{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4078/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4078","id":"gutenberg_4078","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4078","summary":null,"tags":["Appearance (Philosophy) -- Fiction","Category: British Literature","Category: Classics of Literature","Category: Novels","Conduct of life -- Fiction","Contemporary Reviews","Didactic fiction","Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Fiction","London (England) -- History -- 1800-1950 -- Fiction","Movie Books","Paranormal fiction","Portraits -- Fiction","Supernatural -- Fiction"],"text":"Produced by Alfred J. Drake.  HTML version by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY\n\n\nby\n\nOscar Wilde\n\n\n\n\n\n1890, 13-CHAPTER VERSION\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n  Chapter I: 3-12\n  Chapter II: 12-22\n  Chapter III: 22-32\n  Chapter IV: 32-36\n  Chapter V: 36-43\n  Chapter VI: 43-52\n  Chapter VII: 52-58\n  Chapter VIII: 58-64\n  Chapter IX: 65-77\n  Chapter X: 77-81\n  Chapter XI: 81-86\n  Chapter XII: 86-93\n  Chapter XIII: 94-100\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n[3] The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the\nlight summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came\nthrough the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more\ndelicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.\n\nFrom the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was\nlying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton\ncould just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored\nblossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able\nto bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and\nthen the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long\ntussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,\nproducing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of\nthose pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily\nimmobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.  The sullen\nmurmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass,\nor circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires\nof the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more\noppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a\ndistant organ.\n\nIn the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the\nfull-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,\nand in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist\nhimself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago\ncaused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many\nstrange conjectures.\n\nAs he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully\nmirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and\nseemed about to linger there.  But he suddenly started up, and, closing\n[4] his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to\nimprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he\nmight awake.\n\n\"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,\" said\nLord Henry, languidly.  \"You must certainly send it next year to the\nGrosvenor.  The Academy is too large and too vulgar.  The Grosvenor is\nthe only place.\"\n\n\"I don't think I will send it anywhere,\" he answered, tossing his head\nback in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at\nOxford.  \"No: I won't send it anywhere.\"\n\nLord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement\nthrough the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful\nwhorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette.  \"Not send it anywhere?\nMy dear fellow, why?  Have you any reason?  What odd chaps you painters\nare!  You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you\nhave one, you seem to want to throw it away.  It is silly of you, for\nthere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and\nthat is not being talked about.  A portrait like this would set you far\nabove all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous,\nif old men are ever capable of any emotion.\"\n\n\"I know you will laugh at me,\" he replied, \"but I really can't exhibit\nit.  I have put too much of myself into it.\"\n\nLord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with\nlaughter.\n\n\"Yes, I knew you would laugh; but it is quite true, all the same.\"\n\n\"Too much of yourself in it!  Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you\nwere so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with\nyour rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young\nAdonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves.  Why, my\ndear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an\nintellectual expression, and all that.  But beauty, real beauty, ends\nwhere an intellectual expression begins.  Intellect is in itself an\nexaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.  The moment one\nsits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something\nhorrid.  Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.\nHow perfectly hideous they are!  Except, of course, in the Church.  But\nthen in the Church they don't think.  A bishop keeps on saying at the\nage of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen,\nand consequently he always looks absolutely delightful.  Your\nmysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose\npicture really fascinates me, never thinks.  I feel quite sure of that.\nHe is a brainless, beautiful thing, who should be always here in winter\nwhen we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we\nwant something to chill our intelligence.  Don't flatter yourself,\nBasil: you are not in the least like him.\"\n\n\"You don't understand me, Harry.  Of course I am not like him.  I know\nthat perfectly well.  Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him.  You\nshrug your shoulders?  I am telling you the truth.  There is a fatality\nabout all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality\nthat [5] seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings.  It\nis better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the\nstupid have the best of it in this world.  They can sit quietly and\ngape at the play.  If they know nothing of victory, they are at least\nspared the knowledge of defeat.  They live as we all should live,\nundisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin\nupon others nor ever receive it from alien hands.  Your rank and\nwealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are,--my fame, whatever it may\nbe worth; Dorian Gray's good looks,--we will all suffer for what the\ngods have given us, suffer terribly.\"\n\n\"Dorian Gray? is that his name?\" said Lord Henry, walking across the\nstudio towards Basil Hallward.\n\n\"Yes; that is his name.  I didn't intend to tell it to you.\"\n\n\"But why not?\"\n\n\"Oh, I can't explain.  When I like people immensely I never tell their\nnames to any one.  It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know\nhow I love secrecy.  It is the only thing that can make modern life\nwonderful or mysterious to us.  The commonest thing is delightful if\none only hides it.  When I leave town I never tell my people where I am\ngoing.  If I did, I would lose all my pleasure.  It is a silly habit, I\ndare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into\none's life.  I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" answered Lord Henry, laying his hand upon his shoulder;\n\"not at all, my dear Basil.  You seem to forget that I am married, and\nthe one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception\nnecessary for both parties.  I never know where my wife is, and my wife\nnever knows what I am doing.  When we meet,--we do meet occasionally,\nwhen we dine out together, or go down to the duke's,--we tell each\nother the most absurd stories with the most serious faces.  My wife is\nvery good at it,--much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets\nconfused over her dates, and I always do.  But when she does find me\nout, she makes no row at all.  I sometimes wish she would; but she\nmerely laughs at me.\"\n\n\"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,\" said Basil\nHallward, shaking his hand off, and strolling towards the door that led\ninto the garden.  \"I believe that you are really a very good husband,\nbut that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an\nextraordinary fellow.  You never say a moral thing, and you never do a\nwrong thing.  Your cynicism is simply a pose.\"\n\n\"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,\"\ncried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the\ngarden together, and for a time they did not speak.\n\nAfter a long pause Lord Henry pulled out his watch.  \"I am afraid I\nmust be going, Basil,\" he murmured, \"and before I go I insist on your\nanswering a question I put to you some time ago.\"\n\n\"What is that?\" asked Basil Hallward, keeping his eyes fixed on the\nground.\n\n\"You know quite well.\"\n\n\"I do not, Harry.\"\n\n[6] \"Well, I will tell you what it is.\"\n\n\"Please don't.\"\n\n\"I must.  I want you to explain to me why you won't exhibit Dorian\nGray's picture.  I want the real reason.\"\n\n\"I told you the real reason.\"\n\n\"No, you did not.  You said it was because there was too much of\nyourself in it.  Now, that is childish.\"\n\n\"Harry,\" said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, \"every\nportrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not\nof the sitter.  The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion.  It is\nnot he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on\nthe colored canvas, reveals himself.  The reason I will not exhibit\nthis picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret\nof my own soul.\"\n\nLord Harry laughed.  \"And what is that?\" he asked.\n\n\"I will tell you,\" said Hallward; and an expression of perplexity came\nover his face.\n\n\"I am all expectation, Basil,\" murmured his companion, looking at him.\n\n\"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,\" answered the young\npainter; \"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it.  Perhaps you\nwill hardly believe it.\"\n\nLord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy\nfrom the grass, and examined it.  \"I am quite sure I shall understand\nit,\" he replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered\ndisk, \"and I can believe anything, provided that it is incredible.\"\n\nThe wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac\nblooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid\nair.  A grasshopper began to chirrup in the grass, and a long thin\ndragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings.  Lord Henry felt as if\nhe could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and he wondered what was\ncoming.\n\n\"Well, this is incredible,\" repeated Hallward, rather\nbitterly,--\"incredible to me at times.  I don't know what it means.\nThe story is simply this.  Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady\nBrandon's. You know we poor painters have to show ourselves in society\nfrom time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.\nWith an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody,\neven a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.  Well,\nafter I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge\noverdressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became\nconscious that some one was looking at me.  I turned half-way round,\nand saw Dorian Gray for the first time.  When our eyes met, I felt that\nI was growing pale.  A curious instinct of terror came over me.  I knew\nthat I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was\nso fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole\nnature, my whole soul, my very art itself.  I did not want any external\ninfluence in my life.  You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am\nby nature.  My father destined me for the army.  I insisted on [7]\ngoing to Oxford.  Then he made me enter my name at the Middle Temple.\nBefore I had eaten half a dozen dinners I gave up the Bar, and\nannounced my intention of becoming a painter.  I have always been my\nown master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray.\nThen--But I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to\ntell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life.  I had\na strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and\nexquisite sorrows.  I knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become\nabsolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him.  I\ngrew afraid, and turned to quit the room.  It was not conscience that\nmade me do so: it was cowardice.  I take no credit to myself for trying\nto escape.\"\n\n\"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience\nis the trade-name of the firm.  That is all.\"\n\n\"I don't believe that, Harry.  However, whatever was my motive,--and it\nmay have been pride, for I used to be very proud,--I certainly\nstruggled to the door.  There, of course, I stumbled against Lady\nBrandon.  'You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she\nscreamed out.  You know her shrill horrid voice?\"\n\n\"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,\" said Lord Henry,\npulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.\n\n\"I could not get rid of her.  She brought me up to Royalties, and\npeople with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras\nand hooked noses.  She spoke of me as her dearest friend.  I had only\nmet her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me.  I\nbelieve some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at\nleast had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the\nnineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself\nface to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely\nstirred me.  We were quite close, almost touching.  Our eyes met again.\nIt was mad of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.\nPerhaps it was not so mad, after all.  It was simply inevitable.  We\nwould have spoken to each other without any introduction.  I am sure of\nthat.  Dorian told me so afterwards.  He, too, felt that we were\ndestined to know each other.\"\n\n\"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?  I know\nshe goes in for giving a rapid pr\u00e9cis of all her guests.  I remember\nher bringing me up to a most truculent and red-faced old gentleman\ncovered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a\ntragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in\nthe room, something like 'Sir Humpty Dumpty--you know--Afghan\nfrontier--Russian intrigues: very successful man--wife killed by an\nelephant--quite inconsolable--wants to marry a beautiful American\nwidow--everybody does nowadays--hates Mr. Gladstone--but very much\ninterested in beetles: ask him what he thinks of Schouvaloff.'  I\nsimply fled.  I like to find out people for myself.  But poor Lady\nBrandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods.\nShe either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about\nthem except what one wants to know.  But what did she say about Mr.\nDorian Gray?\"\n\n[8] \"Oh, she murmured, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I quite\ninseparable--engaged to be married to the same man--I mean married on\nthe same day--how very silly of me!  Quite forget what he does--afraid\nhe--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin,\ndear Mr. Gray?'  We could neither of us help laughing, and we became\nfriends at once.\"\n\n\"Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best\nending for one,\" said Lord Henry, plucking another daisy.\n\nHallward buried his face in his hands.  \"You don't understand what\nfriendship is, Harry,\" he murmured,--\"or what enmity is, for that\nmatter.  You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to\nevery one.\"\n\n\"How horribly unjust of you!\" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,\nand looking up at the little clouds that were drifting across the\nhollowed turquoise of the summer sky, like ravelled skeins of glossy\nwhite silk.  \"Yes; horribly unjust of you.  I make a great difference\nbetween people.  I choose my friends for their good looks, my\nacquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. A\nman can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.  I have not got\none who is a fool.  They are all men of some intellectual power, and\nconsequently they all appreciate me.  Is that very vain of me?  I think\nit is rather vain.\"\n\n\"I should think it was, Harry.  But according to your category I must\nbe merely an acquaintance.\"\n\n\"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.\"\n\n\"And much less than a friend.  A sort of brother, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Oh, brothers!  I don't care for brothers.  My elder brother won't die,\nand my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.\"\n\n\"Harry!\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious.  But I can't help detesting my\nrelations.  I suppose it comes from the fact that we can't stand other\npeople having the same faults as ourselves.  I quite sympathize with\nthe rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of\nthe upper classes.  They feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and\nimmorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of\nus makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor\nSouthwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite\nmagnificent.  And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the lower\norders live correctly.\"\n\n\"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is\nmore, Harry, I don't believe you do either.\"\n\nLord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his\npatent-leather boot with a tasselled malacca cane.  \"How English you\nare, Basil!  If one puts forward an idea to a real Englishman,--always\na rash thing to do,--he never dreams of considering whether the idea is\nright or wrong.  The only thing he considers of any importance is\nwhether one believes it one's self.  Now, the value of an idea has\nnothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses\nit.  Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is,\nthe more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it [9]\nwill not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his\nprejudices.  However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology,\nor metaphysics with you.  I like persons better than principles.  Tell\nme more about Dorian Gray.  How often do you see him?\"\n\n\"Every day.  I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day.  Of\ncourse sometimes it is only for a few minutes.  But a few minutes with\nsomebody one worships mean a great deal.\"\n\n\"But you don't really worship him?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"How extraordinary!  I thought you would never care for anything but\nyour painting,--your art, I should say.  Art sounds better, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"He is all my art to me now.  I sometimes think, Harry, that there are\nonly two eras of any importance in the history of the world.  The first\nis the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the\nappearance of a new personality for art also.  What the invention of\noil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antino\u00fcs was to late\nGreek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.\nIt is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him.\nOf course I have done all that.  He has stood as Paris in dainty armor,\nand as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear.  Crowned\nwith heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian's barge,\nlooking into the green, turbid Nile.  He has leaned over the still pool\nof some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the\nwonder of his own beauty.  But he is much more to me than that.  I\nwon't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or\nthat his beauty is such that art cannot express it.  There is nothing\nthat art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I\nmet Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life.  But in some\ncurious way--I wonder will you understand me?--his personality has\nsuggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of\nstyle.  I see things differently, I think of them differently.  I can\nnow re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before.  'A dream\nof form in days of thought,'--who is it who says that?  I forget; but\nit is what Dorian Gray has been to me.  The merely visible presence of\nthis lad,--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is\nreally over twenty,--his merely visible presence,--ah!  I wonder can\nyou realize all that that means?  Unconsciously he defines for me the\nlines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the\npassion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that\nis Greek. The harmony of soul and body,--how much that is!  We in our\nmadness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is\nbestial, an ideality that is void.  Harry!  Harry! if you only knew\nwhat Dorian Gray is to me!  You remember that landscape of mine, for\nwhich Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part\nwith? It is one of the best things I have ever done.  And why is it so?\nBecause, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.\"\n\n\"Basil, this is quite wonderful!  I must see Dorian Gray.\"  Hallward\ngot up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden.  After\nsome time he came back.  \"You don't understand, Harry,\" he said.\n\"Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art.  He is never more present\nin my work than when no image of him is there.  He is simply a\nsuggestion, as I have said, of a new manner.  I see him in the curves\nof certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain\ncolors.  That is all.\"\n\n\"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?\"\n\n\"Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of\ncourse, I have never dared to speak to him.  He knows nothing about it.\nHe will never know anything about it.  But the world might guess it;\nand I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart\nshall never be put under their microscope.  There is too much of myself\nin the thing, Harry,--too much of myself!\"\n\n\"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.  They know how useful passion\nis for publication.  Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.\"\n\n\"I hate them for it.  An artist should create beautiful things, but\nshould put nothing of his own life into them.  We live in an age when\nmen treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.  We\nhave lost the abstract sense of beauty.  If I live, I will show the\nworld what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my\nportrait of Dorian Gray.\"\n\n\"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you.  It is only\nthe intellectually lost who ever argue.  Tell me, is Dorian Gray very\nfond of you?\"\n\nHallward considered for a few moments.  \"He likes me,\" he answered,\nafter a pause; \"I know he likes me.  Of course I flatter him\ndreadfully.  I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I\nknow I shall be sorry for having said.  I give myself away.  As a rule,\nhe is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in\narm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things.  Now and then,\nhowever, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight\nin giving me pain.  Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole\nsoul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his\ncoat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a\nsummer's day.\"\n\n\"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger.  Perhaps you will tire\nsooner than he will.  It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no\ndoubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty.  That accounts for the fact\nthat we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.  In the wild\nstruggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so\nwe fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping\nour place.  The thoroughly well informed man,--that is the modern\nideal.  And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful\nthing.  It is like a bric-\u00e0-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and\neverything priced above its proper value.  I think you will tire first,\nall the same.  Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you\nto be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of color, or\nsomething.  You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and\nseriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he\ncalls, you will be [11] perfectly cold and indifferent.  It will be a\ngreat pity, for it will alter you.  The worst of having a romance is\nthat it leaves one so unromantic.\"\n\n\"Harry, don't talk like that.  As long as I live, the personality of\nDorian Gray will dominate me.  You can't feel what I feel.  You change\ntoo often.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it.  Those who are\nfaithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know\nlove's tragedies.\"  And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver\ncase, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and\nself-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase.  There was\na rustle of chirruping sparrows in the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows\nchased themselves across the grass like swallows.  How pleasant it was\nin the garden!  And how delightful other people's emotions were!--much\nmore delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.  One's own soul,\nand the passions of one's friends,--those were the fascinating things\nin life.  He thought with pleasure of the tedious luncheon that he had\nmissed by staying so long with Basil Hallward.  Had he gone to his\naunt's, he would have been sure to meet Lord Goodbody there, and the\nwhole conversation would have been about the housing of the poor, and\nthe necessity for model lodging-houses. It was charming to have escaped\nall that!  As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him.  He\nturned to Hallward, and said, \"My dear fellow, I have just remembered.\"\n\n\"Remembered what, Harry?\"\n\n\"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.\"\n\n\"Where was it?\" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.\n\n\"Don't look so angry, Basil.  It was at my aunt's, Lady Agatha's. She\ntold me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help\nher in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray.  I am bound to\nstate that she never told me he was good-looking.  Women have no\nappreciation of good looks.  At least, good women have not. She said\nthat he was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature.  I at once\npictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horridly\nfreckled, and tramping about on huge feet.  I wish I had known it was\nyour friend.\"\n\n\"I am very glad you didn't, Harry.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I don't want you to meet him.\"\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,\" said the butler, coming into\nthe garden.\n\n\"You must introduce me now,\" cried Lord Henry, laughing.\n\nBasil Hallward turned to the servant, who stood blinking in the\nsunlight.  \"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I will be in in a few\nmoments.\"  The man bowed, and went up the walk.\n\nThen he looked at Lord Henry.  \"Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,\" he\nsaid.  \"He has a simple and a beautiful nature.  Your aunt was quite\nright in what she said of him.  Don't spoil him for me.  Don't try to\ninfluence him.  Your influence would be bad.  The world is wide, and\nhas many marvellous people in it.  Don't take [12] away from me the one\nperson that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my\nart whatever wonder or charm it possesses.  Mind, Harry, I trust you.\"\nHe spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost\nagainst his will.\n\n\"What nonsense you talk!\" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking\nHallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n[...12] As they entered they saw Dorian Gray.  He was seated at the\npiano, with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of\nSchumann's \"Forest Scenes.\"  \"You must lend me these, Basil,\" he cried.\n\"I want to learn them.  They are perfectly charming.\"\n\n\"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of\nmyself,\" answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a\nwilful, petulant manner.  When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint\nblush colored his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.  \"I beg your\npardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you.\"\n\n\"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine.  I\nhave just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you\nhave spoiled everything.\"\n\n\"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray,\" said Lord\nHenry, stepping forward and shaking him by the hand.  \"My aunt has\noften spoken to me about you.  You are one of her favorites, and, I am\nafraid, one of her victims also.\"\n\n\"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present,\" answered Dorian, with a\nfunny look of penitence.  \"I promised to go to her club in Whitechapel\nwith her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to\nhave played a duet together,--three duets, I believe.  I don't know\nwhat she will say to me.  I am far too frightened to call.\"\n\n\"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt.  She is quite devoted to you.\nAnd I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The\naudience probably thought it was a duet.  When Aunt Agatha sits down to\nthe piano she makes quite enough noise for two people.\"\n\n\"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me,\" answered Dorian,\nlaughing.\n\nLord Henry looked at him.  Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,\nwith his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp\ngold hair.  There was something in his face that made one trust him at\nonce.  All the candor of youth was there, as well as all youth's\npassionate purity.  One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from\nthe world.  No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. He was made to be\nworshipped.\n\n\"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray,--far too\ncharming.\"  And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan, and opened\nhis cigarette-case.\n\nHallward had been busy mixing his colors and getting his brushes ready.\nHe was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last [13] remark\nhe glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, \"Harry, I\nwant to finish this picture to-day.  Would you think it awfully rude of\nme if I asked you to go away?\"\n\nLord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray.  \"Am I to go, Mr. Gray?\"\nhe asked.\n\n\"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry.  I see that Basil is in one of his sulky\nmoods; and I can't bear him when he sulks.  Besides, I want you to tell\nme why I should not go in for philanthropy.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray.  But I certainly\nwill not run away, now that you have asked me to stop.  You don't\nreally mind, Basil, do you?  You have often told me that you liked your\nsitters to have some one to chat to.\"\n\nHallward bit his lip.  \"If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.\nDorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself.\"\n\nLord Henry took up his hat and gloves.  \"You are very pressing, Basil,\nbut I am afraid I must go.  I have promised to meet a man at the\nOrleans.--Good-by, Mr. Gray.  Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon\nStreet.  I am nearly always at home at five o'clock.  Write to me when\nyou are coming.  I should be sorry to miss you.\"\n\n\"Basil,\" cried Dorian Gray, \"if Lord Henry goes I shall go too.  You\nnever open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull\nstanding on a platform and trying to look pleasant.  Ask him to stay. I\ninsist upon it.\"\n\n\"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,\" said Hallward,\ngazing intently at his picture.  \"It is quite true, I never talk when I\nam working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious\nfor my unfortunate sitters.  I beg you to stay.\"\n\n\"But what about my man at the Orleans?\"\n\nHallward laughed.  \"I don't think there will be any difficulty about\nthat.  Sit down again, Harry.--And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,\nand don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry\nsays.  He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the\nexception of myself.\"\n\nDorian stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr,\nand made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had\nrather taken a fancy.  He was so unlike Hallward.  They made a\ndelightful contrast.  And he had such a beautiful voice.  After a few\nmoments he said to him, \"Have you really a very bad influence, Lord\nHenry?  As bad as Basil says?\"\n\n\"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray.  All influence\nis immoral,--immoral from the scientific point of view.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul.  He does\nnot think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.  His\nvirtues are not real to him.  His sins, if there are such things as\nsins, are borrowed.  He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an\nactor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is\nself-development.  To realize one's nature perfectly,--that is what\neach of us is here for.  People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.\nThey have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes\nto one's [14] self.  Of course they are charitable.  They feed the\nhungry, and clothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are\nnaked.  Courage has gone out of our race.  Perhaps we never really had\nit.  The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of\nGod, which is the secret of religion,--these are the two things that\ngovern us.  And yet--\"\n\n\"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good\nboy,\" said Hallward, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look\nhad come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.\n\n\"And yet,\" continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with\nthat graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of\nhim, and that he had even in his Eton days, \"I believe that if one man\nwere to live his life out fully and completely, were to give form to\nevery feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream,--I\nbelieve that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we\nwould forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the\nHellenic ideal,--to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal,\nit may be.  But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself.  The\nmutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial\nthat mars our lives.  We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse\nthat we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us.  The\nbody sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of\npurification.  Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure,\nor the luxury of a regret.  The only way to get rid of a temptation is\nto yield to it.  Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for\nthe things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its\nmonstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.  It has been said that\nthe great events of the world take place in the brain.  It is in the\nbrain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place\nalso.  You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your\nrose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid,\nthoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping\ndreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--\"\n\n\"Stop!\" murmured Dorian Gray, \"stop! you bewilder me.  I don't know\nwhat to say.  There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't\nspeak.  Let me think, or, rather, let me try not to think.\"\n\nFor nearly ten minutes he stood there motionless, with parted lips, and\neyes strangely bright.  He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh\nimpulses were at work within him, and they seemed to him to have come\nreally from himself.  The few words that Basil's friend had said to\nhim--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in\nthem--had yet touched some secret chord, that had never been touched\nbefore, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious\npulses.\n\nMusic had stirred him like that.  Music had troubled him many times.\nBut music was not articulate.  It was not a new world, but rather a new\nchaos, that it created in us.  Words!  Mere words!  How terrible they\nwere!  How clear, and vivid, and cruel!  One could not escape from\nthem.  And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! [15] They seemed\nto be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a\nmusic of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.  Mere words!\nWas there anything so real as words?\n\nYes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.\nHe understood them now.  Life suddenly became fiery-colored to him. It\nseemed to him that he had been walking in fire.  Why had he not known\nit?\n\nLord Henry watched him, with his sad smile.  He knew the precise\npsychological moment when to say nothing.  He felt intensely\ninterested.  He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had\nproduced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen,\nwhich had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he\nwondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through the same experience.