watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan
+mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we
+had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been
+studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the
+letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
+Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
+comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where
+we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the
+necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
+stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might
+open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the
+darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh
+shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in
+which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
+in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of
+joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.
+
+It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray
+to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his
+search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and
+possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he
+would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
+alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
+then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
+intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
+is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that indeed,
+according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.
+
+It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic
+communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction
+for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices
+of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of
+the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its
+elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to
+symbolise. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch
+the priest, in his stiff flowered vestment, slowly and with white hands
+moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled
+lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one
+would fain think, is indeed the "_panis caelestis_," the bread of angels,
+or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host
+into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming
+censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the
+air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he
+passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and
+long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women
+whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.
+
+But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual
+development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of
+mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for
+the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are
+no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous
+power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle
+antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season;
+and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the
+_Darwinismus_ movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in
+tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the
+brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of
+the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,
+morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him
+before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared
+with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
+intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
+He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual
+mysteries to reveal.
+
+And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their
+manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums
+from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
+its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their
+true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one
+mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
+that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the
+brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to
+elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
+influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, or
+aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that
+sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be
+able to expel melancholy from the soul.
+
+At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
+latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
+olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad
+gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled
+Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
+grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching
+upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed
+or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and
+horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
+barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
+beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
+unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
+the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
+dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
+with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
+mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
+allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been
+subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
+Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones
+such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers
+that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness.
+He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were
+shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the performer does
+not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh _ture_ of the
+Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in
+high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three
+leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and
+is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from
+the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung
+in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the
+skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went
+with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has
+left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these
+instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought
+that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and
+with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would
+sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening
+in rapt pleasure to "Tannhaeuser," and seeing in the prelude to that
+great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
+
+On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a
+costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered
+with five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years,
+and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often spend a
+whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that
+he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by
+lamp-light, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the
+pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
+carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red
+cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their
+alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of the
+sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow
+of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
+extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la
+vieille roche_ that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
+
+He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's
+"Clericalis Disciplina" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real
+jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of
+Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with
+collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There was a gem in the
+brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of
+golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a
+magical sleep, and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de
+Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India
+made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth
+provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The
+garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her
+colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
+that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
+Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a
+newly-killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The
+bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
+that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the
+aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any
+danger by fire.
+
+The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
+at the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the
+Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
+inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable
+were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold
+might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's strange
+romance "A Margarite of America" it was stated that in the chamber of
+the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased
+out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles,
+sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of
+Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. A
+sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to
+King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over
+its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it
+away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever found again, though the
+Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.
+The King of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian a rosary of three
+hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.
+
+When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.
+of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
+and his cap had double rows of rubles that threw out a great light.
+Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
+twenty-one diamonds. Richard II. had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
+marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII.,
+on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket
+of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich
+stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The
+favourites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.
+Edward II. gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with
+jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
+skull-cap _parseme_ with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves
+reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and
+fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last
+Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls, and
+studded with sapphires.
+
+How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
+decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
+
+Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries that
+performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the Northern
+nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--and he always had an
+extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in
+whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
+ruin that Time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
+rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils
+bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of
+their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained
+his flower-like bloom. How different it was with material things! Where
+had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
+the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls
+for the pleasure of Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had
+stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on
+which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn
+by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
+wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the
+dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth
+of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic
+robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were
+figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,
+hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;" and the
+coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were
+embroidered the verses of a song beginning "_Madame, je suis tout
+joyeux_," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
+thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
+pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
+for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen
+hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
+king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
+were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
+in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black
+velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask,
+with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground,
+and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a
+room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
+cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet
+high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was
+made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from
+the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and
+profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken
+from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had
+stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.
+
+And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
+specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
+the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates, and
+stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
+from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
+"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
+elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
+blue silks, and wrought with _fleurs de lys_, birds, and images; veils
+of _lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
+Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese
+_Foukousas_ with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged
+birds.
+
+He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
+he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
+long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored
+away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of
+the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that
+she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering
+that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possessed a
+gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a
+repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal
+blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought
+in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing
+scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was
+figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the
+fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with
+heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed
+white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread
+and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread
+raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk,
+and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom
+was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and
+blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold,
+figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ,
+and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
+white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and
+_fleurs de lys_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and
+many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to
+which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
+imagination.
+
+For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely
+house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could
+escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be
+almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room
+where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own
+hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real
+degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the
+purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he would not go there,
+would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
+his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.
+Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to
+dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
+until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the
+picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times,
+with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin,
+and smiling with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to
+bear the burden that should have been his own.
+
+After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and
+gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as
+well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
+than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from the picture
+that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his
+absence someone might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate
+bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
+
+He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was true
+that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness
+of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
+from that? He would laugh at anyone who tried to taunt him. He had not
+painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked?
+Even if he told them, would they believe it?
+
+Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
+Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank
+who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton
+luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly
+leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not been
+tampered with, and that the picture was still there. What if it should
+be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely the world
+would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it.
+
+For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
+He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and
+social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said
+that on one occasion when he was brought by a friend into the
+smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman
+got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current
+about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It was rumoured
+that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the
+distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and
+coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary
+absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in
+society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a
+sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were
+determined to discover his secret.
+
+Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,
+and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his
+charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth
+that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer
+to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about
+him. It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most
+intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who had
+wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and
+set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
+horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
+
+Yet these whispered scandals only increased, in the eyes of many, his
+strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of
+security. Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to
+believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
+fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance
+than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much
+less value than the possession of a good _chef_. And, after all, it is a
+very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad
+dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the
+cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold _entrees_, as Lord Henry
+remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a
+good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are,
+or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely
+essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as
+its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic
+play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is
+insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by
+which we can multiply our personalities.
+
+Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the
+shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing
+simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being
+with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature
+that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and
+whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He
+loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country
+house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in
+his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, in
+his "Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James," as one
+who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept him not
+long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had
+some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached
+his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so
+suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's
+studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here, in
+gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and
+wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black armour
+piled at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of
+Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame?
+Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared
+to realise? Here, from the fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth
+Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.
+A flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an enamelled collar
+of white and damask roses. On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an
+apple. There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He
+knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her lovers.
+Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval heavy-lidded eyes
+seemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his
+powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
+saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with
+disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were
+so over-laden with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth
+century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
+second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest
+days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.
+Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and
+insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked
+upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star
+of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of
+his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred
+within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady
+Hamilton face, and her moist wine-dashed lips--he knew what he had got
+from her. He had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty
+of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were
+vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled from the cup she was
+holding. The carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were
+still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to
+follow him wherever he went.
+
+Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,
+nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with
+an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were
+times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was
+merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and
+circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had
+been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them
+all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of
+the world and made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety. It
+seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.
+
+The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
+himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how,
+crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
+Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
+Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him, and the
+flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
+caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
+an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
+wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
+with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
+days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _taedium vitae_, that comes
+on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
+emerald at the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of
+pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
+Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero
+Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
+colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
+from Carthage, and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
+
+Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
+two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
+tapestries or cunningly-wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
+beautiful forms of those whom Vice and Blood and Weariness had made
+monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted
+her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the
+dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the
+Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
+whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
+price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase
+living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot
+who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding
+beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro
+Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of
+Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who
+received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk,
+filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at
+the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured
+only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as
+other men have for red wine--the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and
+one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his
+own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent,
+and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a
+Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord
+of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
+who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este
+in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan
+church for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his
+brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was
+coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange,
+could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love
+and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and
+acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his
+bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,
+as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him
+could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed
+him.
