Collected works. Authorized ed. Edited by Robert Ross

THE PIC1 Urv^

0F

DORIAN GRAY

BY

OSCAR WILDE

AUTHORISED EDITION

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THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LTD.
TORONTO

JOHN W. LUCE & CO. II lJ

I

THE PICTURE
OF DORIAN GRAY

THE studio was filled with the rich odor of roses,
and when the light summer wind stirred amid
the trees of the garden there came through the
open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more
delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags
on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom,
innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could
just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-
colored blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous
branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a
beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the
fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the
long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front
of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary
Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid
jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the me-
dium of :in art V necessarily immobile, seek to
convey the sense tness and motion. The sullen
murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the
long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous in-
sistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling
woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppres-

1

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

sive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon
note of a distant organ.

In the center of the room, clamped to an upright
easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of
extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some
little distance away, was sitting the artist himself,
Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some
years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement,
and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely
form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of
pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to
linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, clos-
ing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though
he sought to imprison within his brain some curious
dream from which he feared he might awake.

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you
have ever done," said Lord Henry, languidly. "You
must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor.
The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever
I have gone there, there have been either so many
people that I have not been able to see the pictures,
which were dreadful, or so many pictures that I have
not been able to see the people, which was worse. The
Grosvenor is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he an-
swered, tossing his head back in that odd way that
used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford.
"No, I won't send it anywhere."

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at
him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of
smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his
heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it any-
where! My dear fellow, why? Have you any rea-
son? What odd chaps you painters are! You do
2

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon
as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away.
It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the
world worse than being talked about, and that is not
being talked about. A portrait like this would set
you far above all the young men in England, and
make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever
capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I
really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself
into it."

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan
and laughed.

"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all
the same."

"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word,
Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really
can't see any resemblance between you, with your
rugged, strong face and your coal-black hair, and
this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made of
ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a
Narcissus, and you — well, of course, you have an in-
tellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real
beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and de-
stroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all fore-
head, or something horrid. Look at the successful
men in any of the learned professions. How per-
fectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the
Church. But then in the Church they don't think.
A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what
he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen,
and as a natural consequence he always looks abso-
lutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend,

3

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

whose name you have never told me, but whose pic-
ture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite
sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful crea-
ture, who should be always here in winter when we
have no flowers to look at, and always here in sum-
mer when we want something to chill our intelligence.
Don't flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least
like him."

"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the
artist. "Of course I am not like him. I know that
perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like
him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you
the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and
intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems
to dog through history the faltering steps of kings.
It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The
ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.
They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If
they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared
the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should
live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet.
They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive
it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry;
my brains, such as they are — my art, whatever it may
be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks — we shall all
suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer ter-
ribly."

"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord
Henry, walking across the studio toward Basil Hall-
ward.

"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to
you."

"But why not?"

"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people im-
mensely I never tell their names to any one. It is

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can
make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The
commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
When I leave town now I never tell my people where
I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure.
It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems
to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. I
suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"

"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all,
my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am mar-
ried, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a
life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
I never know where my wife is, and my wife never
knows what I am doing. When we meet — we do
meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
down to the Duke's — we tell each other the most ab-
surd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is
very good at it — much better, in fact, than I am. She
never gets confused over her dates, and I always do.
But when she does find me out, she makes no row at
all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely
laughs at me."

"I hate the way you talk about your married life,
Harry," said Basil Hallward, strolling toward the
door that led into the garden. "I believe that you
are really a very good husband, but that you are
thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are
an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral
thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cyni-
cism is simply a pose."

"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irri-
tating pose I know," cried Lord Henry, laughing;
and the two young men went out into the garden to-
gether, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo

5

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The
sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the
grass, white daisies were tremulous.

After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch.
"I am afraid I must be going, Basil," he murmured,
"and before I go, I insist on your answering a ques-
tion I put to you some time ago."

"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes
fixed on the ground.

"You know quite well."

"I do not, Harry."

"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to
explain to me why you won't exhibit Dorian Gray's
picture. I want the real reason."

"I told you the real reason."

"No, you did not. You said it was because there
was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is child-
ish."

"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him
straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted
with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the
painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.
The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am
afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
soul."

Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he
asked.

"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression
of perplexity came over his face.

"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his com-
panion, glancing at him.

"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," an-
swered the painter; "and I am afraid you will hardly
6

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe it."
Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a
pink-petaled daisy from the grass, and examined it.
"I am quite sure I shall understand it," he replied,
gazing intently at the little golden white -feathered
disk, "and as for believing things, I can believe any-
thing, provided that it is incredible."

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and
the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars,
moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper
began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a
long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze
wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil
Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was
coming.

"The story is simply this," said the painter after
some time. "Two months ago I went to a crush at
Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists have to
show ourselves in society from time to time, just to
remind the public that we are not savages. With an
evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, any-
body, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for
being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room
about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dow-
agers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became
conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned
half-way round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first
time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing
pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me.
I knew that I had come face to face with some one
whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I
allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature,
my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want
any external influence in my life. You know your-
self, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have

7

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

always been my own master; had at least always been
so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then — But I don't know
how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell
me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my
life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store
for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew
afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not con-
science that made me do so : it was a sort of cowardice.
, I take no credit to myself for trying to escape."

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same
things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the
firm. That is all."

"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe
you do either. However, whatever was my motive —
and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud
— I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course,
I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not
going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she
screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"

"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,"
said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his
long, nervous fingers.

"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to
Royalties, and people with Stars and Garters, and
elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses.
She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met
her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize
me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great
success at the time — at least, had been chattered about
in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-cen-
tury standard of immortality. Suddenly I found my-
self face to face with the young man whose personality
had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close,
almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reck-
less of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me
8

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It
was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to
each other without any introduction. I am sure of
that. Dorian told me so afterward. He, too, felt
that we were destined to know each other."

"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonder-
ful young man?" asked his companion. "I know
she goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her guests.
I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and
red- faced old gentleman covered all over with orders
and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whis-
per which must have been perfectly audible to every-
body in the room, the most astounding details. I
simply fled. I like to find out people for myself.
But poor Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly
as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains
them entirely away, or tells one everything about
them except what one wants to know."

"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Har-
ry!" said Hallward, listlessly.

"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and
only succeeded in opening a restaurant. How could I
admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr.
Dorian Gray?"

"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy — poor dear
mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget
what he does — afraid he — doesn't do anything — oh,
yes, plays the piano — or is it the violin, dear Mr.
Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we
became friends at once."

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a
friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,"
said the young lord, plucking another daisy.

Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand
what friendship is, Harry," he murmured — "or what

9

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that
is to say, you are indifferent to every one."

"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry,
tilting his hat back, and looking up at the little clouds
that, like raveled skeins of glossy white silk, were
drifting across the hollow turquois of the summer sky.
"Yes, horribly unjust of you. I make a great differ-
ence between people. I choose my friends for their
good looks, my acquaintances for their good charac-
ters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I
have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of
some intellectual power, and consequently they all ap-
preciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is
rather vain."

"I should think it was, Harry. But according to
your category I must be merely an acquaintance."

"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an
acquaintance."

"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother,
I suppose?"

"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My
elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers
seem never to do anything else."

"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.

"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I
can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes
from the fact that none of us can stand other people
having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympa-
thize with the rage of the English democracy against
what they call the vices of the upper orders. The
masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immoral-
ity should be their own special property, and that if
any one of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching
on their preserves. When poor Southward got into
10

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite mag-
nificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent,
of the proletariat live correctly."

"I don't agree with a single word that you have
said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure you don't
either."

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, ana1
tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tas-
seled ebony cane. "How English you are, Basil!
That is the second time you have made that observa-
tion. If one puts forward an idea to a true English-
man— always a rash thing to do — he never dreams of
considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The
only thing he considers of any importance is whether
one believes it one's self. Now, the value of an idea
has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of
the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities
are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely
intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not
be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss poli-
tics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like per-
sons better than principles, and I like persons with no
principles better than anything else in the world.
Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do
you see him?"

* 'Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see
him every day. He is absolutely necessary to me."

"How extraordinary! I thought you would never
care for anything but your art."

"He is all my art to me now," said the painter,
gravely. "I sometimes think, Harry, that there are
only two eras of any importance in the world's history.
The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
and the second is the appearance of a new personality

11

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was
to Venetians, the face of Antinoiis was to late Greek
sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day
be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him,
draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have
done all that. But he is much more to me than a
model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatis-
fied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty
is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing
that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I
have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is
the best work of my life. But in some curious way-^-
I wonder will you understand me? — his personality
has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an
entirely new mode of style. I see things differently,
I think of them differently. I can now re-create life
in a way that was hidden from me before. *A dream
of form in days of thought:' — who is it who says that?
I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me.
The merely visible presence of this lad — for he seems
to me little more than a lad, though he is really over
twenty — his merely visible presence — ah! I wonder
can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously
he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school
that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic
spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body — how much that is!
We in our madness have separated the two, and have
invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is
void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is
to me! You remember that landscape of mine for
which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which
I would not part with? It is one of the best things
I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while
12

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some
subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the
first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."

"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian
Gray."

Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and
down the garden. After some time he came back.
"Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply a
motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see
everything in him. He is never more present in my
work than when no image of him is there. He is a
suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find
him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness
and subtleties of certain colors. That is all."

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked
Lord Henry.

"Because, without intending it, I have put into it
some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of
which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him.
He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
anything about it. But the world might guess it;
and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying
eyes. My heart shall never be put under their micro-
scope. There is too much of myself in the thing,
Harry — too much of myself I"

"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They
know how useful passion is for publication. Now-
adays a broken heart will run to many editions."

"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist
should create beautiful things, but should put noth-
ing of his own life into them. We live in an age when
men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of auto-
biography. We have lost the abstract sense of beau-

13

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and
for that reason the world shall never see my portrait
of Dorian Gray."

"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue
with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever
argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?'5

The painter considered for a few moments. "He
likes me," he answered, after a pause; "I know he
likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find
a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know
I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is
charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a
thousand things. Now and then, however, he is hor-
ribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in
giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have
given away my whole soul to some one who treats it
as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decora-
tion to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's
day."

"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," mur-
mured Lord Henry. "Perhaps you will tire sooner
than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there
is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty.
That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains
to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for
existence, we want to have something that endures,
and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in
the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly
well-informed man — that is the modern ideal. And
the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a
dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all mon-
sters and dust, with everything priced above its proper
value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some
day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to
you to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his
14

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

tone of color, or something. You will bitterly re-
proach him in your own heart, and seriously think
that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time
he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It
will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you
have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one
might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any
kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."

"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live,
the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me.
You can't feel what I feel. You change too often."

"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feet
it. Those who are faithful know only the trivial side
of love : it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case,
and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious
and satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in
a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows
in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue
cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like
swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden ! And
how delightful other people's emotions were! — much
more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him.
One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends—
those were the fascinating things in life. He pictured
to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon
that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's, he would have
been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the
whole conversation would have been about the feed-
ing of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-
houses. Each class would have preached the impor-
tance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no
necessity in their own lives. The rich would have
spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown elo-

15

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

quent over the dignity of labor. It was charming to
have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an
idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward,
and said, "My dear fellow, I have just remembered."

"Remembered what, Harry?"

"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."

"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight
frown.

"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt
Lady Agatha's. She told me she had discovered a
wonderful young man, who was going to help her in
the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I
am bound to state that she never told me he was good-
looking. Women have no appreciation of good looks
—at least, good women have not. She said that he
was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at
once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and
lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on
huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend."

"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."

"Why?"

"I don't want you to meet him."

"You don't want me to meet him?"

"No."

"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the
butler, coming into the garden.

"You must introduce me now!" cried Lord Henry,
laughing.

The painter turned to his servant, who stood blink-
ing in the sunlight. "Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker;
I shall be in in a few moments." The man bowed,
and went up the walk.

Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is
my dearest friend," he said. "He has a simple and a
beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what
16

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influ-
ence him. Your influence would be bad. The world
is wide, and has many marvelous people in it. Don't
take away from me the one person who gives to my
art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist
depends on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you." He
spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of
him almost against his will.

"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry,
smiling, and, taking Hallward by the arm, he almost
led him into the house.

17

II

AS they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was
seated at the piano, with his back to them,
turning over the pages of a volume of Schu-
mann's "Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these,
Basil 1" he cried. "I want to learn them. They are
perfectly charming."

"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day,
Dorian."

"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-
sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging
round on the music-stool, in a wilful, petulant man-
ner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
blush colored his cheeks for a moment, and he started
up. "I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know
you had any one with you."

"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Ox-
ford friend of mine. I have just been telling him
what a capital sitter you were, and now you have
spoiled everything."

"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you,
Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, stepping forward and
extending his hand. "My aunt has often spoken to
me about you. You are one of her favorites, and, I
am afraid, one of her victims also."

"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present,"
answered Dorian, with a funny look of penitence. "I
promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with her last
Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were
to have played a duet together — three duets, I believe.
18 '

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

I don't know what she will say to me. I am far too
frightened to call."

"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is
quite devoted to you. And I don't think it really mat-
ters about your not being there. The audience prob-
ably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits
down to the piano she makes quite enough noise for
two people."

"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to
me," answered Dorian, laughing.

Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly
, wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet
lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There
was something in his face that made one trust him at
once. All the candor of youth was there, as well as
all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had
kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder
Basil Hallward worshiped him.

"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy,
Mr. Gray — far too charming." And Lord Henry
flung himself down on the divan, and opened his
cigarette-case.

The painter had been busy mixing his colors and
getting his brushes ready. He was looking worried,
and when he heard Lord Henry's last remark he
glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said :
"Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would
you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go
away?"

Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray.
"Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he asked.

"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil
is in one of his sulky moods ; and I can't bear him when
he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell me why I should
not go in for philanthropy."

19

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray.
It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk
seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away,
now that you have asked me to stop. You don't really
mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that
you liked your sitters to have some one to chat to."

Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of
course you must stay. Dorian's whims are laws to
everybody, except himself."

Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are
very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I
have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-
bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in
Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five
o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should
be sorry to miss you."

"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wot-
ton goes I shall go too. You never open your lips
while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing
on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him
to stay. I insist upon it."

"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,"
said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "It is
quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never
listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my
unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay."

"But what about my man at the Orleans?"

The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be
any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry.
And now Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't
move about too much, or pay any attention to what
Lord Henry says. He has a very bad influence over
all his friends, with the single exception of myself."

Dorian Gray stepped up on the dias, with the air of
a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of dis-
20

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

content to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken
a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a
delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful
voice. After a few moments he said to him: "Have
you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad
as Basil says?"

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr.
Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the
scientific point of view."

"Why?;

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

"Just turn your head a little more to the right,
Dorian, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his
work, and conscious only that a look had come into the
lad's face that he had never seen there before.

"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, mu-
sical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand
that was always so characteristic of him, and that he
had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man

21

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

were to live out his life fully and completely, were to
give form to every feeling, expression to every
thought, reality to every dream — I believe that the
world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we
would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and re-
turn to the Hellenic ideal — to something finer, richer,
than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest
man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation
of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial
that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.
Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the
mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has
done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.
Nothing remains then but the recollection of a
pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to
get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and
your soul grows sick with longing for the things it
has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its
monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
It has been said that the great events of the world take
place in the brain. It is in the brain and the brain
only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red
youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had
passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have
filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams
whose mere memory might stain your cheek with
shame — "

"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you be-
wilder me. I don't know what to say. There is some
answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak.
Let me think, or rather, let me try not to think."

For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless,
with parted lips, and eyes strangely bright. He was
dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at
22

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have
come really from himself. The few words that Basil's
friend had said to him — words spoken by chance, no
doubt, and with wilful paradox in them — had touched
some secret chord that had never been touched before,
but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to
curious pulses.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had
troubled him many times. But music was not articu-
late. It was not a new world, but rather another
chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words I
How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and
cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet
what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed
to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and
to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol
or of lute. Mere words ! Was there anything so real
as words?

Yes ; there had been things in his boyhood that he
had not understood. He understood them now.
Life suddenly became fiery-colored to him. It seemed
to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he
not known it?

