"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
whitewashing."

"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 organized, and to be highly organized 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 some one 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
any one. 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 any
one 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 civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever
knows what a pleasure is."

"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some
one."

"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.

"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 spiritualizes 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. Any one you love
must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must
be fine and noble. To spiritualize 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
overemphasized 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 apologize 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 any one 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
realized 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
door-steps, 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, 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 button-hole 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 some one 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.

"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 realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several
very courteously worded communications 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 any one, 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 any one
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 any one 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? Some one 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 some one 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 or 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.

"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
heart-broken 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 a 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 realized 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 any one. 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. Georges 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 every one 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 leaned 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 realize 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 some one 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 comes
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.

Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper 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 Michelangelo 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 judgement. 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 book-case
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 any one 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 incrusted 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 realize 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 characterizes 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.

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 beau 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 overemphasized, account of the sorrow and
despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and 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 aging 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 realization 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
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.

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 organized 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 symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble
pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, 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;
of 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
gipsies 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 civilizations, 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 Chile, 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 "Tannhauser" 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 lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike 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,
as 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 rubies 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 ear-rings 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 flowerlike 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-lis, 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-lis; 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
her 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 some one 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 any one 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--civilized 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 wristbands, 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 realize? 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 overladen 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 acanthuslike 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 realize his conception of the beautiful.

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
recognized 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 recognize me?"

"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize 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 lamplight 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.
Anglomania 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 or 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 every one 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 some one 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 stanch 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 fire-place, and
stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike 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."

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
book-case--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 mantelshelf, 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
recognize his own brushwork, 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 mantelshelf, 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 a 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 some one 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 realize 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 roused. 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 any one 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.

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 book-case 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 peries 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 honeycombed 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
notepaper 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.

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 especial 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
overdressed 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 mantelshelf, 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 make 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 overdressed 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 dare say 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 realized 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 underlip. 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 his 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.

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 sidewindows 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 spilled. 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,
fanlike 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 lamplit 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 disks of light. The floor was
covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud,
and stained with dark rings of spilled 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 leaped 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 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.

"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 button-hole. 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 recognize 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 recognize 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 some one 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 if 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 some
one 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.

"Sphinxes 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 deathlike 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.

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 foot-marks 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 is 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 some one
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
pre-figure 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 leaped 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 door-post 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.

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 uncivilized.
Civilization 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 spilled 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 any one
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 flowerlike 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
leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content now
with any one 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 starlit 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 every one 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 anything 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, glasslike 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 moralize. 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.

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 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 spilled. 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 recognized 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 recognized who it was.