+
+There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and
+they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
+strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch,
+by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by
+an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were
+moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could
+realise his conception of the beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
+birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.
+
+He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had
+been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
+foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a man
+passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of his
+grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognised him.
+It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not
+account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went on
+quickly in the direction of his own house.
+
+But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the
+pavement, and then hurrying after him. In a few moments his hand was on
+his arm.
+
+"Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for
+you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your
+tired servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to
+Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before
+I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me.
+But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognise me?"
+
+"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognise Grosvenor
+Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at
+all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen
+you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?"
+
+"No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a
+studio in Paris, and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture
+I have in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to talk.
+Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something
+to say to you."
+
+"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray,
+languidly, as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
+latch-key.
+
+The lamp-light struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
+watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till
+twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
+the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any
+delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with
+me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes."
+
+Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter
+to travel! A Gladstone bag, and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get
+into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing
+is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be."
+
+Hallward shook his head as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
+library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth.
+The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with
+some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little
+marqueterie table.
+
+"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
+everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a
+most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you
+used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?"
+
+Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's
+maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
+_Anglomanie_ is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly
+of the French, doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad
+servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One
+often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted
+to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another
+brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
+hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room."
+
+"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap
+and coat off, and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the
+corner. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
+Don't frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me."
+
+"What is it all about?" cried Dorian, in his petulant way, flinging
+himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of
+myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."
+
+"It is about yourself," answered Hallward, in his grave, deep voice,
+"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour."
+
+Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured.
+
+"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
+sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the
+most dreadful things are being said against you in London."
+
+"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other
+people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got
+the charm of novelty."
+
+"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his
+good name. You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and
+degraded. Of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all
+that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind
+you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe
+them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's
+face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
+There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself
+in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his
+hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name, but you know him--came
+to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen him before,
+and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard
+a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There
+was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I know now that
+I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But
+you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous
+untroubled youth--I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see
+you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I
+am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are
+whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that
+a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter
+it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your
+house nor invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord
+Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up
+in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent to the
+exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip, and said that you
+might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no
+pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman
+should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of
+yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out
+before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
+young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed
+suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had
+to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable.
+What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord
+Kent's only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St.
+James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the
+young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman
+would associate with him?"
+
+"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
+said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
+in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
+is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
+anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
+his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
+I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
+son takes his wife from the streets what is that to me? If Adrian
+Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I
+know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
+prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
+call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that
+they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they
+slander. In this country it is enough for a man to have distinction and
+brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of
+lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
+fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
+
+"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad
+enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
+I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
+of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all
+sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
+madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them
+there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are
+smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are
+inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not
+have made his sister's name a by-word."
+
+"Take care, Basil. You go too far."
+
+"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
+Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
+single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the Park?
+Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
+other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of
+dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in
+London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I
+laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your
+country house, and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know
+what is said about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to
+you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself into
+an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then
+proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to
+lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you to have
+a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful
+people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't
+be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good,
+not for evil. They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become
+intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for
+shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or
+not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it
+seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest
+friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to
+him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was
+implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that
+it was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable
+of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I
+could answer that, I should have to see your soul."
+
+"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
+turning almost white from fear.
+
+"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
+voice--"to see your soul. But only God can do that."
+
+A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You
+shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the
+table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it?
+You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody
+would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the
+better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate
+about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about
+corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face."
+
+There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his
+foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible
+joy at the thought that someone else was to share his secret, and that
+the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his
+shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous
+memory of what he had done.
+
+"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into
+his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that
+you fancy only God can see."
+
+Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must
+not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don't mean
+anything."
+
+"You think so?" He laughed again.
+
+"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good.
+You know I have been always a staunch friend to you."
+
+"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."
+
+A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for a
+moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right
+had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of
+what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he
+straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood
+there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes and their
+throbbing cores of flame.
+
+"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man, in a hard, clear voice.
+
+He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give
+me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. If
+you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I
+shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am
+going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and
+shameful."
+
+Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come
+upstairs, Basil," he said, quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from day
+to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
+show it to you if you come with me."
+
+"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my
+train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to
+read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."
+
+"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will
+not have to read long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward
+following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at
+night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A
+rising wind made some of the windows rattle.
+
+When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the
+floor, and taking out the key turned it in the lock. "You insist on
+knowing, Basil?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat harshly,
+"You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything
+about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think:" and,
+taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of
+air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky
+orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he
+placed the lamp on the table.
+
+Hallward glanced round him, with a puzzled expression. The room looked
+as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a
+curtained picture, an old Italian _cassone_, and an almost empty
+bookcase--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a
+table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was
+standing on the mantel-shelf, he saw that the whole place was covered
+with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling
+behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.
+
+"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that
+curtain back, and you will see mine."
+
+The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or
+playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.
+
+"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man; and he tore
+the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground.
+
+An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the
+dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was
+something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
+Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The
+horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous
+beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet
+on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the
+loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed
+away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian
+himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognise his own brush-work,
+and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt
+afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the
+left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright
+vermilion.
+
+It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never
+done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if
+his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own
+picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at
+Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his
+parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across
+his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.
+
+The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with
+that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
+absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither
+real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the
+spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken
+the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.
+
+"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded
+shrill and curious in his ears.
+
+"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in
+his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good
+looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to
+me the wonder of youth, and you finished the portrait of me that
+revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I
+don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would
+call it a prayer...."
+
+"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible.
+The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had
+some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is
+impossible."
+
+"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
+window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
+
+"You told me you had destroyed it."
+
+"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."
+
+"I don't believe it is my picture."
+
+"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.
+
+"My ideal, as you call it...."
+
+"As you called it."
+
+"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an
+ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."
+
+"It is the face of my soul."
+
+"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
+devil."
+
+"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian, with a
+wild gesture of despair.
+
+Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. "My God! if it
+is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,
+why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to
+be!" He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The
+surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was
+from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through
+some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly
+eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not
+so fearful.
+
+His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and
+lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he
+flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
+buried his face in his hands.
+
+"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" There was no
+answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray,
+Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in
+one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash
+away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride
+has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.
+I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself
+too much. We are both punished."
+
+Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed
+eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.
+
+"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
+remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
+as scarlet; yet I will make them as white as snow'?"
+
+"Those words mean nothing to me now."
+
+"Hush! don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God!
+don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"
+
+Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable
+feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
+been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear
+by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred
+within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more
+than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
+around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced
+him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had
+brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten
+to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as
+he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round.
+Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at
+him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear,
+crushing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.
+
+There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of someone choking
+with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively,
+waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice
+more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor.
+He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the
+knife on the table, and listened.
+
+He could hear nothing but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He
+opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely
+quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the
+balustrade, and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.
+Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as
+he did so.
+
+The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with
+bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been
+for the red jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that was
+slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was
+simply asleep.
+
+How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking
+over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind
+had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail,
+starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down, and saw the
+policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on
+the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom
+gleamed at the corner, and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl
+was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and
+then she stopped, and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse
+voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She
+stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the Square. The
+gas-lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their
+black iron branches to and fro. He shivered, and went back, closing the
+window behind him.