With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him.
He knew the precise psychological moment when to
say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was
amazed at the sudden impression that his words had
produced, and, remembering a book that he had read
when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to
him much that he had not known before, he wondered
whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar
experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air.
Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!

Hallward painted away with that marvelous, bold
touch of his that had the true refinement and per-

23

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

feet delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes only
from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.

"Basil, I am tired of standing!" cried Dorian Gray,
suddenly. "I must go out and sit in the garden.
The air is stifling here."

"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am paint-
ing, I can't think of anything else. But you never sat
better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught
the effect I wanted — the half -parted lips, and the
bright look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry
has been saying to you, but he has certainly made
you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose
he has been paying you compliments. You mustn't
believe a word that he says."

"He has certainly not been paying me compliments.
Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe any-
thing he has told me."

"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry,
looking at him with his dreamy, languorous eyes.
"I will go out to the garden with you. It is horribly
hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced
to drink, something with strawberries in it."

"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when
Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have
got to work up this background, so I will join you
later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never
been in better form for painting than I am to-day.
This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my master-
piece as it stands."

Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found
Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac
blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it
had been wine. He came close to him, and put his
hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do
that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul
24

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but
the soul."

The lad started and drew back. He was bare-
headed, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls
and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a
look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they
are suddenly awakened. His finely chiseled nostrils
quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of
his lips and left them trembling.

"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the
great secrets of life — to cure the soul by means of the
senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are
a wonderful creation. You know more than you
think you know, just as you know less than you want
to know."

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.
He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man
who was standing by him. His romantic olive-colored
face and worn expression interested him. There was
something in his low, languid voice that was abso-
lutely fascinating. His cool, white, flower-like hands,
even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke,
like music, and seemed to have a language of their
own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of
being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to
reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hall-
ward for months, but the friendship between them had
never altered him. Suddenly there had come some
one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him
life's mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid
of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd
to be frightened.

"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry.
"Parker has brought out the drinks, and if you stay
any longer in this glare you will be quite spoiled, and

25

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN .GRAY

Basil will never paint you again. You really must
not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be
unbecoming."

"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laugh-
ing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the
garden.

"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."

"Why?"

"Because you have the most marvelous youth, and
youth is the one thing worth having."

"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."
, "No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you
are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has
seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel
it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go,
you charm the world. Will it always be so? . . .
You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray.
Don't frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of
Genius — is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no
explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like
sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark
waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot
be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty.
It makes princes of those who have it. You smile?
Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile. . . .
People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial.
That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as
Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appear-
ances. The true mystery of the world is the visible,
not the invisible. . . . Yes, Mr. Gray the gods
have been good to you. But what the gods give they
quickly take away. You have only a few years in
which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your
26

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you
will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left
for you, or have to content yourself with those mean
triumphs that the memory of your past will make
more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes
brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is
jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your
roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked,
and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly. . . .
Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't
squander the gold of your days listening to the tedi-
ous, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving
away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of
our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is
in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be
always searching for new sensations. Be afraid
of nothing. ... A new Hedonism — that is
what our century wants. You might be its
visible symbol. With your personality there is
nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you
for a season. . . . The moment I met you I
saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really
are, of what you really might be. There was so much
in you that charmed me that I felt that I must tell you
something about yourself. I thought how tragic it
would be if you were wasted. For there is such a
little time that your youth will last — such a little time.
The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom
again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as
it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on
the clematis, and year after year the green night of its
leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get
back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us
at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our

27

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets;
haunted by the memory of the passions of which we
were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations
that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth!
Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world
but youth!"

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.
The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel.
A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment.
Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated
globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with
that strange interest in trivial things that we try
to develop when things of high import make us
afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion
for which we cannot find expression, or when some
thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain
and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew
away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of
a Tynan convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver,
and then swayed gently to and fro.

Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the
studio, and made staccato signs for them to come in.
They turned to each other and smiled.

"I am waiting!" he cried. "Do come in. The
light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks."

They rose up, and sauntered down the walk to-
gether. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered
past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the
garden a thrush began to sing.

"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray/' said
Lord Henry, looking at him.

"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be
glad?"

"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me
shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using
28

THE PICTURE OP DORIAN GRAY

it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it
last forever. It is a meaningless word too. The only
difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is
that the caprice lasts a little longer."

As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his
hand upon Lord Henry's arm. "In that case, let our
friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his
own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
resumed his pose.

Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-
chair, and watched him. The sweep and dash of the
brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke
the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward
stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In
the slanting beams that streamed through the open
doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy
scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.

After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped
painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and
then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of
one of his huge brushes, and frowning. "It is quite
finished!" he cried, at last, and stooping down he
wrote his name in long vermillion letters on the left-
hand corner of the canvas.

Lord Henry came over and examined the picture.
It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a
wonderful likeness as well.

"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,"
he said. "It is the finest portrait of modern times.
Mr. Gray come over and look at yourself."

The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.
"Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down
from the platform.

"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have
sat splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you."

29

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry.
"Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in
front of his picture and turned toward it. When he
saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a
moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his
eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first
time. He stood there motionless and in wonder,
dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him,
but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense
of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He
had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compli-
ments had seemed to him to be merely the charming
exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to
them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had
not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord
Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth,
his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred
him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the
shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the
description flashed across him. Yes there would be a
day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his
eyes dim and colorless, the grace of his figure broken
and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his
lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that
was to make his soul would mar his body. He would
become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.

As he thought of it a sharp pang of pain struck
through him like a knife, and made each delicate fiber
of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into ame-
thyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt
as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.

"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung
a little by the lad's silence, not understanding what it
meant.

30

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who
wouldn't like it? It is one of the greatest things in
modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask
for it. I must have it."

"It is not my property, Harry."

"Whose property is it?"

"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.

"He is a very lucky fellow."

"How sad it is !" murmured Dorian Gray, with his
eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it
isl I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful.
But this picture will remain always young. It will
never be older than this particular day of June.
. . . If it were only the other way! If it were
I who was to be always young, and the picture that
was to grow old! For that — for that — I would give
everything ! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world
I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"

"You would hardly care for such an arrangement,
Basil," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "It would be
rather hard lines on your work."

"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hall-
ward.

Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe
you would, Basil. You like your art better than your
friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze
figure. Hardly as much, I dare say."

The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike
Dorian to speak like that. What had happened?
He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his
cheeks burning.

"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your
ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like
them always. How long will you like me? Till I
have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that

31

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may
be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught
me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right.
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find
that I am growing old I shall kill myself."

Hallward turned pale, and caught his hand. "Do-
rian! Dorian!" he cried, "don't talk like that! I
have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never
have such another. You are not jealous of material
things, are you? — you who are finer than any of
them!"

"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not
die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of
me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every
moment that passes takes something from me, and
gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other
way! If the picture could change, and I could be
always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It
will mock me some day— mock me horribly!" The
hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away,
and flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face
in the cushions, as though he was praying.

"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter, bit-
terly.

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the
real Dorian Gray — that is all."

"It is not."

"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"

"You should have gone away when I asked you,"
he muttered.

"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's
answer.

"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends
at once, but between you both you have made me hate
the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will
32

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

destroy it. What is it but canvas and color? I will
not let it come across our three lives and mar them."

Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow,
and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes looked at
him, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that
was set beneath the high curtained window. What
was he doing there? His fingers were straying about
among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking
for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife,
with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at
last. He was going to rip up the canvas.

With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and
rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his
hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "Don't
Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!"

"I am glad you appreciate my work at last,
Dorian," said the painter, coldly, when he had recov-
ered from his surprise. "I never thought you would."

"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is
part of myself. I feel that."

"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be var-
nished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do
what you like with yourself." And he walked across
the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have
tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry?
Or do you object to such simple pleasure?"

"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry.
"They are the last refuge of the complex. But I
don't like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd
fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was
defined man as a rational animal. It was the most
premature definition ever given. Man is many
things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not,
after all; though I wish you chaps would not squabble
over the picture. You had much better let me have it,

83

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want it, and I
really do."

"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall
never forgive youl" cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't
allow people to call me a silly boy."

"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it
to you before it existed."

"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr.
Gray, and that you don't really object to being re-
minded that you are extremely young."

"I should have objected very strongly this morn-
ing, Lord Henry."

"Ah I this morning! You have lived since then."

There came a knock at the door, and the butler
entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a
small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and
saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn.
Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by
a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the
tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table,
and examined what was under the covers.

"Let us go to the theater to-night," said Lord
Henry. "There is sure to be something on, some-
where. I have promised to dine at White's, but it is
only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to
say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming
in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think
that would be a rather nice excuse : it would have all
the surprise of candor."

"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes,"
muttered Hallward. "And, when one has them on,
they are so horrid."

"Yes," answered Lord Henry, dreamily, "the cos-
tume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so
84

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

somber, so depressing. Sin is the only real color-
element left in modern life."

"You really must not say things like that before
Dorian, Harry."

"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring
out tea for us, or the one in the picture?"

'"Before either."

"I should like to come to the theater with you,
Lord Henry," said the lad.

"Then you shall come; and you will come too,
Basil, won't you?"

"I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a
lot of work to do."

"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."

"I should like that awfully."

The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in
hand, to the picture. "I shall stay with the real
Dorian," he said, sadly.

"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the
portrait, strolling across to him. "Am I really like
that?"

"Yes, you are just like that."

"How wonderful, Basil!"

"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will
never alter," sighed Hallward. "That is some-
thing."

"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" ex-
claimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely J
a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with *
our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and
are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot:
that is all one can say."

"Don't go to the theater to-night, Dorian," said
Hallward. "Stop and dine with me."

35

\

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I can't, Basil."

"Why?"

"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to
go with him."

"He won't like you the better for keeping your
promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you
not to go."

Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.

"I entreat you."

The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry,
who was watching them from the tea-table with an
amused smile.

"I must go, Basil," he answered.

"Very well," said Hallward ; and he went over and
laid down his cup on the tray. "It is rather late,
and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time.
Good-bye, Harry; good-bye Dorian. Come and see
me soon. Come to-morrow."

"Certainly."

"You won't forget?"

"No, of course not," cried Dorian.

"And . . . Harry!"

"Yes, Basil?"

"Remember what I asked you when we were in
the garden this morning."

"I have forgotten it."

"I trust you."

"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry,
laughing. "Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside,
and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye,
Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."

As the door closed behind them, the painter flung
himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into
his face.

Ill

AT half -past twelve next day Lord Henry Wot-
ton strolled from Curzon Street over to the
Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a
genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor,
whom the outside world called selfish because it de-
rived no particular benefit from him, but who was
considered generous by Society, as he fed the people
who amused him. His father had been our am-
bassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and
Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplo-
matic Service in a capricious moment of annoyance
on not being offered the embassy at Paris, a post to
which he considered that he was fully entitled by
reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English
of his despatches, and his inordinate passion for
pleasure. The son, who had been his father's secre-
tary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
foolishly, as was thought at the time, and on succeed-
ing some months later to the title, had set himself
to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of
doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was
less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club.
He paid some attention to the management of his
collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself
for this taint of industry on the ground that the one
advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentle-
man to afford the decency of burning wood on his
own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when
the Tories were in office, during which period he

37

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals.
He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and
a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in
turn. Only England could have produced him, and
he always said that the country was going to the
dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was
a good deal to be said for his prejudices.

When Lord Henry entered the room he found his
uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a
cheroot and grumbling over The Times. "Well,
Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you
out so early? I thought you dandies never got up
till. two, and were not visible till five."

"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle
George. I want to get something out of you."

"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a
wry face. "Well, sit down and tell me all about it.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is
everything."

"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-
hole in his coat; "and when they grow older they
i know it. But I don't want money. It is only people
* who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and
I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger
son, and one lives charmingly upon it. Besides, I
always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and conse-
quently they never bother me. What I want is in-
formation: not useful information, of course; useless
information."

"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English
Blue-book, Harry, although those fellows nowadays
write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplo-
matic, things were much better. But I hear they let
them in now by examination. What can you expect?
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning
38

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite ,
enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he *
knows is bad for him."

"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books,
Uncle George," said Lord Henry, languidly.

"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord
Fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows.

"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George.
Or, rather, I know who he is. He is the last Lord
Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux,
Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me
about this mother. What was she like? Whom did
she marry? You have known nearly everybody in
your time, so you might have known her. I am very
much interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have only
just met him."

"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman —
"Kelso's grandson! ... Of course. ... I
knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful
girl, Margaret Devereux, and made all the men
frantic by running away with a penniless young fel-
low, a mere nobody, a subaltern in a foot regiment,
or something of that kind. Certainly. I remember
the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. The
poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months
after the marriage. There was an ugly story about
it. They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer,
some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public,
paid him, sir, to do it, paid him, and that the fellow
spitted the man as if he had been a pigeon. The
thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop
alone at the club for some time afterward. He
brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and
she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes ; it was a bad

39

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

business. The girl died too, died within a year. So
she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that. What
sort of a boy is he? If he is like his mother he must
be a good-looking chap."

"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.

"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued
the old man. "He should have a pot of money wait-
ing for him if Kelso did the right thing by him. His
mother had money too. All the Selby property came
to her, through her grandfather. Her grandfather
hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog. He was, too.
Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I
was ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me
about the English noble who was always quarreling
with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite
a story of it. I didn't dare show my face at court for
a month. I hope he treated his grandson better than
he did the jarvies."

"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy
that the boy will be well off. He is not of age yet.
He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And . . .
his mother was very beautiful?"

"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest crea-
tures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth induced her
to behave as she did, I never could understand. She
could have married anybody she chose. Carlington
was mad after her. She was romantic, though. All
the women of that family were. The men were a
poor lot, but, egad ! the women were wonderful. Car-
lington went on his knees to her. Told me so him-
self. She laughed at him, and there wasn't a girl in
London at the time who wasn't after him. And by*
the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what
is this humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor
40

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

wanting to marry an American? Ain't English girls
good enough for him?"

"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just
now, Uncle George."

"I'll back English women against the world,
Harry," said Lord Fermor, striking the table with
his fist.

"The betting is on the Americans."

"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.

"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are
capital at a steeplechase. They take things flying.
I don't think Dartmoor has a chance."

"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentle-
man. "Has she got any?"

Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are
as clever at concealing their parents as English women
are at concealing their past," he said, rising to go.

"They are pork-packers, I suppose."

"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I
am told pork-packing is the most lucrative profession
in America, after politics."

"Is she pretty?"

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most Amer-
ican women do. It is the secret of their charm."

"Why can't these American women stay in their
own country? They are always telling us that it is
the Paradise for women."

"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they
are so excessively anxious to get out of it," said Lord
Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I shall be late
for lunch if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving
me the information I wanted. I always like to know
everything about my new friends, and nothing about
my old ones."

41

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Where are you lunching, Harry?"

"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and
Mr. Gray. He is her latest protege.3'

"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to
bother me any more with charity appeals. I am sick
of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have
nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."

"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't
have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense
of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteris-
tic."

The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang
the bell for his servant. Lord Henry passed up the
low arcade into Burlington Street, and turned his
steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.

So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage.
Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred
him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern
romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for
a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut
short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of
voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The
mother snatched away by death, the boy left to soli-
tude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man.
Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the
lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every
exquisite thing that existed, there was something
tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest
flower might blow. . . . And how charming he
had been at dinner the night before, as with startled
eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat
opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades stain-
ing to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.
Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the
42

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

bow. . . . There was something terribly en-
thralling in the exercise of influence. No other
activity was like it. To project one's soul into some
gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment ; to
hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one
with all the added music of passion and youth; to
convey one's temperament into another, as though it
were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was
a real joy in that — perhaps the most satisfying joy
left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own,
an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly
common in its aims. . . . He was a marvelous
type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
had met in Basil's studio, or could be fashioned into
a marvelous type, at any rate. Grace was his, and
the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old
Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that
one could not do with him. He could be made a
Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such beauty
was destined to fade! . . . And Basil? From
a psychological point of view, how interesting he
was ! The new manner in art, the fresh mode of look-
ing at life, suggested so strangely by the merely vis-
ible presence of one who was unconscious of it all ; the
silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked
unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself,
Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul who
sought for her there had been awakened that wonder-
ful vision to which alone are wonderful things re-
vealed; the mere shapes and pattern of things
becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
symbolical value, as though they were themselves pat-
terns of some other and more perfect form whose
shadow they made real: how strange it all was! He
remembered something like it in history. Was it not

43

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed
it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the
colored marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our
own century it was strange. . . . Yes, he would
try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it,
the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the
wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate
him — had already, indeed, half done so. He would
make that wonderful spirit his own. There was
something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.

Suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses.
He found that he had passed his aunt's some distance,
and, smiling to himself, turned back. When he en-
tered the somewhat somber hall, the butler told him
that they had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the
footmen his hat and stick, and passed into the dining-
room.

"Late, as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking
her head at him.

He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the
vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was
there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of
the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.
Opposite was the Duchess of Horley, a lady of admi-
rable good nature and good temper, much liked by
every one who knew her, and of those ample archi-
tectural proportions that in women who are not
Duchesses are described by contemporary historians
as stoutness. Next to her sat, on her right, Sir
Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament,
who followed his leader in public life, and in private
life followed the best cooks, dining with the Tories
and thinking with the Liberals, in accordance with a
wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentle-
44

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

man of considerable charm and culture, who had
fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as
he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything
that he had to say before he was thirty. His own
neighbor was Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt's oldest
friends, a perfect saint among women, but so dread-
fully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound
hymn-book. Fortunately for him she had on the
other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-
aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial statement
in the House of Commons, with whom she was con-
versing in that intensely earnest manner which is the
one unpardonable error, as he remarked once himself,
that all really good people fall into, and from which
none of them ever quite escape.

"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord
Henry," cried the Duchess, nodding pleasantly to
him across the table. "Do you think he will really
marry this fascinating young person?"

"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to
him, Duchess."

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha.
"Really, some one should interfere."

"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father
keeps an American dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas
Burdon, looking supercilious.

"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing,
Sir Thomas."

"Dry-goods! What are American dry- goods?"
asked the Duchess, raising her large hands in wonder,
and accentuating the verb.

"American novels," answered Lord Henry, help-
ing himself to some quail.

The Duchess looked puzzled.

"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady

45

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Agatha. "He never means anything that he says."

"When America was discovered," said the Radical
member, and he began to give some wearisome facts.
Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he ex-
hausted his listeners. The Duchess sighed, and
exercised her privilege of interruption. "I wish to
goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she ex-
claimed. "Really, our girls have no chance nowa-
days. It is most unfair."

"Perhaps, after all, America never has been dis-
covered," said Mr. Erskine; "I myself would really
say that it had merely been detected."

"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants,"
answered the Duchess, vaguely. "I must confess
that most of them are extremely pretty. And they
dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris.
I wish I could afford to do the same."

"They say that when good Americans die they go
to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large
wardrobe of Humor's cast-off clothes.

"Really ! And where do bad Americans go to when
they die?" inquired the Duchess.

"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.

Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your
nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he
said to Lady Agatha. "I have traveled all over it,
in cars provided by the directors, who, in such mat-
ters are extremely civil. I assure you that it is an
education to visit it."

"But must we really see Chicago in order to be
educated?" asked Mr. Erskine, plaintively. "I don't
feel up to the journey."

Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of
Treadley has the world on his shelves. We practical
men like to see things, not to read about them. The
46

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Americans are an extremely interesting people.
They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is
their distinguishing characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine,
an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there
is no nonsense about the Americans."

"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand
brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.
There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting
below the intellect."

"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, grow-
ing rather red.

"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with
a smile.

"Paradoxes are all very well in their way, . . ."
rejoined the Baronet.

"Was that a paradox!" asked Mr. Erskine. "I
did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of
paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we
must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities be-
come acrobats we can judge them."

"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men
argue ! I am sure I never can make out what you are
talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr.
Dorian Gray to give up the East End? I assure you
he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
playing."

"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry,
smiling, and he looked down the table and caught a
bright answering glance.

"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," con-
tinued Lady Agatha.

"I can sympathize with everything, except suffer-
ing," said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I
cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too hor-

47

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

rible, too distressing. There is something terribly
v/ morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One
should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy
of life. The less said aboui life's sores the better."

"Still, the East End is a very important problem,"
remarked Sir Thomas, with a grave shake of the
head.

"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the
problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing
the slaves."

The politician looked at him keenly. "What
change do you propose, then?" he asked.

Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change
anything in England except the weather," he an-
swered. "I am quite content with philosophic con-
templation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone
bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy,
I would suggest that we should appeal to Science to
j put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is
that they lead us astray, and the advantage of Science
is that it is not emotional."

"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured
Mrs. Vandeleur, timidly.

"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.

Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Hu-
manity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's
-^ original sin. If the caveman had known how to
laugh, History would have been different."

"You are really very comforting," warbled the
Duchess. "I have always felt rather guilty when I
came to see your dear aunt, for I take no interest at
all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to
look her in the face without a blush."

"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked
Lord Henry.
48

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Only when one is young," she answered. "When
an old woman like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign.
Ah 1 Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to be-
come young again."

He thought for a moment. "Can you remember
any great error that you committed in your early days,
Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across the table.

"A great many, I fear," she cried.

^Then commit them over again," he said, gravely.
"To get back one's youth gne has merely to repeat
one's follies."

"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must
put it into practise."

"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's
tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but could
not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.

"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets
of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creep-
ing common sense, and discover when it is too late that
the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

A laugh ran round the table.

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it
into the air and transformed it; let it escape and re-
captured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged
it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself be-
came young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure,
wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and
wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills
of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober.
Facts fled before her like frightened forest things.
Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise
Omar sits, till the seething grape- juice rose round her
bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in
red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides.

49

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that
the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the
consciousness that among his audience there was one
whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to
give his wit keenness, and to lend color to his imagina-
tion. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He
charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they
followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took
his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles
chasing each other over his lips, and wonder growing
grave in his darkening eyes.

At last liveried in the costume of the age, Reality
entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the
Duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung
her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she
cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband
at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at
Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair.
If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't
have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A
harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear
Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite de-
lightful, and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I
don't know what to say about your views. You must
come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are
you disengaged Tuesday!"

"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess,"
said Lord Henry, with a bow.

"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you,"
she cried; "so mind you come;" and she swept out of
the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other
ladies.

When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr.
Erskine moved round, and taking a chair close to him,
placed his hand upon his arm.
50

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you
write one?"

"I am too fond of reading books to care to write
them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel
certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian
carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public
in England for anything except newspapers, primers,
and encyclopaedias. Of all the people in the world the
English have the least sense of the beauty of litera-
ture."

"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I
myself used to have literary ambitions, but I gave them
up long ago. And now, my dear young friend, if you
will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
meant all that you said to us at lunch?"

"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry.
"Was it all very bad?"

"Very bad indeed. In fact, I consider you extreme-
ly dangerous, and if anything happens to our good
Duchess we shall all look on you as being primarily
responsible. But I should like to talk to you about
life. The generation into which I was born was
tedious. Some day, when you are tired of London,
come down to Treadley, and expound to me your
philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Bur-
gundy I am fortunate enough to possess."

"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be
a great privilege. It has a perfect host, and a perfect
library."

"You will complete it," answered the old gentle-
man, with a courteous bow. "And now I must
bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due
at the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep
there."

"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"

51

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practis-
ing for an English Academy of Letters."

Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the
Park," he cried.

As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray
touched him on the arm. "Let me come with you,"
he murmured.

"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward
to go and see him," answered Lord Henry.

"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must
come with you. Do let me. And you will promise to
talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully
as you do."

"Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said
Lord Henry, smiling. "All I want now is to look at
life. You may come and look at it with me if you
care to."

52

IV

ONE afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was
reclining in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little
library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair.
It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high
paneled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-
colored frieze and ceiling of raised plaster-work, and
its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk long-fringed
Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a
statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of "Les
Cent Nouvelles," bound for Margaret of Valois by
Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies that
queen had selected for her device. Some large blue
china jars and parrot-tulips were arranged on the
mantel-shelf, and through the small leaded panes of
the window streamed the apricot-colored light of a
summer day in London.

Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always .
late on principle, his principle being that punctuality V
is the thief of time. So the lad was looking rather
sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages
of an elaborately illustrated edition of "Manon Les-
caut" that he had found in one of the bookcases. The
formal mononotous ticking of the Louis Quatorze
clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of
going away.

At last he heard a step outside, and the door
opened. "How late you are, Harry!" he murmured.

"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered
a shrill voice.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet, "I
beg your pardon. I thought—

"You thought it was my husband. It is only his
wife. You must let me introduce myself. I know
you quite well by your photographs. I think my
husband has got seventeen of them."

"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"

"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him
the other night at the opera." She laughed nervously
as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-
me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses
always looked as if they had been designed in a rage
and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love
with somebody, and as her passion was never returned;
she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look pic-
turesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her
name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for
going to church.

"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think."

"Yes, it was at dear 'Lohengrin.' I like Wagner's
music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one
can talk the whole time without other people hearing
what one says. That is a great advantage; don't you
think so, Mr. Gray?"

The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her
thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long
tortoise-shell paper-knife.

Dorian smiled, and shook his head. "I am afraid I
don't think so, Lady Henry. I never talk during
music — at least, during good music. If one hears
bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."

"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr.

Gray? I always hear Harry's views from his friends.

It is the only way I get to know of them. But

you must not think I don't like good music. I adore

54

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

it, but I am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic.
I have simply worshiped pianists — two at a time,
sometimes Harry tells me. I don't know what it is
about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners.
They all are, ain't they? Even those that are born
in England become foreigners after a time, don't they?
It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art.
Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have
never been to any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray?
You must come. I can't afford orchids, but I spare
no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
look so picturesque. But here is Harry! — Harry, I
came in to look for you, to ask you something — I for-
get what it was — and I found Mr. Gray here. We
have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have
quite the same ideas. No ; I think our ideas are quite
different. But he has been most pleasant. I am so
glad I've seen him."

"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord
Henry, elevating his dark crescent-shaped eyebrows
and looking at them both with an amused smile. "So
sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece
of old brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain
for hours for it. Nowadays people know the price of
everything and the value of nothing."

"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady
Henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly
sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with the
Duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry.
You are dining out, I suppose? So am I. Perhaps
I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's ?"

"I dare say, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting
the door behind her, as, looking like a bird-of -paradise
that had been out all night in the rain, she flitted out
of the room, leaving a faint odor of frangipanni.

55

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Then he lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on the
sofa.

"Never marry a woman with straw-colored hair,
Dorian," he said, after a few puffs.

"Why, Harry."

"Because they are so sentimental."

"But I like sentimental people."

"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because
are tired; women because they are curious; both
are disappointed."

"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am
too much in love. That is one of your aphorisms.
I am putting it into practise, as I do everything you
say."

"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry,
after a pause.

"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a
rather commonplace debut/'

"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."

"Who is she?"

"Her name is Sibyl Vane."

"Never heard of her."

"No one has. People will some day, however. She
is a genius."

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are

i a decorative sex. They never have anything to say,

V but they say it charmingly. Women represent the

triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent

the triumph of mind over morals."

"Harry, how can you?"

"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analyzing

women at present, so I ought to know. The subject

is not so abtruse as I thought it was. I find that,

ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the

56

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

plain and the colored. The plain women are very
useful. If you want to gain a reputation for re-
spectability, you have merely to take them down to
supper. The other women are very charming. They
commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to
try and look young. Our grandmothers painted in
order to try and talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit
used to go together. That is all over now. As long
as a woman can look ten years younger than her own \/
daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for conversa-
tion, there are only five women in London worth talk-
ing to, and two of these can't be admitted into decent
society. However, tell me about your genius. How
long have you known her?"

"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."
"Never mind that. How long have you known
her?"

"About three weeks."
"And where did you come across her?"
"I will tell you Harry; but you musn't be un-
sympathetic about it. After all, it never would have
happened if I had not met you. You filled me with
a wild desire to know everything about life. For days
after I met you, something seemed to throb in my
veins. As I lounged in the Park, or strolled down
Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who passed me,
and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives
they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled
me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the
air. I had a passion for sensations. . . . Well,
one evening about seven o'clock I determined to go out
in search of some adventure. I felt that this grey,
monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people,
its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once
phrased, must have something in store for me. I

57

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me
a sense of delight. I remembered what you had said
to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined
together, about the search for beauty being the real
secret of life. I don't know what I expected, but I
went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way
in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grassless
squares. About half -past eight I passed by an absurd
little theater, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy
play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing
waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the
entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ring-
lets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the center of
a soiled shirt. ' 'Ave a box, my lord?' he said, when
he saw me, and he took off his hat with an act of gor-
geous servility. There was something about him,
Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster.
You will laugh at me, I know, but I really went in
and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the
present day I can't make out why I did so ; and yet if
I hadn't — my dear Harry, if I hadn't, I would have
missed the greatest romance of my life. I see you
are laughing. It is horrid of you!"

"I am not laughing, Dorian — at least, I am not
laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest
romance of your life. You should say the first ro-
mance of your life. You will always be loved, and
you will always be in love with love. A grande pas-
sion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
That is the one use of the idle classes of a country.
Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store
for you. This is merely the beginning."

"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian
Gray, angrily.

"No; I think your nature so deep."
58

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"How do you mean?"

"My dear boy, the people who love only once in
their lives are really the shallow people. What they
call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the v
lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency
is to the life of the intellect — simply a confession of
failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day.
The passion for property is in it. There are many
things that we would throw away if we were not afraid
that others might pick them up. But I don't want
to interrupt you. Go on with your story."

"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little pri-
vate box, with a vulgar drop-scene staring me in the
face. I looked out from behind the curtain, and sur-
veyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all cupids
and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The
gallery and pit were fairly full, but the two rows of
dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was hardly
a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
Women went about with oranges and ginger beer, and
there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on."

"It must have been just like the palmy days of
the British Drama."

"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I
began to wonder what on earth I should do, when I
caught sight of the play-bill. What do you think the
play was, Harry?"

"I should think 'The Idiot Boy; or, Dumb but
Innocent.' Our fathers used to like that sort of piece,
I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly
I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers
is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les
grandperes out toujours tort"

"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It

59

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

was 'Romeo and Juliet.' I must admit that I was
rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done
in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt inter-
ested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to
wait for the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra,
presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked
piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the
drop-scene was drawn up, and the play began.
Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked
eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a
beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was
played by the low comedian, who had introduced gags
of his own and was on most friendly terms with the
pit. They were both as grotesque as the scenery,
and that looked as if it had come out of a country
booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face,
a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown
hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that
were like the petals of the rose. She was the loveliest
thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me
once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty,
mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell
yo.u, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist
of tears that came across me. And her voice — I never
heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep
mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's
ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like
a flute or a distant hautboy. In the garden scene
it had all the tremulous ecstacy that one hears just
before dawn when nightingales are singing. There
were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion
of violins. You know how a voice can stir one.
Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things
60

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I
hear them, and each of them says something different.
I don't know which to follow. Why should I not love
her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to
me in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening
she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of
an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's
lips. I have watched her wandering through the
forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose
and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and
has come into the presence of a guilty king, and
given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of.
She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy
have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her
in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women
never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited
to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them.
One knows their minds as easily as one knows their
bonnets. One can always find them. There is no
mystery in any of them. They ride in the Park in
the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the after-
noon. They have their stereotyped smile and their
fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But
an actress! How different an actress is! Harry!
why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth lov-
ing is an actress?"

"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."

"Oh, yes ; horrid people with dyed hair and painted
faces."

"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces.
There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes,"
said Lord Henry.

"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian.
All through your life you will tell me everything
you do."

"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help
telling you things. You have a curious influence over
me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess
it to you. You would understand me."

"People like you — the wilful sunbeams of life —
don't commit crimes, Dorian. But I am much
obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now
tell me — reach me the matches, like a good boy:
thanks — what are your actual relations with Sibyl
Vane?"

Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks
and burning eyes. "Harry, Sibyl Vane is sacred 1"
3 "It is only the sacred things that are worth touch-
ing, Dorian," said Lord Henry, with a strange touch
of pathos in his voice. "But why should you be an-
noyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving
one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
That is what the world calls a romance. You know
her, at any rate, I suppose?"