\nHe had merely shot an arrow into the air.  Had it hit the mark?  How\nfascinating the lad was!\n\nHallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had\nthe true refinement and perfect delicacy that come only from strength.\nHe was unconscious of the silence.\n\n\"Basil, I am tired of standing,\" cried Dorian Gray, suddenly.  \"I must\ngo out and sit in the garden.  The air is stifling here.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I am so sorry.  When I am painting, I can't think of\nanything else.  But you never sat better.  You were perfectly still.\nAnd I have caught the effect I wanted,--the half-parted lips, and the\nbright look in the eyes.  I don't know what Harry has been saying to\nyou, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression.\nI suppose he has been paying you compliments.  You mustn't believe a\nword that he says.\"\n\n\"He has certainly not been paying me compliments.  Perhaps that is the\nreason I don't think I believe anything he has told me.\"\n\n\"You know you believe it all,\" said Lord Henry, looking at him with his\ndreamy, heavy-lidded eyes.  \"I will go out to the garden with you.  It\nis horridly hot in the studio.--Basil, let us have something iced to\ndrink, something with strawberries in it.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Harry.  Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will\ntell him what you want.  I have got to work up this background, so I\nwill join you later on.  Don't keep Dorian too long.  I have never been\nin better form for painting than I am to-day.  This is going to be my\nmasterpiece.  It is my masterpiece as it stands.\"\n\nLord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his\nface in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their\nperfume as if it had been wine.  He came close to him, and put his hand\nupon his shoulder.  \"You are quite right to do that,\" he murmured.\n\"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the\nsenses but the soul.\"\n\nThe lad started and drew back.  He was bareheaded, and the leaves had\ntossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There\nwas a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are\nsuddenly awakened.  His finely-chiselled nostrils quivered, and some\nhidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.\n\n[16] \"Yes,\" continued Lord Henry, \"that is one of the great secrets of\nlife,--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means\nof the soul.  You are a wonderful creature.  You know more than you\nthink you know, just as you know less than you want to know.\"\n\nDorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.  He could not help liking\nthe tall, graceful young man who was standing by him.  His romantic\nolive-colored face and worn expression interested him. There was\nsomething in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating.\nHis cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm.  They\nmoved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their\nown.  But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.  Why had\nit been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?  He had known\nBasil Hallward for months, but the friendship between then had never\naltered him.  Suddenly there had come some one across his life who\nseemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet, what was\nthere to be afraid of?  He was not a school-boy, or a girl.  It was\nabsurd to be frightened.\n\n\"Let us go and sit in the shade,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Parker has brought\nout the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare you will be\nquite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again.  You really must\nnot let yourself become sunburnt.  It would be very unbecoming to you.\"\n\n\"What does it matter?\" cried Dorian, laughing, as he sat down on the\nseat at the end of the garden.\n\n\"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you have now the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one\nthing worth having.\"\n\n\"I don't feel that, Lord Henry.\"\n\n\"No, you don't feel it now.  Some day, when you are old and wrinkled\nand ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and\npassion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you\nwill feel it terribly.  Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.\nWill it always be so?\n\n\"You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray.  Don't frown.  You\nhave.  And Beauty is a form of Genius,--is higher, indeed, than Genius,\nas it needs no explanation.  It is one of the great facts of the world,\nlike sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that\nsilver shell we call the moon.  It cannot be questioned.  It has its\ndivine right of sovereignty.  It makes princes of those who have it.\nYou smile?  Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.\n\n\"People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial.  That may be so.\nBut at least it is not so superficial as Thought.  To me, Beauty is the\nwonder of wonders.  It is only shallow people who do not judge by\nappearances.  The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the\ninvisible.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you.  But what the gods give\nthey quickly take away.  You have only a few years in which really to\nlive.  When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you\nwill suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left [17] for you, or\nhave to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of\nyour past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes\nbrings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and\nwars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and\nhollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.  You will suffer horribly.\n\n\"Realize your youth while you have it.  Don't squander the gold of your\ndays, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,\nor giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar,\nwhich are the aims, the false ideals, of our age.  Live! Live the\nwonderful life that is in you!  Let nothing be lost upon you.  Be\nalways searching for new sensations.  Be afraid of nothing.\n\n\"A new hedonism,--that is what our century wants.  You might be its\nvisible symbol.  With your personality there is nothing you could not\ndo.  The world belongs to you for a season.\n\n\"The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you\nreally are, what you really might be.  There was so much about you that\ncharmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself.  I\nthought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.  For there is such a\nlittle time that your youth will last,--such a little time.\n\n\"The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.  The laburnum\nwill be as golden next June as it is now.  In a month there will be\npurple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of\nits leaves will have its purple stars.  But we never get back our\nyouth.  The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish.\nOur limbs fail, our senses rot.  We degenerate into hideous puppets,\nhaunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid,\nand the exquisite temptations that we did not dare to yield to.  Youth!\nYouth!  There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!\"\n\nDorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.  The spray of lilac fell\nfrom his hand upon the gravel.  A furry bee came and buzzed round it\nfor a moment.  Then it began to scramble all over the fretted purple of\nthe tiny blossoms.  He watched it with that strange interest in trivial\nthings that we try to develop when things of high import make us\nafraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion, for which we cannot\nfind expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden\nsiege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time it flew away.\nHe saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus.\nThe flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.\n\nSuddenly Hallward appeared at the door of the studio, and made frantic\nsigns for them to come in.  They turned to each other, and smiled.\n\n\"I am waiting,\" cried Hallward.  \"Do come in.  The light is quite\nperfect, and you can bring your drinks.\"\n\nThey rose up, and sauntered down the walk together.  Two\ngreen-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree\nat the end of the garden a thrush began to sing.\n\n\"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,\" said Lord Henry, looking at\nhim.\n\n\"Yes, I am glad now.  I wonder shall I always be glad?\"\n\n[18] \"Always!  That is a dreadful word.  It makes me shudder when I\nhear it.  Women are so fond of using it.  They spoil every romance by\ntrying to make it last forever.  It is a meaningless word, too.  The\nonly difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the\ncaprice lasts a little longer.\"\n\nAs they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's\narm.  \"In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,\" he murmured,\nflushing at his own boldness, then stepped upon the platform and\nresumed his pose.\n\nLord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair, and watched\nhim.  The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound\nthat broke the stillness, except when Hallward stepped back now and\nthen to look at his work from a distance.  In the slanting beams that\nstreamed through the open door-way the dust danced and was golden.  The\nheavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.\n\nAfter about a quarter of an hour, Hallward stopped painting, looked for\na long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,\nbiting the end of one of his huge brushes, and smiling.  \"It is quite\nfinished,\" he cried, at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in\nthin vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.\n\nLord Henry came over and examined the picture.  It was certainly a\nwonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.\n\n\"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,\" he said.--\"Mr. Gray,\ncome and look at yourself.\"\n\nThe lad started, as if awakened from some dream.  \"Is it really\nfinished?\" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.\n\n\"Quite finished,\" said Hallward.  \"And you have sat splendidly to-day.\nI am awfully obliged to you.\"\n\n\"That is entirely due to me,\" broke in Lord Henry.  \"Isn't it, Mr.\nGray?\"\n\nDorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture\nand turned towards it.  When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks\nflushed for a moment with pleasure.  A look of joy came into his eyes,\nas if he had recognized himself for the first time.  He stood there\nmotionless, and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking\nto him, but not catching the meaning of his words.  The sense of his\nown beauty came on him like a revelation.  He had never felt it before.\nBasil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the\ncharming exaggerations of friendship.  He had listened to them, laughed\nat them, forgotten them.  They had not influenced his nature.  Then had\ncome Lord Henry, with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible\nwarning of its brevity.  That had stirred him at the time, and now, as\nhe stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality\nof the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when\nhis face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colorless, the\ngrace of his figure broken and deformed.  The scarlet would pass away\nfrom his lips, and the gold steal from his hair.  The life that was to\nmake his soul would mar his body.  He would become ignoble, hideous,\nand uncouth.\n\n[19] As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck like a knife\nacross him, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver.  His\neyes deepened into amethyst, and a mist of tears came across them. He\nfelt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.\n\n\"Don't you like it?\" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the\nlad's silence, and not understanding what it meant.\n\n\"Of course he likes it,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Who wouldn't like it?  It\nis one of the greatest things in modern art.  I will give you anything\nyou like to ask for it.  I must have it.\"\n\n\"It is not my property, Harry.\"\n\n\"Whose property is it?\"\n\n\"Dorian's, of course.\"\n\n\"He is a very lucky fellow.\"\n\n\"How sad it is!\" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon\nhis own portrait.  \"How sad it is!  I shall grow old, and horrid, and\ndreadful.  But this picture will remain always young.  It will never be\nolder than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other\nway!  If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that\nwere to grow old!  For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes,\nthere is nothing in the whole world I would not give!\"\n\n\"You would hardly care for that arrangement, Basil,\" cried Lord Henry,\nlaughing.  \"It would be rather hard lines on you.\"\n\n\"I should object very strongly, Harry.\"\n\nDorian Gray turned and looked at him.  \"I believe you would, Basil. You\nlike your art better than your friends.  I am no more to you than a\ngreen bronze figure.  Hardly as much, I dare say.\"\n\nHallward stared in amazement.  It was so unlike Dorian to speak like\nthat.  What had happened?  He seemed almost angry.  His face was\nflushed and his cheeks burning.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, \"I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your\nsilver Faun.  You will like them always.  How long will you like me?\nTill I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.  I know, now, that when one\nloses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything.\nYour picture has taught me that.  Lord Henry is perfectly right. Youth\nis the only thing worth having.  When I find that I am growing old, I\nwill kill myself.\"\n\nHallward turned pale, and caught his hand.  \"Dorian!  Dorian!\" he\ncried, \"don't talk like that.  I have never had such a friend as you,\nand I shall never have such another.  You are not jealous of material\nthings, are you?\"\n\n\"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.  I am jealous of\nthe portrait you have painted of me.  Why should it keep what I must\nlose?  Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives\nsomething to it.  Oh, if it was only the other way!  If the picture\ncould change, and I could be always what I am now!  Why did you paint\nit?  It will mock me some day,--mock me horribly!\"  The hot tears\nwelled into his eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on\nthe divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as if he was praying.\n\n\"This is your doing, Harry,\" said Hallward, bitterly.\n\n[20] \"My doing?\"\n\n\"Yes, yours, and you know it.\"\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"It is the real Dorian Gray,--that\nis all,\" he answered.\n\n\"It is not.\"\n\n\"If it is not, what have I to do with it?\"\n\n\"You should have gone away when I asked you.\"\n\n\"I stayed when you asked me.\"\n\n\"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between\nyou both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever\ndone, and I will destroy it.  What is it but canvas and color?  I will\nnot let it come across our three lives and mar them.\"\n\nDorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and looked at him\nwith pallid face and tear-stained eyes, as he walked over to the deal\npainting-table that was set beneath the large curtained window.  What\nwas he doing there?  His fingers were straying about among the litter\nof tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something.  Yes, it was the\nlong palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel.  He had found\nit at last.  He was going to rip up the canvas.\n\nWith a stifled sob he leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to\nHallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of\nthe studio.  \"Don't, Basil, don't!\" he cried.  \"It would be murder!\"\n\n\"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,\" said Hallward,\ncoldly, when he had recovered from his surprise.  \"I never thought you\nwould.\"\n\n\"Appreciate it?  I am in love with it, Basil.  It is part of myself, I\nfeel that.\"\n\n\"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and\nsent home.  Then you can do what you like with yourself.\"  And he\nwalked across the room and rang the bell for tea.  \"You will have tea,\nof course, Dorian?  And so will you, Harry?  Tea is the only simple\npleasure left to us.\"\n\n\"I don't like simple pleasures,\" said Lord Henry.  \"And I don't like\nscenes, except on the stage.  What absurd fellows you are, both of you!\nI wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal.  It was the most\npremature definition ever given.  Man is many things, but he is not\nrational.  I am glad he is not, after all: though I wish you chaps\nwould not squabble over the picture.  You had much better let me have\nit, Basil.  This silly boy doesn't really want it, and I do.\"\n\n\"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I will never forgive you!\"\ncried Dorian Gray.  \"And I don't allow people to call me a silly boy.\"\n\n\"You know the picture is yours, Dorian.  I gave it to you before it\nexisted.\"\n\n\"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you\ndon't really mind being called a boy.\"\n\n\"I should have minded very much this morning, Lord Henry.\"\n\n\"Ah! this morning!  You have lived since then.\"\n\nThere came a knock to the door, and the butler entered with the\ntea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table.  There was a [21]\nrattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn.\nTwo globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page.  Dorian Gray\nwent over and poured the tea out.  The two men sauntered languidly to\nthe table, and examined what was under the covers.\n\n\"Let us go to the theatre to-night,\" said Lord Henry.  \"There is sure\nto be something on, somewhere.  I have promised to dine at White's, but\nit is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire and say that I\nam ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a\nsubsequent engagement.  I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it\nwould have the surprise of candor.\"\n\n\"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes,\" muttered Hallward.\n\"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Lord Henry, dreamily, \"the costume of our day is\ndetestable.  It is so sombre, so depressing.  Sin is the only\ncolor-element left in modern life.\"\n\n\"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.\"\n\n\"Before which Dorian?  The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the\none in the picture?\"\n\n\"Before either.\"\n\n\"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,\" said the\nlad.\n\n\"Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won't you?\"\n\n\"I can't, really.  I would sooner not.  I have a lot of work to do.\"\n\n\"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"I should like that awfully.\"\n\nBasil Hallward bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the\npicture.  \"I will stay with the real Dorian,\" he said, sadly.\n\n\"Is it the real Dorian?\" cried the original of the portrait, running\nacross to him.  \"Am I really like that?\"\n\n\"Yes; you are just like that.\"\n\n\"How wonderful, Basil!\"\n\n\"At least you are like it in appearance.  But it will never alter,\"\nsaid Hallward.  \"That is something.\"\n\n\"What a fuss people make about fidelity!\" murmured Lord Henry.\n\n\"And, after all, it is purely a question for physiology.  It has\nnothing to do with our own will.  It is either an unfortunate accident,\nor an unpleasant result of temperament.  Young men want to be faithful,\nand are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one\ncan say.\"\n\n\"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,\" said Hallward.  \"Stop and\ndine with me.\"\n\n\"I can't, really.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I have promised Lord Henry to go with him.\"\n\n\"He won't like you better for keeping your promises.  He always breaks\nhis own.  I beg you not to go.\"\n\nDorian Gray laughed and shook his head.\n\n\"I entreat you.\"\n\nThe lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them\nfrom the tea-table with an amused smile.\n\n[22] \"I must go, Basil,\" he answered.\n\n\"Very well,\" said Hallward; and he walked over and laid his cup down on\nthe tray.  \"It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had\nbetter lose no time.  Good-by, Harry; good-by, Dorian.  Come and see me\nsoon.  Come to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"You won't forget?\"\n\n\"No, of course not.\"\n\n\"And . . . Harry!\"\n\n\"Yes, Basil?\"\n\n\"Remember what I asked you, when in the garden this morning.\"\n\n\"I have forgotten it.\"\n\n\"I trust you.\"\n\n\"I wish I could trust myself,\" said Lord Henry, laughing.--\"Come, Mr.\nGray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own\nplace.--Good-by, Basil.  It has been a most interesting afternoon.\"\n\nAs the door closed behind them, Hallward flung himself down on a sofa,\nand a look of pain came into his face.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n[...22] One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a\nluxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in\nCurzon Street.  It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high\npanelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-colored frieze and\nceiling of raised plaster-work, and its brick-dust felt carpet strewn\nwith long-fringed silk Persian rugs.  On a tiny satinwood table stood a\nstatuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of \"Les Cent Nouvelles,\"\nbound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt\ndaisies that the queen had selected for her device.  Some large blue\nchina jars, filled with parrot-tulips, were ranged on the mantel-shelf,\nand through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the\napricot-colored light of a summer's day in London.\n\nLord Henry had not come in yet.  He was always late on principle, his\nprinciple being that punctuality is the thief of time.  So the lad was\nlooking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages\nof an elaborately-illustrated edition of \"Manon Lescaut\" that he had\nfound in one of the bookcases.  The formal monotonous ticking of the\nLouis Quatorze clock annoyed him.  Once or twice he thought of going\naway.\n\nAt last he heard a light step outside, and the door opened.  \"How late\nyou are, Harry!\" he murmured.\n\n\"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray,\" said a woman's voice.\n\nHe glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet.  \"I beg your pardon. I\nthought--\"\n\n\"You thought it was my husband.  It is only his wife.  You must let me\nintroduce myself.  I know you quite well by your photographs.  I think\nmy husband has got twenty-seven of them.\"\n\n[23] \"Not twenty-seven, Lady Henry?\"\n\n\"Well, twenty-six, then.  And I saw you with him the other night at the\nOpera.\"  She laughed nervously, as she spoke, and watched him with her\nvague forget-me-not eyes.  She was a curious woman, whose dresses\nalways looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a\ntempest.  She was always in love with somebody, and, as her passion was\nnever returned, she had kept all her illusions.  She tried to look\npicturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.  Her name was\nVictoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.\n\n\"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?\"\n\n\"Yes; it was at dear 'Lohengrin.'  I like Wagner's music better than\nany other music.  It is so loud that one can talk the whole time,\nwithout people hearing what one says.  That is a great advantage: don't\nyou think so, Mr. Gray?\"\n\nThe same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her\nfingers began to play with a long paper-knife.\n\nDorian smiled, and shook his head: \"I am afraid I don't think so, Lady\nHenry.  I never talk during music,--at least during good music. If one\nhears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by conversation.\"\n\n\"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray?  But you must\nnot think I don't like good music.  I adore it, but I am afraid of it.\nIt makes me too romantic.  I have simply worshipped pianists,--two at a\ntime, sometimes.  I don't know what it is about them. Perhaps it is\nthat they are foreigners.  They all are, aren't they? Even those that\nare born in England become foreigners after a time, don't they?  It is\nso clever of them, and such a compliment to art. Makes it quite\ncosmopolitan, doesn't it?  You have never been to any of my parties,\nhave you, Mr. Gray?  You must come.  I can't afford orchids, but I\nspare no expense in foreigners.  They make one's rooms look so\npicturesque.  But here is Harry!--Harry, I came in to look for you, to\nask you something,--I forget what it was,--and I found Mr. Gray here.\nWe have had such a pleasant chat about music.  We have quite the same\nviews.  No; I think our views are quite different.  But he has been\nmost pleasant.  I am so glad I've seen him.\"\n\n\"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed,\" said Lord Henry, elevating his\ndark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused\nsmile.--\"So sorry I am late, Dorian.  I went to look after a piece of\nold brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain for hours for it.\nNowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.\"\n\n\"I am afraid I must be going,\" exclaimed Lady Henry, after an awkward\nsilence, with her silly sudden laugh.  \"I have promised to drive with\nthe duchess.--Good-by, Mr. Gray.--Good-by, Harry.  You are dining out,\nI suppose?  So am I.  Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's.\"\n\n\"I dare say, my dear,\" said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her,\nas she flitted out of the room, looking like a bird-of-paradise that\nhad been out in the rain, and leaving a faint odor of patchouli behind\nher.  Then he shook hands with Dorian Gray, lit a cigarette, and flung\nhimself down on the sofa.\n\n[24] \"Never marry a woman with straw-colored hair, Dorian,\" he said,\nafter a few puffs.\n\n\"Why, Harry?\"\n\n\"Because they are so sentimental.\"\n\n\"But I like sentimental people.\"\n\n\"Never marry at all, Dorian.  Men marry because they are tired; women,\nbecause they are curious: both are disappointed.\"\n\n\"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry.  I am too much in love.\nThat is one of your aphorisms.  I am putting it into practice, as I do\neverything you say.\"\n\n\"Whom are you in love with?\" said Lord Henry, looking at him with a\ncurious smile.\n\n\"With an actress,\" said Dorian Gray, blushing.\n\nLord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  \"That is a rather common-place\nd\u00e9but,\" he murmured.\n\n\"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry.\"\n\n\"Who is she?\"\n\n\"Her name is Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"Never heard of her.\"\n\n\"No one has.  People will some day, however.  She is a genius.\"\n\n\"My dear boy, no woman is a genius: women are a decorative sex.  They\nnever have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.  They represent\nthe triumph of matter over mind, just as we men represent the triumph\nof mind over morals.  There are only two kinds of women, the plain and\nthe colored.  The plain women are very useful.  If you want to gain a\nreputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to\nsupper.  The other women are very charming.  They commit one mistake,\nhowever.  They paint in order to try to look young.  Our grandmothers\npainted in order to try to talk brilliantly.  Rouge and esprit used to\ngo together.  That has all gone out now.  As long as a woman can look\nten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.\nAs for conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking\nto, and two of these can't be admitted into decent society.  However,\ntell me about your genius.  How long have you known her?\"\n\n\"About three weeks.  Not so much.  About two weeks and two days.\"\n\n\"How did you come across her?\"\n\n\"I will tell you, Harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.\nAfter all, it never would have happened if I had not met you.  You\nfilled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.  For days\nafter I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins.  As I lounged\nin the Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one\nwho passed me, and wonder with a mad curiosity what sort of lives they\nled.  Some of them fascinated me.  Others filled me with terror. There\nwas an exquisite poison in the air.  I had a passion for sensations.\n\n\"One evening about seven o'clock I determined to go out in search of\nsome adventure.  I felt that this gray, monstrous London of ours, with\nits myriads of people, its splendid sinners, and its sordid sins, as\n[25] you once said, must have something in store for me.  I fancied a\nthousand things.\n\n\"The mere danger gave me a sense of delight.  I remembered what you had\nsaid to me on that wonderful night when we first dined together, about\nthe search for beauty being the poisonous secret of life.  I don't know\nwhat I expected, but I went out, and wandered eastward, soon losing my\nway in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grassless squares.\nAbout half-past eight I passed by a little third-rate theatre, with\ngreat flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills.  A hideous Jew, in the\nmost amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the\nentrance, smoking a vile cigar.  He had greasy ringlets, and an\nenormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt.  ''Ave a box,\nmy lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an act\nof gorgeous servility.  There was something about him, Harry, that\namused me.  He was such a monster.  You will laugh at me, I know, but I\nreally went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box.  To the\npresent day I can't make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn't!--my\ndear Harry, if I hadn't, I would have missed the greatest romance of my\nlife.  I see you are laughing.  It is horrid of you!\"\n\n\"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you.  But you\nshould not say the greatest romance of your life.  You should say the\nfirst romance of your life.  You will always be loved, and you will\nalways be in love with love.  There are exquisite things in store for\nyou.  This is merely the beginning.\"\n\n\"Do you think my nature so shallow?\" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.\n\n\"No; I think your nature so deep.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"My dear boy, people who only love once in their lives are really\nshallow people.  What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I\ncall either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination.\nFaithlessness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the\nintellectual life,--simply a confession of failure.  But I don't want\nto interrupt you.  Go on with your story.\"\n\n\"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a\nvulgar drop-scene staring me in the face.  I looked out behind the\ncurtain, and surveyed the house.  It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids\nand cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake.  The gallery and pit\nwere fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty,\nand there was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the\ndress-circle.  Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there\nwas a terrible consumption of nuts going on.\"\n\n\"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama.\"\n\n\"Just like, I should fancy, and very horrid.  I began to wonder what on\nearth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill.  What do you\nthink the play was, Harry?\"\n\n\"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.'  Our fathers\nused to like that sort of piece, I believe.  The longer I live, Dorian,\nthe more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is\nnot good enough for us.  In art, as in politics, les grand p\u00e8res ont\ntoujours tort.\"\n\n[26] \"This play was good enough for us, Harry.  It was 'Romeo and\nJuliet.'  I must admit I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing\nShakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place.  Still, I felt\ninterested, in a sort of way.  At any rate, I determined to wait for\nthe first act.  There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a\nyoung Jew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at\nlast the drop-scene was drawn up, and the play began.  Romeo was a\nstout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice,\nand a figure like a beer-barrel.  Mercutio was almost as bad.  He was\nplayed by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was\non most familiar terms with the pit.  They were as grotesque as the\nscenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a pantomime of fifty\nyears ago.  But Juliet!  Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years\nof age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek head with plaited\ncoils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips\nthat were like the petals of a rose.  She was the loveliest thing I had\never seen in my life.  You said to me once that pathos left you\nunmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears.\nI tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears\nthat came across me.  And her voice,--I never heard such a voice.  It\nwas very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to fall\nsingly upon one's ear.  Then it became a little louder, and sounded\nlike a flute or a distant hautbois.  In the garden-scene it had all the\ntremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are\nsinging.  There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of\nviolins.  You know how a voice can stir one.  Your voice and the voice\nof Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget.  When I close\nmy eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different.  I\ndon't know which to follow.  Why should I not love her?  Harry, I do\nlove her.  She is everything to me in life.  Night after night I go to\nsee her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is\nImogen.  I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking\nthe poison from her lover's lips.  I have watched her wandering through\nthe forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and\ndainty cap.  She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a\nguilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of.\nShe has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her\nreed-like throat.  I have seen her in every age and in every costume.\nOrdinary women never appeal to one's imagination.  They are limited to\ntheir century.  No glamour ever transfigures them.  One knows their\nminds as easily as one knows their bonnets.  One can always find them.\nThere is no mystery in one of them.  They ride in the Park in the\nmorning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their\nstereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner. They are quite\nobvious.  But an actress!  How different an actress is!  Why didn't you\ntell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?\"\n\n\"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.\"\n\n\"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces.  There is an extraordinary\ncharm in them, sometimes.\"\n\n[27] \"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian.  All through your life\nyou will tell me everything you do.\"\n\n\"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true.  I cannot help telling you things.\nYou have a curious influence over me.  If I ever did a crime, I would\ncome and confide it to you.  You would understand me.\"\n\n\"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes,\nDorian.  But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same.  And\nnow tell me,--reach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks,--tell me,\nwhat are your relations with Sibyl Vane?\"\n\nDorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.\n\"Harry, Sibyl Vane is sacred!\"\n\n\"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,\" said\nLord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice.  \"But why\nshould you be annoyed?  I suppose she will be yours some day.  When one\nis in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always\nends by deceiving others.  That is what the world calls romance.  You\nknow her, at any rate, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Of course I know her.  On the first night I was at the theatre, the\nhorrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over,\nand offered to bring me behind the scenes and introduce me to her.  I\nwas furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for\nhundreds of years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in\nVerona.  I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he thought I\nhad taken too much champagne, or something.\"\n\n\"I am not surprised.\"\n\n\"I was not surprised either.  Then he asked me if I wrote for any of\nthe newspapers.  I told him I never even read them.  He seemed terribly\ndisappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics\nwere in a conspiracy against him, and that they were all to be bought.\"\n\n\"I believe he was quite right there.  But, on the other hand, most of\nthem are not at all expensive.\"\n\n\"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means.  By this time the\nlights were being put out in the theatre, and I had to go.  