+
+Having reached the door, he turned the key, and opened it. He did not
+even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole
+thing was not to realise the situation. The friend who had painted the
+fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his
+life. That was enough.
+
+Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish
+workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished
+steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by
+his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment,
+then he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing
+the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands
+looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.
+
+Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The
+woodwork creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped
+several times, and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the
+sound of his own footsteps.
+
+When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They
+must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in
+the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and
+put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled
+out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two.
+
+He sat down, and began to think. Every year--every month, almost--men
+were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness
+of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth....
+And yet what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the
+house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants
+were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to
+Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had
+intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before
+any suspicions would be aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed
+long before then.
+
+A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat, and went
+out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the
+policeman on the pavement outside, and seeing the flash of the
+bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited, and held his breath.
+
+After a few moments he drew back the latch, and slipped out, shutting
+the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In
+about five minutes his valet appeared half dressed, and looking very
+drowsy.
+
+"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in;
+"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"
+
+"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
+blinking.
+
+"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
+to-morrow. I have some work to do."
+
+"All right, sir."
+
+"Did anyone call this evening?"
+
+"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
+catch his train."
+
+"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"
+
+"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
+find you at the club."
+
+"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
+
+Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table, and passed into the
+library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room biting
+his lip, and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the
+shelves, and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152,
+Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
+chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
+peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
+He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.
+
+The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he
+opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had
+been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His
+night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But
+youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
+
+He turned round, and, leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his
+chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky
+was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like
+a morning in May.
+
+Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent
+blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there
+with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
+suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for
+Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came
+back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still
+sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such
+hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.
+
+He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken
+or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory
+than in the doing of them; strange triumphs that gratified the pride
+more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of
+joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the
+senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of
+the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
+strangle one itself.
+
+When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
+then got up hastily, and dressed himself with even more than his usual
+care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
+scarf-pin, and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time
+also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
+about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
+servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of the
+letters he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several times
+over, and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face.
+"That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once said.
+
+After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
+with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
+table sat down and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
+other he handed to the valet.
+
+"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
+is out of town, get his address."
+
+As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upon a
+piece of paper, drawing first flowers, and bits of architecture, and
+then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
+seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and,
+getting up, went over to the bookcase and took out a volume at hazard.
+He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until
+it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.
+
+When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
+of the book. It was Gautier's "Emaux et Camees," Charpentier's
+Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of
+citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
+pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned
+over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the
+cold yellow hand "_du supplice encore mal lavee_," with its downy red
+hairs and its "_doigts de faune_." He glanced at his own white taper
+fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he
+came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:--
+
+    "Sur une gamme chromatique,
+      Le sein de perles ruisselant,
+    La Venus de l'Adriatique
+      Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
+
+    "Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes
+      Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
+    S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
+      Que souleve un soupir d'amour.
+
+    "L'esquif aborde et me depose,
+      Jetant son amarre au pilier,
+    Devant une facade rose,
+      Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
+
+How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating
+down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black
+gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to
+him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one
+pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the
+gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall
+honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the
+dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept
+saying over and over to himself:--
+
+    "Devant une facade rose,
+      Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
+
+The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn
+that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to
+mad, delightful follies. There was romance in every place. But Venice,
+like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true
+romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. Basil had
+been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor
+Basil! what a horrible way for a man to die!
+
+He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He read of
+the swallows that fly in and out of the little cafe at Smyrna where the
+Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke
+their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of
+the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in
+its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered
+Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures
+with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl
+over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which,
+drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that
+Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "_monstre charmant_" that
+couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time the book
+fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came
+over him. What if Alan Campbell should be out of England? Days would
+elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come. What
+could he do then? Every moment was of vital importance. They had been
+great friends once, five years before--almost inseparable, indeed. Then
+the intimacy had come suddenly to an end. When they met in society now,
+it was only Dorian Gray who smiled; Alan Campbell never did.
+
+He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation
+of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry
+he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant
+intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he had spent a great
+deal of his time working in the Laboratory, and had taken a good class
+in the Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted
+to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own, in which he
+used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the annoyance of his
+mother, who had set her heart on his standing for Parliament, and had a
+vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. He was
+an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin and
+the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had
+first brought him and Dorian Gray together--music and that indefinable
+attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished,
+and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met
+at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after
+that used to be always seen together at the Opera, and wherever good
+music was going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell
+was always either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to
+many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful
+and fascinating in life. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place
+between them no one ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that they
+scarcely spoke when they met, and that Campbell seemed always to go away
+early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed,
+too--was strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike
+hearing music, and would never himself play, giving as his excuse, when
+he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no
+time left in which to practise. And this was certainly true. Every day
+he seemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared
+once or twice in some of the scientific reviews, in connection with
+certain curious experiments.
+
+This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he kept
+glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by he became horribly
+agitated. At last he got up, and began to pace up and down the room,
+looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long stealthy strides. His
+hands were curiously cold.
+
+The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with
+feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the
+jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting
+for him there; saw it indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands
+his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight,
+and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain
+had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made
+grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
+danced like some foul puppet on a stand, and grinned through moving
+masks. Then, suddenly, Time stopped for him. Yes: that blind,
+slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, Time being
+dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its
+grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him
+stone.
+
+At last the door opened, and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes
+upon him.
+
+"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.
+
+A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back
+to his cheeks.
+
+"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself
+again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.
+
+The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments Alan Campbell walked in,
+looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his
+coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.
+
+"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming."
+
+"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it
+was a matter of life and death." His voice was hard and cold. He spoke
+with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the steady
+searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands in the
+pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
+gesture with which he had been greeted.
+
+"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
+person. Sit down."
+
+Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The
+two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that
+what he was going to do was dreadful.
+
+After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very
+quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
+had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room
+to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
+He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, and don't look at me like
+that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not
+concern you. What you have to do is this----"
+
+"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether what you
+have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. I entirely decline
+to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
+They don't interest me any more."
+
+"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
+you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are
+the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
+matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about
+chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you
+have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs--to destroy it
+so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come
+into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in
+Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must
+be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and
+everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
+scatter in the air."
+
+"You are mad, Dorian."
+
+"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."
+
+"You are mad, I tell you--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to
+help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to
+do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my
+reputation for you? What is it to me what devil's work you are up to?"
+
+"It was suicide, Alan."
+
+"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."
+
+"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"
+
+"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I
+don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not be
+sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of
+all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have
+thought you knew more about people's characters. Your friend Lord Henry
+Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has
+taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have
+come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't come to me."
+
+"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had made me
+suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the
+marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the
+result was the same."
+
+"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not
+inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my stirring in
+the matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a crime
+without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it."
+
+"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment; listen to
+me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain
+scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
+horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous
+dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden
+table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through,
+you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not
+turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing anything wrong.
+On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the
+human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or
+gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. What I
+want you to do is merely what you have often done before. Indeed, to
+destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to
+work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If
+it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you
+help me."
+
+"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent
+to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me."
+
+"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you
+came I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some
+day. No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the
+scientific point of view. You don't inquire where the dead things on
+which you experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you too
+much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan."
+
+"Don't speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead."
+
+"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is
+sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan!
+if you don't come to my assistance I am ruined. Why, they will hang me,
+Alan! Don't you understand? They will hang me for what I have done."
+
+"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do
+anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me."
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I entreat you, Alan."
+
+"It is useless."
+
+The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes. Then he stretched
+out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He read
+it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table.