"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at
the theater, the horrid old Jew came round to the box
after the performance was over, and offered to take
me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was
furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been
dead for hundreds of years, and that her body was
lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think, from his
blank look of amazement, that he was under the im-
pression that I had taken too much champagne, or
something."

"I am not surprised."

"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the
62

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

newspapers. I told him I never even read them.
He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided
to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy /
against him, and that they were every one of them
to be bought."

"I should not wonder if he was quite right there.
But, on the other hand, judging from their appear- ^
ance, most of them cannot be at all expensive."

"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his
means," laughed Dorian. "By this time, however,
the lights were being put out in the theater, and I
had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he
strongly recommended. I declined. The next night,
of course, I arrived at the place again. When he saw
me he made me a low bow, and assured me that I was
a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive
brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for
Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride,
that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to 'The
Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to
think it a distinction."

"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian — a great dis-
tinction. Most people become bankrupt through hav-
ing invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have
ruined one's self over poetry is an honor. But when
did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"

"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind.
I could not help going round. I had thrown her some
flowers, and she had looked at me — at least, I fancied
that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He
seemed determined to take me behind, so I consented.
It was curious my not wanting to know her, wasn't
it?"

"No, I don't think so."

"My dear Harry, why?"

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to
know about the girl."

"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There
is something of a child about her. Her eyes opened
wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what I
thought of her performance, and she seemed quite un-
conscious of her power. I think we were both rather
nervous. The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway
of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches
about us both, while we stood looking at each other
like children. He would insist on calling me 'My
Lord/ so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not any-
thing of the kind. She said, quite simply to me,
'You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince
Charming.' '

"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to
pay compliments."

"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded
me merely as a person in a play. She knows nothing
of life. She lives with her mother, a faded, tired
woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of ma-
genta dressing- wrapper on the first night, and looks
as if she had seen better days."

"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured
Lord Henry, examining his rings.

"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said
it did not interest me."

"You were quite right. There is always some-
thing infinitely mean about other people's tragedies."

"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it
to me where she came from? From her little head to
her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine.
Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every
night she is more marvelous."

"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine
64

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

with me now. I thought you must have some curious
romance on hand. You have; but it is not quite
what I expected."

"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together
every day, and I have been to the Opera with you sev-
eral times," said Dorian, opening his blue eyes in
wonder.

"You always come dreadfuly late."

"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he
cried, "even if it is only a single act. I get hungry
for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful
soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am
filled with awe."

"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't
you?"

He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he
answered, "and to-morrow night she will be Juliet."

"When is she Sibyl Vane?"

"Never."

"I congratulate you."

"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines
of the world in one. She is more than an individual.
You laugh, but I tell you she has genius. I love her,
and I must make her love me. You, who know all the
secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love
me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the
dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and
grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir
their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into
pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He
was walking up and down the room as he spoke.
Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was
terribly excited.

Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of
pleasure. How different he was now from the shy,

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's studio!
His nature had developed like a flower, had borne
blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-
place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet
it on the way.

"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord
Henry, at last.

"I want you and Basil to come with me some night
and see her act. I have not the slightest fear of the
result. You are certain to acknowledge her genius.
Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is
bound to him for three years — at least, for two years
and eight months from the present time. I shall have
to pay him something, of course. When all that is
settled, I shall take a West End theater and bring her
out properly. She will make the world as mad as she
has made me."

"That would be impossible, my dear boy!"

"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consum-
mate art-instinct, in her, but she has personality also;
and you have often told me that it is personalities, not
principles, that move the age."

"Well, what night shall we go?"

"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-
morrow. She plays Juliet to-morrow."

"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I
will get Basil."

"Not eight, Harry, please. Half -past six. We
must be there before the curtain rises. You must see
her in the first act, where she meets Romeo."

"Half -past six! What an hour! It will be like
having a meat-tea or reading an English novel. It
must be seven. No gentleman dines before seven.
Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall
I write to him?"
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a
week. It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me
my portrait in the most wonderful frame, especially
designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous
of the picture for being a whole month younger than
I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you
had better write to him. I don't want to see him
alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me
good advice."

Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of
giving away what they need most themselves. It is
what I call the depth of generosity."

"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to
me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have
known you, Harry, I have discovered that."

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charm-
ing in him into his work. The consequence is that
he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his
principles, and his common sense. The only artists I
have ever known who are personally delightful are bad
artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make,
and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what
they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the
most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets
are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes
are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact
of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry
that he cannot write. The others write the poetry
that they dare not realize."

"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian
Gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out
of a large gold-topped bottle that stood on the table.
"It must be, if you say it. And now I am off.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Imogen is waiting for me. Don't forget about to-
morrow. Good-bye."

As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids
drooped, and he began to think. Certainly few peo-
ple had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray,
and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else
caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or
jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a
more interesting study. He had been always en-
thralled by the methods of natural science, but the
ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to
him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun
by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting
others. Human life — that appeared to him the one
thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was
nothing else of any value. It was true that as one
watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleas-
ure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of
glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling
the brain and making the imagination turbid with
monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There
were poisons so subtle that to know their properties
one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
strange that one had to pass through them if one
sought to understand their nature. And yet what
a great reward one received! How wonderful the
whole world became to one ! To note the curious hard
logic of passion, and the emotional colored life of the
intellect — to observe where they met, and where they
separated, at what point they were in unison, and at
what point they were at discord — there was a delight
in that ! What matter what the cost was ? One could
never pay too high a price for any sensation.

He was conscious — and the thought brought a

gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes — that it

68

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

was through certain words of his, musical words said
with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had
turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before
her. To a large extent, the lad was his own creation.
He had made him premature. That was something.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its
secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of
life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of
the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the
passions and the intellect. But now and then a com-
plex personality took the place and assumed the office
of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, Life
having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has,
or sculpture, or painting.

Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his
harvest while it was yet spring. The pulse and pas-
sion of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-
conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
beautiful face and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to
wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was
destined to end. He was like one of those gracious
figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be
remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense
of beauty, whose wounds are like red roses.

Soul and body, body and soul — how mysterious
they were! There was animalism in the soul, and
the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses
could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who
could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psy-
chical impulse began? How shallow were the arbi-
trary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet
how difficult to decide between the claims of the vari-
ous schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the
house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit
from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit
with matter was a mystery also.

He began to wonder whether he could ever make
psychology so absolute a science that each little spring
of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always
misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.

/ Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely
the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had,
as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had
claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the forma-
tion of character, had praised it as something that
taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid.
But there was no motive power in experience. It was
as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All
that it really demonstrated was that our future would

I be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done
once, and with loathing, we would do many times,
and with joy.

It was clear to him that the experimental method
was the only method by which one could arrive at
any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly
Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and
seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sud-
den mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological
phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt
that curiosity had much to do with it — curiosity and
the desire for new experiences ; yet it was not a simple
but rather a very complex passion. What there was
in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had
been transformed by the workings of the imagination,
changed into something that seemed to the lad him-
self to be remote from sense, and was for that very
reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions
about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyran-
70

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

nized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives
were those of whose nature we were conscious. It
often happened that when we thought we were experi-
menting on others we were really experimenting on
ourselves.

While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a
knock came at the door, and his valet entered, and
reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. He got
up and looked out into the street. The sunset had
smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the
houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of
heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose.
He thought of his friend's young fiery-colored life,
and wondered how it was all going to end.

When he arrived home, about half -past twelve
o'clock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table.
He opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray. It
was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to
Sibyl Vane.

71

£ £ T\ fl OTHER, mother, I am so happy!" whis-
I y I pered the girl burying her face in the lap
of the faded, tired-looking woman who,
with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sit-
ting in the one arm-chair that their dingy sitting-room
contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you
must be happy too!"

Mrs. Vane winced, and put her thin bismuth-
whitened hands on her daughter's head. "Happy!"
she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I see you
act. You must not think of anything but your acting.
Mr. Isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him
money."

The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, mother 1"
she cried. "What does money matter? Love is more
than money."

"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay
off our debts, and to get a proper outfit for James.
You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds is a
very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most consid-
erate."

"He is not a gentleman, mother, and I hate the way
he talks to me," said the girl, rising to her feet, and
going over to the window.

"I don't know how we could manage without him,"
answered the elder woman, querulously.

Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We
don'trwant him any more, mother. Prince Charming
rules life for us now." Then she paused. A rose
72

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks. Quick
breath parted the petals of her lips. They trembled.
Some southern wind of passion swept over her, and
stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him,"
she said simply.

"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-
phrase flung in answer. The waving of crooked,
false- jeweled fingers gave an added grotesqueness to
the words.

The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird
was in her voice. Her eyes caught the melody, and
echoed it in radiance: then closed for a moment, as
though to hide their secret. iWhen they opened, the
mist of a dream had passed across them.

Thin-lipped Wisdom spoke at her from the worn
chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of
cowardice whose author apes the name of common
sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison
of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with
her. She had called on memory to remake him. She
had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought
him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth.
Her eyelids were warm with his breath.

Then Wisdom altered its method and spoke of
espial and discovery. This young man might be rich.
If so, marriage should be thought of. Against the
shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning.
The arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin
lips moving, and smiled.

Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy
silence troubled her. "Mother! mother!" she cried,
"why does he love me so much? I know why I love
him. I love him because he is like what Love him-
self should be. But what does he see in me? I am
not worthy of him. And yet — why, I cannot tell —

73

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel hum-
ble. I feel proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you
love my father as I love Prince Charming?"

The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse
powder that daubed her cheeks, and her dry lips
twitched with a spasm of pain. Sibyl rushed to her,
flung her arms around her neck, and kissed her.
"Forgive me, mother. I know it pains you to talk
about our father. But it only pains you because you
loved him so much. Don't look so sad. I am as
happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. Ah!
let me be happy forever!"

"My child, you are far too young to think of fall-
ing in love. Besides, what do you know of this
young man? You don't even know his name. The
whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when
James is going away to Australia, and I have so much
to think of, I must say that you should have shown
more consideration. However, as I said before, if he
is rich . . ."

"Ah! mother, mother, let me be happy!"

Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those
false theatrical gestures that so often become a mode
of second nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her
arms. At this moment the door opened, and a young
lad with rough brown hair came into the room. He
was thick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were
large, and somewhat clumsy in movement. He was
not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly
have guessed the close relationship that existed be-
tween them. Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes on him, and
intensified her smile. She mentally elevated her son
to the dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the
tableau was interesting.

"You might keep some of your kisses for me,
74

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Sibyl, I think," said the lad, with a good-natured
grumble.

"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she
cried. "You are a dreadful old bear." And she ran
across the room and hugged him.

James Vane looked into his sister's face with tender-
ness. "I want you to come out with me for a walk,
Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever see this horrid
London again. I am sure I don't want to."

"My son, don't say such dreadful things," mur-
mured Mrs. Vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress,
with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She felt a
little disappointed that he had not joined the group.
It would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness
of the situation.

"Why not, mother? I mean it."

"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return
from Australia in a position of affluence. I believe
there is no society of any kind in the Colonies, nothing
that I would call society; so when you have made
your fortune you must come back and assert yourself
in London."

"Society !" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know
anything about that. I should like to make some
money to take you and Sibyl off the stage. I hate it !"

"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of
you! But are you really going for a walk with me?
That will be nice! I was afraid you were going to
say good-bye to some of your friends — to Tom Hardy,
who gave you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who
makes fun of you for smoking it. It is very sweet of
you to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall
we go? Let us go to the Park."

"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only
swell people go to the Park."

75

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve
of his coat.

He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said
at last, "but don't be too long dressing." She danced
out of the door. One could hear her singing as she
ran up-stairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.

He walked up and down the room two or three
times. Then he turned to the still figure in the chair.
"Mother, are my things ready?" he asked.

"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her
eyes on her work. For some months past she had felt
ill at ease when she was alone with this rough, stern
son of hers. Her shallow, secret nature was troubled
when their eyes met. She used to wonder if he sus-
pected anything. The silence, for he made no other
observation, became intolerable to her. She began to
complain. Women defend themselves by attacking,
just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
"I hope you will be contented, James, with your sea-
faring life," she said. "You must remember that it
is your own choice. You might have entered a so-
licitor's office. Solicitors are a very respectable class,
and in the country often dine with the best families."

"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But
you are quite right. I have chosen my own life.
All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't let her come
to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."

"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course
I watch over Sibyl."

"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the
theater, and goes behind to talk to her. Is that right?
What about that?"

"You are speaking about things you don't under-
stand, James. In the profession we are accustomed to
receive a great deal of most gratifying attention. I
76

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

myself used to receive many bouquets at one time.
That was when acting was really understood. As for
Sibyl, I do not know at present whether her attach-
ment is serious or not. But there is no doubt that the
young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He
is always most polite to me. Besides, he has the ap-
pearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are
lovely."

"You don't know his name, though," said the lad,
harshly.

"No," answered his mother, with a placid expres-
sion on her face. "He has not yet revealed his real
name. I think it is quite romantic of him. He is
probably a member of the aristocracy."

James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl,
mother!" he cried, "watch over her!"

"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is
always under my special care. Of course, if this
gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she
should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he
is one of the aristocracy. He has all the appearance
of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant mar-
riage for Sibyl. They would make a charming
couple. His good looks are really quite remarkable;
everybody notices them."

The lad muttered something1 to himself, and
drummed on the window-pane with his coarse fingers.
He had just turned round to say something, when the
door opened, and Sibyl ran in.

"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What
is the matter?"

"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be
serious sometimes. Good-bye, mother; I will have
my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is packed,
except my shirts, so you need not trouble."

77

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of
strained stateliness.

She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had
adopted with her, and there was something in his look
that had made her feel afraid.

"Kiss me, mother," said the girl. Her flower-
like lips touched the withered cheek, and warmed its
frost.

"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking
up to the ceiling in search of an imaginary gallery.

"Come, Sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. He
hated his mother's affectations.

They went out into the flickering wind-blown sun-
light, and strolled down the dreary Euston Road.
The passers-by glanced in wonder at the sullen, heavy
youth, who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the
company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He
was like a common gardener walking with a rose.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the
inquisitive glance of some stranger. He had that dis-
like of being stared at which comes on geniuses late in
life, and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, how-
ever, was quite unconscious of the effect she was pro-
ducing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her
lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming, and,
that she might think of him all the more, she did not
talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which
Jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to
find, about the wonderful heiress whose life he was
to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers.
For he was not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or
whatever he was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor's
existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a
horrid ship, with the hoarse, humpbacked waves try-
ing to get in, and a black wind blowing the masts
78

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

down, and tearing the sails into long, screaming
ribands! He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne,
bid a polite good-bye to the captain, and go off at
once to the gold-fields. Before the week was over
he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold,
the largest nugget that had ever been discovered,
and bring it down to the coast in a wagon guarded
by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were
to attack them three times, and be defeated with
immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the
gold-fields at all. They were horrid places, where
men got intoxicated, and shot each other in barrooms,
and used bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-
farmer, and one evening, as he was riding home, he
was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a
robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her.
Of course she would fall in love with him, and he
with her, and they would get married and come home,
and live in an immense house in London. Yes, there
were delightful things in store for him. But he must
be very good and not lose his temper, or spend his
money foolishly. She was only a year older than he
was, but she knew so much more of life. He must be
sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say
his prayers each night before he went to sleep. God
was very good, and would watch over him. She
would pray for him, too, and in a few years he would
come back quite rich and happy.

The lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer.
He was heart-sick at leaving home.

Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and
morose. Inexperienced though he was, he had still a
strong sense of the danger of Sibyl's position. This
young dandy who was making love to her could mean
her no good. He was a gentleman, and he hated him

79

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

for that, hated him through some curious race-instinct
for which he could not account, and which for that
reason was all the more dominant in him. He was
conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his
mother's nature, and in that saw infinite peril for
Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness. Children begin by lov-
•I ing their parents; as they grow older they judge
them; sometimes they forgive them.

His mother! He had something on his mind to
ask of her, something that he had brooded on for many
months of silence. A chance phrase that he had
heard at the theater, a whispered sneer that had
reached his ears one night as he waited at the stage
door had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. He
remembered it as if it had been the lash of a hunting-
crop across his face. His brows knit together into a
wedge-like furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit
his under lip.