He wanted\nme to try some cigars which he strongly recommended.  I declined.  The\nnext night, of course, I arrived at the theatre again. When he saw me\nhe made me a low bow, and assured me that I was a patron of art.  He\nwas a most offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for\nShakespeare.  He told me once, with an air of pride, that his three\nbankruptcies were entirely due to the poet, whom he insisted on calling\n'The Bard.'  He seemed to think it a distinction.\"\n\n\"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian,--a great distinction.  But when\ndid you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?\"\n\n\"The third night.  She had been playing Rosalind.  I could not help\ngoing round.  I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me;\nat least I fancied that she had.  The old Jew was persistent.  He\nseemed determined to bring me behind, so I consented.  It was curious\nmy not wanting to know her, wasn't it?\"\n\n[28] \"No; I don't think so.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, why?\"\n\n\"I will tell you some other time.  Now I want to know about the girl.\"\n\n\"Sibyl?  Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle.  There is something of a\nchild about her.  Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told\nher what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious\nof her power.  I think we were both rather nervous.  The old Jew stood\ngrinning at the door-way of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate\nspeeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like\nchildren.  He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to assure\nSibyl that I was not anything of the kind.  She said quite simply to\nme, 'You look more like a prince.'\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments.\"\n\n\"You don't understand her, Harry.  She regarded me merely as a person\nin a play.  She knows nothing of life.  She lives with her mother, a\nfaded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta\ndressing-wrapper on the first night, and who looks as if she had seen\nbetter days.\"\n\n\"I know that look.  It always depresses me.\"\n\n\"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest\nme.\"\n\n\"You were quite right.  There is always something infinitely mean about\nother people's tragedies.\"\n\n\"Sibyl is the only thing I care about.  What is it to me where she came\nfrom?  From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and\nentirely divine.  I go to see her act every night of my life, and every\nnight she is more marvellous.\"\n\n\"That is the reason, I suppose, that you will never dine with me now. I\nthought you must have some curious romance on hand.  You have; but it\nis not quite what I expected.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have\nbeen to the Opera with you several times.\"\n\n\"You always come dreadfully late.\"\n\n\"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an\nact.  I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful\nsoul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with\nawe.\"\n\n\"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?\"\n\nHe shook his head.  \"To-night she is Imogen,\" he answered, \"and\ntomorrow night she will be Juliet.\"\n\n\"When is she Sibyl Vane?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"How horrid you are!  She is all the great heroines of the world in\none.  She is more than an individual.  You laugh, but I tell you she\nhas genius.  I love her, and I must make her love me.  You, who know\nall the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I\nwant to make Romeo jealous.  I want the dead lovers of the [29] world\nto hear our laughter, and grow sad.  I want a breath of our passion to\nstir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.  My\nGod, Harry, how I worship her!\"  He was walking up and down the room as\nhe spoke.  Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly\nexcited.\n\nLord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure.  How different\nhe was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's\nstudio!  His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of\nscarlet flame.  Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and\nDesire had come to meet it on the way.\n\n\"And what do you propose to do?\" said Lord Henry, at last.\n\n\"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act.  I\nhave not the slightest fear of the result.  You won't be able to refuse\nto recognize her genius.  Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands.\nShe is bound to him for three years--at least for two years and eight\nmonths--from the present time.  I will have to pay him something, of\ncourse.  When all that is settled, I will take a West-End theatre and\nbring her out properly.  She will make the world as mad as she has made\nme.\"\n\n\"Impossible, my dear boy!\"\n\n\"Yes, she will.  She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in\nher, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it\nis personalities, not principles, that move the age.\"\n\n\"Well, what night shall we go?\"\n\n\"Let me see.  To-day is Tuesday.  Let us fix to-morrow.  She plays\nJuliet to-morrow.\"\n\n\"All right.  The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil.\"\n\n\"Not eight, Harry, please.  Half-past six.  We must be there before the\ncurtain rises.  You must see her in the first act, where she meets\nRomeo.\"\n\n\"Half-past six!  What an hour!  It will be like having a meat-tea.\nHowever, just as you wish.  Shall you see Basil between this and then?\nOr shall I write to him?\"\n\n\"Dear Basil!  I have not laid eyes on him for a week.  It is rather\nhorrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful\nframe, designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of it for\nbeing a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in\nit.  Perhaps you had better write to him.  I don't want to see him\nalone.  He says things that annoy me.\"\n\nLord Henry smiled.  \"He gives you good advice, I suppose.  People are\nvery fond of giving away what they need most themselves.\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romance in\nhim?\"\n\n\"I don't know whether he has any passion, but he certainly has\nromance,\" said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes.  \"Has he\nnever let you know that?\"\n\n\"Never.  I must ask him about it.  I am rather surprised to hear it. He\nis the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a\nPhilistine.  Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.\"\n\n\"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into [30]\nhis work.  The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his\nprejudices, his principles, and his common sense.  The only artists I\nhave ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists.  Good\nartists give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly\nuninteresting in themselves.  A great poet, a really great poet, is the\nmost unpoetical of all creatures.  But inferior poets are absolutely\nfascinating.  The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they\nlook.  The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets\nmakes a man quite irresistible.  He lives the poetry that he cannot\nwrite.  The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.\"\n\n\"I wonder is that really so, Harry?\" said Dorian Gray, putting some\nperfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that\nstood on the table.  \"It must be, if you say so.  And now I must be\noff.  Imogen is waiting for me.  Don't forget about to-morrow.\nGood-by.\"\n\nAs he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began\nto think.  Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as\nDorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused\nhim not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy.  He was pleased by\nit.  It made him a more interesting study.  He had been always\nenthralled by the methods of science, but the ordinary subject-matter\nof science had seemed to him trivial and of no import.  And so he had\nbegun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others.\nHuman life,--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating.\nThere was nothing else of any value, compared to it.  It was true that\nas one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one\ncould not wear over one's face a mask of glass, or keep the sulphurous\nfumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with\nmonstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle\nthat to know their properties one had to sicken of them.  There were\nmaladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to\nunderstand their nature.  And, yet, what a great reward one received!\nHow wonderful the whole world became to one!  To note the curious hard\nlogic of passion, and the emotional colored life of the intellect,--to\nobserve where they met, and where they separated, at what point they\nbecame one, and at what point they were at discord,--there was a\ndelight in that!  What matter what the cost was?  One could never pay\ntoo high a price for any sensation.\n\nHe was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his\nbrown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical\nwords said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned\nto this white girl and bowed in worship before her.  To a large extent,\nthe lad was his own creation.  He had made him premature.  That was\nsomething.  Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its\nsecrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were\nrevealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect\nof art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately\nwith the passions and the intellect.  But now and then a complex\npersonality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed,\nin its [31] way, a real work of art, Life having its elaborate\nmasterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.\n\nYes, the lad was premature.  He was gathering his harvest while it was\nyet spring.  The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was\nbecoming self-conscious.  It was delightful to watch him.  With his\nbeautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at.\nIt was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end.  He was like\none of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem\nto be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty,\nand whose wounds are like red roses.\n\nSoul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were!  There was\nanimalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.\nThe senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade.  Who could\nsay where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?\nHow shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!\nAnd yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various\nschools!  Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin?  Or was the\nbody really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought?  The separation of\nspirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter\nwas a mystery also.\n\nHe began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolute a\nscience that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it\nwas, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.\nExperience was of no ethical value.  It was merely the name we gave to\nour mistakes.  Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning,\nhad claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in the formation of\ncharacter, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow\nand showed us what to avoid.  But there was no motive power in\nexperience.  It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself.\nAll that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same\nas our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we\nwould do many times, and with joy.\n\nIt was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by\nwhich one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and\ncertainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to\npromise rich and fruitful results.  His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane\nwas a psychological phenomenon of no small interest.  There was no\ndoubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire\nfor new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex\npassion.  What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of\nboyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination,\nchanged into something that seemed to the boy himself to be remote from\nsense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous.  It was the\npassions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most\nstrongly over us.  Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we\nwere conscious.  It often happened that when we thought we were\nexperimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.\n\nWhile Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the\ndoor, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress [32]\nfor dinner.  He got up and looked out into the street.  The sunset had\nsmitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite.\nThe panes glowed like plates of heated metal.  The sky above was like a\nfaded rose.  He thought of Dorian Gray's young fiery-colored life, and\nwondered how it was all going to end.\n\nWhen he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram\nlying on the hall-table.  He opened it and found it was from Dorian.\nIt was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n[...32] \"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?\" said Lord Henry on\nthe following evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room\nat the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three.\n\n\"No, Harry,\" answered Hallward, giving his hat and coat to the bowing\nwaiter.  \"What is it?  Nothing about politics, I hope?  They don't\ninterest me.  There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons\nworth painting; though many of them would be the better for a little\nwhitewashing.\"\n\n\"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,\" said Lord Henry, watching him\nas he spoke.\n\nHallward turned perfectly pale, and a curious look flashed for a moment\ninto his eyes, and then passed away, leaving them dull. \"Dorian engaged\nto be married!\" he cried.  \"Impossible!\"\n\n\"It is perfectly true.\"\n\n\"To whom?\"\n\n\"To some little actress or other.\"\n\n\"I can't believe it.  Dorian is far too sensible.\"\n\n\"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear\nBasil.\"\n\n\"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry,\" said\nHallward, smiling.\n\n\"Except in America.  But I didn't say he was married.  I said he was\nengaged to be married.  There is a great difference.  I have a distinct\nremembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of\nbeing engaged.  I am inclined to think that I never was engaged.\"\n\n\"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth.  It would be\nabsurd for him to marry so much beneath him.\"\n\n\"If you want him to marry this girl, tell him that, Basil.  He is sure\nto do it then.  Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is\nalways from the noblest motives.\"\n\n\"I hope the girl is good, Harry.  I don't want to see Dorian tied to\nsome vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his\nintellect.\"\n\n\"Oh, she is more than good--she is beautiful,\" murmured Lord Henry,\nsipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters.  \"Dorian says she is\nbeautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.  [33]\nYour portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal\nappearance of other people.  It has had that excellent effect, among\nothers.  We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his\nappointment.\"\n\n\"But do you approve of it, Harry?\" asked Hallward, walking up and down\nthe room, and biting his lip.  \"You can't approve of it, really. It is\nsome silly infatuation.\"\n\n\"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now.  It is an absurd\nattitude to take towards life.  We are not sent into the world to air\nour moral prejudices.  I never take any notice of what common people\nsay, and I never interfere with what charming people do.  If a\npersonality fascinates me, whatever the personality chooses to do is\nabsolutely delightful to me.  Dorian Gray falls in love with a\nbeautiful girl who acts Shakespeare, and proposes to marry her.  Why\nnot?  If he wedded Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You\nknow I am not a champion of marriage.  The real drawback to marriage is\nthat it makes one unselfish.  And unselfish people are colorless.  They\nlack individuality.  Still, there are certain temperaments that\nmarriage makes more complex.  They retain their egotism, and add to it\nmany other egos.  They are forced to have more than one life.  They\nbecome more highly organized.  Besides, every experience is of value,\nand, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an\nexperience.  I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife,\npassionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become\nfascinated by some one else.  He would be a wonderful study.\"\n\n\"You don't mean all that, Harry; you know you don't.  If Dorian Gray's\nlife were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself.  You are much\nbetter than you pretend to be.\"\n\nLord Henry laughed.  \"The reason we all like to think so well of others\nis that we are all afraid for ourselves.  The basis of optimism is\nsheer terror.  We think that we are generous because we credit our\nneighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves.  We\npraise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good\nqualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.\nI mean everything that I have said.  I have the greatest contempt for\noptimism.  And as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose\ngrowth is arrested.  If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to\nreform it.  But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I\ncan.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!\" said the\nboy, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings, and\nshaking each of his friends by the hand in turn.  \"I have never been so\nhappy.  Of course it is sudden: all really delightful things are.  And\nyet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my\nlife.\"  He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked\nextraordinarily handsome.\n\n\"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,\" said Hallward, \"but I\ndon't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.\nYou let Harry know.\"\n\n\"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner,\" broke in Lord [34]\nHenry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder, and smiling as he spoke.\n\"Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then\nyou will tell us how it all came about.\"\n\n\"There is really not much to tell,\" cried Dorian, as they took their\nseats at the small round table.  \"What happened was simply this. After\nI left you yesterday evening, Harry, I had some dinner at that curious\nlittle Italian restaurant in Rupert Street, you introduced me to, and\nwent down afterwards to the theatre.  Sibyl was playing Rosalind.  Of\ncourse the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd.  But Sibyl!\nYou should have seen her!  When she came on in her boy's dress she was\nperfectly wonderful.  She wore a moss-colored velvet jerkin with\ncinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green\ncap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined\nwith dull red.  She had never seemed to me more exquisite.  She had all\nthe delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your\nstudio, Basil.  Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves\nround a pale rose.  As for her acting--well, you will see her to-night.\nShe is simply a born artist.  I sat in the dingy box absolutely\nenthralled.  I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth\ncentury.  I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever\nseen.  After the performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her.\nAs we were sitting together, suddenly there came a look into her eyes\nthat I had never seen there before.  My lips moved towards hers.  We\nkissed each other.  I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment.\nIt seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point\nof rose-colored joy.  She trembled all over, and shook like a white\nnarcissus.  Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I\nfeel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help it.  Of\ncourse our engagement is a dead secret.  She has not even told her own\nmother.  I don't know what my guardians will say.  Lord Radley is sure\nto be furious.  I don't care.  I shall be of age in less than a year,\nand then I can do what I like.  I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to\ntake my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays?\nLips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my\near.  I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on\nthe mouth.\"\n\n\"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,\" said Hallward, slowly.\n\n\"Have you seen her to-day?\" asked Lord Henry.\n\nDorian Gray shook his head.  \"I left her in the forest of Arden, I\nshall find her in an orchard in Verona.\"\n\nLord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner.  \"At what\nparticular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? and what\ndid she say in answer?  Perhaps you forgot all about it.\"\n\n\"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did\nnot make any formal proposal.  I told her that I loved her, and she\nsaid she was not worthy to be my wife.  Not worthy!  Why, the whole\nworld is nothing to me compared to her.\"\n\n\"Women are wonderfully practical,\" murmured Lord Henry,--\"much more\npractical than we are.  In situations of that kind we often forget to\nsay anything about marriage, and they always remind us.\"\n\n[35] Hallward laid his hand upon his arm.  \"Don't, Harry.  You have\nannoyed Dorian.  He is not like other men.  He would never bring misery\nupon any one.  His nature is too fine for that.\"\n\nLord Henry looked across the table.  \"Dorian is never annoyed with me,\"\nhe answered.  \"I asked the question for the best reason possible, for\nthe only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any\nquestion,--simple curiosity.  I have a theory that it is always the\nwomen who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women, except,\nof course, in middle-class life.  But then the middle classes are not\nmodern.\"\n\nDorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head.  \"You are quite incorrigible,\nHarry; but I don't mind.  It is impossible to be angry with you.  When\nyou see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would\nbe a beast without a heart.  I cannot understand how any one can wish\nto shame what he loves.  I love Sibyl Vane.  I wish to place her on a\npedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.\nWhat is marriage?  An irrevocable vow.  And it is an irrevocable vow\nthat I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me\ngood.  When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me.  I\nbecome different from what you have known me to be.  I am changed, and\nthe mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your\nwrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.\"\n\n\"You will always like me, Dorian,\" said Lord Henry.  \"Will you have\nsome coffee, you fellows?--Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne,\nand some cigarettes.  No: don't mind the cigarettes; I have\nsome.--Basil, I can't allow you to smoke cigars.  You must have a\ncigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure.  It\nis exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.  What more can you\nwant?--Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me.  I represent to you\nall the sins you have never had the courage to commit.\"\n\n\"What nonsense you talk, Harry!\" cried Dorian Gray, lighting his\ncigarette from a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had\nplaced on the table.  \"Let us go down to the theatre.  When you see\nSibyl you will have a new ideal of life.  She will represent something\nto you that you have never known.\"\n\n\"I have known everything,\" said Lord Henry, with a sad look in his\neyes, \"but I am always ready for a new emotion.  I am afraid that there\nis no such thing, for me at any rate.  Still, your wonderful girl may\nthrill me.  I love acting.  It is so much more real than life.  Let us\ngo.  Dorian, you will come with me.--I am so sorry, Basil, but there is\nonly room for two in the brougham.  You must follow us in a hansom.\"\n\nThey got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing.\nHallward was silent and preoccupied.  There was a gloom over him.  He\ncould not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better\nthan many other things that might have happened.  After a few moments,\nthey all passed down-stairs.  He drove off by himself, as had been\narranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in\nfront of him.  A strange sense of loss came over him. [36] He felt that\nDorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the\npast.  His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became\nblurred to him.  When the cab drew up at the doors of the theatre, it\nseemed to him that he had grown years older.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n[...36] For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and\nthe fat Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to\near with an oily, tremulous smile.  He escorted them to their box with\na sort of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking\nat the top of his voice.  Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever.  He\nfelt as if he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.\nLord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him.  At least he\ndeclared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assured\nhim that he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius\nand gone bankrupt over Shakespeare.  Hallward amused himself with\nwatching the faces in the pit.  The heat was terribly oppressive, and\nthe huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of fire.\nThe youths in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and\nhung them over the side.  They talked to each other across the theatre,\nand shared their oranges with the tawdry painted girls who sat by them.\nSome women were laughing in the pit; their voices were horribly shrill\nand discordant.  The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.\n\n\"What a place to find one's divinity in!\" said Lord Henry.\n\n\"Yes!\" answered Dorian Gray.  \"It was here I found her, and she is\ndivine beyond all living things.  When she acts you will forget\neverything.  These common people here, with their coarse faces and\nbrutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They\nsit silently and watch her.  They weep and laugh as she wills them to\ndo.  She makes them as responsive as a violin.  She spiritualizes them,\nand one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self.\"\n\n\"Oh, I hope not!\" murmured Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants\nof the gallery through his opera-glass.\n\n\"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian,\" said Hallward.  \"I understand\nwhat you mean, and I believe in this girl.  Any one you love must be\nmarvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine\nand noble.  To spiritualize one's age,--that is something worth doing.\nIf this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if\nshe can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been\nsordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend\nthem tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all\nyour adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.  This marriage is\nquite right.  I did not think so at first, but I admit it now.  God\nmade Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Basil,\" answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand.  \"I [37] knew\nthat you would understand me.  Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me.\nBut here is the orchestra.  It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for\nabout five minutes.  Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl\nto whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything\nthat is good in me.\"\n\nA quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of\napplause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage.  Yes, she was certainly\nlovely to look at,--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,\nthat he had ever seen.  There was something of the fawn in her shy\ngrace and startled eyes.  A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a\nmirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded,\nenthusiastic house.  She stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed\nto tremble.  Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.\nDorian Gray sat motionless, gazing on her, like a man in a dream.  Lord\nHenry peered through his opera-glass, murmuring, \"Charming! charming!\"\n\nThe scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's\ndress had entered with Mercutio and his friends.  The band, such as it\nwas, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.  Through the\ncrowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a\ncreature from a finer world.  Her body swayed, as she danced, as a\nplant sways in the water.  The curves of her throat were like the\ncurves of a white lily.  Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.\n\nYet she was curiously listless.  She showed no sign of joy when her\neyes rested on Romeo.  The few lines she had to speak,--\n\n     Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,\n        Which mannerly devotion shows in this;\n     For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,\n        And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss,--\n\nwith the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly\nartificial manner.  The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view\nof tone it was absolutely false.  It was wrong in color.  It took away\nall the life from the verse.  It made the passion unreal.\n\nDorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.  Neither of his friends dared\nto say anything to him.  She seemed to them to be absolutely\nincompetent.  They were horribly disappointed.\n\nYet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of\nthe second act.  They waited for that.  If she failed there, there was\nnothing in her.\n\nShe looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.  That could not\nbe denied.  But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew\nworse as she went on.  Her gestures became absurdly artificial.  She\nover-emphasized everything that she had to say.  The beautiful\npassage,--\n\n     Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,\n     Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek\n     For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night,--\n\n[38] was declaimed with the painful precision of a school-girl who has\nbeen taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When\nshe leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines,--\n\n                                Although I joy in thee,\n     I have no joy of this contract to-night:\n     It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;\n     Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be\n     Ere one can say, \"It lightens.\"  Sweet, good-night!\n     This bud of love by summer's ripening breath\n     May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet,--\n\nshe spoke the words as if they conveyed no meaning to her.  It was not\nnervousness.  Indeed, so far from being nervous, she seemed absolutely\nself-contained.  It was simply bad art.  She was a complete failure.\n\nEven the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their\ninterest in the play.  They got restless, and began to talk loudly and\nto whistle.  The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the\ndress-circle, stamped and swore with rage.  The only person unmoved was\nthe girl herself.\n\nWhen the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord\nHenry got up from his chair and put on his coat.  \"She is quite\nbeautiful, Dorian,\" he said, \"but she can't act.  Let us go.\"\n\n\"I am going to see the play through,\" answered the lad, in a hard,\nbitter voice.  \"I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an\nevening, Harry.  I apologize to both of you.\"\n\n\"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill,\" interrupted\nHallward.  \"We will come some other night.\"\n\n\"I wish she was ill,\" he rejoined.  \"But she seems to me to be simply\ncallous and cold.  She has entirely altered.  Last night she was a\ngreat artist.  To-night she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress.\"\n\n\"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian.  Love is a more\nwonderful thing than art.\"\n\n\"They are both simply forms of imitation,\" murmured Lord Henry.  \"But\ndo let us go.  Dorian, you must not stay here any longer.  It is not\ngood for one's morals to see bad acting.  Besides, I don't suppose you\nwill want your wife to act.  So what does it matter if she plays Juliet\nlike a wooden doll?  She is very lovely, and if she knows as little\nabout life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful\nexperience.  There are only two kinds of people who are really\nfascinating,--people who know absolutely everything, and people who\nknow absolutely nothing.  Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so\ntragic!  The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that\nis unbecoming.  Come to the club with Basil and myself.  We will smoke\ncigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane.  She is beautiful.\nWhat more can you want?\"\n\n\"Please go away, Harry,\" cried the lad.  \"I really want to be\nalone.--Basil, you don't mind my asking you to go?  Ah! can't you see\nthat my heart is breaking?\"  The hot tears came to his eyes.  His [39]\nlips trembled, and, rushing to the back of the box, he leaned up\nagainst the wall, hiding his face in his hands.\n\n\"Let us go, Basil,\" said Lord Henry, with a strange tenderness in his\nvoice; and the two young men passed out together.\n\nA few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose\non the third act.  Dorian Gray went back to his seat.  He looked pale,\nand proud, and indifferent.  The play dragged on, and seemed\ninterminable.  Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots,\nand laughing.  The whole thing was a fiasco.  The last act was played\nto almost empty benches.\n\nAs soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the\ngreenroom.  The girl was standing alone there, with a look of triumph\non her face.  Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.  There was a\nradiance about her.  Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of\ntheir own.\n\nWhen he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy\ncame over her.  \"How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!\" she cried.\n\n\"Horribly!\" he answered, gazing at her in amazement,--\"horribly!  It\nwas dreadful.  Are you ill?  You have no idea what it was.  You have no\nidea what I suffered.\"\n\nThe girl smiled.  \"Dorian,\" she answered, lingering over his name with\nlong-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to\nthe red petals of her lips,--\"Dorian, you should have understood.  But\nyou understand now, don't you?\"\n\n\"Understand what?\" he asked, angrily.\n\n\"Why I was so bad to-night.  Why I shall always be bad.  Why I shall\nnever act well again.\"\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders.  \"You are ill, I suppose.  When you are ill\nyou shouldn't act.  You make yourself ridiculous.  My friends were\nbored.  I was bored.\"\n\nShe seemed not to listen to him.  She was transfigured with joy.  An\necstasy of happiness dominated her.\n\n\"Dorian, Dorian,\" she cried, \"before I knew you, acting was the one\nreality of my life.  It was only in the theatre that I lived.  I\nthought that it was all true.  I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the\nother.  The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia\nwere mine also.  I believed in everything.  The common people who acted\nwith me seemed to me to be godlike.  The painted scenes were my world.\nI knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real.  You came,--oh, my\nbeautiful love!--and you freed my soul from prison.  You taught me what\nreality really is.  To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw\nthrough the hollowness, the sham, the silliness, of the empty pageant\nin which I had always played.  To-night, for the first time, I became\nconscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the\nmoonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and\nthat the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, not what\nI wanted to say.  You had brought me something higher, something of\nwhich all art is but a reflection.  You have made me understand what\nlove really is.  My love! my love!  I am sick [40] of shadows.  You are\nmore to me than all art can ever be.  What have I to do with the\npuppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how\nit was that everything had gone from me.  Suddenly it dawned on my soul\nwhat it all meant.  The knowledge was exquisite to me.  I heard them\nhissing, and I smiled.  What should they know of love?  Take me away,\nDorian--take me away with you, where we can be quite alone.  I hate the\nstage.  