+Having done this, he got up, and went over to the window.
+
+Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and
+opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell back
+in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if
+his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.
+
+After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round, and
+came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no
+alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the
+address. If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't help me, I
+will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to
+help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you.
+You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh,
+offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me--no
+living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate
+terms."
+
+Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
+
+"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The
+thing is quite simple. Come, don't work yourself into this fever. The
+thing has to be done. Face it, and do it."
+
+A groan broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. The
+ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing
+Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
+borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his
+forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already
+come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead.
+It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.
+
+"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."
+
+"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter
+things.
+
+"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."
+
+He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"
+
+"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."
+
+"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."
+
+"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
+note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the
+things back to you."
+
+Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope
+to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he
+rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon
+as possible, and to bring the things with him.
+
+As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and, having got up
+from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a
+kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly
+buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the
+beat of a hammer.
+
+As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and, looking at Dorian
+Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in
+the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.
+"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.
+
+"Hush, Alan: you have saved my life," said Dorian.
+
+"Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from
+corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing
+what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life
+that I am thinking."
+
+"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian, with a sigh, "I wish you had a thousandth
+part of the pity for me that I have for you." He turned away as he
+spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.
+
+After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant
+entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil
+of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps.
+
+"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.
+
+"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another
+errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies
+Selby with orchids?"
+
+"Harden, sir."
+
+"Yes--Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden
+personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and
+to have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don't want any white
+ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty place,
+otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it."
+
+"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?"
+
+Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your experiment take, Alan?"
+he said, in a calm, indifferent voice. The presence of a third person in
+the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
+
+Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," he
+answered.
+
+"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
+Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have
+the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want
+you."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.
+
+"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is!
+I'll take it for you. You bring the other things." He spoke rapidly, and
+in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left
+the room together.
+
+When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it
+in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He
+shuddered. "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured.
+
+"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell, coldly.
+
+Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his
+portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn
+curtain was lying. He remembered that, the night before he had
+forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and
+was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.
+
+What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one
+of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it
+was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent
+thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose
+grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had
+not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.
+
+He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with
+half-closed eyes and averted head walked quickly in, determined that he
+would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down, and
+taking up the gold and purple hanging, he flung it right over the
+picture.
+
+There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed
+themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard
+Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other
+things that he had required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder if
+he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of
+each other.
+
+"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.
+
+He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been
+thrust back into the chair, and that Campbell was gazing into a
+glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs he heard the key
+being turned in the lock.
+
+It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library. He was
+pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what you asked me to do," he
+muttered. "And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again."
+
+"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," said Dorian,
+simply.
+
+As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible
+smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at
+the table was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
+buttonhole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
+Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing
+with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he
+bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps
+one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
+Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed
+that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our
+age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for
+sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He
+himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a
+moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.
+
+It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who
+was a very clever woman, with what Lord Henry used to describe as the
+remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife
+to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband
+properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and
+married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted
+herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and
+French _esprit_ when she could get it.
+
+Dorian was one of her special favourites, and she always told him that
+she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my
+dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
+"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most
+fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our
+bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to
+raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.
+However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully
+short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never
+sees anything."
+
+Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she
+explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married
+daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make
+matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is
+most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay
+with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman
+like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them
+up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure
+unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much
+to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.
+There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of
+Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You
+shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me."
+
+Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. Yes:
+it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen
+before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those
+middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,
+but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an
+over-dressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always
+trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to
+her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against
+her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and
+Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy
+dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces, that, once
+seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,
+white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the
+impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of
+ideas.
+
+He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the
+great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the
+mauve-draped mantel-shelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be
+so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance, and he promised
+faithfully not to disappoint me."
+
+It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door
+opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some
+insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.
+
+But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away
+untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an
+insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the _menu_ specially for you," and
+now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence
+and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass
+with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.
+
+"Dorian," said Lord Henry, at last, as the _chaud-froid_ was being
+handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out
+of sorts."
+
+"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is afraid
+to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly
+should."
+
+"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in
+love for a whole week--not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town."
+
+"How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady.
+"I really cannot understand it."
+
+"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl,
+Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us and
+your short frocks."
+
+"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I
+remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how _decolletee_
+she was then."
+
+"She is still _decolletee_," he answered, taking an olive in his long
+fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
+_edition de luxe_ of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and
+full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary.
+When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief."
+
+"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.
+
+"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third
+husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth."
+
+"Certainly, Lady Narborough."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it."
+
+"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends."
+
+"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether,
+like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at
+her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any
+hearts at all."
+
+"Four husbands! Upon my word that is _trop de zele_."
+
+"_Trop d'audace_, I tell her," said Dorian.
+
+"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol
+like? I don't know him."
+
+"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,"
+said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
+
+Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all
+surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."
+
+"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows.
+"It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent
+terms."
+
+"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking
+her head.
+
+Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous,"
+he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things
+against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
+
+"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.
+
+"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really if you all worship
+Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so
+as to be in the fashion."
+
+"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You
+were far too happy. When a woman marries again it is because she
+detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he
+adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."
+
+"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.
+
+"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the
+rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them
+they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask
+me to dinner again, after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough; but
+it is quite true."
+
+"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your
+defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married.
+You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that
+would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors,
+and all the bachelors like married men."
+
+"_Fin de siecle_," murmured Lord Henry.
+
+"_Fin du globe_," answered his hostess.
+
+"I wish it were _fin du globe_," said Dorian, with a sigh. "Life is a
+great disappointment."
+
+"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell
+me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that one knows that
+Life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish
+that I had been; but you are made to be good--you look so good. I must
+find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray should
+get married?"
+
+"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry, with a
+bow.
+
+"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through
+Debrett carefully to-night, and draw out a list of all the eligible
+young ladies."
+
+"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian.
+
+"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done
+in a hurry. I want it to be what _The Morning Post_ calls a suitable
+alliance, and I want you both to be happy."
+
+"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry.
+"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."
+
+"Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair,
+and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again.
+You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew
+prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet,
+though. I want it to be a delightful gathering."
+
+"I like men who have a future, and women who have a past," he answered.
+"Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?"
+
+"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons,
+my dear Lady Ruxton," she added. "I didn't see you hadn't finished your
+cigarette."
+
+"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going
+to limit myself, for the future."
+
+"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal
+thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a
+feast."
+
+Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to
+me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she
+murmured, as she swept out of the room.
+
+"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal,"
+cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble
+upstairs."
+
+The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the
+table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat, and went and
+sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the
+situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The
+word _doctrinaire_--word full of terror to the British mind--reappeared
+from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served
+as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of
+Thought. The inherited stupidity of the race--sound English common sense
+he jovially termed it--was shown to be the proper bulwark for Society.
+
+A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at
+Dorian.
+
+"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of
+sorts at dinner."
+
+"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all."
+
+"You were charming last night. The little Duchess is quite devoted to
+you. She tells me she is going down to Selby."
+
+"She has promised to come on the twentieth."
+
+"Is Monmouth to be there too?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Harry."
+
+"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very
+clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of
+weakness. It is the feet of clay that makes the gold of the image
+precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White
+porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what
+fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences."
+
+"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.
+
+"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is
+ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity,
+with time thrown in. Who else is coming?"
+
+"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey
+Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian."
+
+"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find
+him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat over-dressed, by
+being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type."
+
+"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to
+Monte Carlo with his father."
+
+"Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come. By the
+way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven.