"You are not listening to a word I am saying,
Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I am making the most de-
lightful plans for your future. Do say something."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Oh, that you will be a good boy, and not forget
us," she answered, smiling at him.

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely
to forget me than I am to forget you, Sibyl."

She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she
asked.

"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he?
Why have you not told me about him? He means
you no good."

"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say
anything about him. I love him."

"Why, you don't even know his name," answered
the lad. "Who is he? I have a right to know."
80

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like
the name? Oh! you silly boy! you should never for-
get it. If you only saw him, you would think him the
most wonderful person in the world. Some day you
will meet him: when you come back from Australia.
You will like him so much. Everybody likes him,
and I ... love him. I wish you could come to
the theater to-night. He is going to be there, and I
am to play Juliet. Oh! how I shall play it! Fancy,
Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To have him sit-
ting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I
may frighten the company — frighten or enthrall
them. To be in love is to surpass one's self. Poor
dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'Genius!' to his
loafers at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma;
to-night he will announce me as a revelation. I feel
it. And it is all his, his only, Prince Charming, my
wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor
beside him. Poor? What does that matter? When
poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through
the window. Our proverbs want rewriting. They
were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-
time for me, I think — a very dance of blossoms in blue
skies."

"He is a gentleman," said the lad, suddenly.

"A Prince!" she cried, musically. "What more
do you want?"

"He wants to enslave you."

"I shudder at the thought of being free."

"I want you to beware of him."

"To see him is to worship him, to know him is to
trust him."

"Sibyl, you are mad about him."

She laughed, and took his arm. "You dear old
Jim, you talk as if you were a hundred. Some day

81

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

you will be in love yourself. Then you will know
what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should
be glad to think that, though you are going away, you
leave me happier than I have ever been before. Life
has been hard for us both — terribly hard and difficult.
But it will be different now. You are going to a new
world, and I have found one. Here are two
chairs; let us sit down and see the smart people go

by."

They took their seats amid a crowd of watchers.
The tulip-bed across the road flamed like throbbing
rings of fire. A white dust, tremulous cloud of orris-
root it seemed, hung in the panting air. The brightly
colored parasols danced and dipped like monstrous
butterflies.

She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his
prospects. He spoke slowly and with effort. They
passed words to each other as players at a game pass
counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not com-
municate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen
mouth was all the echo she could win. After some
time she became silent. Suddenly she caught a
glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, and in an
open carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove
past.

She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.

"Who?" said Jim Vane.

"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after
the victoria.

He jumped up, and siezed her roughly by the arm.
"Show him to me. Which is he? Point him out.
I must see him!" he exclaimed. But at that moment
the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between,
and when it had left the space clear, the carriage had
swept out of the park.
82

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"He is gone," murmured Sibyl, sadly. "I wish
you had seen him."

"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in
heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill
him."

She looked at him in horror. He repeated his
words. They cut the air like a dagger. The people
round began to gape. A lady standing close to her
tittered.

"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered.
He followed her doggedly as she passed through the
crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.

When they reached the Achilles Statue she turned
round. There was pity in her eyes that became
laughter on her lips. She shook her head at him.
"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered
boy, that is all. How can you say such horrible
things? You don't know what you are talking about.
You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you
would fall in love. Love makes people good, and
what you said was wicked."

"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I
am about. Mother is no help to you. She doesn't
understand how to look after you. I wish now that I
was not going to Australia at all. I have a great
mind to chuck the whole thing up. I would, if my
articles hadn't been signed."

"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one
of the heroes of those silly melodramas mother used
to be so fond of acting in. I am not going to quarrel
with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is
perfect happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you
would never harm any one I love, would you?"

"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the
sullen answer.

83

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I shall love him forever!" she cried.

"And he?"

"Forever, too!"

"He had better."

She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put
her hand on his arm. He was merely a boy.

At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which
left them close to their shabby home in the Euston
Road. It was after five o'clock, and Sibyl had to lie
down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim in-
sisted that she should do so. He said that he would
sooner part with her when their mother was not
present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he
detested scenes of every kind.

In Sibyl's own room they parted. There was jeal-
ousy in the lad's heart, and a fierce, murderous hatred
of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come
between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round
his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he
softened, and kissed her with real affection. There
were tears in his eyes as he went down-stairs.

His mother was waiting for him below. She
grumbled at his unpunctuality as he entered. He
made no answer, but sat down to his meager meal.
The flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the
stained cloth. Through the rumble of omnibuses, and
the clatter of street-cabs, he could hear the droning
voice devouring each minute that was left to him.

After some time he thrust away his plate, and put
his head in his hands. He felt that he had a right to
know. It should have been told to him before, if it
was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother
watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her
lips. A tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her
fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up, and
84

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

went to the door. Then he turned back, and looked
at her. Their eyes met. In hers he saw a wild ap-
peal for mercy. It enraged him.

"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said.
Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. She
made no answer. "Tell me the truth. I have a right
to know. Were you married to my father?"

She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief.
The terrible moment, the moment that night and day,
for weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at
last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some
measure it was a disappointment to her. The vulgar
directness of the question called for a direct answer.
The situation had not been gradually led up to. It
was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.

"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh sim-
plicity of life.

"My father was a scoundrel, then!" cried the lad,
clenching his fists.

She shook her head. "I knew he was not free.
We loved each other very much. If he had lived, he
would have made provision for us. Don't speak
against him, my son. He was your father, and a
gentleman. Indeed, he was highly connected."

An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for
myself!" he exclaimed, "but don't let Sibyl . . .
It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love with her, or
says he is? Highly connected too, I suppose?"

For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came
over the woman. Her head drooped. She wiped her
eyes with her shaking hands. "Sibyl has a mother,"
she murmured; "I had none."

The lad was touched. He went toward her, and
stooping down he kissed her. "I am sorry if I have
pained you by asking about my father," he said, "but

85

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye.
Don't forget that you will have only one child now to
look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my
sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and
kill him like a dog. I swear it."

The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate
gesture that accompanied it, the mad melodramatic
words, made life seem more vivid to her. She was
familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more
freely, and for the first time for many months she
really admired her son. She would have liked to have
continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but
he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down,
and mufflers looked for. The lodging-house drudge
bustled in and out. There was the bargaining with
the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details.
It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that
she waved the tattered lace handkerchief from the
window as her son drove away. She was conscious
that a great opportunity had been wasted. She con-
soled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her
life would be, now that she had only one child to look
after. She remembered the phrase. It had pleased
her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly
and dramatically expressed. She felt that they would
all laugh at it some day.

86

VI

4 £ y SUPPOSE you have heard the news, Basil?"
said Lord Henry that evening, as Hallward
was shown into a little private room at the
Bristol, where dinner had been laid for three.

"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat
and coat to the bowing waiter. "What is it? Noth-
ing about politics, I hope? They don't interest me.
There is hardly a single person in the House of Com-
mons worth painting, though many of them would be X
the better for a little whitewashing."

"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord
Henry, watching him as he spoke.

Hallward started, and then frowned. "Dorian en-
gaged to be married!" he cried. "Impossible 1"

"It is perfectly true."

"To whom?"

"To some little actress or other."

"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."

"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now (
and then, my dear Basil."

"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now
and then, Harry."

"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry, lan-
guidly. "But I didn't say that he was married. I
said he was engaged to be married. There is a great
difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being
married, but I have no recollection at all of being
engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was
engaged."

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and
wealth. It would be absurd for him to marry so much
beneath him."

"If you want him to marry this girl, tell him that,
Basil. He is sure to do it, then. Whenever a man
does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the
noblest motives."

"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to
see Dorian tied to some vile creature who might de-
grade his nature and ruin his intellect."

"Oh, she is better than good — she is beautiful,"
murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth
and orange bitters. "Dorian says she is beautiful,
and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.
Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation
of the personal appearance of other people. It has
had that excellent effect, among others. We are to
see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his appoint-
ment."

"Are you serious?"

"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I
thought I should ever be more serious than I am at
the present moment."

"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the
painter, walking up and down the room, and biting
his lip. "You can't approve of it, possibly. It is
some silly infatuation."

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now.
It is an absurd attitude to take toward life. We are
not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I
never take any notice of what common people say, and
I never interfere with what charming people do. If a
personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expres-
sion that personality selects is absolutely delightful to
me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why
not? If he wedded Messalina he would be none the
less interesting. You know I am not a champion of
marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it *•
makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are color-
less. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain
temperaments that marriage makes more complex.
They retain their egotism, and add to it many other
egos. They are forced to have more than one life.
They become more highly organized, and to be highly
organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's ex-
istence. Besides, every experience is of value, and,
whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly i-
an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make
this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six
months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some
one else. He would be a wonderful study."

"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry,
you know you don't. If Dorian Gray's life were
spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You
are much better than you pretend to be."

Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to
think so well of others is that we are all afraid for our-
selves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We
think that we are generous because we credit our
neighbor with the possession of those virtues that are
likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker
that we may overdraw our account, and find good
qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may
spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have
said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism..
As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose
growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you
have merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course
that would be silly, but there are other and more in-

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

teresting bonds between men and women. I will cer-
tainly encourage them. They have the charm of
being fashionable. But here is Dorian himself. He
will tell you more than I can."

"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both
congratulate me!" said the lad, throwing off his even-
ing cape with its satin-lined wings, and shaking each
of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never
been so happy. Of course it is sudden; all really de-
lightful things are. And yet it seems to me to be the
one thing I have been looking for all my life." He
was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
extraordinarily handsome.

"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,"
said Hallward, "but I don't quite forgive you for not
having let me know of your engagement. You let
Harry know."

"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner,"
broke in Lord Henry, putting his hand on the lad's
shoulder, and smiling as he spoke. "Come, let us sit
down and try what the new chef here is like, and then
you will tell us how it all came about."

"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian,
as they took their seats at the small round table.
"What happened was simply this. After I left you
yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner
at that little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you
introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to
the theater. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course
the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd.
But Sibyl! You should have seen her! When she
came on in her boy's clothes she was perfectly wonder-
ful. She wore a moss-colored velvet jerkin with cin-
namon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught
in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red.
She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had
all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that
you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered
round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As
for her acting — well, you shall see her to-night. She
is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box
absolutely enthralled. I forgot that I was in London
and in the nineteenth century. I was away with my
love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the
performance was over I went behind and spoke to her.
As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into
her eyes a look that I had never seen there before.
My lips moved toward hers. We kissed each other.
I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It
seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to
one perfect point of rose-colored joy. She trembled
all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she
flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I
feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help
it. Of course our engagement is a dead secret. She
has not even told her own mother. I don't know what
my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be
furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than
a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been
right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry,
and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips
that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their
secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind
around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."

"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you are right," said
Hallward, slowly.

"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the
forest of Arden, I shall find her in an orchard in
Verona."

Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative
manner. "At what particular point did you mention
the word marriage, Dorian? and what did she say in
answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."

"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business
transaction, and I did not make any formal proposal.
I told her that I loved her, and she said she was not
worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the
whole world is nothing to me compared with her."

"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured
Lord Henry — "much more practical than we are. In
situations of that kind we often forget to say anything
about marriage, and they always remind us."

Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't,
Harry. You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like
other men. He would never bring misery upon any
one. His nature is too fine for that."

Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is
never annoyed with me," he answered. "I asked the
question for the best reason possible, for the only
reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any ques-
tion— simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is
always the women who propose to us, and not we who
propose to the women — except, of course, in middle-
class life. But then the middle classes are not
modern."

Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You
are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don't mind. It is
impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sibyl
Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her
would be a beast — a beast without a heart. I cannot
understand how any one can wish to shame the thing
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her
on a pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the
woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irre-
vocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't
mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take.
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me
good. When I am with her, I regret all that you
have taught me. I become different from what you
have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere
touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you
and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful
theories."

"And those are . . . ?" asked Lord Henry,
helping himself to some salad.

"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about
love, your theories about pleasure. All your theories,
in fact, Harry."

"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory
about," he answered, in his slow, melodious voice.
"But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my
own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is
Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are
happy we are always good, but when we are good we
are not always happy."

"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil
Hallward.

"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair,
and looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of
purple-lipped irises that stood in the center of the
table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"

"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self,"
he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with
his pale, fine pointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced
to be in harmony with others. One's own life — that
is the important thing. As for the lives of one's

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

neighbors, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one
can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are
not one's concern. Besides, Individualism has really
the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accept-
ing the standard of one's age. I consider that for any
man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a
form of the grossest immorality."

"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self,
Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" sug-
gested the painter.

"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowa-
days. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the
vj poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.
^Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege
of the rich."

"One has to pay in other ways but money."

"What sort of ways, Basil?"

"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in
. . . well, in the consciousness of degradation."

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear
fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emo-
tions are out of date. One can use them in fiction, of
course. But then the only things that one can use in
fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.
Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure,
and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure

is."

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

"That is certainly better than being adored," he
answered, toying with some fruits. "Being adored is,
a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats
its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering
us to do something for them."

"I should have said that whatever they ask for
94

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

they had first given to us," murmured the lad, gravely.
"They create Love in our natures. They have a right
to demand it back."

"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.

"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.

"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit,
Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their
lives."

"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want
it back in such very small change. That is the worry.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire
us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always pre-
vent us from carrying them out."

"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I
like you so much."

"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied.
"Will you have some coffee, you fellows? — Waiter,
bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes.
No, don't mind the cigarettes; I have some. — Basil, I
can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a
cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect
pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatis-
fied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you
will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the
sins you have never had the courage to commit."

"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad,
taking a light from a fire-breathing silver dragon that
the waiter had placed on the table. "Let us go down
to the theater. When Sibyl comes on the stage you
will have a new ideal of life. She will represent some-
thing to you that you have never known."

"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with
a tired look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a
new emotion. I am afraid, however, that, for me at
any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your won-

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

derful girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so
much more real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you
will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there
is only room for two in the brougham. You must
follow us in a hansom."

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their
coffee standing. The painter was silent and pre-
occupied. There was a gloom over him. He could
not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be
better than many other things that might have hap-
pened. After a few minutes, they all passed down-
stairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged,
and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham
in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over
him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again
be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had
come between them. . . . His eyes darkened, and
the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes.
When the cab drew up at the theater it seemed to
him that he had grown years older.

96

VII

FOR some reason or other the house was crowded
that night, and the fat Jew manager who met
them at the door was beaming from ear to ear
with an oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to
their box with a sort of pompous humility, waving
his fat jeweled hands, and talking at the top of his
voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever.
He felt as if he had come to look for Miranda and had
been met by Caliban. Lord Henry, upon the other
hand, rather liked him (at least, he declared he did),
and insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assur-
ing him that he was proud to meet a man who had
discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a
poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the
faces in the pit. The heat was terribly oppressive,
and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia
with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery
had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung
them over the side. They talked to each other across
the theater, and shared their oranges with the tawdry
girls who sat beside them. Some women were laugh-
ing in the pit; their voices were horribly shrill and
discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came
from the bar.

"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord
Henry.

"Yes," answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I
found her, and she is divine beyond all living things.
When she acts you will forget everything. These

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

common rough people, with their coarse faces and
brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on
the stage. They sit silently and watch her. They
weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes
them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them,
and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood
as one's self."

"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I
hope not!" exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning
the occupants of the gallery through his opera-glass.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said
the painter. "I understand what you mean, and I
believe in this girl. Any one you love must be mar-
velous, and any girl that has the effect you describe
must be fine and noble. To spiritualize one's age —
that is something worth doing. If this girl can give
a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can
create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have
been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their
selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not
their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy
of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now.
The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her
you would have been incomplete."

"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing
his hand. "I knew that you would understand me.
Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here is the
orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for
about five minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you
will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my
life, to whom I have given everything that is good in
me."

A quarter of an hour afterward, amid an extraor-
dinary turmoil of applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at —
one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
that he had ever seen. There was something of the
fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. A faint
blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver,
came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded, en-
thusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces, and
her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to
his feet and began to applaud. Motionless, and as
one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her.
Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring,
"Charming! charming!"