I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic\none that burns me like fire.  Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now\nwhat it all means?  Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for\nme to play at being in love.  You have made me see that.\"\n\nHe flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face.  \"You have\nkilled my love,\" he muttered.\n\nShe looked at him in wonder, and laughed.  He made no answer.  She came\nacross to him, and stroked his hair with her little fingers. She knelt\ndown and pressed his hands to her lips.  He drew them away, and a\nshudder ran through him.\n\nThen he leaped up, and went to the door.  \"Yes,\" he cried, \"you have\nkilled my love.  You used to stir my imagination.  Now you don't even\nstir my curiosity.  You simply produce no effect.  I loved you because\nyou were wonderful, because you had genius and intellect, because you\nrealized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the\nshadows of art.  You have thrown it all away.  You are shallow and\nstupid.  My God! how mad I was to love you!  What a fool I have been!\nYou are nothing to me now.  I will never see you again.  I will never\nthink of you.  I will never mention your name. You don't know what you\nwere to me, once.  Why, once . . . . Oh, I can't bear to think of it!\nI wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of\nmy life.  How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!\nWhat are you without your art? Nothing.  I would have made you famous,\nsplendid, magnificent.  The world would have worshipped you, and you\nwould have belonged to me. What are you now?  A third-rate actress with\na pretty face.\"\n\nThe girl grew white, and trembled.  She clinched her hands together,\nand her voice seemed to catch in her throat.  \"You are not serious,\nDorian?\" she murmured.  \"You are acting.\"\n\n\"Acting!  I leave that to you.  You do it so well,\" he answered,\nbitterly.\n\nShe rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expression of pain in her\nface, came across the room to him.  She put her hand upon his arm, and\nlooked into his eyes.  He thrust her back.  \"Don't touch me!\" he cried.\n\nA low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet, and lay\nthere like a trampled flower.  \"Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!\" she\nwhispered.  \"I am so sorry I didn't act well.  I was thinking of you\nall the time.  But I will try,--indeed, I will try.  It came so\nsuddenly across me, my love for you.  I think I should never have known\nit if you had not kissed me,--if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me\nagain, my love.  Don't go away from me.  I couldn't bear it. Can't you\nforgive me for to-night?  I will work so hard, and try to [41] improve.\nDon't be cruel to me because I love you better than anything in the\nworld.  After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you.  But\nyou are quite right, Dorian.  I should have shown myself more of an\nartist.  It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't help it.  Oh, don't\nleave me, don't leave me.\"  A fit of passionate sobbing choked her.\nShe crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with\nhis beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled\nin exquisite disdain.  There is always something ridiculous about the\npassions of people whom one has ceased to love.  Sibyl Vane seemed to\nhim to be absurdly melodramatic.  Her tears and sobs annoyed him.\n\n\"I am going,\" he said at last, in his calm, clear voice.  \"I don't wish\nto be unkind, but I can't see you again.  You have disappointed me.\"\n\nShe wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer to him.  Her\nlittle hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him.\nHe turned on his heel, and left the room.  In a few moments he was out\nof the theatre.\n\nWhere he went to, he hardly knew.  He remembered wandering through\ndimly-lit streets with gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking\nhouses.  Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after\nhim.  Drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves\nlike monstrous apes.  He had seen grotesque children huddled upon\ndoor-steps, and had heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.\n\nWhen the dawn was just breaking he found himself at Covent Garden. Huge\ncarts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty\nstreet.  The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their\nbeauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain.  He followed into\nthe market, and watched the men unloading their wagons.  A\nwhite-smocked carter offered him some cherries.  He thanked him,\nwondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat\nthem listlessly.  They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness\nof the moon had entered into them.  A long line of boys carrying crates\nof striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of\nhim, threading their way through the huge jade-green piles of\nvegetables.  Under the portico, with its gray sun-bleached pillars,\nloitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction\nto be over.  After some time he hailed a hansom and drove home.  The\nsky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like\nsilver against it.  As he was passing through the library towards the\ndoor of his bedroom, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had\npainted of him.  He started back in surprise, and then went over to it\nand examined it.  In the dim arrested light that struggled through the\ncream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed to him to be a little\nchanged.  The expression looked different.  One would have said that\nthere was a touch of cruelty in the mouth.  It was certainly curious.\n\nHe turned round, and, walking to the window, drew the blinds up.  The\nbright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows [42] into\ndusky corners, where they lay shuddering.  But the strange expression\nthat he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there,\nto be more intensified even.  The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him\nthe lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been\nlooking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.\n\nHe winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory\nCupids, that Lord Henry had given him, he glanced hurriedly into it.\nNo line like that warped his red lips.  What did it mean?\n\nHe rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it\nagain.  There were no signs of any change when he looked into the\nactual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression\nhad altered.  It was not a mere fancy of his own.  The thing was\nhorribly apparent.\n\nHe threw himself into a chair, and began to think.  Suddenly there\nflashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the\nday the picture had been finished.  Yes, he remembered it perfectly.\nHe had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the\nportrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the\nface on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that\nthe painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and\nthought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness\nof his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his prayer had not been\nanswered?  Such things were impossible.  It seemed monstrous even to\nthink of them.  And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the\ntouch of cruelty in the mouth.\n\nCruelty!  Had he been cruel?  It was the girl's fault, not his.  He had\ndreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he\nhad thought her great.  Then she had disappointed him. She had been\nshallow and unworthy.  And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over\nhim, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little\nchild.  He remembered with what callousness he had watched her.  Why\nhad he been made like that?  Why had such a soul been given to him?\nBut he had suffered also.  During the three terrible hours that the\nplay had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of\ntorture.  His life was well worth hers.  She had marred him for a\nmoment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better\nsuited to bear sorrow than men.  They lived on their emotions.  They\nonly thought of their emotions.  When they took lovers, it was merely\nto have some one with whom they could have scenes.  Lord Henry had told\nhim that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.  Why should he trouble\nabout Sibyl Vane?  She was nothing to him now.\n\nBut the picture?  What was he to say of that?  It held the secret of\nhis life, and told his story.  It had taught him to love his own\nbeauty.  Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?  Would he ever look\nat it again?\n\nNo; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses.  The\nhorrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly\nthere had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that [43] makes\nmen mad.  The picture had not changed.  It was folly to think so.\n\nYet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel\nsmile.  Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight.  Its blue eyes\nmet his own.  A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the\npainted image of himself, came over him.  It had altered already, and\nwould alter more.  Its gold would wither into gray.  Its red and white\nroses would die.  For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck\nand wreck its fairness.  But he would not sin.  The picture, changed or\nunchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.  He would\nresist temptation.  He would not see Lord Henry any more,--would not,\nat any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil\nHallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for\nimpossible things.  He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,\nmarry her, try to love her again.  Yes, it was his duty to do so.  She\nmust have suffered more than he had.  Poor child! He had been selfish\nand cruel to her.  The fascination that she had exercised over him\nwould return.  They would be happy together.  His life with her would\nbe beautiful and pure.\n\nHe got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the\nportrait, shuddering as he glanced at it.  \"How horrible!\" he murmured\nto himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it.  When he\nstepped out on the grass, he drew a deep breath.  The fresh morning air\nseemed to drive away all his sombre passions.  He thought only of Sibyl\nVane.  A faint echo of his love came back to him.  He repeated her name\nover and over again.  The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched\ngarden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n[...43] It was long past noon when he awoke.  His valet had crept\nseveral times into the room on tiptoe to see if he was stirring, and\nhad wondered what made his young master sleep so late.  Finally his\nbell sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile\nof letters, on a small tray of old S\u00e8vres china, and drew back the\nolive-satin curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in\nfront of the three tall windows.\n\n\"Monsieur has well slept this morning,\" he said, smiling.\n\n\"What o'clock is it, Victor?\" asked Dorian Gray, sleepily.\n\n\"One hour and a quarter, monsieur.\"\n\nHow late it was!  He sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over\nhis letters.  One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by\nhand that morning.  He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside.\nThe others he opened listlessly.  They contained the usual collection\nof cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes\nof charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable\nyoung men every morning during the season. There was a [44] rather\nheavy bill, for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had\nnot yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely\nold-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when\nonly unnecessary things are absolutely necessary to us; and there were\nseveral very courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street\nmoney-lenders offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice\nand at the most reasonable rates of interest.\n\nAfter about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate\ndressing-gown, passed into the onyx-paved bath-room.  The cool water\nrefreshed him after his long sleep.  He seemed to have forgotten all\nthat he had gone through.  A dim sense of having taken part in some\nstrange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality\nof a dream about it.\n\nAs soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a\nlight French breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round\ntable close to an open window.  It was an exquisite day.  The warm air\nseemed laden with spices.  A bee flew in, and buzzed round the\nblue-dragon bowl, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, that stood in front\nof him.  He felt perfectly happy.\n\nSuddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the\nportrait, and he started.\n\n\"Too cold for Monsieur?\" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the\ntable.  \"I shut the window?\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"I am not cold,\" he murmured.\n\nWas it all true?  Had the portrait really changed?  Or had it been\nsimply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where\nthere had been a look of joy?  Surely a painted canvas could not alter?\nThe thing was absurd.  It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day.\nIt would make him smile.\n\nAnd, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing!  First in\nthe dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of\ncruelty in the warped lips.  He almost dreaded his valet leaving the\nroom.  He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the\nportrait.  He was afraid of certainty.  When the coffee and cigarettes\nhad been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a mad desire to tell\nhim to remain.  As the door closed behind him he called him back.  The\nman stood waiting for his orders.  Dorian looked at him for a moment.\n\"I am not at home to any one, Victor,\" he said, with a sigh.  The man\nbowed and retired.\n\nHe rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on a\nluxuriously-cushioned couch that stood facing the screen.  The screen\nwas an old one of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a\nrather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern.  He scanned it curiously,\nwondering if it had ever before concealed the secret of a man's life.\n\nShould he move it aside, after all?  Why not let it stay there?  What\nwas the use of knowing?  If the thing was true, it was terrible.  If it\nwas not true, why trouble about it?  But what if, by some fate or\ndeadlier chance, other eyes than his spied behind, and saw the horrible\nchange?  What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at\nhis own picture?  He would be sure to do that.  No; the [45] thing had\nto be examined, and at once.  Anything would be better than this\ndreadful state of doubt.\n\nHe got up, and locked both doors.  At least he would be alone when he\nlooked upon the mask of his shame.  Then he drew the screen aside, and\nsaw himself face to face.  It was perfectly true.  The portrait had\naltered.\n\nAs he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he\nfound himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost\nscientific interest.  That such a change should have taken place was\nincredible to him.  And yet it was a fact.  Was there some subtle\naffinity between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form\nand color on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it be\nthat what that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they\nmade true?  Or was there some other, more terrible reason?  He\nshuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there,\ngazing at the picture in sickened horror.\n\nOne thing, however, he felt that it had done for him.  It had made him\nconscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane.  It was not\ntoo late to make reparation for that.  She could still be his wife.\nHis unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would\nbe transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil\nHallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would\nbe to him what holiness was to some, and conscience to others, and the\nfear of God to us all.  There were opiates for remorse, drugs that\ncould lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of\nthe degradation of sin.  Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men\nbrought upon their souls.\n\nThree o'clock struck, and four, and half-past four, but he did not\nstir.  He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life, and to\nweave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine\nlabyrinth of passion through which he was wandering.  He did not know\nwhat to do, or what to think.  Finally, he went over to the table and\nwrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her\nforgiveness, and accusing himself of madness.  He covered page after\npage with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of pain.  There is a\nluxury in self-reproach.  When we blame ourselves we feel that no one\nelse has a right to blame us.  It is the confession, not the priest,\nthat gives us absolution.  When Dorian Gray had finished the letter, he\nfelt that he had been forgiven.\n\nSuddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's\nvoice outside.  \"My dear Dorian, I must see you.  Let me in at once. I\ncan't bear your shutting yourself up like this.\"\n\nHe made no answer at first, but remained quite still.  The knocking\nstill continued, and grew louder.  Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry\nin, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel\nwith him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was\ninevitable.  He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,\nand unlocked the door.\n\n\"I am so sorry for it all, my dear boy,\" said Lord Henry, coming in.\n\"But you must not think about it too much.\"\n\n[46] \"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?\" asked Dorian.\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly\npulling his gloves off.  \"It is dreadful, from one point of view, but\nit was not your fault.  Tell me, did you go behind and see her after\nthe play was over?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I felt sure you had.  Did you make a scene with her?\"\n\n\"I was brutal, Harry,--perfectly brutal.  But it is all right now.  I\nam not sorry for anything that has happened.  It has taught me to know\nmyself better.\"\n\n\"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way!  I was afraid I\nwould find you plunged in remorse, and tearing your nice hair.\"\n\n\"I have got through all that,\" said Dorian, shaking his head, and\nsmiling.  \"I am perfectly happy now.  I know what conscience is, to\nbegin with.  It is not what you told me it was.  It is the divinest\nthing in us.  Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more,--at least not before\nme.  I want to be good.  I can't bear the idea of my soul being\nhideous.\"\n\n\"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian!  I congratulate you\non it.  But how are you going to begin?\"\n\n\"By marrying Sibyl Vane.\"\n\n\"Marrying Sibyl Vane!\" cried Lord Henry, standing up, and looking at\nhim in perplexed amazement.  \"But, my dear Dorian--\"\n\n\"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say.  Something dreadful\nabout marriage.  Don't say it.  Don't ever say things of that kind to\nme again.  Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me.  I am not going to\nbreak my word to her.  She is to be my wife.\"\n\n\"Your wife!  Dorian! . . . Didn't you get my letter?  I wrote to you\nthis morning, and sent the note down, by my own man.\"\n\n\"Your letter?  Oh, yes, I remember.  I have not read it yet, Harry. I\nwas afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like.\"\n\nLord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray,\ntook both his hands in his, and held them tightly.  \"Dorian,\" he said,\n\"my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane is\ndead.\"\n\nA cry of pain rose from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,\ntearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp.  \"Dead!  Sibyl dead! It\nis not true!  It is a horrible lie!\"\n\n\"It is quite true, Dorian,\" said Lord Henry, gravely.  \"It is in all\nthe morning papers.  I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one\ntill I came.  There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must\nnot be mixed up in it.  Things like that make a man fashionable in\nParis.  But in London people are so prejudiced.  Here, one should never\nmake one's d\u00e9but with a scandal.  One should reserve that to give an\ninterest to one's old age.  I don't suppose they know your name at the\ntheatre.  If they don't, it is all right.  Did any one see you going\nround to her room?  That is an important point.\"\n\nDorian did not answer for a few moments.  He was dazed with horror.\nFinally he murmured, in a stifled voice, \"Harry, did you say an\ninquest?  What did you mean by that?  Did Sibyl--?  Oh, [47] Harry, I\ncan't bear it!  But be quick.  Tell me everything at once.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put\nin that way to the public.  As she was leaving the theatre with her\nmother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had forgotten\nsomething up-stairs.  They waited some time for her, but she did not\ncome down again.  They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of\nher dressing-room.  She had swallowed something by mistake, some\ndreadful thing they use at theatres.  I don't know what it was, but it\nhad either prussic acid or white lead in it.  I should fancy it was\nprussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously.  It is very\ntragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed up in it. I see\nby the Standard that she was seventeen.  I should have thought she was\nalmost younger than that.  She looked such a child, and seemed to know\nso little about acting.  Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your\nnerves.  You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in\nat the Opera.  It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there.  You\ncan come to my sister's box.  She has got some smart women with her.\"\n\n\"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,\" said Dorian Gray, half to\nhimself,--\"murdered her as certainly as if I had cut her little throat\nwith a knife.  And the roses are not less lovely for all that.  The\nbirds sing just as happily in my garden.  And to-night I am to dine\nwith you, and then go on to the Opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose,\nafterwards.  How extraordinarily dramatic life is!  If I had read all\nthis in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it.  Somehow, now\nthat it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful\nfor tears.  Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever\nwritten in my life.  Strange, that my first passionate love-letter\nshould have been addressed to a dead girl.  Can they feel, I wonder,\nthose white silent people we call the dead?  Sibyl!  Can she feel, or\nknow, or listen?  Oh, Harry, how I loved her once!  It seems years ago\nto me now.  She was everything to me.  Then came that dreadful\nnight--was it really only last night?--when she played so badly, and my\nheart almost broke.  She explained it all to me.  It was terribly\npathetic.  But I was not moved a bit.  I thought her shallow.  Then\nsomething happened that made me afraid.  I can't tell you what it was,\nbut it was awful.  I said I would go back to her.  I felt I had done\nwrong.  And now she is dead.  My God! my God!  Harry, what shall I do?\nYou don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me\nstraight.  She would have done that for me.  She had no right to kill\nherself.  It was selfish of her.\"\n\n\"My dear Dorian, the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by\nboring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.\nIf you had married this girl you would have been wretched.  Of course\nyou would have treated her kindly.  One can always be kind to people\nabout whom one cares nothing.  But she would have soon found out that\nyou were absolutely indifferent to her.  And when a woman finds that\nout about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears\nvery smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to [48] pay for.\nI say nothing about the social mistake, but I assure you that in any\ncase the whole thing would have been an absolute failure.\"\n\n\"I suppose it would,\" muttered the lad, walking up and down the room,\nand looking horribly pale.  \"But I thought it was my duty.  It is not\nmy fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was\nright.  I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good\nresolutions,--that they are always made too late.  Mine certainly were.\"\n\n\"Good resolutions are simply a useless attempt to interfere with\nscientific laws.  Their origin is pure vanity.  Their result is\nabsolutely nil.  They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious\nsterile emotions that have a certain charm for us.  That is all that\ncan be said for them.\"\n\n\"Harry,\" cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,\n\"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to?  I\ndon't think I am heartless.  Do you?\"\n\n\"You have done too many foolish things in your life to be entitled to\ngive yourself that name, Dorian,\" answered Lord Henry, with his sweet,\nmelancholy smile.\n\nThe lad frowned.  \"I don't like that explanation, Harry,\" he rejoined,\n\"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless.  I am nothing of the\nkind.  I know I am not.  And yet I must admit that this thing that has\nhappened does not affect me as it should.  It seems to me to be simply\nlike a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible\nbeauty of a great tragedy, a tragedy in which I took part, but by which\nI have not been wounded.\"\n\n\"It is an interesting question,\" said Lord Henry, who found an\nexquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism,--\"an\nextremely interesting question.  I fancy that the explanation is this.\nIt often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an\ninartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their\nabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack\nof style.  They affect us just as vulgarity affects us.  They give us\nan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.\nSometimes, however, a tragedy that has artistic elements of beauty\ncrosses our lives.  If these elements of beauty are real, the whole\nthing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect.  Suddenly we find\nthat we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play.  Or\nrather we are both.  We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the\nspectacle enthralls us.  In the present case, what is it that has\nreally happened?  Some one has killed herself for love of you.  I wish\nI had ever had such an experience.  It would have made me in love with\nlove for the rest of my life.  The people who have adored me--there\nhave not been very many, but there have been some--have always insisted\non living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care\nfor me.  They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them they\ngo in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman!  What a\nfearful thing it is!  And what an utter intellectual stagnation it\nreveals!  One should absorb the color of life, but one should never\nremember its details.  Details are always vulgar.\n\n[49] \"Of course, now and then things linger.  I once wore nothing but\nviolets all through one season, as mourning for a romance that would\nnot die.  Ultimately, however, it did die.  I forget what killed it. I\nthink it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is\nalways a dreadful moment.  It fills one with the terror of eternity.\nWell,--would you believe it?--a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found\nmyself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on\ngoing over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking\nup the future.  I had buried my romance in a bed of poppies.  She\ndragged it out again, and assured me that I had spoiled her life.  I am\nbound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any\nanxiety.  But what a lack of taste she showed!  The one charm of the\npast is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has\nfallen.  They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of\nthe play is entirely over they propose to continue it.  If they were\nallowed to have their way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and\nevery tragedy would culminate in a farce.  They are charmingly\nartificial, but they have no sense of art.  You are more fortunate than\nI am.  I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I have known\nwould have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you.  Ordinary women\nalways console themselves.  Some of them do it by going in for\nsentimental colors. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her\nage may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.\nIt always means that they have a history.  Others find a great\nconsolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their\nhusbands.  They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it\nwas the most fascinating of sins.  Religion consoles some.  Its\nmysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me; and\nI can quite understand it.  Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being\ntold that one is a sinner.  There is really no end to the consolations\nthat women find in modern life.  Indeed, I have not mentioned the most\nimportant one of all.\"\n\n\"What is that, Harry?\" said Dorian Gray, listlessly.\n\n\"Oh, the obvious one.  Taking some one else's admirer when one loses\none's own.  In good society that always whitewashes a woman.  But\nreally, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the\nwomen one meets!  There is something to me quite beautiful about her\ndeath.  I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen.\nThey make one believe in the reality of the things that shallow,\nfashionable people play with, such as romance, passion, and love.\"\n\n\"I was terribly cruel to her.  You forget that.\"\n\n\"I believe that women appreciate cruelty more than anything else. They\nhave wonderfully primitive instincts.  We have emancipated them, but\nthey remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same.  They love\nbeing dominated.  I am sure you were splendid.  I have never seen you\nangry, but I can fancy how delightful you looked.  And, after all, you\nsaid something to me the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the\ntime to be merely fanciful, but that I see now was absolutely true, and\nit explains everything.\"\n\n[50] \"What was that, Harry?\"\n\n\"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of\nromance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that\nif she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen.\"\n\n\"She will never come to life again now,\" murmured the lad, burying his\nface in his hands.\n\n\"No, she will never come to life.  She has played her last part.  But\nyou must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply\nas a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful\nscene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.  The girl never really\nlived, and so she has never really died.  To you at least she was\nalways a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and\nleft them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's\nmusic sounded richer and more full of joy.  The moment she touched\nactual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away.\nMourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia\nwas strangled.  Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of\nBrabantio died.  But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane.  She was\nless real than they are.\"\n\nThere was a silence.  The evening darkened in the room.  Noiselessly,\nand with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden.  The colors\nfaded wearily out of things.\n\nAfter some time Dorian Gray looked up.  \"You have explained me to\nmyself, Harry,\" he murmured, with something of a sigh of relief.  \"I\nfelt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I\ncould not express it to myself.  How well you know me!  But we will not\ntalk again of what has happened.  It has been a marvellous experience.\nThat is all.  I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as\nmarvellous.\"\n\n\"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian.  There is nothing that\nyou, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do.\"\n\n\"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and gray, and wrinkled?  What\nthen?\"\n\n\"Ah, then,\" said Lord Henry, rising to go,--\"then, my dear Dorian, you\nwould have to fight for your victories.  As it is, they are brought to\nyou.  No, you must keep your good looks.  We live in an age that reads\ntoo much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.  We\ncannot spare you.  And now you had better dress, and drive down to the\nclub.  We are rather late, as it is.\"\n\n\"I think I shall join you at the Opera, Harry.  I feel too tired to eat\nanything.  What is the number of your sister's box?\"\n\n\"Twenty-seven, I believe.  It is on the grand tier.  You will see her\nname on the door.  But I am sorry you won't come and dine.\"\n\n\"I don't feel up to it,\" said Dorian, wearily.  \"But I am awfully\nobliged to you for all that you have said to me.  You are certainly my\nbest friend.  No one has ever understood me as you have.\"\n\n\"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian,\" answered Lord\nHenry, shaking him by the hand.  \"Good-by.  I shall see you before\nnine-thirty, I hope.  Remember, Patti is singing.\"\n\nAs he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, [51]\nand in a few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds\ndown.  He waited impatiently for him to go.  The man seemed to take an\ninterminable time about everything.\n\nAs soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. No;\nthere was no further change in the picture.  It had received the news\nof Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself.  It was\nconscious of the events of life as they occurred.  The vicious cruelty\nthat marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the\nvery moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was.  Or\nwas it indifferent to results?  Did it merely take cognizance of what\npassed within the soul? he wondered, and hoped that some day he would\nsee the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he\nhoped it.\n\nPoor Sibyl! what a romance it had all been!  She had often mimicked\ndeath on the stage, and at last Death himself had touched her, and\nbrought her with him.  How had she played that dreadful scene?  Had she\ncursed him, as she died?  No; she had died for love of him, and love\nwould always be a sacrament to him now.  She had atoned for everything,\nby the sacrifice she had made of her life.  He would not think any more\nof what she had made him go through, that horrible night at the\ntheatre.  When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic\nfigure to show Love had been a great reality.  A wonderful tragic\nfigure?  Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her child-like look\nand winsome fanciful ways and shy tremulous grace. He wiped them away\nhastily, and looked again at the picture.\n\nHe felt that the time had really come for making his choice.  Or had\nhis choice already been made?  Yes, life had decided that for\nhim,--life, and his own infinite curiosity about life.  Eternal youth,\ninfinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder\nsins,--he was to have all these things.  The portrait was to bear the\nburden of his shame: that was all.\n\nA feeling of pain came over him as he thought of the desecration that\nwas in store for the fair face on the canvas.  Once, in boyish mockery\nof Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips\nthat now smiled so cruelly at him.  Morning after morning he had sat\nbefore the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as\nit seemed to him at times.  Was it to alter now with every mood to\nwhich he yielded?  Was it to become a hideous and loathsome thing, to\nbe hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that\nhad so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of the hair?\nThe pity of it! the pity of it!\n\nFor a moment he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that\nexisted between him and the picture might cease.  It had changed in\nanswer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain\nunchanged.  And, yet, who, that knew anything about Life, would\nsurrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that\nchance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?\nBesides, was it really under his control?  Had it indeed been prayer\nthat had produced the substitution?  Might there not be some curious\nscientific reason for it all?  If thought could exercise its [52]\ninfluence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an\ninfluence upon dead and inorganic things?  Nay, without thought or\nconscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in\nunison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom, in secret\nlove or strange affinity?  But the reason was of no importance.  