+What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?"
+
+Dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at
+last, "I did not get home till nearly three."
+
+"Did you go to the club?"
+
+"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I
+didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How
+inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been
+doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at
+half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my
+latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any
+corroborative evidence on the subject you can ask him."
+
+Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let
+us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman.
+Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not
+yourself to-night."
+
+"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come
+round and see you to-morrow or next day. Make my excuses to Lady
+Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home."
+
+"All right, Dorian. I daresay I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The
+Duchess is coming."
+
+"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove
+back to his own house he was conscious that the sense of terror he
+thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual
+questioning had made him lose his nerves for the moment, and he wanted
+his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He
+winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.
+
+Yet it had to be done. He realised that, and when he had locked the door
+of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust
+Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another
+log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was
+horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything.
+At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian
+pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead
+with a cool musk-scented vinegar.
+
+Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed
+nervously at his under-lip. Between two of the windows stood a large
+Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony, and inlaid with ivory and blue
+lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and
+make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet
+almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He
+lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the
+long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the
+cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying,
+went over to it, and, having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A
+triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively
+towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese
+box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides
+patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round
+crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside
+was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and
+persistent.
+
+He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his
+face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly
+hot, he drew himself up, and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes
+to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so,
+and went into his bedroom.
+
+As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray
+dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept
+quietly out of the house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good
+horse. He hailed it, and in a low voice gave the driver an address.
+
+The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.
+
+"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if
+you drive fast."
+
+"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and
+after his fare had got in he turned his horse round, and drove rapidly
+towards the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
+in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
+and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some
+of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards
+brawled and screamed.
+
+Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
+Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
+now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
+to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
+senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret.
+He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were
+opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the
+memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were
+new.
+
+The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a
+huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The
+gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the
+man lost his way, and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from
+the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The side-windows of the hansom
+were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.
+
+"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the
+soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to
+death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had
+been spilt. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no
+atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was
+possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out,
+to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed,
+what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made
+him a Judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful,
+horrible, not to be endured.
+
+On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
+step. He thrust up the trap, and called to the man to drive faster. The
+hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned, and
+his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse
+madly with his stick. The driver laughed, and whipped up. He laughed in
+answer, and the man was silent.
+
+The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
+sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and, as the mist
+thickened, he felt afraid.
+
+Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he
+could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like
+tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the
+darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut,
+then swerved aside, and broke into a gallop.
+
+After some time they left the clay road, and rattled again over
+rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
+fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamp-lit blind. He
+watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes, and made
+gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart.
+As they turned a corner a woman yelled something at them from an open
+door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The
+driver beat at them with his whip.
+
+It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with
+hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
+those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
+them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
+intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
+still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept
+the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's
+appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness
+that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became
+dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The
+coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life,
+the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their
+intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art,
+the dreamy shadows of Song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness.
+In three days he would be free.
+
+Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the
+low roofs and jagged chimney stacks of the houses rose the black masts
+of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.
+
+"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
+trap.
+
+Dorian started, and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and,
+having got out hastily, and given the driver the extra fare he had
+promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and
+there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light
+shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an
+outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a
+wet mackintosh.
+
+He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he
+was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small
+shabby house, that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of
+the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped, and gave a peculiar knock.
+
+After a little time he heard steps in the passage, and the chain being
+unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word
+to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as
+he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that
+swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the
+street. He dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked
+as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring
+gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them,
+were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed
+them, making quivering discs of light. The floor was covered with
+ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained
+with dark rings of spilt liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little
+charcoal stove playing with bone counters, and showing their white teeth
+as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a
+sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily-painted bar that ran
+across one complete side stood two haggard women mocking an old man who
+was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He
+thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed
+by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper.
+
+At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
+darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
+heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils
+quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow
+hair, who was bending over a lamp, lighting a long thin pipe, looked up
+at him, and nodded in a hesitating manner.
+
+"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.
+
+"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps
+will speak to me now."
+
+"I thought you had left England."
+
+"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at
+last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added,
+with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I
+think I have had too many friends."
+
+Dorian winced, and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
+fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the
+gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in
+what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
+teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he
+was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was
+eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
+Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The
+presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one
+would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
+
+"I am going on to the other place," he said, after a pause.
+
+"On the wharf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
+now."
+
+Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women
+who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better."
+
+"Much the same."
+
+"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
+something."
+
+"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.
+
+"Never mind."
+
+Adrian Singleton rose up wearily, and followed Dorian to the bar. A
+half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
+greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
+them. The women sidled up, and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back
+on them, and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.
+
+A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
+the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.
+
+"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
+the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me
+again."
+
+Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then
+flickered out, and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head, and
+raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
+watched her enviously.
+
+"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What
+does it matter? I am quite happy here."
+
+"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
+after a pause.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Good-night, then."
+
+"Good-night," answered the young man, passing up the steps, and wiping
+his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
+
+Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew
+the curtain aside a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
+woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!" she
+hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
+
+"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."
+
+She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called,
+ain't it?" she yelled after him.
+
+The drowsy sailor leapt to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
+round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He
+rushed out as if in pursuit.
+
+Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His
+meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
+if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
+Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his
+lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did
+it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of
+another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life, and
+paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so
+often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In
+her dealings with man Destiny never closed her accounts.
+
+There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
+for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of
+the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
+impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
+They move to their terrible end as automatons move, Choice is taken from
+them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but
+to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. For all
+sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of
+disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning-star of evil, fell
+from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
+
+Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
+rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
+as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
+short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
+suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself he
+was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.
+
+He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
+tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
+and saw the gleam of a polished barrel pointing straight at his head,
+and the dusky form of a short thick-set man facing him.
+
+"What do you want?" he gasped.
+
+"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you."
+
+"You are mad. What have I done to you?"
+
+"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane
+was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door.
+I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had
+no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were
+dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I
+heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you
+are going to die."
+
+Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I
+never heard of her. You are mad."
+
+"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
+are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what
+to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one
+minute to make your peace--no more. I go on board to-night for India,
+and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all."
+
+Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
+what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he
+cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!"
+
+"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years
+matter?"
+
+"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
+voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!"
+
+James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
+Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
+
+Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
+the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
+of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
+unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
+summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
+when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not
+the man who had destroyed her life.
+
+He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I
+would have murdered you!"
+
+Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of
+committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
+"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
+hands."
+
+"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I
+heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."
+
+"You had better go home, and put that pistol away, or you may get into
+trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel, and going slowly down the
+street.
+
+James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head
+to foot. After a little while a black shadow that had been creeping
+along the dripping wall, moved out into the light and came close to him
+with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round
+with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar.
+
+"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting her haggard face
+quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out
+from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money,
+and he's as bad as bad."
+
+"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's
+money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be nearly
+forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got
+his blood upon my hands."
+
+The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered.
+"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
+what I am."
+
+"You lie!" cried James Vane.
+
+She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth,"
+she cried.
+
+"Before God?"
+
+"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here.
+They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh
+on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I
+have though," she added, with a sickly leer.
+
+"You swear this?"
+
+"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give
+me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money
+for my night's lodging."
+
+He broke from her with an oath, and rushed to the corner of the street,
+but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had
+vanished also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal
+talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a
+jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and
+the mellow light of the huge lace-covered lamp that stood on the table
+lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which
+the Duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among
+the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian
+had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker
+chair looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough
+pretending to listen to the Duke's description of the last Brazilian
+beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate
+smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The
+house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to
+arrive on the next day.