The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and
Romeo in his pilgrim's dress had entered with Mer-
cutio and his other friends. The band, such as it was,
struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.
Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed
actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a creature from a finer
world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant
swayed in the water. The curves of her throat were
the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be
made of cool ivory.

Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign
of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few
words she had to speak —

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims9 hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss —

with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a
thoroughly artificial manner. The voice was exqui-
site, but from that point of view of tone it was abso-
lutely false. It was wrong in color. It took away all

99

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal
Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was
puzzled and anxious. Neither of his friends dared to
say anything to him. She seemed to them to be
absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disap-
pointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is in
the balcony scene of the second act. They waited for
that. If she failed there, there was nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moon-
light. That could not be denied. But the staginess
of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she
went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial.
She overemphasized everything that she had to say.
The beautiful passage —

Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,

Else would a maiden blush repaint my cheek

For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight —

was declaimed with the painful precision of a school-
girl who has been taught to recite by some second-rate
professor of elocution. When she leaned over the
balcony and came to those wonderful lines —

Although I joy in ihee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet —

she spoke the words as though they conveyed no
meaning to her. It was not nervousness. Indeed, so
100

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

far from being nervous, she was absolutely self-con-
tained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete
failure.

Even the common, uneducated audience of the pit
and gallery lost their interest in the play. They got
restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle. The
Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only
person unmoved was the girl herself.

When the second act was over there came a storm
of hisses, and Lord Henry got up from his chair and
put on his coat. "She is quite beautiful, Dorian,"
he said, "but she can't act. Let us go."

"I am going to see the play through," answered
the lad, in a hard, bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry
that I have made you waste an evening, Harry. I
apologize to you both."

"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was
ill," interrupted Hallward. "We will come some
other night."

"I wish she was ill," he rejoined. "But she seems
to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely
altered. Last night she was a great artist. This
evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre
actress."

"Don't talk like that about any one you love,
Dorian. Love is a more wonderful thing than Art."

"They are both simply forms of imitation," re-
marked Lord Henry. "But do let us go. Dorian,
you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for
one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't sup-
pose you will want your wife to act. So what does it
matter if she plays Juliet like a wooden doll? She is
very lovely, and if she knows as little about life as she
does about acting, she will be a delightful experience.

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THE PICTURE OF, DORIAN GRAY

There are only two kinds of people who are really
fascinating — people who know absolutely everything,
and people who know absolutely nothing. Good
heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The
secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion
that is unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil and
myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the
beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more
can you want?"

"Go away, Harry," cried the lad, "I want to be
alone! Basil, you must go. Ah! can't you see that
my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to his
eyes. His lips trembled, and, rushing to the back of
the box, he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face
in his hands.

"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry, with a
strange tenderness in his voice, and the two young
men passed out together.

A few moments afterward the footlights flared up,
and the curtain rose on the third act. Dorian Gray
went back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud,
and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed
interminable. Half of the audience went out, tramp-
ing in heavy boots, and laughing. The whole thing
was a fiasco. The last act was played to almost empty
benches. The curtain went down on a titter, and
some groans.

As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind
the scenes into the greenroom. The girl was standing
there alone, with a look of triumph on her face. Her
eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a
radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling
over some secret of their own.

When he entered she looked at him, and an expres-
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

sion of infinite joy came over her. "How badly I
acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.

"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amaze-
ment— "horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill?
You have no idea what it was. You have no idea
what I suffered."

The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, linger-
ing over his name with long-drawn music in her voice,
as though it were sweeter than honey to the red petals
of her mouth — "Dorian, you should have understood.
But you understand now, don't you?"

"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.

"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always
be bad. Why I shall never act well again."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I sup-
pose. When you are ill you shouldn't act. You
make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I
was bored."

She seemed not to listen to him. She was trans-
figured with joy. An ecstasy of happiness dominated
her.

"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you,
acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in
the theater that I lived. I thought that it was all
true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other.
The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of
Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything.
The common people who acted with me seemed to me
to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world.
I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them
real. You came — oh, my beautiful love! — and you
freed my soul from prison. You taught me what
reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my
life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always
played. To-night for the first time, I became con-
scious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and
painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false,
that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had
to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not
what I wanted to say. You had brought me some-
thing higher, something of which all art is but a reflec-
tion. You had made me understand what love really
is. My love! my love 1 Prince Charming! Prince
of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are
more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to
do with the puppets of a play? When I came on to-
night I could not understand how it was that every-
thing had gone from me. I thought that I was going
to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing.
Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant.
The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them
hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love
such as ours? Take me away, Dorian — take me away
with you, where we can be quite alone. I hate the
stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but
I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh,
Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it signifies?
Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me
to play at being in love. You have made me see that."

He flung himself down on the sofa, and turned
away his face. "You have killed my love," he mut-
tered.

She looked at him in wonder, and laughed. He
made no answer. She came across to him, and with
her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt down and
pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away,
and a shudder ran through him.

Then he leaped up, and went to the door. "Yes,"
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

he cried, "you have killed my love! You used to stir
my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curi-
osity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you
because you were marvelous, because you had genius
and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great
poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of
art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow
and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you!
What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me
now. I will never see you again. I will never think
of you. I will never mention your name. You don't
know what you were to me, once. Why, once . . .
Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never
laid eyes upon you ! You have spoiled the romance of
my life. How little you can know of love if you say
it mars your art ! Without your art you are nothing.
I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent.
The world would have worshiped you, and you would
have borne my name. What are you now? A third-
rate actress with a pretty face."

The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched
her hands together, and her voice seemed to catch in
her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?" she
murmured. "You are acting."

"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well,"
he answered, bitterly.

She rose from her knees, and, with a piteous expres-
sion of pain in her face, came across the room to him.
She put her hand upon his arm, and looked into his
eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he
cried.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself
at his feet, and lay there like a trampled flower.
"Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she whispered.
"I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

you all the time. But I will try — indeed, I will try.
It came so suddenly across me, my love for you. I
think I should never have known it if you had not
kissed me — if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me
again, my love. Don't go away from me. I couldn't
bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My brother
. . . No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He
was in jest. . . . But you, oh! can't you forgive
me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try to
improve. Don't be cruel to me, because I love you
better than anything in the world. After all, it is only
once that I have not pleased you. But you are quite
right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of
an artist. It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't
help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me!" A fit
of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on
the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with
his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiseled
lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always
something ridiculous about the emotion of people
whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to
him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs
annoyed him.

"I am going," he said at last, in his calm, clear
voice. "I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't see
you again. You have disappointed me."

She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept
nearer. Her little hands stretched blindly out, and
appeared to be seeking for him. He turned on his
heel, and left the room. In a few moments he was
out of the theater.

Where he went to he hardly knew. He remem-
bered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt,
black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses.
Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

called after him. Drunkards had reeled by cursing,
and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes.
He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-
steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.

As the dawn was just breaking he found himself
close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and,
flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into
a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The
air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and
their beauty seemed to bring him an. anodyne for his
pain. He followed into the market, and watched the
men unloading their wagons. A white-smocked
carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him,
wondered why he refused to accept any money for
them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been
plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had
entered into them. A long line of boys carrying
crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses,
defiled in front of him, threading their way through
the huge jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the
portico, with its gray sun-bleached pillars, loitered a
troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the
auction to be over. Others crowded round the swing-
ing doors of the coffee-house in the Piazza. The
heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough
stones, shaking their bells and trappings. Some of
the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-
necked, and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about pick-
ing up seeds.

After a little while he hailed a hansom, and drove
home. For a few moments he loitered upon the door-
step, looking round at the silent Square, with its
blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.
The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

houses glistened like silver against it. From some
chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising.
It curled, a violent riband, through the nacre-colored
air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some
Doge's barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great
oak-paneled hall of entrance, lights were still burning
from three flickering jets; thin blue petals of flame
they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned
them out, and, having thrown his hat and cape on the
table, passed through the library toward the door of
his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground
floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had
just had decorated for himself, and hung with some
curious Renaissance tapestries that had been discov-
ered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he
was turning the handle of the door his eyes fell upon
the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He
started back as if in surprise. Then he went on into
his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he
had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed
to hesitate. Finally he came back, went over to the
picture and examined it. * In the dim arrested light
that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds,
the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The
expression looked different. One would have said
that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It I
was certainly strange.

He turned round, and, walking to the window,
drew up the blinds. The bright dawn flooded the
room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusty cor-
ners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange
expression that he had noticed in the face of the por-
trait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified
even. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he
had been looking into a mirror after he had done some
dreadful thing.

He winced and taking up from the table an oval
glass framed in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's
many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its pol-
ished depths. No line like that warped his red lips.
What did it mean?

He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture,
and examined it again. There were no signs of any
change when he looked into the actual painting, and
yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had
altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The
thing was horribly apparent.

He threw himself into a chair, and began to think.
Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had
said in Basil Hallward's studio the day the picture had
been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He
had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain
young and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty
might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear
the burden of his passions and his sins; that the
painted image might be seared with the lines of suffer-
ing and thought, and that he might keep all the
delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious
boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled?
Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous
even to think of them. And yet there was the
picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the
mouth.

Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's
fault, not his. He had dreamed of her as a great
artist, had given his love to her because he had thought
her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had
been shallow and unworthy. And yet a feeling of

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

infinite regret came over him as he thought of her
lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. He re-
membered with what callousness he had watched her.
Why had he been made like that? Why had such a
soul been given to him? But he had suffered also.
During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted
he had lived centuries of pain, eon upon eon of tor-
ture. His life was well worth hers. She had marred
him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an
age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sor-
row than men. They lived on their emotions. They
only thought of their emotions. When they took
lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom
they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him
that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. Why
should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was
nothing to him now.

But the picture? What was he to say of that? It
held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had
taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach
him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at
it again?

No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the
troubled senses. The horrible night that he had
passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly there
had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that
makes men mad. The picture had not changed. It
was folly to think so.

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred
face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in
the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. [A
sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the
painted image of himself, came over him. It had
altered already, and would alter more. Its gold
would wither into gray. Its red and white roses
110

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

would die. For every sin that he committed, a
stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he
would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged,
would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.
He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord
Henry any more — would not, at any rate, listen to
those subtle, poisonous theories that in Basil Hall-
ward's garden had first stirred within him the passion
for impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl
Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her
again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have
suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had
been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that she
had exercised over him would return. They would
be happy together. His life with her would be beau-
tiful and pure.

He got up from his chair, and drew a large screen
right in front of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced
at it. "How horrible!" he muttered to himself, and
he walked across to the window and opened it. When
he stepped out onto the grass, he drew a deep breath.
The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his
sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl. A faint
echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her
name over and over again. The birds that were sing-
ing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling
the flowers about her.

Ill

VIII

IT was long past noon when he awoke. His valet
had crept several times on tiptoe into the room
to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what
made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell
sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea
and a pile of letters on a small tray of old Sevres
china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains, with
their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of
the three tall windows.

"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said,
smiling.

"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray,
drowsily*

"One hour and a quarter, monsieur."

How late it-was! He sat up, and, having sipped
some tea, turned over his letters. One of them was
from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand that
morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it
aside. The others he opened listlessly. They con-
tained the usual collection of cards, invitations to
dinner, tickets for private views, programs of charity
concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashion-
able young men every morning during the season.
There was a rather heavy bill for a chased silver Louis
Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet had the courage
to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-
fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an
age when unnecessary things are our only necessities ;
and there were several very courteously worded com-
112

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

munications from Jermyn Street money-lenders,
offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's
notice and at the most reasonable rates of interest.

After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing
on an elaborate dressing-gown of silk-embroidered
cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom.
The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep.
He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone
through. A dim sense of having taken part in some
strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there
was the unreality of a dream about it.

As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library
and sat down to a light French breakfast that had
been laid out for him on a small round table close to
the open window. It was an exquisite day. The
warm air seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in,
and buzzed around the blue-dragon bowl that, filled
with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him. He felt
perfectly happy.

Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had
placed in front of the portrait, and he started.

"Too cold for monsieur?" asked his valet, putting
an omelet on the table. "I shut the window."

Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he mur-
mured.

Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed?
Or had it been simply his own imagination that had
made him see a look of evil where there had been
a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not
alter? The thing was absurd. It would serve as a
tale to tell Basil some day. It would make him
smile.

And yet how vivid was his recollection of the whole
thing! First in the dim twilight, and then in the
bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving
the room. He knew that when he was alone he
would have to examine the portrait. He was afraid
of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes had
been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild
desire to tell him to remain. As the door was closing
behind him he called him back. The man stood wait-
ing for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a mo-
ment. "I am not at home to any one, Victor," he
said, with a sigh. The man bowed and retired.

Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and
flung himself down on a luxuriously cushioned couch
that stood facing the screen. The screen was an old
one of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought
with a rather florid Louis Quatorze pattern. He
scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it had
concealed the secret of a man's life.

Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it
stay there? What was the use of knowing? If the
thing was true, it was terrible. If it was not true,
why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or
deadlier chance, eyes other than his spied behind, and
saw the horrible change? What should he do if Basil
Hallward came and asked to look at his own picture?
Basil would be sure to do that. No ; the thing had to
be examined, and at once. Anything would be better
than this dreadful state of doubt.

He got up and locked both doors ; at least he would
be alone when he looked upon the mask of his shame.
Then he drew the screen aside, and saw himself face
to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
altered.

As he often remembered afterward, and always
with no small wonder, he found himself at first gazing
at the portrait with a feeling of almost scientific in-
114

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

terest. That such a change should have taken place
was incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was
there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms,
that shaped themselves into form and color on the
canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it
be that what that soul thought, they realized? — that
what it dreamed, they made true? Or was there some
other, more terrible reason? He shuddered and felt
afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing
at the picture in sickened horror.

One thing, however, he felt that it had done for
him : it had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel,
he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to
make reparation for that. She could still be his wife.
His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher
influence, would be transformed into some nobler pas-
sion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted
of him would be a guide to him through life, would be
to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to
others, and the fear of God to us all. There were
opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral
sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the
degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign
of the ruin men brought upon their souls.

Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half -hour
rang its double chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir.
He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life,
and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way
through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through
which he was wandering. He did not know what to
do or what to think. Finally, he went over to* the
table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he loved,
imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of
madness. He covered page after page with wild
words of sorrow, and wilder words of pain. There is

115

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves
we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is
the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
When Dorian Gray had finished the letter, he felt that
he had been forgiven.

Suddenly there came a knock at the door, and he
heard Lord Henry's voice outside. "My dear boy, I
must see you. Let me in at once. I can't bear your
shutting yourself up like this."

He made no answer at first, but remained quite still.
The knocking still continued, and grew louder. Yes,
it was better to let Lord Henry in, and to explain to
him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel with
him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part, i part-
ing was inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen
hastily across the picture, and unlocked the door.

"I am sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry,
as he entered. "But you must not think too much
about it."

"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.

"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking
into a chair, and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves.
"It is dreadful, from one point of view, but it was
not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see
her after the play was over?"

"Yes."

"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with
her?"

"I was brutal, Harry — perfectly brutal. But it is
all right now. I am not sorry for anything that
has happened. It has taught me to know myself
better."

"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way!
I was afraid I would find you plunged in remorse, and
tearing that nice curly hair of yours."
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking
his head, and smiling. "I am perfectly happy now.
I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not
what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in
us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more — at least, not
before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea
of my soul being hideous."

"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian!
I congratulate you on it. But how are you going to
begin?"

"By marrying Sibyl Vane."

"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, stand-
ing up, and looking at him in perplexed amazement.
"But, my dear Dorian — "

"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say.
Something dreadful about marriage. Don't say it.
Don't ever say things of that kind to me again. Two
days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going
to break my word to her. She is to be my wife."

"Your wife! Dorian! . . . Didn't you get
my letter? I wrote to you this morning, and sent
the note down by my own man."

"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not
read it yet, Harry. I was afraid there might be some-
thing in it that I wouldn't like. You cut life to
pieces with your epigrams."

"You know nothing, then?"

"What do you mean?"

Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting
down by Dorian Gray, took both his hands in his own,
and held them tightly. "Dorian," he said, "my let-
ter— don't be frightened — was to tell you that Sibyl
Vane is dead."