He\nwould never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power.  If the picture\nwas to alter, it was to alter.  That was all.  Why inquire too closely\ninto it?\n\nFor there would be a real pleasure in watching it.  He would be able to\nfollow his mind into its secret places.  This portrait would be to him\nthe most magical of mirrors.  As it had revealed to him his own body,\nso it would reveal to him his own soul.  And when winter came upon it,\nhe would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of\nsummer.  When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid\nmask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood.\nNot one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade.  Not one pulse of\nhis life would ever weaken.  Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be\nstrong, and fleet, and joyous.  What did it matter what happened to the\ncolored image on the canvas?  He would be safe.  That was everything.\n\nHe drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,\nsmiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was\nalready waiting for him.  An hour later he was at the Opera, and Lord\nHenry was leaning over his chair.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\n[...52] As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was\nshown into the room.\n\n\"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,\" he said, gravely.  \"I called\nlast night, and they told me you were at the Opera.  Of course I knew\nthat was impossible.  But I wish you had left word where you had really\ngone to.  I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy\nmight be followed by another.  I think you might have telegraphed for\nme when you heard of it first.  I read of it quite by chance in a late\nedition of the Globe, that I picked up at the club. I came here at\nonce, and was miserable at not finding you.  I can't tell you how\nheart-broken I am about the whole thing.  I know what you must suffer.\nBut where were you?  Did you go down and see the girl's mother?  For a\nmoment I thought of following you there.  They gave the address in the\npaper.  Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it?  But I was afraid of\nintruding upon a sorrow that I could not lighten.  Poor woman!  What a\nstate she must be in!  And her only child, too!  What did she say about\nit all?\"\n\n\"My dear Basil, how do I know?\" murmured Dorian, sipping some\npale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass,\nand looking dreadfully bored.  \"I was at the Opera.  You should have\ncome on there.  I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first\ntime. We were in her box.  She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang\ndivinely.  Don't talk about horrid subjects.  If one doesn't [53] talk\nabout a thing, it has never happened.  It is simply expression, as\nHarry says, that gives reality to things.  Tell me about yourself and\nwhat you are painting.\"\n\n\"You went to the Opera?\" said Hallward, speaking very slowly, and with\na strained touch of pain in his voice.  \"You went to the Opera while\nSibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?  You can talk to me\nof other women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before\nthe girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man,\nthere are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!\"\n\n\"Stop, Basil!  I won't hear it!\" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet.\n\"You must not tell me about things.  What is done is done.  What is\npast is past.\"\n\n\"You call yesterday the past?\"\n\n\"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it?  It is only\nshallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion.  A man who\nis master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a\npleasure.  I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.  I want to\nuse them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.\"\n\n\"Dorian, this is horrible!  Something has changed you completely. You\nlook exactly the same wonderful boy who used to come down to my studio,\nday after day, to sit for his picture.  But you were simple, natural,\nand affectionate then.  You were the most unspoiled creature in the\nwhole world.  Now, I don't know what has come over you.  You talk as if\nyou had no heart, no pity in you.  It is all Harry's influence.  I see\nthat.\"\n\nThe lad flushed up, and, going to the window, looked out on the green,\nflickering garden for a few moments.  \"I owe a great deal to Harry,\nBasil,\" he said, at last,--\"more than I owe to you.  You only taught me\nto be vain.\"\n\n\"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian,--or shall be some day.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean, Basil,\" he exclaimed, turning round.  \"I\ndon't know what you want.  What do you want?\"\n\n\"I want the Dorian Gray I used to know.\"\n\n\"Basil,\" said the lad, going over to him, and putting his hand on his\nshoulder, \"you have come too late.  Yesterday when I heard that Sibyl\nVane had killed herself--\"\n\n\"Killed herself!  Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?\" cried\nHallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.\n\n\"My dear Basil!  Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident?  Of\ncourse she killed herself  It is one of the great romantic tragedies of\nthe age.  As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives.\nThey are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious.  You\nknow what I mean,--middle-class virtue, and all that kind of thing.\nHow different Sibyl was!  She lived her finest tragedy.  She was always\na heroine.  The last night she played--the night you saw her--she acted\nbadly because she had known the reality of love.  When she knew its\nunreality, she died, as Juliet might have died.  She passed again into\nthe sphere of art.  There is something of the martyr about her.  Her\ndeath has all the pathetic uselessness of [54] martyrdom, all its\nwasted beauty.  But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not\nsuffered.  If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment,--about\nhalf-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to six,--you would have found me\nin tears.  Even Harry, who was here, who brought me the news, in fact,\nhad no idea what I was going through.  I suffered immensely, then it\npassed away.  I cannot repeat an emotion.  No one can, except\nsentimentalists.  And you are awfully unjust, Basil.  You come down\nhere to console me.  That is charming of you.  You find me consoled,\nand you are furious.  How like a sympathetic person!  You remind me of\na story Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty\nyears of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed, or some\nunjust law altered,--I forget exactly what it was.  Finally he\nsucceeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.  He had\nabsolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed\nmisanthrope.  And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really want to\nconsole me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it\nfrom a proper artistic point of view.  Was it not Gautier who used to\nwrite about la consolation des arts?  I remember picking up a little\nvellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that\ndelightful phrase.  Well, I am not like that young man you told me of\nwhen we were down at Marlowe together, the young man who used to say\nthat yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life.  I\nlove beautiful things that one can touch and handle.  Old brocades,\ngreen bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,\nluxury, pomp,--there is much to be got from all these.  But the\nartistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still\nmore to me.  To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says,\nis to escape the suffering of life.  I know you are surprised at my\ntalking to you like this.  You have not realized how I have developed.\nI was a school-boy when you knew me.  I am a man now.  I have new\npassions, new thoughts, new ideas.  I am different, but you must not\nlike me less.  I am changed, but you must always be my friend.  Of\ncourse I am very fond of Harry.  But I know that you are better than he\nis. You are not stronger,--you are too much afraid of life,--but you\nare better.  And how happy we used to be together!  Don't leave me,\nBasil, and don't quarrel with me.  I am what I am.  There is nothing\nmore to be said.\"\n\nHallward felt strangely moved.  Rugged and straightforward as he was,\nthere was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its\ntenderness.  The lad was infinitely dear to him, and his personality\nhad been the great turning-point in his art.  He could not bear the\nidea of reproaching him any more.  After all, his indifference was\nprobably merely a mood that would pass away.  There was so much in him\nthat was good, so much in him that was noble.\n\n\"Well, Dorian,\" he said, at length, with a sad smile, \"I won't speak to\nyou again about this horrible thing, after to-day.  I only trust your\nname won't be mentioned in connection with it.  The inquest is to take\nplace this afternoon.  Have they summoned you?\"\n\nDorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at\nthe mention of the word \"inquest.\"  There was something so [55] crude\nand vulgar about everything of the kind.  \"They don't know my name,\" he\nanswered.\n\n\"But surely she did?\"\n\n\"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned\nto any one.  She told me once that they were all rather curious to\nlearn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince\nCharming.  It was pretty of her.  You must do me a drawing of her,\nBasil.  I should like to have something more of her than the memory of\na few kisses and some broken pathetic words.\"\n\n\"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you.  But you\nmust come and sit to me yourself again.  I can't get on without you.\"\n\n\"I will never sit to you again, Basil.  It is impossible!\" he\nexclaimed, starting back.\n\nHallward stared at him, \"My dear boy, what nonsense!\" he cried.  \"Do\nyou mean to say you don't like what I did of you?  Where is it?  Why\nhave you pulled the screen in front of it?  Let me look at it.  It is\nthe best thing I have ever painted.  Do take that screen away, Dorian.\nIt is simply horrid of your servant hiding my work like that.  I felt\nthe room looked different as I came in.\"\n\n\"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil.  You don't imagine I let\nhim arrange my room for me?  He settles my flowers for me\nsometimes,--that is all.  No; I did it myself.  The light was too\nstrong on the portrait.\"\n\n\"Too strong!  Impossible, my dear fellow!  It is an admirable place for\nit.  Let me see it.\"  And Hallward walked towards the corner of the\nroom.\n\nA cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between\nHallward and the screen.  \"Basil,\" he said, looking very pale, \"you\nmust not look at it.  I don't wish you to.\"\n\n\"Not look at my own work! you are not serious.  Why shouldn't I look at\nit?\" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.\n\n\"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honor I will never\nspeak to you again as long as I live.  I am quite serious.  I don't\noffer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any.  But, remember,\nif you touch this screen, everything is over between us.\"\n\nHallward was thunderstruck.  He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute\namazement.  He had never seen him like this before.  The lad was\nabsolutely pallid with rage.  His hands were clinched, and the pupils\nof his eyes were like disks of blue fire.  He was trembling all over.\n\n\"Dorian!\"\n\n\"Don't speak!\"\n\n\"But what is the matter?  Of course I won't look at it if you don't\nwant me to,\" he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going\nover towards the window.  \"But, really, it seems rather absurd that I\nshouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in\nParis in the autumn.  I shall probably have to give it another coat of\nvarnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?\"\n\n\"To exhibit it!  You want to exhibit it?\" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a\nstrange sense of terror creeping over him.  Was the world going [56] to\nbe shown his secret?  Were people to gape at the mystery of his life?\nThat was impossible.  Something--he did not know what--had to be done\nat once.\n\n\"Yes: I don't suppose you will object to that.  Georges Petit is going\nto collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de\nS\u00e8ze, which will open the first week in October.  The portrait will\nonly be away a month.  I should think you could easily spare it for\nthat time.  In fact, you are sure to be out of town.  And if you hide\nit always behind a screen, you can't care much about it.\"\n\nDorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.  There were beads of\nperspiration there.  He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible\ndanger.  \"You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it,\" he\nsaid.  \"Why have you changed your mind?  You people who go in for being\nconsistent have just as many moods as others.  The only difference is\nthat your moods are rather meaningless.  You can't have forgotten that\nyou assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you\nto send it to any exhibition.  You told Harry exactly the same thing.\"\nHe stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes.  He\nremembered that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and\nhalf in jest, \"If you want to have an interesting quarter of an hour,\nget Basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture.  He told me\nwhy he wouldn't, and it was a revelation to me.\"  Yes, perhaps Basil,\ntoo, had his secret.  He would ask him and try.\n\n\"Basil,\" he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in\nthe face, \"we have each of us a secret.  Let me know yours, and I will\ntell you mine.  What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my\npicture?\"\n\nHallward shuddered in spite of himself.  \"Dorian, if I told you, you\nmight like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I\ncould not bear your doing either of those two things.  If you wish me\nnever to look at your picture again, I am content.  I have always you\nto look at.  If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden\nfrom the world, I am satisfied.  Your friendship is dearer to me than\nany fame or reputation.\"\n\n\"No, Basil, you must tell me,\" murmured Dorian Gray.  \"I think I have a\nright to know.\"  His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity\nhad taken its place.  He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's\nmystery.\n\n\"Let us sit down, Dorian,\" said Hallward, looking pale and pained. \"Let\nus sit down.  I will sit in the shadow, and you shall sit in the\nsunlight.  Our lives are like that.  Just answer me one question. Have\nyou noticed in the picture something that you did not like?--something\nthat probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself to\nyou suddenly?\"\n\n\"Basil!\" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling\nhands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.\n\n\"I see you did.  Don't speak.  Wait till you hear what I have to say.\nIt is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of\nfeeling than a man usually gives to a friend.  Somehow, I had never\nloved a woman.  I suppose I never had time.  Perhaps, as [57] Harry\nsays, a really 'grande passion' is the privilege of those who have\nnothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country.\nWell, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most\nextraordinary influence over me.  I quite admit that I adored you\nmadly, extravagantly, absurdly.  I was jealous of every one to whom you\nspoke.  I wanted to have you all to myself.  I was only happy when I\nwas with you.  When I was away from you, you were still present in my\nart.  It was all wrong and foolish.  It is all wrong and foolish still.\nOf course I never let you know anything about this.  It would have been\nimpossible.  You would not have understood it; I did not understand it\nmyself.  One day I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you.  It\nwas to have been my masterpiece.  It is my masterpiece.  But, as I\nworked at it, every flake and film of color seemed to me to reveal my\nsecret.  I grew afraid that the world would know of my idolatry.  I\nfelt, Dorian, that I had told too much. Then it was that I resolved\nnever to allow the picture to be exhibited.  You were a little annoyed;\nbut then you did not realize all that it meant to me.  Harry, to whom I\ntalked about it, laughed at me.  But I did not mind that.  When the\npicture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right.\nWell, after a few days the portrait left my studio, and as soon as I\nhad got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it seemed to\nme that I had been foolish in imagining that I had said anything in it,\nmore than that you were extremely good-looking and that I could paint.\nEven now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the\npassion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one\ncreates.  Art is more abstract than we fancy.  Form and color tell us\nof form and color,--that is all.  It often seems to me that art\nconceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him. And\nso when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your portrait\nthe principal thing in my exhibition.  It never occurred to me that you\nwould refuse.  I see now that you were right.  The picture must not be\nshown.  You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told\nyou.  As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.\"\n\nDorian Gray drew a long breath.  The color came back to his cheeks, and\na smile played about his lips.  The peril was over.  He was safe for\nthe time.  Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the young\nman who had just made this strange confession to him.  He wondered if\nhe would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend.  Lord\nHarry had the charm of being very dangerous.  But that was all.  He was\ntoo clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be\nsome one who would fill him with a strange idolatry?  Was that one of\nthe things that life had in store?\n\n\"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian,\" said Hallward, \"that you should\nhave seen this in the picture.  Did you really see it?\"\n\n\"Of course I did.\"\n\n\"Well, you don't mind my looking at it now?\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"You must not ask me that, Basil.  I could not\npossibly let you stand in front of that picture.\"\n\n\"You will some day, surely?\"\n\n[58] \"Never.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps you are right.  And now good-by, Dorian.  You have been\nthe one person in my life of whom I have been really fond.  I don't\nsuppose I shall often see you again.  You don't know what it cost me to\ntell you all that I have told you.\"\n\n\"My dear Basil,\" cried Dorian, \"what have you told me?  Simply that you\nfelt that you liked me too much.  That is not even a compliment.\"\n\n\"It was not intended as a compliment.  It was a confession.\"\n\n\"A very disappointing one.\"\n\n\"Why, what did you expect, Dorian?  You didn't see anything else in the\npicture, did you?  There was nothing else to see?\"\n\n\"No: there was nothing else to see.  Why do you ask?  But you mustn't\ntalk about not meeting me again, or anything of that kind.  You and I\nare friends, Basil, and we must always remain so.\"\n\n\"You have got Harry,\" said Hallward, sadly.\n\n\"Oh, Harry!\" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter.  \"Harry spends\nhis days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what\nis improbable.  Just the sort of life I would like to lead.  But still\nI don't think I would go to Harry if I was in trouble.  I would sooner\ngo to you, Basil.\"\n\n\"But you won't sit to me again?\"\n\n\"Impossible!\"\n\n\"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian.  No man comes\nacross two ideal things.  Few come across one.\"\n\n\"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. I\nwill come and have tea with you.  That will be just as pleasant.\"\n\n\"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,\" murmured Hallward, regretfully. \"And\nnow good-by.  I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once\nagain.  But that can't be helped.  I quite understand what you feel\nabout it.\"\n\nAs he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.  Poor Basil! how\nlittle he knew of the true reason!  And how strange it was that,\ninstead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had\nsucceeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How\nmuch that strange confession explained to him!  Basil's absurd fits of\njealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious\nreticences,--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There was\nsomething tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.\n\nHe sighed, and touched the bell.  The portrait must be hidden away at\nall costs.  He could not run such a risk of discovery again.  It had\nbeen mad of him to have the thing remain, even for an hour, in a room\nto which any of his friends had access.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\n[...58] When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and\nwondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen.  The man was\nquite impassive, and waited for his orders.  Dorian lit a cigarette,\n[59] and walked over to the glass and glanced into it.  He could see\nthe reflection of Victor's face perfectly.  It was like a placid mask\nof servility.  There was nothing to be afraid of, there.  Yet he\nthought it best to be on his guard.\n\nSpeaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he\nwanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker's and ask him to\nsend two of his men round at once.  It seemed to him that as the man\nleft the room he peered in the direction of the screen.  Or was that\nonly his fancy?\n\nAfter a few moments, Mrs. Leaf, a dear old lady in a black silk dress,\nwith a photograph of the late Mr. Leaf framed in a large gold brooch at\nher neck, and old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands,\nbustled into the room.\n\n\"Well, Master Dorian,\" she said, \"what can I do for you?  I beg your\npardon, sir,\"--here came a courtesy,--\"I shouldn't call you Master\nDorian any more.  But, Lord bless you, sir, I have known you since you\nwere a baby, and many's the trick you've played on poor old Leaf. Not\nthat you were not always a good boy, sir; but boys will be boys, Master\nDorian, and jam is a temptation to the young, isn't it, sir?\"\n\nHe laughed.  \"You must always call me Master Dorian, Leaf.  I will be\nvery angry with you if you don't.  And I assure you I am quite as fond\nof jam now as I used to be.  Only when I am asked out to tea I am never\noffered any.  I want you to give me the key of the room at the top of\nthe house.\"\n\n\"The old school-room, Master Dorian?  Why, it's full of dust.  I must\nget it arranged and put straight before you go into it.  It's not fit\nfor you to see, Master Dorian.  It is not, indeed.\"\n\n\"I don't want it put straight, Leaf.  I only want the key.\"\n\n\"Well, Master Dorian, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you goes into\nit.  Why, it hasn't been opened for nearly five years,--not since his\nlordship died.\"\n\nHe winced at the mention of his dead uncle's name.  He had hateful\nmemories of him.  \"That does not matter, Leaf,\" he replied.  \"All I\nwant is the key.\"\n\n\"And here is the key, Master Dorian,\" said the old lady, after going\nover the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. \"Here\nis the key.  I'll have it off the ring in a moment.  But you don't\nthink of living up there, Master Dorian, and you so comfortable here?\"\n\n\"No, Leaf, I don't.  I merely want to see the place, and perhaps store\nsomething in it,--that is all.  Thank you, Leaf.  I hope your\nrheumatism is better; and mind you send me up jam for breakfast.\"\n\nMrs. Leaf shook her head.  \"Them foreigners doesn't understand jam,\nMaster Dorian.  They calls it 'compot.'  But I'll bring it to you\nmyself some morning, if you lets me.\"\n\n\"That will be very kind of you, Leaf,\" he answered, looking at the key;\nand, having made him an elaborate courtesy, the old lady left the room,\nher face wreathed in smiles.  She had a strong objection to the French\nvalet.  It was a poor thing, she felt, for any one to be born a\nforeigner.\n\n[60] As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked\nround the room.  His eye fell on a large purple satin coverlet heavily\nembroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century\nVenetian work that his uncle had found in a convent near Bologna.  Yes,\nthat would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had perhaps served\noften as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that had a\ncorruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death\nitself,--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.\nWhat the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image\non the canvas.  They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace.\nThey would defile it, and make it shameful.  And yet the thing would\nstill live on.  It would be always alive.\n\nHe shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil\nthe true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would\nhave helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more\npoisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that\nhe bore him--for it was really love--had something noble and\nintellectual in it.  It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty\nthat is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire.  It was\nsuch love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann,\nand Shakespeare himself.  Yes, Basil could have saved him.  But it was\ntoo late now.  The past could always be annihilated.  Regret, denial,\nor forgetfulness could do that.  But the future was inevitable.  There\nwere passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that\nwould make the shadow of their evil real.\n\nHe took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that\ncovered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was\nthe face on the canvas viler than before?  It seemed to him that it was\nunchanged; and yet his loathing of it was intensified.  Gold hair, blue\neyes, and rose-red lips,--they all were there.  It was simply the\nexpression that had altered.  That was horrible in its cruelty.\nCompared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's\nreproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little\naccount!  His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and\ncalling him to judgment.  A look of pain came across him, and he flung\nthe rich pall over the picture.  As he did so, a knock came to the\ndoor.  He passed out as his servant entered.\n\n\"The persons are here, monsieur.\"\n\nHe felt that the man must be got rid of at once.  He must not be\nallowed to know where the picture was being taken to.  There was\nsomething sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes.\nSitting down at the writing-table, he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,\nasking him to send him round something to read, and reminding him that\nthey were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.\n\n\"Wait for an answer,\" he said, handing it to him, \"and show the men in\nhere.\"\n\nIn two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Ashton\nhimself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in\nwith a somewhat rough-looking young assistant.  Mr. Ashton was a\nflorid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was\nconsiderably [61] tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of\nthe artists who dealt with him.  As a rule, he never left his shop. He\nwaited for people to come to him.  But he always made an exception in\nfavor of Dorian Gray.  There was something about Dorian that charmed\neverybody.  It was a pleasure even to see him.\n\n\"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?\" he said, rubbing his fat freckled\nhands.  \"I thought I would do myself the honor of coming round in\nperson.  I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir.  Picked it up at a\nsale.  Old Florentine.  Came from Fonthill, I believe.  Admirably\nsuited for a religious picture, Mr. Gray.\"\n\n\"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.\nAshton.  I will certainly drop in and look at the frame,--though I\ndon't go in much for religious art,--but to-day I only want a picture\ncarried to the top of the house for me.  It is rather heavy, so I\nthought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men.\"\n\n\"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray.  I am delighted to be of any service to\nyou.  Which is the work of art, sir?\"\n\n\"This,\" replied Dorian, moving the screen back.  \"Can you move it,\ncovering and all, just as it is?  I don't want it to get scratched\ngoing up-stairs.\"\n\n\"There will be no difficulty, sir,\" said the genial frame-maker,\nbeginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from\nthe long brass chains by which it was suspended.  \"And, now, where\nshall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?\"\n\n\"I will show you the way, Mr. Ashton, if you will kindly follow me. Or\nperhaps you had better go in front.  I am afraid it is right at the top\nof the house.  We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider.\"\n\nHe held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and\nbegan the ascent.  The elaborate character of the frame had made the\npicture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious\nprotests of Mr. Ashton, who had a true tradesman's dislike of seeing a\ngentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to\nhelp them.\n\n\"Something of a load to carry, sir,\" gasped the little man, when they\nreached the top landing.  And he wiped his shiny forehead.\n\n\"A terrible load to carry,\" murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the door\nthat opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret\nof his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.\n\nHe had not entered the place for more than four years,--not, indeed,\nsince he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child and then\nas a study when he grew somewhat older.  It was a large,\nwell-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord\nSherard for the use of the little nephew whom, being himself childless,\nand perhaps for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep\nat a distance.  It did not appear to Dorian to have much changed.\nThere was the huge Italian cassone, with its fantastically-painted\npanels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often\nhidden himself as a boy.  There was the satinwood bookcase filled with\nhis dog-eared school-books.  On the wall behind it was hanging the same\n[62] ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing\nchess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded\nbirds on their gauntleted wrists.  How well he recalled it all!  Every\nmoment of his lonely childhood came back to him, as he looked round.\nHe remembered the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed\nhorrible to him that it was here that the fatal portrait was to be\nhidden away.  How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all\nthat was in store for him!\n\nBut there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as\nthis.  He had the key, and no one else could enter it.  Beneath its\npurple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden,\nand unclean.  What did it matter?  No one could see it.  He himself\nwould not see it.  Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his\nsoul?  He kept his youth,--that was enough.  And, besides, might not\nhis nature grow finer, after all?  There was no reason that the future\nshould be so full of shame.  Some love might come across his life, and\npurify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already\nstirring in spirit and in flesh,--those curious unpictured sins whose\nvery mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.  Perhaps, some\nday, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive\nmouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.\n\nNo; that was impossible.  The thing upon the canvas was growing old,\nhour by hour, and week by week.  Even if it escaped the hideousness of\nsin, the hideousness of age was in store for it.  The cheeks would\nbecome hollow or flaccid.  Yellow crow's-feet would creep round the\nfading eyes and make them horrible.  The hair would lose its\nbrightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross,\nas the mouths of old men are.  There would be the wrinkled throat, the\ncold blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the\nuncle who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.  The picture had to\nbe concealed.  There was no help for it.\n\n\"Bring it in, Mr. Ashton, please,\" he said, wearily, turning round. \"I\nam sorry I kept you so long.  I was thinking of something else.\"\n\n\"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray,\" answered the frame-maker, who\nwas still gasping for breath.  \"Where shall we put it, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh, anywhere, Here, this will do.  I don't want to have it hung up.\nJust lean it against the wall.  Thanks.\"\n\n\"Might one look at the work of art, sir?\"\n\nDorian started.  \"It would not interest you, Mr. Ashton,\" he said,\nkeeping his eye on the man.  He felt ready to leap upon him and fling\nhim to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that\nconcealed the secret of his life.  \"I won't trouble you any more now. I\nam much obliged for your kindness in coming round.\"\n\n\"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray.  Ever ready to do anything for you,\nsir.\"  And Mr. Ashton tramped down-stairs, followed by the assistant,\nwho glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough,\nuncomely face.  He had never seen any one so marvellous.\n\nWhen the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked [63] the\ndoor, and put the key in his pocket.  He felt safe now.  No one would\never look on the horrible thing.  No eye but his would ever see his\nshame.\n\nOn reaching the library he found that it was just after five o'clock,\nand that the tea had been already brought up.  On a little table of\ndark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from his\nguardian's wife, Lady Radley, who had spent the preceding winter in\nCairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a book bound\nin yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. A copy\nof the third edition of the St. James's Gazette had been placed on the\ntea-tray.  It was evident that Victor had returned.  He wondered if he\nhad met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house and had\nwormed out of them what they had been doing.  He would be sure to miss\nthe picture,--had no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying\nthe tea-things.  The screen had not been replaced, and the blank space\non the wall was visible.  Perhaps some night he might find him creeping\nup-stairs and trying to force the door of the room.  It was a horrible\nthing to have a spy in one's house.  He had heard of rich men who had\nbeen blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter,\nor overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address, or\nfound beneath a pillow a withered flower or a bit of crumpled lace.\n\nHe sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's\nnote.  It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper,\nand a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at\neight-fifteen.  He opened the St. James's languidly, and looked through\nit.  A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye.  He read the\nfollowing paragraph:\n\n\"INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell\nTavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of\nSibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre,\nHolborn.  A verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable\nsympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly\naffected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of Dr.\nBirrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.\"\n\nHe frowned slightly, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the\nroom and flung the pieces into a gilt basket.  How ugly it all was! And\nhow horribly real ugliness made things!  He felt a little annoyed with\nLord Henry for having sent him the account.  And it was certainly\nstupid of him to have marked it with red pencil.  Victor might have\nread it.  The man knew more than enough English for that.\n\nPerhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something.  And, yet,\nwhat did it matter?  What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's\ndeath?  There was nothing to fear.  Dorian Gray had not killed her.\n\nHis eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.  What was\nit, he wondered.  He went towards the little pearl-colored octagonal\nstand, that had always looked to him like the work of some [64] strange\nEgyptian bees who wrought in silver, and took the volume up.  He flung\nhimself into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves.  After a\nfew minutes, he became absorbed.  It was the strangest book he had ever\nread.  It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate\nsound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before\nhim.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to\nhim.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.