+
+"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the
+table, and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my
+plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."
+
+"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the Duchess,
+looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my
+own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."
+
+"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are
+both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an
+orchid, for my buttonhole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
+effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one
+of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen
+of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad
+truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
+Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is
+with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The
+man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is
+the only thing he is fit for."
+
+"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.
+
+"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.
+
+"I recognise him in a flash," exclaimed the Duchess.
+
+"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a
+label there is no escape! I refuse the title."
+
+"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.
+
+"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I give the truths of to-morrow."
+
+"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.
+
+"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.
+
+"Of your shield, Harry: not of your spear."
+
+"I never tilt against Beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.
+
+"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much."
+
+"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
+beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready
+than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."
+
+"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the Duchess.
+"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"
+
+"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good
+Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
+virtues have made our England what she is."
+
+"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.
+
+"I live in it."
+
+"That you may censure it the better."
+
+"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.
+
+"What do they say of us?"
+
+"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."
+
+"Is that yours, Harry?"
+
+"I give it to you."
+
+"I could not use it. It is too true."
+
+"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognise a description."
+
+"They are practical."
+
+"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger,
+they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."
+
+"Still, we have done great things."
+
+"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."
+
+"We have carried their burden."
+
+"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."
+
+She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried.
+
+"It represents the survival of the pushing."
+
+"It has development."
+
+"Decay fascinates me more."
+
+"What of Art?" she asked.
+
+"It is a malady."
+
+"Love?"
+
+"An illusion."
+
+"Religion?"
+
+"The fashionable substitute for Belief."
+
+"You are a sceptic."
+
+"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."
+
+"What are you?"
+
+"To define is to limit."
+
+"Give me a clue."
+
+"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."
+
+"You bewilder me. Let us talk of someone else."
+
+"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince
+Charming."
+
+"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.
+
+"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the Duchess,
+colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
+scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
+butterfly."
+
+"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian.
+
+"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me."
+
+"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"
+
+"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I
+come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by
+half-past eight."
+
+"How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning."
+
+"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one
+I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is nice of you
+to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing. All good hats
+are made out of nothing."
+
+"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every
+effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a
+mediocrity."
+
+"Not with women," said the Duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule
+the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone
+says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you
+ever love at all."
+
+"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.
+
+"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the Duchess, with
+mock sadness.
+
+"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? Romance lives
+by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides,
+each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference
+of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies
+it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret
+of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
+
+"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the Duchess, after
+a pause.
+
+"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry.
+
+The Duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression
+in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired.
+
+Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed.
+"I always agree with Harry, Duchess."
+
+"Even when he is wrong?"
+
+"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."
+
+"And does his philosophy make you happy?"
+
+"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
+searched for pleasure."
+
+"And found it, Mr. Gray?"
+
+"Often. Too often."
+
+The Duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
+don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."
+
+"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his
+feet, and walking down the conservatory.
+
+"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
+cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating."
+
+"If he were not, there would be no battle."
+
+"Greek meets Greek, then?"
+
+"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman."
+
+"They were defeated."
+
+"There are worse things than capture," she answered.
+
+"You gallop with a loose rein."
+
+"Pace gives life," was the _riposte_.
+
+"I shall write it in my diary to-night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That a burnt child loves the fire."
+
+"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."
+
+"You use them for everything, except flight."
+
+"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us."
+
+"You have a rival."
+
+"Who?"
+
+He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him."
+
+"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to Antiquity is fatal to us
+who are romanticists."
+
+"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."
+
+"Men have educated us."
+
+"But not explained you."
+
+"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
+
+"Sphynxes without secrets."
+
+She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go
+and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."
+
+"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."
+
+"That would be a premature surrender."
+
+"Romantic Art begins with its climax."
+
+"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."
+
+"In the Parthian manner?"
+
+"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."
+
+"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he
+finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came
+a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody
+started up. The Duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his
+eyes Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray
+lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a death-like swoon.
+
+He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room, and laid upon one of
+the sofas. After a short time he came to himself, and looked round with
+a dazed expression.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?"
+He began to tremble.
+
+"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was
+all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to
+dinner. I will take your place."
+
+"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather
+come down. I must not be alone."
+
+He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety
+in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror
+ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of
+the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of
+James Vane watching him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
+time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
+indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
+tracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble
+in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the
+leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
+regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering
+through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its
+hand upon his heart.
+
+But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
+the night, and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual
+life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
+imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of
+sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
+brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the
+good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the
+weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
+house he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any
+footmarks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have
+reported it. Yes: it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's brother had not
+come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some
+winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not
+know who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved
+him.
+
+And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
+that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible
+form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be, if
+day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent
+corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat
+at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the
+thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air
+seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of
+madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the
+scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with
+added horror. Out of the black cave of Time, terrible and swathed in
+scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six
+o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.
+
+It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was
+something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
+seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it
+was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused
+the change. His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish
+that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle
+and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions
+must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die.
+Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that
+are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides, he had
+convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken
+imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and
+not a little of contempt.
+
+After breakfast he walked with the Duchess for an hour in the garden,
+and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp
+frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue
+metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat reed-grown lake.
+
+At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey Clouston,
+the Duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. He
+jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home,
+made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough
+undergrowth.
+
+"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.
+
+"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open.
+I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground."
+
+Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown and
+red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters
+ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that
+followed, fascinated him, and filled him with a sense of delightful
+freedom. He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high
+indifference of joy.
+
+Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass, some twenty yards in front
+of them, with black-tipped ears erect, and long hinder limbs throwing it
+forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir Geoffrey
+put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the animal's
+grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out
+at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live."
+
+"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
+into the thicket he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry of a hare
+in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is worse.
+
+"Good heavens! I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. "What an
+ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting there!" he
+called out at the top of his voice. "A man is hurt."
+
+The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
+
+"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time the firing
+ceased along the line.
+
+"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey, angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
+"Why on earth don't you keep your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the
+day."
+
+Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
+lithe, swinging branches aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging
+a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It seemed
+to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey
+ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the
+keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces.
+There was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. A
+great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the boughs overhead.
+
+After a few moments, that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
+endless hours of pain, he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started,
+and looked round.
+
+"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is
+stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."
+
+"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered, bitterly. "The
+whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man...?"
+
+He could not finish the sentence.
+
+"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of shot
+in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come; let us go
+home."
+
+They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty
+yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry, and said, with
+a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."
+
+"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this accident, I suppose. My dear
+fellow, it can't be helped. It was the man's own fault. Why did he get
+in front of the guns? Besides, it's nothing to us. It is rather awkward
+for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It makes
+people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he shoots
+very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter."
+
+Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something
+horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps," he
+added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.
+
+The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is _ennui_,
+Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. But we
+are not likely to suffer from it, unless these fellows keep chattering
+about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be
+tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does
+not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides,
+what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the
+world that a man can want. There is no one who would not be delighted to
+change places with you."
+
+"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don't laugh
+like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just
+died is better off than I am. I have no terror of Death. It is the
+coming of Death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in
+the leaden air around me. Good heavens! don't you see a man moving
+behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"
+
+Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
+was pointing. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for
+you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the
+table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must
+come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."
+
+Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The
+man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
+manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. "Her
+Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.
+
+Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am coming
+in," he said, coldly. The man turned round, and went rapidly in the
+direction of the house.