A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he
leaped to his feet, tearing his hands away from Lord

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead! It is not
true ! It is a horrible lie ! How dare you say it ?"

"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry,
gravely. "It is in all the morning papers. I wrote
down to you to ask you not to see any one till I came.
There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you
must not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a
man fashionable in Paris. But in London people are
so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's
debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give
an interest to one's old age. I suppose they don't
know your name at the theater. If they don't, it is
all right. Did any one see you going round to her
room? That is an important point."

Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He
was dazed with horror. Finally he stammered, in a -
stifled voice: "Harry, did you say an inquest? What
did you mean by that? Did Sibyl — Oh, Harry I
can't bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at

once."

"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian,
though it must be put in that way to the public. It
seems that as she was leaving the theater with her
mother, about half -past twelve or so, she said she had
forgotten something up-stairs. They waited some
time for her, but she did not come down again. They
ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her
dressing-room. She had swallowed something by
mistake, some dreadful thing they use at theaters. I
don't know what it was, but it had either prussic acid
or white lead in it. I should fancy it was prussic
acid, and she seems to have died instantaneously."

"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.

"Yes, it is very tragic, of course, but you must not
get yourself mixed up in it. I see by The Standard
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

that she was seventeen. I should have thought she
was almost younger than that. She looked such a
child, and seemed to know so little about acting.
Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your nerves.
You must come and dine with me, and afterward we
will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and
everybody will be there. You can come to my sister's
box. She has got some smart women with her."

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian
Gray, half to himself — "murdered her as surely as if
I had cut her little throat with a knife. Yet the
roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing
just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to
dine with you, and then go on to the Opera, and sup
somewhere, I suppose, afterward. How extraordina-
rily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow,
now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems
far too wonderful for tears. Here is the first passion-
ate love-letter I have ever written in 'my life.
Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should
have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I
wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?
Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry,
how I loved her once ! It seems years ago to me now.
She was everything to me. Then came that dreadful
night — was it really only last night? — when she
played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She
explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic. But
I was not moved a bit. I thought her shallow. Sud-
denly something happened that made me afraid. I
can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible. I said
I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong.
And now she is dead. My God! my God! Harry,
what shall I do? You don't know the danger I am

119

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

in, and there is nothing to keep me straight. She
would have done that for me. She had no right to
kill herself. It was selfish of her."

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking
a cigarette from his case, and producing a gold-latten
match-box, "the only way a woman can ever reform a
man is by boring him so completely that he loses all
possible interest in life. If you had married this girl
you would have been wretched. Of course, you would
have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to
people about whom one cares nothing. But she would
have soon found out that you were absolutely indiffer-
ent to her. And when a woman finds that out about
her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or
wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's
husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the
social mistake, which would have been abject, which,
of course, I would not have allowed, but I assure you
that in any case the whole thing would have been an
absolute failure."

"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up
and down the room, and looking horribly pale. "But
I thought it was my duty. It is not my fault that this
terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was
right. I remember your saying once that there is a
fatality about good resolutions — that they are always
made too late. Mine certainly were."

"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere
with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity.
Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and
then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that
have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that
can be said for them. They are simply cheques that
men draw on a bank where they have no account."

"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sit-
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ting down beside him, "why is it that I cannot feel
this tragedy as much as I want to? I don't think I
am heartless. Do you?"

"You have done too many foolish things during
the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that
name, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, with his sweet,
melancholy smile.

The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation,
Harry," he rejoined, "but I am glad you don't think
I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind. I know I
am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that
has happened does not affect me as it should. It
seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a
wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a
Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part,
but by which I have not been wounded."

"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry,
who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the
lad's unconscious egotism — "an extremely interesting
question. I fancy that the true explanation is this.
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur
in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their
crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd
want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They
affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt
against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that
possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives.
If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing
simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Sud-
denly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the
spectators of the play; or, rather, we are both. We
watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle
enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has
really happened? Some one has killed herself for love

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experi-
ence. It would have made me in love with love for
the rest of my life. The people who have adored me
—there have not been very many, but there have
been some — have always insisted on living on, long
, after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care
for me. They have become stout and tedious, and
when I meet them they go in at once for reminiscen-
ces. That awful memory of woman! What a fear-
ful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual
stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the color
of life, but one should never remember its details.
Details are always vulgar."

"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.

"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion.
"Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course,
now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but
violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
mourning for a romance that would not die. Ulti-
mately, however, it did die. I forget what killed
it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the
whole world for me. That is always a dreadful
moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
Well — would you believe it? — a week ago, at Lady
Hampshire's I found myself seated at dinner next
the lady in question, and she insisted on going over
the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and
raking up the future. I had buried my romance in a
bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again, and
assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound
to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not
feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
^ showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the
past. But women never know when the curtain has
fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

as the interest of the play is entirely over they pro-
pose to continue it. If they were allowed their own
way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and
every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are
charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.
You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you,
Dorian, that not one of the women I have known
would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you.
Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of
them do it by going in for sentimental colors. Never
trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age
may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of
pink ribbons. It always means that they have a his-
tory. Others find a great consolation in suddenly dis-
covering the good qualities of their husbands. They
flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were
the most fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some.
Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a
woman once told me; and I can quite understand it.
Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that
one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
Yes, there is really no end to the consolations that
women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not men-
tioned the most important one."

"What is that, Harry?" said the lad, listlessly.

"Oh, the oBvious consolation. Taking some one
else's admirer when one loses one's own. In good
society that always whitewashes a woman. But really,
Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been
from all the women one meets! There is something
to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I
am living in a century when such wonders happen.
They make one believe in the reality of the things
we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love."

"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."

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"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, down-
right cruelty, more than anything else. They have
wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emanci-
pated them, but they remain slaves looking for their
masters, all the same. They love being dominated.
I am sure you were splendid. I have never seen you
really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how de-
lightful you looked. And, after all, you said some-
thing to me the day before yesterday that seemed to
me at the time to be merely fanciful, but that I see
now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to
everything."

"What was that, Harry?"

"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you
all the heroines of romance — that she was Desdemona
one night, and Orphelia the other; that if she died as
Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."

"She will never come to life again now," muttered
the lad, burying his face in his hands.

"No, she will never come to life. She has played
her last part. But you must think of that lonely
death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange
lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a
wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril
Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has
never really died. To you at least she was always a
dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's
plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed
through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and
more full of joy. The moment she touched actual
life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed
away. Mourn for Orphelia, if you like. Put ashes
on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry
out against Heaven because the daughter of Bra-
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

bantio died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl
Vane. She was less real than they are."

There was a silence. The evening darkened in the
room. Noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows
crept in from the garden. The colors faded wearily
out of things.

After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You
have explained me to myself, Harry," he murmured,
with something of a sigh of relief. "I felt all that
you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I
could not express it to myself. How well you know
me! But we will not talk again of what has hap-
pened. It has been a marvelous experience. That
is all. I wonder if life has still in store for me any-
thing as marvelous."

"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian.
There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary
good looks, will not be able to do."

"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old,
and wrinkled? What then?"

"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go — "then,
my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your vic-
tories. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you
must keep your good looks. We live in an age that
reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much
to be beautiful. We can not spare you. And now
you had better dress, and drive down to the club. We
are rather late, as it is."

"I think I shall join you at the Opera, Harry. I
feel too tired to eat anything. What is the number of
your sister's box?"

"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier.
You will see her name on the door. But I am sorry
you won't come and dine."

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian, listlessly.
"But I am awfully obliged to you for all that you
have said to me. You are certainly my best friend.
No one has ever understood me as you have."

"We are only at the beginning of our friendship,
Dorian," answered Lord Henry, shaking him by the
hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before nine-
thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."

As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray
touched the bell, and in a few minutes Victor appeared
with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He waited
impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take
an interminable time over everything.

As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen, and
drew it back. No ; there was no further change in the

Sicture. It had received the news of Sibyl Vane's
eath before he had known of it himself. It was con-
scious of the events of life as they occurred. The
vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth
had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the
girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was
it indifferent to results? Did it merely take cogni-
zance of what passed within the soul? He wondered,
and hoped that some day he would see the change
taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he
hoped it.

Poor Sibyl! what a romance it had all been! She
had often mimicked death on the stage. Then Death
himself had touched her, and taken her with him.
How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had
she cursed him as she died? No; she had died fof
love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to
him now. She had atoned for everything by the sao-
rifice she had made of her life. He would not think
any more of what she had made him go through on
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

that horrible night at the theater. When he thought
of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on
to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of
Love. A wonderful tragic figure? Tears came to
his eyes as he remembered her childlike look and win-
some fanciful ways and shy tremulous grace. He
brushed them away hastily, and looked again at the
picture.

He felt that the time had really come for making
his choice. Or had his choice already been made?
Yes, life had decided that for him — life, and his own
infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite
passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and
wilder sins — he was to have all these things. The
portrait was to bear the burden of his shame; that
was all.

A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of
the desecration that was in store for the fair face on
the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he
had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that
now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morn-
ing he had sat before the portrait wondering at its
beauty, almost enamored of it, as it seemed to him at
times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which
he yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loath-
some thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to
be shut out from the sunlight that had so often
touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its
hair? The pity of it! the pity of it!

For a moment he thought of praying that the hor-
rible sympathy that existed between him and the pic-
ture might cease. It had changed in answer to a
prayer ; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain
unchanged. And yet who that knew anything about
Life would surrender the chance of remaining always

127

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young, however fantastic that chance might be, or
with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?
Besides, was it really under his control? Had it in-
deed been prayer that had produced the substitution?
Might there not be some curious scientific reason for
it all? If thought could exercise its influence upon a
living organism, might not thought exercise an influ-
ence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without
thought or conscious desire, might not things external
to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and
passions, atom calling to atom, in secret love or
strange affinity? But the reason was of no impor-
tance. He would never again attempt by prayer any
terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was
to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely
into it?

For there would be a real pleasure in watching it,
He would be able to follow his mind into its secret
places. This portrait would be to him the most mag-
ical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own
body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. And
when winter came upon it, he would still be standing
where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a
pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep
the glamour of boyhood. Not one blossom of his
loveliness would ever fade, not one pulse of his life
would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he
would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did
it matter what happened to the colored image on the
canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.

He drew the screen back into its former place in
front of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed
into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting
for him. An hour later he was at the Opera, and
Lord Henry was leaning over his chair.
128 "

rx

AS he was sitting at breakfast next morning,
Basil Hallward was shown into the room.
"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,"
he said, gravely. "I called last night, and they told
me you were at the Opera. Of course, I knew that
was impossible. But I wish you had left word where
you had really gone to. I passed a dreadful evening,
half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by
another. I think you might have telegraphed for me
when you heard of it first. I read of it quite by
chance in a late edition of the Globe that I picked up
at the club. I came here at once, and was miserable
at not finding you. I can't tell you how heart-broken
I am about the whole thing. I know what you must
suffer. But where were you? Did you go down and
see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of
following you there. They gave the address in the
paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it? But
I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that I could
not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must
be in! And her only child, too! What did she say
about it all?"

"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured
Dorian Gray, sipping some pale-yellow wine from a
delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass, and
looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the Opera.
You should have come on there. I met Lady
Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first time. We
were in her box. She is perfectly charming; and
Patti sung divinely. Don't talk about horrid sub-

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jects. If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never
happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says,
that gives reality to things. I may mention that she
was not the woman's only child. There is a son, a
charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the
stage. He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell
me about yourself and what you are painting."

"You went to the Opera?" said Hallward, speak-
ing very slowly, and with a strained touch of pain in
his voice. "You went to the Opera while Sibyl Vane
was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can
talk to me of other women being charming, and of
Patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved has
even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man,
there are horrors in store for that little white body of
hers!"

"Stop Basil! I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leap-
ing to his feet. "You must not tell me about things.
What is done is done. What is past is past."

"You call yesterday the past?"

"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with
it? It is only shallow people who require years to
get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of him-
self can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a
pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my
emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to
dominate them."

"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed
you completely. You look exactly the same wonder-
ful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my
studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple,
natural, and affectionate then. You were the most
unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don't
know what has come over you. You talk as if you
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influ-
ence. I see that."

The lad flushed up, and going to the window looked
for a few moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed
garden. "I owe a great deal to Harry, Basil," he
said at last — "more than I owe to you. You only
taught me to be vain."

"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian — or shall he
some day."

"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he ex-
claimed, turning round. "I don't know what you
want. What do you want?"

"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the
artist, sadly.

"Basil," said the lad, going over to him, and put-
ting his hand on his shoulder, "you have come too
late. Yesterday, when I heard that Sibyl Vane had
killed herself—"

"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt
about that?" cried Hallward, looking up at him with
an expression of horror.

"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a
vulgar accident? Of course she killed herself."

The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How
fearful!" he muttered, and a shudder ran through
him.

"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful
about it. It is one of the great romantic tragedies of
the age. As a rule, people who act lead the most
commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or
faithful wives, or something tedious. You know what
I mean — middle-class virtue, and all that kind of
thing. How different Sibyl was! She lived her
finest tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

night she played — the night you saw her — she acted
badly because she had known the reality of love.
When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might
have died. She passed again into the sphere of art.
There is something of the martyr about her. Her
death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom,
all its wasted beauty. But, as I was saying, you
must not think I have not suffered. If you had come
in yesterday at a particular moment — about half -past
five, perhaps, or a quarter to six — you would have
found me in tears. Even Harry, who was here — who
brought me the news, in- fact — had no idea of what I
was going through. I suffered immensely. Then it
passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one
1 £ can, except sentimentalists. And you are awfully un-
just, Basil. You come down here to console me.
That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and
you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!
You remind me of a story Harry told me about a
certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his
life in trying to get some grievance redressed, or some
unjust law altered — I forget exactly what it was.
Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his
disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do,
almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misan-
thrope. And, besides, my dear old Basil, if you really
want to console me, teach me rather to forget what
has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point
of view. Was it not Gautier who used to write about
la consolation des art? I remember picking up a little
vellum-covered book in your studio one day and
chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not
like that young man you told me of when we were
down at Marlowe together, the young man who used
to say that yellow satin could console one for all the
132 *

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

miseries of life. I love beautiful things that one can
touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes,
lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,
luxury, pomp — there is much to be got from all these.
[But the artistic temperament that they create, or at
any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become the
spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape
the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my
talking to you like this. You have not realized how I
have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew
me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new
thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must
not like me less. I am changed, but you must always
be my friend. Of course, I am very fond of Harry.
But I know you are better than he is. You are not
stronger — you are too much afraid of life — but you
are better. And how happy we used to be together!
Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel with me. I
am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."

The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was in-
finitely dear to him, and his personality had been the
great turning-point in his art. He could not bear the
idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his in-
difference was probably merely a mood that would
pass away. There was so much in him that was good,
so much in him that was noble.

"Well, Dorian," he said, at length, with a sad smile,
"I won't speak to you again about this horrible
thing after to-day. I only trust your name won't be
mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to
take place this afternoon. Have they summoned
you?"

Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance
passed over his face at the mention of the word "in-
quest." There was something so crude and vulgar

133

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

about everything of the kind. "They don't know
my name," he answered.

"But surely she did?"

"Only my Christian name, and that, I am quite sure,
she never mentioned to any one. She told me once
that they were all rather curious to learn who I was,
and that she invariably told them my name was Prince
Charming. It was pretty of her. You must do me a
drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have some-
thing more of her than the memory of a few kisses
and some broken, pathetic words."

"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would
please you. But you must come and sit to me yourself
again. I can't get on without you."

"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impos-
sible!" he exclaimed, starting back.

The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what
nonsense!" he cried. "Do you mean to say you don't
like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have
you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look
at it. It is the best thing I have ever done. Do take
the screen away, Dorian; it is simply disgraceful
of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the
room looked different as I came in." '

"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You
don't imagine I let him arrange my room for me?
He settles my flowers for me sometimes — that is all.
No ; I did it myself. The light was too strong on the
portrait."

"Too strong! Impossible, my dear fellow! It is
an admirable place for it. Let me see it." And
Hallward walked toward the corner of the room.

A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips
and he rushed between the painter and the screen.
134

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must not
look at it. I don't wish you to."