\n\nIt was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being,\nindeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who\nspent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the\npassions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his\nown, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through\nwhich the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere\nartificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,\nas much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.  The\nstyle in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid\nand obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical\nexpressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work\nof some of the finest artists of the French school of D\u00e9cadents.  There\nwere in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as evil in color.\nThe life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical\nphilosophy.  One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the\nspiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions\nof a modern sinner.  It was a poisonous book.  The heavy odor of\nincense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.  The\nmere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so\nfull as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated,\nproduced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter,\na form of revery, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of\nthe falling day and the creeping shadows.\n\nCloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed\nthrough the windows.  He read on by its wan light till he could read no\nmore.  Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the\nlateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed\nthe book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his\nbedside, and began to dress for dinner.\n\nIt was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found\nLord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very bored.\n\n\"I am so sorry, Harry,\" he cried, \"but really it is entirely your\nfault.  That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot what the\ntime was.\"\n\n\"I thought you would like it,\" replied his host, rising from his chair.\n\n\"I didn't say I liked it, Harry.  I said it fascinated me.  There is a\ngreat difference.\"\n\n\"Ah, if you have discovered that, you have discovered a great deal,\"\nmurmured Lord Henry, with his curious smile.  \"Come, let us go in to\ndinner.  It is dreadfully late, and I am afraid the champagne will be\ntoo much iced.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\n[65] For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the memory of\nthis book.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never\nsought to free himself from it.  He procured from Paris no less than\nfive large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in\ndifferent colors, so that they might suit his various moods and the\nchanging fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have\nalmost entirely lost control.  The hero, the wonderful young Parisian,\nin whom the romantic temperament and the scientific temperament were so\nstrangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.\nAnd, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his\nown life, written before he had lived it.\n\nIn one point he was more fortunate than the book's fantastic hero. He\nnever knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat\ngrotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still\nwater, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was\noccasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently,\nbeen so remarkable.  It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in\nnearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its\nplace--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its\nreally tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and\ndespair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world,\nhe had most valued.\n\nHe, at any rate, had no cause to fear that.  The boyish beauty that had\nso fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never\nto leave him.  Even those who had heard the most evil things against\nhim (and from time to time strange rumors about his mode of life crept\nthrough London and became the chatter of the clubs) could not believe\nanything to his dishonor when they saw him.  He had always the look of\none who had kept himself unspotted from the world. Men who talked\ngrossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room.  There was\nsomething in the purity of his face that rebuked them.  His mere\npresence seemed to recall to them the innocence that they had\ntarnished.  They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was\ncould have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and\nsensuous.\n\nHe himself, on returning home from one of those mysterious and\nprolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among\nthose who were his friends, or thought that they were so, would creep\nup-stairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never\nleft him, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil\nHallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on\nthe canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him\nfrom the polished glass.  The very sharpness of the contrast used to\nquicken his sense of pleasure.  He grew more and more enamoured of his\nown beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.\nHe would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous and\nterrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead\nor crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, [66] wondering sometimes\nwhich were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.  He\nwould place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the\npicture, and smile.  He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.\n\nThere were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own\ndelicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little\nill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in\ndisguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he\nhad brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant\nbecause it was purely selfish.  But moments such as these were rare.\nThat curiosity about life that, many years before, Lord Henry had first\nstirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend,\nseemed to increase with gratification.  The more he knew, the more he\ndesired to know.  He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed\nthem.\n\nYet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to\nsociety.  Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each\nWednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the\nworld his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the\nday to charm his guests with the wonders of their art.  His little\ndinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were\nnoted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,\nas for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with\nits subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered\ncloths, and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many,\nespecially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw,\nin Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often\ndreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of\nthe real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and\nperfect manner of a citizen of the world.  To them he seemed to belong\nto those whom Dante describes as having sought to \"make themselves\nperfect by the worship of beauty.\" Like Gautier, he was one for whom\n\"the visible world existed.\"\n\nAnd, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the\narts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.\nFashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment\nuniversal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert\nthe absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for\nhim.  His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that he affected\nfrom time to time, had their marked influence on the young exquisites\nof the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in\neverything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of\nhis graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.\n\nFor, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost\nimmediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a\nsubtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the\nLondon of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the\n\"Satyricon\" had once been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be\nsomething more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the\nwearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or [67] the conduct\nof a cane.  He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would\nhave its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles and find in the\nspiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.\n\nThe worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been\ndecried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and\nsensations that seem stronger than ourselves, and that we are conscious\nof sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.  But it\nappeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never\nbeen understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely\nbecause the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill\nthem by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new\nspirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the\ndominant characteristic.  As he looked back upon man moving through\nHistory, he was haunted by a feeling of loss.  So much had been\nsurrendered! and to such little purpose!  There had been mad wilful\nrejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose\norigin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more\nterrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,\nthey had sought to escape, Nature in her wonderful irony driving the\nanchorite out to herd with the wild animals of the desert and giving to\nthe hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.\n\nYes, there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new hedonism that\nwas to re-create life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely\npuritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.  It was\nto have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was never to\naccept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any\nmode of passionate experience.  Its aim, indeed, was to be experience\nitself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might\nbe.  Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar\nprofligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing.  But it was to\nteach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is\nitself but a moment.\n\nThere are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either\nafter one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured of\ndeath, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through\nthe chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality\nitself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,\nand that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one\nmight fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled\nwith the malady of revery. Gradually white fingers creep through the\ncurtains, and they appear to tremble.  Black fantastic shadows crawl\ninto the corners of the room, and crouch there.  Outside, there is the\nstirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to\ntheir work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills,\nand wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the\nsleepers.  Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by\ndegrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and we\nwatch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.  The wan\nmirrors get back their mimic life.  The flameless tapers stand where we\nhave left them, and beside them [68] lies the half-read book that we\nhad been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or\nthe letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too\noften.  Nothing seems to us changed.  Out of the unreal shadows of the\nnight comes back the real life that we had known.  We have to resume it\nwhere we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the\nnecessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of\nstereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids\nmight open some morning upon a world that had been re-fashioned anew\nfor our pleasure in the darkness, a world in which things would have\nfresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world\nin which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any\nrate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance\neven of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their\npain.\n\nIt was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray\nto be the true object, or among the true objects, of life; and in his\nsearch for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and\npossess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he\nwould often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really\nalien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and\nthen, having, as it were, caught their color and satisfied his\nintellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that\nis not incompatible with a real ardor of temperament, and that indeed,\naccording to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.\n\nIt was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic\ncommunion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction\nfor him.  The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the\nsacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb\nrejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity\nof its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it\nsought to symbolize.  He loved to kneel down on the cold marble\npavement, and with the priest, in his stiff flowered cope, slowly and\nwith white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, and raising\naloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer\nthat at times, one would fain think, is indeed the \"panis caelestis,\"\nthe bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of\nChrist, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for\nhis sins.  The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and\nscarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle\nfascination for him.  As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at\nthe black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of\nthem and listen to men and women whispering through the tarnished\ngrating the true story of their lives.\n\nBut he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual\ndevelopment by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of\nmistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable\nfor the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which\nthere are no stars and the moon is in travail.  Mysticism, with its\nmarvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle\nantinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a\nseason; and for a [69] season he inclined to the materialistic\ndoctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious\npleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly\ncell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the\nconception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical\nconditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.  Yet, as has been\nsaid of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any\nimportance compared with life itself.  He felt keenly conscious of how\nbarren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and\nexperiment.  He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their\nmysteries to reveal.\n\nAnd so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their\nmanufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums\nfrom the East.  He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not\nits counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their\ntrue relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one\nmystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets\nthat woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the\nbrain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often\nto elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several\ninfluences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers,\nof aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that\nsickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to\nbe able to expel melancholy from the soul.\n\nAt another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long\nlatticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of\nolive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad\ngypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled\nTunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while\ngrinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, or turbaned\nIndians, crouching upon scarlet mats, blew through long pipes of reed\nor brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and\nhorrible horned adders.  The harsh intervals and shrill discords of\nbarbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's\nbeautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell\nunheeded on his ear.  He collected together from all parts of the world\nthe strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of\ndead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact\nwith Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them.  He had\nthe mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not\nallowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have\nbeen subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the\nPeruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human\nbones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green\nstones that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular\nsweetness.  He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when\nthey were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the\nperformer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the\nharsh tur\u00e9 of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who\nsit all day long in trees, and that can be heard, it is said, at a\ndistance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that [70] has two vibrating\ntongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an\nelastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of\nthe Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge\ncylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the\none that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican\ntemple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a\ndescription.  The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated\nhim, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that Art, like\nNature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous\nvoices.  Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his\nbox at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt\npleasure to \"Tannh\u00e4user,\" and seeing in that great work of art a\npresentation of the tragedy of his own soul.\n\nOn another occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a\ncostume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered\nwith five hundred and sixty pearls.  He would often spend a whole day\nsettling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he had\ncollected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by\nlamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the\npistachio-colored peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,\ncarbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red\ncinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their\nalternate layers of ruby and sapphire.  He loved the red gold of the\nsunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow\nof the milky opal.  He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of\nextraordinary size and richness of color, and had a turquoise de la\nvieille roche that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.\n\nHe discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels.  In Alphonso's\n\"Clericalis Disciplina\" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real\njacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander he was said to have\nfound snakes in the vale of Jordan \"with collars of real emeralds\ngrowing on their backs.\"  There was a gem in the brain of the dragon,\nPhilostratus told us, and \"by the exhibition of golden letters and a\nscarlet robe\" the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep, and\nslain.  According to the great alchemist Pierre de Boniface, the\ndiamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him\neloquent.  The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked\nsleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine.  The garnet cast\nout demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her color. The\nselenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that\ndiscovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.\nLeonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a\nnewly-killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison.  The\nbezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm\nthat could cure the plague.  In the nests of Arabian birds was the\naspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any\ndanger by fire.\n\nThe King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,\nas the ceremony of his coronation.  The gates of the palace of John the\nPriest were \"made of sardius, with the horn of the horned [71] snake\ninwrought, so that no man might bring poison within.\" Over the gable\nwere \"two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles,\" so that the\ngold might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night.  In Lodge's\nstrange romance \"A Margarite of America\" it was stated that in the\nchamber of Margarite were seen \"all the chaste ladies of the world,\ninchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites,\ncarbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults.\"  Marco Polo had watched\nthe inhabitants of Zipangu place a rose-colored pearl in the mouth of\nthe dead.  A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver\nbrought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven\nmoons over his loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit,\nhe flung it away,--Procopius tells the story,--nor was it ever found\nagain, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of\ngold pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown a Venetian a rosary\nof one hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.\n\nWhen the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.\nof France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to\nBrant\u00f4me, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great\nlight.  Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with three\nhundred and twenty-one diamonds.  Richard II. had a coat, valued at\nthirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall\ndescribed Henry VIII., on his way to the Tower previous to his\ncoronation, as wearing \"a jacket of raised gold, the placard\nembroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderike\nabout his neck of large balasses.\"  The favorites of James I. wore\near-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.  Edward II. gave to Piers\nGaveston a suit of red-gold armor studded with jacinths, and a collar\nof gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parsem\u00e9 with\npearls.  Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had\na hawk-glove set with twelve rubies and fifty-two great pearls.  The\nducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race,\nwas studded with sapphires and hung with pear-shaped pearls.\n\nHow exquisite life had once been!  How gorgeous in its pomp and\ndecoration!  Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.\n\nThen he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries\nthat performed the office of frescos in the chill rooms of the Northern\nnations of Europe.  As he investigated the subject,--and he always had\nan extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment\nin whatever he took up,--he was almost saddened by the reflection of\nthe ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things.  He, at\nany rate, had escaped that.  Summer followed summer, and the yellow\njonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the\nstory of their shame, but he was unchanged.  No winter marred his face\nor stained his flower-like bloom.  How different it was with material\nthings!  Where had they gone to? Where was the great crocus-colored\nrobe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked\nfor Athena?  Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the\nColosseum at Rome, on which were represented the starry sky, and Apollo\ndriving a chariot drawn by [72] white gilt-reined steeds?  He longed to\nsee the curious table-napkins wrought for Elagabalus, on which were\ndisplayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;\nthe mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden\nbees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of\nPontus, and were figured with \"lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests,\nrocks, hunters,--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;\"\nand the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which\nwere embroidered the verses of a song beginning \"Madame, je suis tout\njoyeux,\" the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold\nthread, and each note, a square shape in those days, formed with four\npearls.  He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims\nfor the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with \"thirteen\nhundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the\nking's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings\nwere similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked\nin gold.\"  Catherine de M\u00e9dicis had a mourning-bed made for her of\nblack velvet powdered with crescents and suns.  Its curtains were of\ndamask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver\nground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it\nstood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black\nvelvet upon cloth of silver.  Louis XIV. had gold-embroidered\ncaryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment.  The state bed of\nSobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered\nin turquoises with verses from the Koran.  Its supports were of silver\ngilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled\nmedallions.  It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and\nthe standard of Mohammed had stood under it.\n\nAnd so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite\nspecimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting\nthe dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought, with gold-threat palmates,\nand stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes,\nthat from their transparency are known in the East as \"woven air,\" and\n\"running water,\" and \"evening dew;\" strange figured cloths from Java;\nelaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair\nblue silks and wrought with fleurs de lys, birds, and images; veils of\nlacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff Spanish\nvelvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas with\ntheir green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged birds.\n\nHe had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed\nhe had for everything connected with the service of the Church.  In the\nlong cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had\nstored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the\nraiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and\nfine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by\nthe suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain.\nHe had a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured\nwith a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled\nformal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine- [73] apple\ndevice wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels\nrepresenting scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of\nthe Virgin was figured in colored silks upon the hood.  This was\nItalian work of the fifteenth century.  Another cope was of green\nvelvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from\nwhich spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were\npicked out with silver thread and colored crystals.  The morse bore a\nseraph's head in gold-thread raised work.  The orphreys were woven in a\ndiaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many\nsaints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian.  He had chasubles,\nalso, of amber-colored silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow\nsilk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the\nPassion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and\npeacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk\ndamask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs de lys; altar\nfrontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals,\nchalice-veils, and sudaria.  In the mystic offices to which these\nthings were put there was something that quickened his imagination.\n\nFor these things, and everything that he collected in his lovely house,\nwere to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could\nescape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be\nalmost too great to be borne.  Upon the walls of the lonely locked room\nwhere he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own\nhands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real\ndegradation of his life, and had draped the purple-and-gold pall in\nfront of it as a curtain.  For weeks he would not go there, would\nforget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, his\nwonderful joyousness, his passionate pleasure in mere existence.  Then,\nsuddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to\ndreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,\nuntil he was driven away.  On his return he would sit in front of the\npicture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times,\nwith that pride of rebellion that is half the fascination of sin, and\nsmiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear\nthe burden that should have been his own.\n\nAfter a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and\ngave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as\nwell as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where he had more\nthan once spent his winter.  He hated to be separated from the picture\nthat was such a part of his life, and he was also afraid that during\nhis absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the\nelaborate bolts and bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.\n\nHe was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing.  It was true\nthat the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness\nof the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn\nfrom that?  He would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him.  He had\nnot painted it.  What was it to him how vile and full of shame it\nlooked?  Even if he told them, would they believe it?\n\nYet he was afraid.  Sometimes when he was down at his great [74] house\nin Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own\nrank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the\nwanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, he would\nsuddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door\nhad not been tampered with and that the picture was still there. What\nif it should be stolen?  The mere thought made him cold with horror.\nSurely the world would know his secret then.  Perhaps the world already\nsuspected it.\n\nFor, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.\nHe was blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and social\nposition fully entitled him to become a member, and on one occasion,\nwhen he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Carlton,\nthe Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner and\nwent out.  Curious stories became current about him after he had passed\nhis twenty-fifth year.  It was said that he had been seen brawling with\nforeign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and\nthat he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of\ntheir trade.  His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he\nused to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in\ncorners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching\neyes, as if they were determined to discover his secret.\n\nOf such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,\nand in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his\ncharming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth\nthat seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer\nto the calumnies (for so they called them) that were circulated about\nhim.  It was remarked, however, that those who had been most intimate\nwith him appeared, after a time, to shun him.  Of all his friends, or\nso-called friends, Lord Henry Wotton was the only one who remained\nloyal to him.  Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had\nbraved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to\ngrow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.\n\nYet these whispered scandals only lent him, in the eyes of many, his\nstrange and dangerous charm.  His great wealth was a certain element of\nsecurity.  Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to\nbelieve anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and\ncharming.  It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance\nthan morals, and the highest respectability is of less value in its\nopinion than the possession of a good chef.  And, after all, it is a\nvery poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad\ndinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.  Even the\ncardinal virtues cannot atone for cold entr\u00e9es, as Lord Henry remarked\nonce, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a good deal\nto be said for his view.  For the canons of good society are, or should\nbe, the same as the canons of art.  Form is absolutely essential to it.\nIt should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and\nshould combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit\nand beauty that make such plays charming.  Is insincerity such a [75]\nterrible thing? I think not.  It is merely a method by which we can\nmultiply our personalities.\n\nSuch, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion.  He used to wonder at the\nshallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing\nsimple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence.  To him, man was a\nbeing with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform\ncreature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and\npassion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies\nof the dead.  He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery\nof his country-house and look at the various portraits of those whose\nblood flowed in his veins.  Here was Philip Herbert, described by\nFrancis Osborne, in his \"Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and\nKing James,\" as one who was \"caressed by the court for his handsome\nface, which kept him not long company.\"  Was it young Herbert's life\nthat he sometimes led?  Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body\nto body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that\nruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause,\ngive utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to that mad prayer that had\nso changed his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled\nsurcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony\nSherard, with his silver-and-black armor piled at his feet.  What had\nthis man's legacy been?  Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed\nhim some inheritance of sin and shame?  Were his own actions merely the\ndreams that the dead man had not dared to realize?  Here, from the\nfading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl\nstomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.  A flower was in her right hand,\nand her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On\na table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple.  There were large\ngreen rosettes upon her little pointed shoes.  He knew her life, and\nthe strange stories that were told about her lovers.  Had he something\nof her temperament in him?  Those oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look\ncuriously at him.  What of George Willoughby, with his powdered hair\nand fantastic patches?  How evil he looked!  The face was saturnine and\nswarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain.\nDelicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were so\noverladen with rings.  He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth\ncentury, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the\nsecond Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest\ndays, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.\nFitzherbert?  How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls\nand insolent pose!  What passions had he bequeathed? The world had\nlooked upon him as infamous.  He had led the orgies at Carlton House.\nThe star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the\nportrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black.  