+
+"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It
+is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt
+with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
+
+"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present
+instance you are quite astray. I like the Duchess very much, but I don't
+love her."
+
+"And the Duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are
+excellently matched."
+
+"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
+scandal."
+
+"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
+lighting a cigarette.
+
+"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."
+
+"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.
+
+"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray, with a deep note of pathos in
+his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion, and forgotten the
+desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
+become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was
+silly of me to come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to
+Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."
+
+"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what
+it is? You know I would help you."
+
+"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered, sadly. "And I dare say it is
+only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a
+horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the Duchess,
+looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come back,
+Duchess."
+
+"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey is
+terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
+How curious!"
+
+"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. Some whim,
+I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am sorry
+they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."
+
+"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no
+psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
+purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know someone who
+had committed a real murder."
+
+"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the Duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
+Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint."
+
+Dorian drew himself up with an effort, and smiled. "It is nothing,
+Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is
+all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what Harry
+said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must
+go and lie down. You will excuse me, won't you?"
+
+They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
+conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian,
+Lord Henry turned and looked at the Duchess with his slumberous eyes.
+"Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "I
+wish I knew," she said at last.
+
+He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty
+that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
+
+"One may lose one's way."
+
+"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Disillusion."
+
+"It was my _debut_ in life," she sighed.
+
+"It came to you crowned."
+
+"I am tired of strawberry leaves."
+
+"They become you."
+
+"Only in public."
+
+"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.
+
+"I will not part with a petal."
+
+"Monmouth has ears."
+
+"Old age is dull of hearing."
+
+"Has he never been jealous?"
+
+"I wish he had been."
+
+He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking
+for?" she inquired.
+
+"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."
+
+She laughed. "I have still the mask."
+
+"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.
+
+She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.
+
+Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
+in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become too
+hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky
+beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
+prefigure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at what Lord
+Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
+
+At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
+pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
+at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
+night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in
+the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
+
+Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
+town to consult his doctor, and asking him to entertain his guests in
+his absence. As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the
+door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him.
+He frowned, and bit his lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after some
+moments' hesitation.
+
+As soon as the man entered Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer,
+and spread it out before him.
+
+"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning,
+Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.
+
+"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?" asked
+Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left in
+want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."
+
+"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of coming
+to you about."
+
+"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean?
+Wasn't he one of your men?"
+
+"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."
+
+The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart had
+suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out. "Did you say a
+sailor?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both
+arms, and that kind of thing."
+
+"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
+looking at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell his
+name?"
+
+"Some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
+kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor, we
+think."
+
+Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He
+clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he exclaimed. "Quick! I must
+see it at once."
+
+"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don't like to
+have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad
+luck."
+
+"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to
+bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I'll go to the stables myself. It
+will save time."
+
+In less than a quarter of an hour Dorian Gray was galloping down the
+long avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him
+in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
+path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
+He lashed her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air
+like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.
+
+At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He
+leapt from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. In the
+farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him
+that the body was there, and he hurried to the door, and put his hand
+upon the latch.
+
+There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a
+discovery that would either make or mar his life. Then he thrust the
+door open, and entered.
+
+On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man
+dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. A spotted
+handkerchief had been placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a
+bottle, sputtered beside it.
+
+Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take
+the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to
+come to him.
+
+"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at
+the doorpost for support.
+
+When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of joy
+broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was James
+Vane.
+
+He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode
+home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried
+Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with
+rose-water. "You're quite perfect. Pray, don't change."
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
+things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good
+actions yesterday."
+
+"Where were you yesterday?"
+
+"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."
+
+"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the
+country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people
+who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised. Civilisation is not
+by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by
+which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being
+corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they
+stagnate."
+
+"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of
+both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
+together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I
+have altered."
+
+"You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you
+had done more than one?" asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate
+a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a
+perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.
+
+"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone else. I
+spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was
+quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
+which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How long
+ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She
+was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure
+that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been
+having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
+Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept
+tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone
+away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her
+as flower-like as I had found her."
+
+"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
+of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish
+your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That
+was the beginning of your reformation."
+
+"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's
+heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is no
+disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and
+marigold."
+
+"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
+leant back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
+boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now
+with anyone of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a
+rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you,
+and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be
+wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of
+your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how
+do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some
+star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?"
+
+"I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the
+most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you
+say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode
+past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a
+spray of jasmine. Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to
+persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first
+little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.
+I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about
+yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for
+days."
+
+"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."
+
+"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
+Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.
+
+"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and
+the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having
+more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate
+lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell's
+suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.
+Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for
+Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and
+the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I
+suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in
+San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said
+to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess
+all the attractions of the next world."
+
+"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his
+Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could
+discuss the matter so calmly.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is
+no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him.
+Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it."
+
+"Why?" said the younger man, wearily.
+
+"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
+trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays
+except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the
+nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee
+in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom
+my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very
+fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course married
+life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even
+of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such
+an essential part of one's personality."
+
+Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table and, passing into the next
+room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white
+and black ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he
+stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever
+occur to you that Basil was murdered?"
+
+Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury
+watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to
+have enemies. Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a
+man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was
+really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he
+told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, and that you
+were the dominant motive of his art."
+
+"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian, with a note of sadness in his
+voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?"
+
+"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all
+probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
+the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his
+chief defect."
+
+"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
+said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.
+
+"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
+doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
+It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your
+vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
+exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
+degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
+a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."
+
+"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who
+has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
+Don't tell me that."
+
+"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord
+Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of life. I
+should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never
+do any thing that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass
+from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a
+really romantic end as you suggest; but I can't. I dare say he fell into
+the Seine off an omnibus, and that the conductor hushed up the scandal.
+Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his back
+under those dull-green waters with the heavy barges floating over him,
+and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would
+have done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting
+had gone off very much."
+
+Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began
+to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird,
+with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch.
+As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of
+crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and began to sway backwards
+and forwards.
+
+"Yes," he continued, turning round, and taking his handkerchief out of
+his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
+lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great
+friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I
+suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores
+have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of
+you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I
+remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby,
+and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back?
+What a pity! It was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it.
+I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then, his
+work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that
+always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did
+you advertise for it? You should."
+
+"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it.
+I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why
+do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some
+play--'Hamlet,' I think--how do they run?--
+
+        "'Like the painting of a sorrow,
+    A face without a heart.'
+
+Yes: that is what it was like."
+
+Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
+heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
+
+Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano.
+"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
+heart.'"
+
+The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the
+way, Dorian," he said, after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he
+gain the whole world and lose'--how does the quotation run?--'his own
+soul'?"
+
+The music jarred and Dorian Gray started, and stared at his friend. "Why
+do you ask me that, Harry?"
+
+"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,
+"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
+That is all. I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close by the
+Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people
+listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the
+man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being
+rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A
+wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white
+faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase
+flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lips--it was really very good
+in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that
+Art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not
+have understood me."
+
+"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and
+sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a
+soul in each one of us. I know it."
+
+"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely
+certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the
+lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have
+you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up
+our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian,
+and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.
+You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I
+am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You
+have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of
+the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and
+absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in
+appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I
+would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or
+be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of
+the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now
+with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front
+of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I
+always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their
+opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the
+opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in
+everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are
+playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea
+weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes?
+It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art
+left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music to-night. It
+seems to me that you are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas
+listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know
+nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one
+is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how
+happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk
+deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate.
+Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more
+than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."
+
+"I am not the same, Harry."
+
+"Yes: you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
+Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.
+Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
+shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
+yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question
+of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides
+itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe, and
+think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a
+morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that
+brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you
+had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had
+ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that
+our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own
+senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of
+_lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the
+strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with
+you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always
+worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the
+age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad
+that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a
+picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your
+art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."
+
+Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair.
+"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have
+the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to
+me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even
+you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."
+
+"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne
+over again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the
+dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will
+come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the club, then. It has
+been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some
+one at White's who wants immensely to know you--young Lord Poole,
+Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has
+begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful, and rather
+reminds me of you."
+
+"I hope not," said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired
+to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I
+want to go to bed early."
+
+"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
+in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
+heard from it before."
+
+"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling, "I am a
+little changed already."
+
+"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will
+always be friends."
+
+"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry,
+promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm."
+
+"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be
+going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
+against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too
+delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are,
+and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is
+no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates
+the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
+calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
+But we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to
+ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
+afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to
+consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you
+come. Or shall we lunch with our little Duchess? She says she never sees
+you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her
+clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at
+eleven."
+
+"Must I really come, Harry?"
+
+"Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been
+such lilacs since the year I met you."
+
+"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good-night,
+Harry." As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had
+something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and
+did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
+smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He
+heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He
+remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared
+at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the
+charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that
+no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom he had lured to
+love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her
+once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and answered that
+wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she
+had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her
+cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
+everything that he had lost.
+
+When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent
+him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began
+to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.
+
+Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing
+for the unstained purity of his boyhood--his rose-white boyhood, as Lord
+Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled
+his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had
+been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in
+being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been
+the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame.
+But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?
+
+Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that
+the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the
+unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to
+that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure,
+swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not
+"Forgive us our sins," but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the
+prayer of a man to a most just God.
+
+The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many
+years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids
+laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night
+of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and
+with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some
+one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending
+with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made
+of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases
+came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.
+Then he loathed his own beauty, and, flinging the mirror on the floor,
+crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty
+that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.
+But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His
+beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was
+youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods and
+sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.
+
+It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was
+of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was
+hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had shot
+himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret
+that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over
+Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It was already
+waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of
+Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death
+of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that
+had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait
+that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were
+unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been
+simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had
+been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.
+
+A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for.
+Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any
+rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
+
+As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the
+locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had
+been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every
+sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had
+already gone away. He would go and look.
+
+He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the
+door a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and
+lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the
+hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to
+him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.
+
+He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and
+dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and
+indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the
+eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of
+the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if
+possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed
+brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. Then he trembled. Had it been
+merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for
+a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or
+that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than
+we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain
+larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease
+over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as
+though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held
+the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself
+up, and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was
+monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? There
+was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him
+had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs.
+The world would simply say that he was mad. They would shut him up if he
+persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer
+public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called
+upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that
+he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He
+shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little
+to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror,
+this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity?
+Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that?
+There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could
+tell?... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared
+her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's
+sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognised that now.
+
+But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
+burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only
+one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself--that was
+evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had
+given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had
+felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been
+away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon
+it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had
+marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it
+had been conscience. He would destroy it.
+
+He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He
+had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was
+bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill
+the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and
+when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous
+soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He
+seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
+
+There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony
+that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. Two
+gentlemen, who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and looked up
+at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman, and
+brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no
+answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all
+dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and
+watched.
+
+"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
+
+"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.
+
+They looked at each other, as they walked away and sneered. One of them
+was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.
+
+Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were
+talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and
+wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.
+
+After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the
+footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They
+called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force
+the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. The
+windows yielded easily; their bolts were old.
+
+When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait
+of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his
+exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
+evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and
+loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that
+they recognised who it was.
+
+THE END
+
+* * *
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+PIRATED EDITIONS
+
+Owing to the number of unauthorised editions of "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN
+GRAY" issued at various times both in America and on the Continent of
+Europe, it has become necessary to indicate which are the only
+authorised editions of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece.
+
+Many of the pirated editions are incomplete in that they omit the
+Preface and seven additional chapters which were first published in the
+London edition of 1891. In other cases certain passages have been
+mutilated, and faulty spellings and misprints are numerous.
+
+
+AUTHORISED EDITIONS
+
+(I) First published in _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_, July, 1890.
+London: Ward, Lock & Co. _Copyrighted in London_.
+
+Published _simultaneously_ in America. Philadelphia: J.-B. Lippincott
+Co. _Copyrighted in the United States of America_.
+
+(II) A Preface to "Dorian Gray." _Fortnightly Review_, March 1, 1891.
+London: Chapman & Hall. (_All rights reserved._)
+
+(III) With the Preface and Seven additional chapters. London, New York,
+and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. (n. d.).
+
+(Of this edition 250 copies were issued on L.P., _dated_ 1891.)
+
+(IV) The same. London, New York, and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Bowden. (n.
+d.).
+
+(Published 1894 or 1895.) See Stuart Mason's "Art and Morality" (page
+153).
+
+
+THE FOLLOWING EDITIONS
+
+were issued by Charles Carrington, _Publisher and Literary Agent_, late
+of 13 Faubourg Montmartre, Paris, and 10 _Rue de la Tribune_, BRUSSELS
+(Belgium), to whom the Copyright belongs.
+
+(V) Small 8vo, vii 334 pages, printed on English antique wove paper,
+silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1901.
+
+(VI) The same, vii 327 pages, silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1905.
+
+Of this edition 100 copies were issued on hand-made paper.
+
+(VII) 4to, vi 312 pages, broad margins, claret-coloured paper wrappers,
+title on label on the outside. 250 copies. Price 10_s_. 6_d_. 1908
+(February).
+
+(VIII) Cr. 8vo, uniform with Methuen's (London) complete edition of
+Wilde's _Works_. xi 362 pages, printed on hand-made paper, white cloth,
+gilt extra.
+
+1000 copies. Price 12_s._ 6_d._ 1908 (April 16).
+
+Of this edition 80 further copies were printed on Imperial Japanese
+vellum, full vellum binding, gilt extra. Price 42_s_.
+
+(IX) Illustrated edition. Containing seven fullpaged illustrations by
+Paul Thirlat, engraved on Wood by Eugene Dete (both of Paris), and
+artistically printed by Brendon & Son, Ltd. (of Plymouth), 4to, vi 312
+pages, half parchment bound, with corners, and _fleur-de-lys_ on side.
+1908-9. Price 15_s._
+
+(X) Small edition, uniform with Messrs. Methuen's Issue of "Oscar
+Wilde's Works" at same price. 12mo, xii and 352 pages. 2000 copies.
+Bound in green cloth. 1910. Price 5_s._
+
+It follows from all this that, with the exception of the version in
+_Lippincott's Magazine_ only those editions are authorised to be sold in
+Great Britain and her Colonies which bear the imprimatur of Ward, Lock &
+Co., London, or Charles Carrington, Paris and Brussels; and that all
+other editions, whether American, Continental (_save Carrington's Paris
+editions above specified_) or otherwise, may not be sold within British
+jurisdiction without infringing the _Berne_ law of literary copyright
+and incurring the disagreements that may therefrom result.
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED.
+
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+or bookshelf. Size 6-3/4 x 4 x 3/4 inch thick.
+Printed in large type on a thin but thoroughly
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+and title-page to each volume on Japanese vellum.
+
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+
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+
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+1/4 Vellum, gilt top, in Case, 15/- net
+
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+
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+
+The Serious Poems of Thomas Hood. With
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+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
+HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
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