Her blood,\nalso, stirred within him.  How curious it all seemed!\n\nYet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,\nnearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly\nwith an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.  There\n[76] were times when it seemed to Dorian Gray that the whole of history\nwas merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act\nand circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it\nhad been in his brain and in his passions.  He felt that he had known\nthem all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the\nstage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of\nwonder.  It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had\nbeen his own.\n\nThe hero of the dangerous novel that had so influenced his life had\nhimself had this curious fancy.  In a chapter of the book he tells how,\ncrowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as\nTiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of\nElephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the\nflute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had\ncaroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and supped in\nan ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had\nwandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round\nwith haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his\ndays, and sick with that ennui, that taedium vitae, that comes on those\nto whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at\nthe red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of pearl and\npurple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of\nPomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he\npassed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with colors, and\nplied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage,\nand given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.\n\nOver and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the\nchapter immediately following, in which the hero describes the curious\ntapestries that he had had woven for him from Gustave Moreau's designs,\nand on which were pictured the awful and beautiful forms of those whom\nVice and Blood and Weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke\nof Milan, who slew his wife, and painted her lips with a scarlet\npoison; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, who\nsought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and whose tiara,\nvalued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of a\nterrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men,\nand whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who had\nloved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside\nhim, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario,\nthe young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus\nIV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received\nLeonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with\nnymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve her at the\nfeast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured\nonly by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as\nother men have for red wine,--the son of the Fiend, as was reported,\nand one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for\nhis own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of\nInnocent, and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was\ninfused by a [77] Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of\nIsotta, and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the\nenemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave\npoison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honor of a\nshameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles\nVI., who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had\nwarned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who could only\nbe soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love and Death\nand Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and\nacanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his\nbride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,\nas he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated\nhim could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him,\nblessed him.\n\nThere was a horrible fascination in them all.  He saw them at night,\nand they troubled his imagination in the day.  The Renaissance knew of\nstrange manners of poisoning,--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted\ntorch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander\nand by an amber chain.  Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.  There\nwere moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he\ncould realize his conception of the beautiful.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\n[...77] It was on the 7th of November, the eve of his own thirty-second\nbirthday, as he often remembered afterwards.\n\nHe was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he\nhad been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold\nand foggy.  At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a\nman passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of\nhis gray ulster turned up.  He had a bag in his hand.  He recognized\nhim.  It was Basil Hallward.  A strange sense of fear, for which he\ncould not account, came over him.  He made no sign of recognition, and\nwent on slowly, in the direction of his own house.\n\nBut Hallward had seen him.  Dorian heard him first stopping, and then\nhurrying after him.  In a few moments his hand was on his arm.\n\n\"Dorian!  What an extraordinary piece of luck!  I have been waiting for\nyou ever since nine o'clock in your library.  Finally I took pity on\nyour tired servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am\noff to Paris by the midnight train, and I wanted particularly to see\nyou before I left.  I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as\nyou passed me.  But I wasn't quite sure.  Didn't you recognize me?\"\n\n\"In this fog, my dear Basil?  Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor\nSquare.  I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel\nat all certain about it.  I am sorry you are going away, as I have not\nseen you for ages.  But I suppose you will be back soon?\"\n\n\"No: I am going to be out of England for six months.  I intend [78] to\ntake a studio in Paris, and shut myself up till I have finished a great\npicture I have in my head.  However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to\ntalk.  Here we are at your door.  Let me come in for a moment.  I have\nsomething to say to you.\"\n\n\"I shall be charmed.  But won't you miss your train?\" said Dorian Gray,\nlanguidly, as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his\nlatch-key.\n\nThe lamp-light struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at\nhis watch.  \"I have heaps of time,\" he answered.  \"The train doesn't go\ntill twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.  In fact, I was on my\nway to the club to look for you, when I met you.  You see, I shan't\nhave any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things.  All I\nhave with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty\nminutes.\"\n\nDorian looked at him and smiled.  \"What a way for a fashionable painter\nto travel!  A Gladstone bag, and an ulster!  Come in, or the fog will\nget into the house.  And mind you don't talk about anything serious.\nNothing is serious nowadays.  At least nothing should be.\"\n\nHallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the\nlibrary.  There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open\nhearth.  The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case\nstood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on\na little table.\n\n\"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.  He gave me\neverything I wanted, including your best cigarettes.  He is a most\nhospitable creature.  I like him much better than the Frenchman you\nused to have.  What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?\"\n\nDorian shrugged his shoulders.  \"I believe he married Lady Ashton's\nmaid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.\nAnglomanie is very fashionable over there now, I hear.  It seems silly\nof the French, doesn't it?  But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad\nservant.  I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about.  One\noften imagines things that are quite absurd.  He was really very\ndevoted to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another\nbrandy-and-soda?  Or would you like hock-and-seltzer?  I always take\nhock-and-seltzer myself.  There is sure to be some in the next room.\"\n\n\"Thanks, I won't have anything more,\" said Hallward, taking his cap and\ncoat off, and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the\ncorner.  \"And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.\nDon't frown like that.  You make it so much more difficult for me.\"\n\n\"What is it all about?\" cried Dorian, in his petulant way, flinging\nhimself down on the sofa.  \"I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired\nof myself to-night.  I should like to be somebody else.\"\n\n\"It is about yourself,\" answered Hallward, in his grave, deep voice,\n\"and I must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour.\"\n\nDorian sighed, and lit a cigarette.  \"Half an hour!\" he murmured.\n\n[79] \"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your\nown sake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know\nthat the most dreadful things are being said about you in\nLondon,--things that I could hardly repeat to you.\"\n\n\"I don't wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other\npeople, but scandals about myself don't interest me.  They have not got\nthe charm of novelty.\"\n\n\"They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his\ngood name.  You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and\ndegraded.  Of course you have your position, and your wealth, and all\nthat kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind\nyou, I don't believe these rumors at all.  At least, I can't believe\nthem when I see you.  Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's\nface.  It cannot be concealed.  People talk of secret vices.  There are\nno such things as secret vices.  If a wretched man has a vice, it shows\nitself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the\nmoulding of his hands even.  Somebody--I won't mention his name, but\nyou know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.  I had\nnever seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the\ntime, though I have heard a good deal since.  He offered an extravagant\nprice.  I refused him.  There was something in the shape of his fingers\nthat I hated.  I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied\nabout him.  His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure,\nbright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth,--I can't\nbelieve anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you\nnever come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I\nhear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I\ndon't know what to say.  Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of\nBerwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it?  Why is it that so\nmany gentlemen in London will neither go to your house nor invite you\nto theirs?  You used to be a friend of Lord Cawdor.  I met him at\ndinner last week.  Your name happened to come up in conversation, in\nconnection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the\nDudley.  Cawdor curled his lip, and said that you might have the most\nartistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl\nshould be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the\nsame room with.  I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked\nhim what he meant.  He told me.  He told me right out before everybody.\nIt was horrible!  Why is your friendship so fateful to young men? There\nwas that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.  You were\nhis great friend.  There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave\nEngland, with a tarnished name.  You and he were inseparable.  What\nabout Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end?  What about Lord Kent's\nonly son, and his career?  I met his father yesterday in St. James\nStreet.  He seemed broken with shame and sorrow.  What about the young\nDuke of Perth?  What sort of life has he got now?  What gentleman would\nassociate with him?  Dorian, Dorian, your reputation is infamous.  I\nknow you and Harry are great friends.  I say nothing about that now,\nbut [80] surely you need not have made his sister's name a by-word.\nWhen you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched\nher.  Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with\nher in the Park?  Why, even her children are not allowed to live with\nher.  Then there are other stories,--stories that you have been seen\ncreeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into\nthe foulest dens in London.  Are they true? Can they be true?  When I\nfirst heard them, I laughed.  I hear them now, and they make me\nshudder.  What about your country-house, and the life that is led\nthere?  Dorian, you don't know what is said about you.  I won't tell\nyou that I don't want to preach to you.  I remember Harry saying once\nthat every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment\nalways said that, and then broke his word.  I do want to preach to you.\nI want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you.  I\nwant you to have a clean name and a fair record.  I want you to get rid\nof the dreadful people you associate with.  Don't shrug your shoulders\nlike that.  Don't be so indifferent.  You have a wonderful influence.\nLet it be for good, not for evil.  They say that you corrupt every one\nwhom you become intimate with, and that it is quite sufficient for you\nto enter a house, for shame of some kind to follow after you.  I don't\nknow whether it is so or not.  How should I know?  But it is said of\nyou. I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.  Lord\nGloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.  He showed me a\nletter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her\nvilla at Mentone.  Your name was implicated in the most terrible\nconfession I ever read.  I told him that it was absurd,--that I knew\nyou thoroughly, and that you were incapable of anything of the kind.\nKnow you?  I wonder do I know you?  Before I could answer that, I\nshould have to see your soul.\"\n\n\"To see my soul!\" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and\nturning almost white from fear.\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Hallward, gravely, and with infinite sorrow in his\nvoice,--\"to see your soul.  But only God can do that.\"\n\nA bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. \"You\nshall see it yourself, to-night!\" he cried, seizing a lamp from the\ntable.  \"Come: it is your own handiwork.  Why shouldn't you look at it?\nYou can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose.  Nobody\nwould believe you.  If they did believe you, they'd like me all the\nbetter for it.  I know the age better than you do, though you will\nprate about it so tediously.  Come, I tell you.  You have chattered\nenough about corruption.  Now you shall look on it face to face.\"\n\nThere was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.  He stamped\nhis foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.  He felt a\nterrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret,\nand that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of\nall his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the\nhideous memory of what he had done.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into\nhis stern eyes, \"I will show you my soul.  You shall see the thing that\nyou fancy only God can see.\"\n\n[81] Hallward started back.  \"This is blasphemy, Dorian!\" he cried.\n\"You must not say things like that.  They are horrible, and they don't\nmean anything.\"\n\n\"You think so?\" He laughed again.\n\n\"I know so.  As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your\ngood.  You know I have been always devoted to you.\"\n\n\"Don't touch me.  Finish what you have to say.\"\n\nA twisted flash of pain shot across Hallward's face.  He paused for a\nmoment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.  After all, what\nright had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?  If he had done a\ntithe of what was rumored about him, how much he must have suffered!\nThen he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and\nstood there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes\nand their throbbing cores of flame.\n\n\"I am waiting, Basil,\" said the young man, in a hard, clear voice.\n\nHe turned round.  \"What I have to say is this,\" he cried.  \"You must\ngive me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against\nyou.  If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to\nend, I will believe you.  Deny them, Dorian, deny them!  Can't you see\nwhat I am going through?  My God! don't tell me that you are infamous!\"\n\nDorian Gray smiled.  There was a curl of contempt in his lips.  \"Come\nup-stairs, Basil,\" he said, quietly.  \"I keep a diary of my life from\nday to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written.  I\nwill show it to you if you come with me.\"\n\n\"I will come with you, Dorian, if you wish it.  I see I have missed my\ntrain.  That makes no matter.  I can go to-morrow.  But don't ask me to\nread anything to-night.  All I want is a plain answer to my question.\"\n\n\"That will be given to you up-stairs.  I could not give it here.  You\nwon't have to read long.  Don't keep me waiting.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\n[...81] He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward\nfollowing close behind.  They walked softly, as men instinctively do at\nnight.  The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase.  A\nrising wind made some of the windows rattle.\n\nWhen they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the\nfloor, and taking out the key turned it in the lock.  \"You insist on\nknowing, Basil?\" he asked, in a low voice.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I am delighted,\" he murmured, smiling.  Then he added, somewhat\nbitterly, \"You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know\neverything about me.  You have had more to do with my life than you\nthink.\"  And, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in.  A\ncold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in\na flame of murky orange.  He shuddered.  \"Shut the door behind you,\" he\nsaid, as he placed the lamp on the table.\n\n[82] Hallward glanced round him, with a puzzled expression.  The room\nlooked as if it had not been lived in for years.  A faded Flemish\ntapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost\nempty bookcase,--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a\nchair and a table.  As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle\nthat was standing on the mantel-shelf, he saw that the whole place was\ncovered with dust, and that the carpet was in holes.  A mouse ran\nscuffling behind the wainscoting.  There was a damp odor of mildew.\n\n\"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil?  Draw that\ncurtain back, and you will see mine.\"\n\nThe voice that spoke was cold and cruel.  \"You are mad, Dorian, or\nplaying a part,\" muttered Hallward, frowning.\n\n\"You won't?  Then I must do it myself,\" said the young man; and he tore\nthe curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground.\n\nAn exclamation of horror broke from Hallward's lips as he saw in the\ndim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering at him.  There was\nsomething in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.\nGood heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at!\nThe horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely marred that\nmarvellous beauty.  There was still some gold in the thinning hair and\nsome scarlet on the sensual lips.  The sodden eyes had kept something\nof the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet passed\nentirely away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat.  Yes, it\nwas Dorian himself.  But who had done it?  He seemed to recognize his\nown brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was\nmonstrous, yet he felt afraid.  He seized the lighted candle, and held\nit to the picture.  In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in\nlong letters of bright vermilion.\n\nIt was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire.  He had never\ndone that.  Still, it was his own picture.  He knew it, and he felt as\nif his blood had changed from fire to sluggish ice in a moment. His own\npicture!  What did it mean?  Why had it altered?  He turned, and looked\nat Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man.  His mouth twitched, and\nhis parched tongue seemed unable to articulate.  He passed his hand\nacross his forehead.  It was dank with clammy sweat.\n\nThe young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with\nthat strange expression that is on the faces of those who are absorbed\nin a play when a great artist is acting.  There was neither real sorrow\nin it nor real joy.  There was simply the passion of the spectator,\nwith perhaps a flicker of triumph in the eyes.  He had taken the flower\nout of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.\n\n\"What does this mean?\" cried Hallward, at last.  His own voice sounded\nshrill and curious in his ears.\n\n\"Years ago, when I was a boy,\" said Dorian Gray, \"you met me, devoted\nyourself to me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good\nlooks.  One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained\nto me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that\nrevealed to me the wonder of beauty.  In a mad moment, that [83] I\ndon't know, even now, whether I regret or not, I made a wish. Perhaps\nyou would call it a prayer . . . .\"\n\n\"I remember it!  Oh, how well I remember it!  No! the thing is\nimpossible.  The room is damp.  The mildew has got into the canvas. The\npaints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them.  I tell you the\nthing is impossible.\"\n\n\"Ah, what is impossible?\" murmured the young man, going over to the\nwindow, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.\n\n\"You told me you had destroyed it.\"\n\n\"I was wrong.  It has destroyed me.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it is my picture.\"\n\n\"Can't you see your romance in it?\" said Dorian, bitterly.\n\n\"My romance, as you call it . . .\"\n\n\"As you called it.\"\n\n\"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.  This is the face of a\nsatyr.\"\n\n\"It is the face of my soul.\"\n\n\"God! what a thing I must have worshipped!  This has the eyes of a\ndevil.\"\n\n\"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil,\" cried Dorian, with a\nwild gesture of despair.\n\nHallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it.  \"My God! if it\nis true,\" he exclaimed, \"and this is what you have done with your life,\nwhy, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you\nto be!\"  He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it.\nThe surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it.  It\nwas from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come.\nThrough some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were\nslowly eating the thing away.  The rotting of a corpse in a watery\ngrave was not so fearful.\n\nHis hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and\nlay there sputtering.  He placed his foot on it and put it out.  Then\nhe flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table\nand buried his face in his hands.\n\n\"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!\"  There was no\nanswer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window.\n\n\"Pray, Dorian, pray,\" he murmured.  \"What is it that one was taught to\nsay in one's boyhood?  'Lead us not into temptation.  Forgive us our\nsins.  Wash away our iniquities.'  Let us say that together.  The\nprayer of your pride has been answered.  The prayer of your repentance\nwill be answered also.  I worshipped you too much.  I am punished for\nit.  You worshipped yourself too much.  We are both punished.\"\n\nDorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed\neyes.  \"It is too late, Basil,\" he murmured.\n\n\"It is never too late, Dorian.  Let us kneel down and try if we can\nremember a prayer.  Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be\nas scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?\"\n\n[84] \"Those words mean nothing to me now.\"\n\n\"Hush! don't say that.  You have done enough evil in your life.  My\nGod! don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?\"\n\nDorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable\nfeeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him.  The mad passions\nof a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was\nseated at the table, more than he had ever loathed anything in his\nwhole life.  He glanced wildly around.  Something glimmered on the top\nof the painted chest that faced him.  His eye fell on it.  He knew what\nit was.  It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to\ncut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him.  He moved\nslowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so.  As soon as he got\nbehind him, he seized it, and turned round.  Hallward moved in his\nchair as if he was going to rise.  He rushed at him, and dug the knife\ninto the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head\ndown on the table, and stabbing again and again.\n\nThere was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of some one choking\nwith blood.  The outstretched arms shot up convulsively three times,\nwaving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air.  He stabbed him once\nmore, but the man did not move.  Something began to trickle on the\nfloor.  He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he\nthrew the knife on the table, and listened.\n\nHe could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He\nopened the door, and went out on the landing.  The house was quite\nquiet.  No one was stirring.\n\nHe took out the key, and returned to the room, locking himself in as he\ndid so.\n\nThe thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with\nbowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms.  Had it not been\nfor the red jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that\nslowly widened on the table, one would have said that the man was\nsimply asleep.\n\nHow quickly it had all been done!  He felt strangely calm, and, walking\nover to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony.  The\nwind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's\ntail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.  He looked down, and saw the\npoliceman going his rounds and flashing a bull's-eye lantern on the\ndoors of the silent houses.  The crimson spot of a prowling hansom\ngleamed at the corner, and then vanished. A woman in a ragged shawl was\ncreeping round by the railings, staggering as she went.  Now and then\nshe stopped, and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse\nvoice.  The policeman strolled over and said something to her.  She\nstumbled away, laughing.  A bitter blast swept across the Square.  The\ngas-lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook\ntheir black iron branches as if in pain.  He shivered, and went back,\nclosing the window behind him.\n\nHe passed to the door, turned the key, and opened it.  He did not even\nglance at the murdered man.  He felt that the secret of the whole thing\nwas not to realize the situation.  The friend who had painted [85] the\nfatal portrait, the portrait to which all his misery had been due, had\ngone out of his life.  That was enough.\n\nThen he remembered the lamp.  It was a rather curious one of Moorish\nworkmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished\nsteel.  Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would\nbe asked.  He turned back, and took it from the table.  How still the\nman was!  How horribly white the long hands looked!  He was like a\ndreadful wax image.\n\nHe locked the door behind him, and crept quietly down-stairs.  The\nwood-work creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain.  He stopped\nseveral times, and waited.  No: everything was still.  It was merely\nthe sound of his own footsteps.\n\nWhen he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner.\nThey must be hidden away somewhere.  He unlocked a secret press that\nwas in the wainscoting, and put them into it.  He could easily burn\nthem afterwards.  Then he pulled out his watch.  It was twenty minutes\nto two.\n\nHe sat down, and began to think.  Every year--every month, almost--men\nwere strangled in England for what he had done.  There had been a\nmadness of murder in the air.  Some red star had come too close to the\nearth.\n\nEvidence?  What evidence was there against him?  Basil Hallward had\nleft the house at eleven.  No one had seen him come in again.  Most of\nthe servants were at Selby Royal.  His valet had gone to bed.\n\nParis!  Yes.  It was to Paris that Basil had gone, by the midnight\ntrain, as he had intended.  With his curious reserved habits, it would\nbe months before any suspicions would be aroused.  Months? Everything\ncould be destroyed long before then.\n\nA sudden thought struck him.  He put on his fur coat and hat, and went\nout into the hall.  There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of\nthe policeman outside on the pavement, and seeing the flash of the\nlantern reflected in the window.  He waited, holding his breath.\n\nAfter a few moments he opened the front door, and slipped out, shutting\nit very gently behind him.  Then he began ringing the bell. In about\nten minutes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very drowsy.\n\n\"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,\" he said, stepping in;\n\"but I had forgotten my latch-key.  What time is it?\"\n\n\"Five minutes past two, sir,\" answered the man, looking at the clock\nand yawning.\n\n\"Five minutes past two?  How horribly late!  You must wake me at nine\nto-morrow.  I have some work to do.\"\n\n\"All right, sir.\"\n\n\"Did any one call this evening?\"\n\n\"Mr. Hallward, sir.  He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away\nto catch his train.\"\n\n\"Oh!  I am sorry I didn't see him.  Did he leave any message?\"\n\n\"No, sir, except that he would write to you.\"\n\n[86] \"That will do, Francis.  Don't forget to call me at nine tomorrow.\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\nThe man shambled down the passage in his slippers.\n\nDorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the yellow marble table, and\npassed into the library.  He walked up and down the room for a quarter\nof an hour, biting his lip, and thinking.  Then he took the Blue Book\ndown from one of the shelves, and began to turn over the leaves.  \"Alan\nCampbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.\"  Yes; that was the man he\nwanted.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\n[...86] At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup\nof chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters.  Dorian was sleeping\nquite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his\ncheek.  He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.\n\nThe man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as\nhe opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he\nhad been having some delightful dream.  Yet he had not dreamed at all.\nHis night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain.\nBut youth smiles without any reason.  It is one of its chiefest charms.\n\nHe turned round, and, leaning on his elbow, began to drink his\nchocolate.  The mellow November sun was streaming into the room.  The\nsky was bright blue, and there was a genial warmth in the air.  It was\nalmost like a morning in May.\n\nGradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent\nblood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there\nwith terrible distinctness.  He winced at the memory of all that he had\nsuffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for\nBasil Hallward, that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came\nback to him, and he grew cold with passion.  The dead man was still\nsitting there, too, and in the sunlight now.  How horrible that was!\nSuch hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.\n\nHe felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken\nor grow mad.  There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory\nthan in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride\nmore than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of\njoy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the\nsenses.  But this was not one of them.  It was a thing to be driven out\nof the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might\nstrangle one itself.\n\nHe passed his hand across his forehead, and then got up hastily, and\ndressed himself with even more than his usual attention, giving a good\ndeal of care to the selection of his necktie and scarf-pin, and\nchanging his rings more than once.\n\nHe spent a long time over breakfast, tasting the various dishes,\ntalking to his valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of\n[87] getting made for the servants at Selby, and going through his\ncorrespondence.  Over some of the letters he smiled.  Three of them\nbored him.  One he read several times over, and then tore up with a\nslight look of annoyance in his face.  \"That awful thing, a woman's\nmemory!\" as Lord Henry had once said.\n\nWhen he had drunk his coffee, he sat down at the table, and wrote two\nletters.  One he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet.\n\n\"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell\nis out of town, get his address.\"\n\nAs soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upon a\npiece of paper, drawing flowers, and bits of architecture, first, and\nthen faces.  Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed\nto have an extraordinary likeness to Basil Hallward.  He frowned, and,\ngetting up, went over to the bookcase and took out a volume at hazard.\nHe was determined that he would not think about what had happened, till\nit became absolutely necessary to do so.\n\nWhen he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page\nof the book.  It was Gautier's \"Emaux et Cam\u00e9es,\" Charpentier's\nJapanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching.  The binding was\nof citron-green leather with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted\npomegranates.  It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton.  As he\nturned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of\nLacenaire, the cold yellow hand \"du supplice encore mal lav\u00e9e,\" with\nits downy red hairs and its \"doigts de faune.\"  He glanced at his own\nwhite taper fingers, and passed on, till he came to those lovely verses\nupon Venice:\n\n     Sur une gamme chromatique,\n        Le sein de perles ruisselant,\n     La V\u00e9nus de l'Adriatique\n        Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.\n\n     Les d\u00f4mes, sur l'azur des ondes\n        Suivant la phrase au pur contour,\n     S'enflent comme des gorges rondes\n        Que soul\u00e8ve un soupir d'amour.\n\n     L'esquif aborde et me d\u00e9pose,\n        Jetant son amarre au pilier,\n     Devant une fa\u00e7ade rose,\n        Sur le marbre d'un escalier.\n\nHow exquisite they were!  As one read them, one seemed to be floating\ndown the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, lying in a black\ngondola with silver prow and trailing curtains.  The mere lines looked\nto him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as\none pushes out to the Lido.  The sudden flashes of color reminded him\nof the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the\ntall honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through\nthe dim arcades.  Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying\nover and over to himself,--\n\n     Devant une fa\u00e7ade rose,\n     Sur le marbre d'un escalier.\n\n[88] The whole of Venice was in those two lines.  He remembered the\nautumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred\nhim to delightful fantastic follies.  There was romance in every place.\nBut Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and\nbackground was everything, or almost everything.  Basil had been with\nhim part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor Basil! what\na horrible way for a man to die!\n\nHe sighed, and took up the book again, and tried to forget.  He read of\nthe swallows that fly in and out of the little caf\u00e9 at Smyrna where the\nHadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke\ntheir long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; of the\nObelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its\nlonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-covered\nNile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures\nwith gilded claws, and crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl\nover the green steaming mud; and of that curious statue that Gautier\ncompares to a contralto voice, the \"monstre charmant\" that couches in\nthe porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time the book fell from\nhis hand.  He grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came over him.\nWhat if Alan Campbell should be out of England?  Days would elapse\nbefore he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come.  What could\nhe do then?  Every moment was of vital importance.\n\nThey had been great friends once, five years before,--almost\ninseparable, indeed.  Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.\nWhen they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan\nCampbell never did.\n\nHe was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real\nappreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the\nbeauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His\ndominant intellectual passion was for science.  At Cambridge he had\nspent a great deal of his time working in the Laboratory, and had taken\na good class in the Natural Science tripos of his year. Indeed, he was\nstill devoted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his\nown, in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the\nannoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for\nParliament and had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up\nprescriptions.  He was an excellent musician, however, as well, and\nplayed both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs.  In\nfact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian Gray\ntogether,--music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to\nbe able to exercise whenever he wished, and indeed exercised often\nwithout being conscious of it. They had met at Lady Berkshire's the\nnight that Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always\nseen together at the Opera, and wherever good music was going on.  For\neighteen months their intimacy lasted.  Campbell was always either at\nSelby Royal or in Grosvenor Square.  To him, as to many others, Dorian\nGray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in\nlife. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one ever\nknew.  But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when [89]\nthey met, and that Campbell seemed always to go away early from any\nparty at which Dorian Gray was present.  He had changed, too,--was\nstrangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearing music\nof any passionate character, and would never himself play, giving as\nhis excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science\nthat he had no time left in which to practise. And this was certainly\ntrue.  Every day he seemed to become more interested in biology, and\nhis name appeared once or twice in some of the scientific reviews, in\nconnection with certain curious experiments.\n\nThis was the man that Dorian Gray was waiting for, pacing up and down\nthe room, glancing every moment at the clock, and becoming horribly\nagitated as the minutes went by.  At last the door opened, and his\nservant entered.\n\n\"Mr. Alan Campbell, sir.\"\n\nA sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the color came back\nto his cheeks.\n\n\"Ask him to come in at once, Francis.\"\n\nThe man bowed, and retired.  In a few moments Alan Campbell walked in,\nlooking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his\ncoal-black hair and dark eyebrows.\n\n\"Alan! this is kind of you.  I thank you for coming.\"\n\n\"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray.  But you said it\nwas a matter of life and death.\"  His voice was hard and cold.  He\nspoke with slow deliberation.  There was a look of contempt in the\nsteady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian.  He kept his hands in\nthe pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and appeared not to have noticed the\ngesture with which he had been greeted.\n\n\"It is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person.\nSit down.\"\n\nCampbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The\ntwo men's eyes met.  In Dorian's there was infinite pity.  He knew that\nwhat he was going to do was dreadful.\n\nAfter a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very\nquietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of the man\nhe had sent for, \"Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a\nroom to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a\ntable.  He has been dead ten hours now.  Don't stir, and don't look at\nme like that.  Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters\nthat do not concern you.  What you have to do is this--\"\n\n\"Stop, Gray.  I don't want to know anything further.  Whether what you\nhave told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me.  I entirely\ndecline to be mixed up in your life.  Keep your horrible secrets to\nyourself.  They don't interest me any more.\"\n\n\"Alan, they will have to interest you.  This one will have to interest\nyou.  I am awfully sorry for you, Alan.  But I can't help myself.  You\nare the one man who is able to save me.  I am forced to bring you into\nthe matter.  I have no option.  Alan, you are a scientist.  You know\nabout chemistry, and things of that kind.  You have made experiments.\nWhat you have got to do is to destroy the [90] thing that is\nup-stairs,--to destroy it so that not a vestige will be left of it.\nNobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed, at the present\nmoment he is supposed to be in Paris.  He will not be missed for\nmonths.  When he is missed, there must be no trace of him found here.\nYou, Alan, you must change him, and everything that belongs to him,\ninto a handful of ashes that I may scatter in the air.\"\n\n\"You are mad, Dorian.\"\n\n\"Ah!  I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.\"\n\n\"You are mad, I tell you,--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger\nto help you, mad to make this monstrous confession.  I will have\nnothing to do with this matter, whatever it is.  Do you think I am\ngoing to peril my reputation for you?  What is it to me what devil's\nwork you are up to?\"\n\n\"It was a suicide, Alan.\"\n\n\"I am glad of that.  But who drove him to it?  You, I should fancy.\"\n\n\"Do you still refuse to do this, for me?\"\n\n\"Of course I refuse.  I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I\ndon't care what shame comes on you.  You deserve it all.  I should not\nbe sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced.  How dare you ask\nme, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror?  I should\nhave thought you knew more about people's characters.  Your friend Lord\nHenry Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else\nhe has taught you.  Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you.\nYou have come to the wrong man.  Go to some of your friends.  Don't\ncome to me.\"\n\n\"Alan, it was murder.  I killed him.  You don't know what he had made\nme suffer.  Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or\nthe marring of it than poor Harry has had.  He may not have intended\nit, the result was the same.\"\n\n\"Murder!  Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to?  I shall not\ninform upon you.  It is not my business.  Besides, you are certain to\nbe arrested, without my stirring in the matter.  Nobody ever commits a\nmurder without doing something stupid.  But I will have nothing to do\nwith it.\"\n\n\"All I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experiment.  You\ngo to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do there\ndon't affect you.  If in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid\nlaboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters\nscooped out in it, you would simply look upon him as an admirable\nsubject.  You would not turn a hair.  You would not believe that you\nwere doing anything wrong.  On the contrary, you would probably feel\nthat you were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of\nknowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or\nsomething of that kind.  What I want you to do is simply what you have\noften done before.  Indeed, to destroy a body must be less horrible\nthan what you are accustomed to work at.  And, remember, it is the only\npiece of evidence against me.  If it is discovered, I am lost; and it\nis sure to be discovered unless you help me.\"\n\n[91] \"I have no desire to help you.  You forget that.  I am simply\nindifferent to the whole thing.  It has nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\"Alan, I entreat you.  Think of the position I am in.  Just before you\ncame I almost fainted with terror.  No! don't think of that. Look at\nthe matter purely from the scientific point of view.  You don't inquire\nwhere the dead things on which you experiment come from.  Don't inquire\nnow.  I have told you too much as it is.  But I beg of you to do this.\nWe were friends once, Alan.\"\n\n\"Don't speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead.\"\n\n\"The dead linger sometimes.  The man up-stairs will not go away.  He is\nsitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms.  Alan!\nAlan! if you don't come to my assistance I am ruined.  Why, they will\nhang me, Alan!  Don't you understand?  They will hang me for what I\nhave done.\"\n\n\"There is no good in prolonging this scene.  I refuse absolutely to do\nanything in the matter.  It is insane of you to ask me.\"\n\n\"You refuse absolutely?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe same look of pity came into Dorian's eyes, then he stretched out\nhis hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it.  He read it\nover twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. Having\ndone this, he got up, and went over to the window.\n\nCampbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and\nopened it.  As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell\nback in his chair.  A horrible sense of sickness came over him.  He\nfelt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.\n\nAfter two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round,\nand came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.\n\n\"I am so sorry, Alan,\" he murmured, \"but you leave me no alternative. I\nhave a letter written already.  Here it is.  You see the address. If\nyou don't help me, I must send it.  You know what the result will be.\nBut you are going to help me.  It is impossible for you to refuse now.\nI tried to spare you.  You will do me the justice to admit that.  You\nwere stern, harsh, offensive.  You treated me as no man has ever dared\nto treat me,--no living man, at any rate.  I bore it all.  Now it is\nfor me to dictate terms.\"\n\nCampbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.\n\n\"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan.  You know what they are.\nThe thing is quite simple.  Come, don't work yourself into this fever.\nThe thing has to be done.  Face it, and do it.\"\n\nA groan broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over.  The\nticking of the clock on the mantel-piece seemed to him to be dividing\ntime into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be\nborne.  He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his\nforehead, and as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had\nalready come upon him.  The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand\nof lead.  It was intolerable.  It seemed to crush him.\n\n\"Come, Alan, you must decide at once.\"\n\n[92] He hesitated a moment.  \"Is there a fire in the room up-stairs?\"\nhe murmured.\n\n\"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos.\"\n\n\"I will have to go home and get some things from the laboratory.\"\n\n\"No, Alan, you need not leave the house.  Write on a sheet of\nnote-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the\nthings back to you.\"\n\nCampbell wrote a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope to\nhis assistant.  Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he\nrang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon\nas possible, and to bring the things with him.\n\nWhen the hall door shut, Campbell started, and, having got up from the\nchair, went over to the chimney-piece.  He was shivering with a sort of\nague.  For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly\nbuzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like\nthe beat of a hammer.\n\nAs the chime struck one, Campbell turned around, and, looking at Dorian\nGray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears.  There was something in\nthe purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.\n\"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!\" he muttered.\n\n\"Hush, Alan: you have saved my life,\" said Dorian.\n\n\"Your life?  Good heavens! what a life that is!  You have gone from\ncorruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime.  In\ndoing what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your\nlife that I am thinking.\"\n\n\"Ah, Alan,\" murmured Dorian, with a sigh, \"I wish you had a thousandth\npart of the pity for me that I have for you.\"  He turned away, as he\nspoke, and stood looking out at the garden.  Campbell made no answer.\n\nAfter about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant\nentered, carrying a mahogany chest of chemicals, with a small electric\nbattery set on top of it.  He placed it on the table, and went out\nagain, returning with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two\nrather curiously-shaped iron clamps.\n\n\"Shall I leave the things here, sir?\" he asked Campbell.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Dorian.  \"And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another\nerrand for you.  What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies\nSelby with orchids?\"\n\n\"Harden, sir.\"\n\n\"Yes,--Harden.  You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden\npersonally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered,\nand to have as few white ones as possible.  In fact, I don't want any\nwhite ones.  It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty\nplace, otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it.\"\n\n\"No trouble, sir.  At what time shall I be back?\"\n\nDorian looked at Campbell.  \"How long will your experiment take, Alan?\"\nhe said, in a calm, indifferent voice.  The presence of a third person\nin the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.\n\nCampbell frowned, and bit his lip.  \"It will take about five hours,\" he\nanswered.\n\n[93] \"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,\nFrancis.  Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing.  You can have\nthe evening to yourself.  I am not dining at home, so I shall not want\nyou.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" said the man, leaving the room.\n\n\"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost.  How heavy this chest is!\nI'll take it for you.  You bring the other things.\"  He spoke rapidly,\nand in an authoritative manner.  Campbell felt dominated by him.  They\nleft the room together.\n\nWhen they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned\nit in the lock.  Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his\neyes.  He shuddered.  \"I don't think I can go in, Alan,\" he murmured.\n\n\"It is nothing to me.  I don't require you,\" said Campbell, coldly.\n\nDorian half opened the door.  As he did so, he saw the face of the\nportrait grinning in the sunlight.  On the floor in front of it the\ntorn curtain was lying.  He remembered that the night before, for the\nfirst time in his life, he had forgotten to hide it, when he crept out\nof the room.\n\nBut what was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening,\non one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?  How\nhorrible it was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than\nthe silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing\nwhose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that\nit had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.\n\nHe opened the door a little wider, and walked quickly in, with\nhalf-closed eyes and averted head, determined that he would not look\neven once upon the dead man.  Then, stooping down, and taking up the\ngold-and-purple hanging, he flung it over the picture.\n\nHe stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves\non the intricacies of the pattern before him.  He heard Campbell\nbringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that\nhe had required for his dreadful work.  He began to wonder if he and\nBasil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of each\nother.\n\n\"Leave me now,\" said Campbell.\n\nHe turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been\nthrust back into the chair and was sitting up in it, with Campbell\ngazing into the glistening yellow face.  As he was going downstairs he\nheard the key being turned in the lock.\n\nIt was long after seven o'clock when Campbell came back into the\nlibrary.  He was pale, but absolutely calm.  \"I have done what you\nasked me to do,\" he muttered.  \"And now, good-by.  Let us never see\neach other again.\"\n\n\"You have saved me from ruin, Alan.  I cannot forget that,\" said\nDorian, simply.\n\nAs soon as Campbell had left, he went up-stairs.  There was a horrible\nsmell of chemicals in the room.  But the thing that had been sitting at\nthe table was gone.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\n[94] \"There is no good telling me you are going to be good, Dorian,\"\ncried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl\nfilled with rose-water.  \"You are quite perfect.  Pray don't change.\"\n\nDorian shook his head.  \"No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful\nthings in my life.  I am not going to do any more.  I began my good\nactions yesterday.\"\n\n\"Where were you yesterday?\"\n\n\"In the country, Harry.  I was staying at a little inn by myself.\"\n\n\"My dear boy,\" said Lord Henry smiling, \"anybody can be good in the\ncountry.  There are no temptations there.  That is the reason why\npeople who live out of town are so uncivilized.  There are only two\nways, as you know, of becoming civilized.  One is by being cultured,\nthe other is by being corrupt.  Country-people have no opportunity of\nbeing either, so they stagnate.\"\n\n\"Culture and corruption,\" murmured Dorian.  \"I have known something of\nboth.  It seems to me curious now that they should ever be found\ntogether.  For I have a new ideal, Harry.  I am going to alter.  I\nthink I have altered.\"\n\n\"You have not told me yet what your good action was.  Or did you say\nyou had done more than one?\"\n\n\"I can tell you, Harry.  It is not a story I could tell to any one\nelse.  I spared somebody.  It sounds vain, but you understand what I\nmean.  She was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane.  I\nthink it was that which first attracted me to her.  You remember Sibyl,\ndon't you?  How long ago that seems!  Well, Hetty was not one of our\nown class, of course.  She was simply a girl in a village. But I really\nloved her.  I am quite sure that I loved her.  All during this\nwonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her\ntwo or three times a week.  Yesterday she met me in a little orchard.\nThe apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was\nlaughing.  We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn.\nSuddenly I determined to leave her as flower-like as I had found her.\"\n\n\"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill\nof real pleasure, Dorian,\" interrupted Lord Henry.  \"But I can finish\nyour idyl for you.  You gave her good advice, and broke her heart.\nThat was the beginning of your reformation.\"\n\n\"Harry, you are horrible!  You mustn't say these dreadful things.\nHetty's heart is not broken.  Of course she cried, and all that.  But\nthere is no disgrace upon her.  She can live, like Perdita, in her\ngarden.\"\n\n\"And weep over a faithless Florizel,\" said Lord Henry, laughing.  \"My\ndear Dorian, you have the most curious boyish moods.  Do you think this\ngirl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank?  I\nsuppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning\nploughman.  Well, having met you, and loved you, will teach her to\ndespise her husband, and she will be wretched.  From a moral point of\nview I really don't think much of your great renunciation. [95] Even as\na beginning, it is poor.  Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't\nfloating at the present moment in some mill-pond, with water-lilies\nround her, like Ophelia?\"\n\n\"I can't bear this, Harry!  You mock at everything, and then suggest\nthe most serious tragedies.  I am sorry I told you now.  I don't care\nwhat you say to me, I know I was right in acting as I did.  Poor Hetty!\nAs I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the\nwindow, like a spray of jasmine.  Don't let me talk about it any more,\nand don't try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for\nyears, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is\nreally a sort of sin.  I want to be better.  I am going to be better.\nTell me something about yourself.  What is going on in town?  I have\nnot been to the club for days.\"\n\n\"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance.\"\n\n\"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,\" said\nDorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.\n\n\"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and\nthe public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more\nthan one topic every three months.  They have been very fortunate\nlately, however.  They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan\nCampbell's suicide.  Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of\nan artist.  Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the gray ulster\nwho left Victoria by the midnight train on the 7th of November was poor\nBasil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris\nat all.  I suppose in about a fortnight we will be told that he has\nbeen seen in San Francisco.  It is an odd thing, but every one who\ndisappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.  It must be a\ndelightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.\"\n\n\"What do you think has happened to Basil?\" asked Dorian, holding up his\nBurgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could\ndiscuss the matter so calmly.\n\n\"I have not the slightest idea.  If Basil chooses to hide himself, it\nis no business of mine.  If he is dead, I don't want to think about\nhim.  Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.  I hate it. One\ncan survive everything nowadays except that.  Death and vulgarity are\nthe only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain\naway.  Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian.  You must play\nChopin to me.  The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin\nexquisitely.  Poor Victoria!  I was very fond of her.  The house is\nrather lonely without her.\"\n\nDorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and, passing into the\nnext room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the\nkeys.  After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and, looking\nover at Lord Henry, said, \"Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil\nwas murdered?\"\n\nLord Henry yawned.  \"Basil had no enemies, and always wore a Waterbury\nwatch.  Why should he be murdered?  He was not clever enough to have\nenemies.  Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting.  But a man\ncan paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible.  Basil was\nreally rather dull.  He only interested me once, [96] and that was when\nhe told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you.\"\n\n\"I was very fond of Basil,\" said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes.\n\"But don't people say that he was murdered?\"\n\n\"Oh, some of the papers do.  It does not seem to be probable.  I know\nthere are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man\nto have gone to them.  He had no curiosity.  It was his chief defect.\nPlay me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice,\nhow you have kept your youth.  You must have some secret.  I am only\nten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and bald, and yellow.\nYou are really wonderful, Dorian.  You have never looked more charming\nthan you do to-night.  You remind me of the day I saw you first.  You\nwere rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.  You have\nchanged, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me\nyour secret.  To get back my youth I would do anything in the world,\nexcept take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.  Youth!  There\nis nothing like it.  It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.\nThe only people whose opinions I listen to now with any respect are\npeople much younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has\nrevealed to them her last wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict\nthe aged.  I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on\nsomething that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions\ncurrent in 1820, when people wore high stocks and knew absolutely\nnothing.  How lovely that thing you are playing is!  I wonder did\nChopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and\nthe salt spray dashing against the panes?  It is marvelously romantic.\nWhat a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not\nimitative!  Don't stop.  I want music to-night.  It seems to me that\nyou are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas listening to you.  I\nhave sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of.  The\ntragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.  I am\namazed sometimes at my own sincerity.  Ah, Dorian, how happy you are!\nWhat an exquisite life you have had!  You have drunk deeply of\neverything.  You have crushed the grapes against your palate.  Nothing\nhas been hidden from you.  But it has all been to you no more than the\nsound of music.  It has not marred you.  You are still the same.\n\n\"I wonder what the rest of your life will be.  Don't spoil it by\nrenunciations.  At present you are a perfect type.  Don't make yourself\nincomplete.  You are quite flawless now.  You need not shake your head:\nyou know you are.  Besides, Dorian, don't deceive yourself.  Life is\nnot governed by will or intention.  Life is a question of nerves, and\nfibres, and slowly-built-up cells in which thought hides itself and\npassion has its dreams.  You may fancy yourself safe, and think\nyourself strong.  But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning\nsky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings\nstrange memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had\ncome across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased\nto play,--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our\nlives depend.  Browning writes about that somewhere; but our [97] own\nsenses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odor of\nheliotrope passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest\nyear of my life over again.\n\n\"I wish I could change places with you, Dorian.  The world has cried\nout against us both, but it has always worshipped you.  It always will\nworship you.  You are the type of what the age is searching for, and\nwhat it is afraid it has found.  I am so glad that you have never done\nanything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced\nanything outside of yourself!  Life has been your art.  You have set\nyourself to music.  Your days have been your sonnets.\"\n\nDorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair.\n\"Yes, life has been exquisite,\" he murmured, \"but I am not going to\nhave the same life, Harry.  And you must not say these extravagant\nthings to me.  You don't know everything about me.  I think that if you\ndid, even you would turn from me.  You laugh.  Don't laugh.\"\n\n\"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian?  Go back and play the nocturne\nover again.  Look at that great honey-colored moon that hangs in the\ndusky air.  She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she\nwill come closer to the earth.  You won't?  Let us go to the club,\nthen.  It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly.\nThere is some one at the club who wants immensely to know you,--young\nLord Poole, Bournmouth's eldest son.  He has already copied your\nneckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you.  He is quite\ndelightful, and rather reminds me of you.\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" said Dorian, with a touch of pathos in his voice.  \"But I\nam tired to-night, Harry.  I won't go to the club.  It is nearly\neleven, and I want to go to bed early.\"\n\n\"Do stay.  You have never played so well as to-night.  There was\nsomething in your touch that was wonderful.  It had more expression\nthan I had ever heard from it before.\"\n\n\"It is because I am going to be good,\" he answered, smiling.  \"I am a\nlittle changed already.\"\n\n\"Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me.  We must always\nbe friends.\"\n\n\"Yet you poisoned me with a book once.  I should not forgive that.\nHarry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one.  It\ndoes harm.\"\n\n\"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.  You will soon be\ngoing about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown\ntired.  You are much too delightful to do that.  Besides, it is no use.\nYou and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. Come round\ntomorrow.  I am going to ride at eleven, and we might go together.  The\nPark is quite lovely now.  I don't think there have been such lilacs\nsince the year I met you.\"\n\n\"Very well.  I will be here at eleven,\" said Dorian.  \"Good-night,\nHarry.\"  As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had\nsomething more to say.  Then he sighed and went out.\n\nIt was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and\ndid not even put his silk scarf round his throat.  As he strolled [98]\nhome, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.\nHe heard one of them whisper to the other, \"That is Dorian Gray.\"  He\nremembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared\nat, or talked about.  He was tired of hearing his own name now.  Half\nthe charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was\nthat no one knew who he was.  He had told the girl whom he had made\nlove him that he was poor, and she had believed him.  He had told her\nonce that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and told him that\nwicked people were always very old and very ugly.  What a laugh she\nhad!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her\ncotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had\neverything that he had lost.\n\nWhen he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.  He sent\nhim to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and\nbegan to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.\n\nWas it really true that one could never change?  He felt a wild longing\nfor the unstained purity of his boyhood,--his rose-white boyhood, as\nLord Henry had once called it.  He knew that he had tarnished himself,\nfilled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he\nhad been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible\njoy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had\nbeen the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to\nshame.  But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?\n\nIt was better not to think of the past.  Nothing could alter that. It\nwas of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think.  Alan\nCampbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not\nrevealed the secret that he had been forced to know.  The excitement,\nsuch as it was, over Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass\naway.  It was already waning.  He was perfectly safe there.  Nor,\nindeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his\nmind.  It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil\nhad painted the portrait that had marred his life.  He could not\nforgive him that.  It was the portrait that had done everything. Basil\nhad said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne\nwith patience.  The murder had been simply the madness of a moment.  As\nfor Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own act.  He had chosen to\ndo it.  It was nothing to him.\n\nA new life!  That was what he wanted.  That was what he was waiting\nfor.  Surely he had begun it already.  He had spared one innocent\nthing, at any rate.  He would never again tempt innocence.  He would be\ngood.\n\nAs he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in\nthe locked room had changed.  Surely it was not still so horrible as it\nhad been?  Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel\nevery sign of evil passion from the face.  Perhaps the signs of evil\nhad already gone away.  He would go and look.\n\nHe took the lamp from the table and crept up-stairs.  As he unlocked\nthe door, a smile of joy flitted across his young face and [99]\nlingered for a moment about his lips.  Yes, he would be good, and the\nhideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to\nhim.  He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.\n\nHe went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and\ndragged the purple hanging from the portrait.  A cry of pain and\nindignation broke from him.  He could see no change, unless that in the\neyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle\nof the hypocrite.  The thing was still loathsome,--more loathsome, if\npossible, than before,--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand\nseemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilt.\n\nHad it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed?  Or\nthe desire of a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his\nmocking laugh?  Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us\ndo things finer than we are ourselves?  Or, perhaps, all these?\n\nWhy was the red stain larger than it had been?  It seemed to have crept\nlike a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers.  There was blood on\nthe painted feet, as though the thing had dripped,--blood even on the\nhand that had not held the knife.\n\nConfess?  Did it mean that he was to confess?  To give himself up, and\nbe put to death?  He laughed.  He felt that the idea was monstrous.\nBesides, who would believe him, even if he did confess? There was no\ntrace of the murdered man anywhere.  Everything belonging to him had\nbeen destroyed.  He himself had burned what had been below-stairs.  The\nworld would simply say he was mad.  They would shut him up if he\npersisted in his story.\n\nYet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make\npublic atonement.  There was a God who called upon men to tell their\nsins to earth as well as to heaven.  Nothing that he could do would\ncleanse him till he had told his own sin.  His sin?  He shrugged his\nshoulders.  The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He\nwas thinking of Hetty Merton.\n\nIt was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking\nat.  Vanity?  Curiosity?  Hypocrisy?  Had there been nothing more in\nhis renunciation than that?  There had been something more.  At least\nhe thought so.  But who could tell?\n\nAnd this murder,--was it to dog him all his life?  Was he never to get\nrid of the past?  Was he really to confess?  No.  There was only one\nbit of evidence left against him.  The picture itself,--that was\nevidence.\n\nHe would destroy it.  Why had he kept it so long?  It had given him\npleasure once to watch it changing and growing old.  Of late he had\nfelt no such pleasure.  It had kept him awake at night.  When he had\nbeen away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look\nupon it.  It had brought melancholy across his passions.  Its mere\nmemory had marred many moments of joy.  It had been like conscience to\nhim.  Yes, it had been conscience.  He would destroy it.\n\nHe looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He\nhad cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was\nbright, and glistened.  As it had killed the painter, so it [100] would\nkill the painter's work, and all that that meant.  It would kill the\npast, and when that was dead he would be free.  He seized it, and\nstabbed the canvas with it, ripping the thing right up from top to\nbottom.\n\nThere was a cry heard, and a crash.  The cry was so horrible in its\nagony that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms.\nTwo gentlemen, who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and\nlooked up at the great house.  They walked on till they met a\npoliceman, and brought him back.  The man rang the bell several times,\nbut there was no answer.  The house was all dark, except for a light in\none of the top windows.  After a time, he went away, and stood in the\nportico of the next house and watched.\n\n\"Whose house is that, constable?\" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.\n\n\"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir,\" answered the policeman.\n\nThey looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered.  One of\nthem was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.\n\nInside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics\nwere talking in low whispers to each other.  Old Mrs. Leaf was crying,\nand wringing her hands.  Francis was as pale as death.\n\nAfter about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the\nfootmen and crept up-stairs.  They knocked, but there was no reply.\nThey called out.  Everything was still.  Finally, after vainly trying\nto force the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the\nbalcony.  The windows yielded easily: the bolts were old.\n\nWhen they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait\nof their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his\nexquisite youth and beauty.  Lying on the floor was a dead man, in\nevening dress, with a knife in his heart.  He was withered, wrinkled,\nand loathsome of visage.  It was not till they had examined the rings\nthat they recognized who it was.","title":"The Picture of Dorian Gray","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":54646}