"Not look at my own work! You are not serious.
Why shouldn't I look at it?" exclaimed Hallward,
laughing.

"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of
honor I will never speak to you again as long as I
live. I am quite serious. I don't offer any explana-
tion, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember,
if you touch this screen, everything is over between

us."

Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at
Dorian Gray in absolute amazement. He had never
seen him like this before. The lad was actually pallid
with rage. His hands were clenched, and the pupils
of his eyes were like disks of blue fire. He was
trembling all over.

"Dorian!"

"Don't speak!"

"But what is the matter? Of course, I won't look
at it if you don't want me to," he said, rather
coldly, turning on his Heel, and going over toward
the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that
I shouldn't see my own work, especially as I am
going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn. I shall
probably have to give it another coat of varnish before
that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?"

"To exhibit it ! You want to exhibit it ?" exclaimed
Dorian Gray, a strange sense of terror creeping
over him. Was the world going to be shown his
secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his
life? That was impossible. Something — he did not
know what — had to be done at once.

"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Georges Petit is going to collect all my best pictures
for a special exhibition in the Rue de Seze, which will
open the first week in October. The portrait will only
be away a month. I should think you could easily
spare it for that time. In fact, you are sure to be out
of town. And if you keep it always behind a screen,
you can't care much about it."

Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.
There were beads of perspiration there. He felt that
he was on the brink of a horrible danger. "You told
me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he
cried* "Why have you changed your mind? You
people who go in for being consistent have just as
many moods as others have. The only difference is
that your moods are rather meaningless. You can't
have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that
nothing in the world would induce you to send it to
any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same
thing." He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light
came into his eyes. He remembered that Lord Henry
had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest:
"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour,
get Basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture.
He told me why he wouldn't, and it was a revelation
to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He
would ask him and try.

"Basil," he said, coming over quite close and looking
him straight in the face, "we have each of us a secret.
Let me know yours, and I shall tell you mine. What
was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?"

The painter shuddered in spite of himself.
"Dorian, if I told you, you might like me less than you
do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I could not
bear your doing either of those two things. If you
wish me never to look at your picture again, I am
136

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

content. I have always you to look at. If you wish
the best work I have ever done to be hidden from the
world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to
me than any fame or reputation."

"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian
Gray. "I think I have a right to know." His feel-
ing of terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken
its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hall-
ward's mystery.

"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking
troubled. "Let us sit down. And just answer. me
one question. Have you noticed in the picture
something curious? — something that probably at first
did not strike you, but that revealed itself to you sud-
denly?"

"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his
chair with trembling hands, and gazing at him with
wild, startled eyes.

"I see you (fid. Don't speak. Wait till you hear
what I have to say. Dorian, from the moment I met
you, your personality had the most extraordinary in-
fluence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and
power, by you. You became to me the visible incar-
nation of that unseen jdeal whose memory haunts us
artists like an exquisite dream. I worshiped you. I
grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I
wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy
when I was with you. When you were away from
me you were still present in my art. ... Of
course, I never let you know anything about this. It
would have been impossible. You would not have
understood it; I hardly understood it myself. I only
knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that
the world had become wonderful to my eyes — too
wonderful, perhaps ; for in such mad worships there is

137

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

il, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
keeping them. . . . Weeks and weeks went on,
and I grew more and more absorbed in you. Then
came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris
in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak
and polished boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-
blossoms, you had sat on the prow of Adrian's barge,
gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leaned
over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen
in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own
face; and it had all been what art should be — uncon-
scious, ideal, and remote. One day — a fatal day, I
sometimes think — I determined to paint a wonderful
portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume
of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own
time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or
the mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly
presented to me without mist or veil, I can not tell.
But I know that as I worked at it every flake and
film of color seemed to me to reveal my secret. I
grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry.
I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had
put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I
resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited.
You were a little annoyed, but then you did not realize
all that it meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked
about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that.
When the picture was finished, and I sat alone with
it, I felt that I was right. . . . Well, after a few
days the thing left my studio, and as soon as I had got
rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it
seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining
that I had seen anything in it, more than that you
were extremely good-looking and that I could paint.
Even now I can not help feeling that it is a mistake to
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really
shown in the work one creates. Art is always more
abstract than we fancy. Form and color tell us of
form and color — that is all. It often seems to me that
art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever
reveals him. And so when I got this offer from Paris
I determined to make your portrait the principal thing
in my exhibition. It never occurred to me that you
would refuse. I see now that you were right. The
picture cannot be shown. You must not be angry
with me, Dorian, for what I have told you. As I said
to Harry once, you are made to be worshiped."

Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The color came
back to his cheeks, and a smile played about his lips.
The peril was over. He was safe for the time. Yet
he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter
who had just made this strange confession to him, and
wondered if he himself would ever be so dominated by
the personality of a friend. Lord Henry had the
charm of being very dangerous. But that was all.
He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of.
Would there ever be some one who would fill him with
a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things that
life had in store?

"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward,
"that you should have seen this in the portrait. Did
you really see it?"

"I saw something in it," he answered — "something
that seemed to be very curious."

"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing
now?"

Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me
that, Basil. I could not possibly let you stand in front
of that picture."

"You will some day, surely?"

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Never."

"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye,
Dorian. You have been the one person in my life who
has really influenced my art. Whatever I have done
that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don't know
what it cost me to tell you all that I have told you,"

"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told
me? Simply that you felt that you admired me too
much. That is not even a compliment."

"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a
confession. Now that I have made it, something
seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should
never put one's worship into words."

"It was a very disappointing confession."

"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't
see anything else in the picture, did you? There was
nothing else to see?"

"No, there was nothing else to see. Why do you
ask? But you mustn't talk about worship. It is
foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must
alway remain so."

"You have got Harry," said the painter, sadly.

"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of
laughter. "Harry spends his days in saying what is
incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improba-
ble. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But
still I don't think I would go to Harry if I were in
trouble. I would sooner go to you, Basil."

"You will sit to me again?"

"Impossible!"

"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian.
No man came across two ideal things. Few come

across one."

"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never
sit to you again. There is something fatal about a
140

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

portrait. It has a life of its own. I will come and
have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant."

"Pleasanter for you, I'm afraid," murmured Hall-
ward, regretfully. "And now good-bye. I am sorry
you won't let me look at the picture once again. But
that can't be helped. I quite understand what you
feel about it."

As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.
Poor Basil! how little he knew of the true reason.
And how strange it was that, instead of having been
forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded almost
by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How
much that strange confession explained to him! The
painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his
extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences — he un-
derstood them all now, and he felt sorry. There
seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship
so colored by romance.

He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must
be hidden away at all costs. He could not run such a
risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to
have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in
a room to which any of his friends had access.

141

X

WHEN his servant entered, he looked at him
steadfastly, and wondered if he had thought
of peering behind the screen. The man was
quite impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian
lit a cigarette, and walked over to the glass and
glanced into it. He could see the reflection of Vic-
tor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of
servility. There was nothing to be afraid of there.
Yet he thought it best to be on his guard.

Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-
keeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to
the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men
round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left
the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the
screen. Or was that merely his own fancy?

After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with
old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands,
Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for
the key of the schoolroom.

"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian!" she ex-
claimed. "Why, it is full of dust. I must get it
arranged and put straight before you go into it. It is
not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."

"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want
the key."

"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you
go into it. Why, it hasn't been opened for nearly
five years — not since his lordship died."

He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He
142

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

had hateful memories of him. "That does not mat-
ter," he answered. "I simply want to see the place —
that is all. Give me the key."

"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going
over the contents of her bunch with tremulously un-
certain hands. "Here is the key. I'll have it off the
bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living
up there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"

"No, no!" he cried, petulantly. "Thank you,
Leaf. That will do."

She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous
over some detail of the household. He sighed, and
told her to manage things as she thought best. She
left the room, wreathed in smiles.

As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his
pocket Mid looked around the room. His eye fell on
a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with
gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
Venetian work that his grandfather- had found in a
con vent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap
th.e dreadful thing in. It had, perhaps, served often
a,s a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something
ithat had a corruption of its own, worse than the cor-
/!ruption of death itself — something that would breed
horrors and yet would never die. What the worm
was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted
image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty,
and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and
make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live
on. It would be always alive.

He shuddered, and for a moment, he regretted that
he had not told Basil the true reason why he had
wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have
helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the
still more poisonous influences that came from his own

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

temperament. The love that he bore him — for it was
really love — had nothing in it that was not noble and
intellectual. It was not that mere physical admira-
tion of beauty that is born of the senses, and that
dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael
Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckel-
mann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could
have saved him. But it was too late now. The past
could always be annihilated; regret, denial, or for get-
fulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
There were passions in him that would find their ter-
rible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of
their evil real.

He took up from the couch the great pu'.'ple-and-
gold texture that covered it, and, holding ;t in his
hands, passed behind the screen. Was the .face on
the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that
it was unchanged; and yet his loathing of it was in-
tensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips—-
they all were there. It was simply the expression
that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty.
Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke,
how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl Vane had
been! — how shallow, and of what little account? His
own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and
calling him to judgment. A look of pain came across
him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. As
he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out
as his servant entered.

"The persons are here, monsieur."

He felt that the man must be got rid of at once.
He must not be allowed to know where the picture
was being taken to. There was something sly about
him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sit-
ting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to
144

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Lord Henry, asking him to send him round some-
thing to read, and reminding .him that they were to
meet at eight-fifteen that evening.

"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him,
"and show the men in here."

In two or three minutes there was another knock,
and Mr. Hubbard himself, the celebrated frame-maker
of South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat
rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a
florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for
art was considerably tempered by the inveterate im-
pecuniosity of most of the artists who dwelt with him.
As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for
people to come to him. But he always made an ex-
ception in favor of Dorian Gray. There was some-
thing about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was
a pleasure even to see him.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said,
rubbing his fat, freckled hands\ "I thought I would
do myself the honor of coming round in person. I
have just got a beauty of a frame sir. Picked it up
at a sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I
believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject,
Mr. Gray."

"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble
of coming around, Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly
drop in and look at the frame — though I don't go in
much at present for religious art — but to-day I only
want a picture carried to the top of the house for me.
It is rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to
lend me a couple of your men."

"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be
of any service to you. Which is the work of art, sir?"

"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back.
"Can you move it, covering and all, just as it is? I

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

don't want it to get scratched going up-stairs.'5

"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial
frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant,
to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by
which it was suspended. "And now where shall we
carry it to, Mr. Gray?"

"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you
will kindly follow me; or perhaps you had better go
in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of the
house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is
wider."

He held the door open for them, and they passed out
into the hall and began the ascent. The elaborate
character of the frame had made the picture extremely
bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had aT true trades-
man's spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing
anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to
help them.

"Something of a load to carry, sir" gasped the little
man, when they reached the top landing. And he
wiped his shiny forehead.

"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian,
as he unlocked the door that opened into the room
that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life
and hide his soul from the eyes of men.

He had not entered the place for more than four
years — not, indeed, since he had used it first as a play-
room when he was a child, and then as a study when
he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-propor-
tioned room, which had been specially built by the last
Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom,
for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for
other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep
at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
146

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

changed. There was a huge Italian cassone, with
its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt
moldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as
a boy. There the satinwood bookcase filled with his
dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was
hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a
faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,
while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded
birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he re-
membered it all! Every moment of his lonely child-
hood came back to him as he looked round. He re-
called the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it
seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal por-
trait was to be hidden away. How little he had
thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store
for him!

But there was no other place in the house so secure
from prying eyes as this. He had the key, and no one
else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall the face
painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it.
He himself would not see it. Why should he watch
the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept 'his
youth — that was enough. And, besides, might not
his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason
that the future should be so full of shame. Some love
might come across his life, and purify him, and shield
him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring
in spirit and in flesh — those curious, unpictured sins
whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their
charm. Perhaps some day the cruel look would
have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth,
and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's
masterpiece.

No; that was impossible. Hour by hour and week

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

by week the thing upon the canvas was growing old.
It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hide-
ousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would
become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's-feet would
creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible.
The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would
gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the
mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled
throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body,
that he remembered in the grandfather who had been
so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be
concealed. There was no help for it.

"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wear-
ily, turning round. "I am sorry I kept you so long.
I was thinking of something else."

"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered
the frame-maker, who was still gasping for breath.
"Where shall we put it, sir?"

"Oh, anywhere. Here, this will do. I don't want
to have it hung up. Just lean it against the wall.
Thanks."

"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr.
Hubbard," he said, keeping his eye on the man. He
felt ready to leap upon him and fling him to the
ground if he dared lift the gorgeous hanging that
concealed the secret of his life. "I sha'n't trouble
you any more now. I am much obliged for your
kindness in coming round."

"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do
anything for you, sir." And Mr; Hubbard tramped
down-stairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced
back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough,
uncomely face. He had never seen any one so mar-
velous.

148

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

When the sound of their footsteps had died away,
Dorian locked the door and put the key in his pocket.
He felt safe now. No one would ever look upon the
horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his
shame.

On reaching the library he found that it was just
after five o'clock, and that the tea had been already
brought up. On a little table of dark, perfumed
wood, thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from
Lady Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty profes-
sional invalid, who had spent the preceding winter in
Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside
it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly
torn and the edges soiled. A copy of the third edition
of The St. James's Gazette had been placed on the
tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned.
He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they
were leaving the house, and had wormed out of them
what they had been doing. He would be sure to miss
the picture — had no doubt missed it already, while he
had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not
been set back, and the blank space was visible on the
wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping
up-stairs and trying to force the door of the room. It
was a terrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He
had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all
their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or
overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an
address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
or a shred of crumpled lace.

He sighed, and, having poured himself out some
tea, opened Lord Henry's note. It was* simply to say
that he sent him round the evening paper and a book
that might interest him, and that he would be at the
club at eight-fifteen. He opened The St. James's

149

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark
on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention
to the following paragraph:

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.— An inquest was held
this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by
Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl
Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal
Theater, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadven-
ture was returned. Considerable sympathy was ex-
pressed for the mother of the deceased, who was
greatly affected during the giving of her own evi-
dence and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-
mortem examination of the deceased.

He frowned, and, tearing the paper in two, went
across the room and flung the pieces away. How
ugly it all was ! And how horribly real ugliness made
things ! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
having sent him the report. And it was certainly
stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil.
Victor might frave read it. The man knew more than
enough English for that.

Perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect
something. And yet, what did it matter? What
had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death?
There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not
killed her.

His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry
had sent him. What was it? he wondered. He went
toward the little pearl-colored octagonal stand, that
had always looked to him like the work of some
strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and
taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-
chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a
150

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest
book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in
exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes,
the sins of the world were passing in dumb show be-
fore him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were
suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had
never dreamed were gradually revealed.

It was a novel without a plot, and with only one
character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study
of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying
to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and
modes of thought that belonged to every century ex-
cept his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the
various moods through which the world-spirit had ever
passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renun-
ciations that men have unwisely called virtue as much
as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.
The style in which it was written was that curidus
jeweled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot
and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elab-
orate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some
of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes.
There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids,
and as subtle in color. The life of the senses was de-
scribed in the terms of mystical philosophy. One
hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the mor-
bid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poison-
ous book. The heavy odor of incense seemed to cling
about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their
music, so full as it was of complex refrains and move-
ments elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of
the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form
of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him

151

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

unconscious of the falling day and the creeping
shadows.

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a cop-
per-green sky gleamed through the windows. He
read on by its wan light till he could read no more.
Then, after his valet had reminded him several times
of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into
the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine
table that always stood at his bedside, and began to
dress for dinner.

It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the
club, where he found Lord Henry sitting alone, in
the morning-room, looking very much bored.

"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is
entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fas-
cinated me that I forgot how the time was going."

"Yes? I thought you would like it," replied his
host, rising from his chair.

"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated
me. There is a great difference."

"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord
Henry. And they passed into the dining-room.

152

XI

FOR years Dorian Gray could not free himself
from the influence of this book; or perhaps
it would be more accurate to say that he never
sought to free himself from it. He procured from
Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first
edition, and had them bound in different colors, so
that they might suit his various moods and the chang-
ing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at
times, to have almost entirely lost control. The hero,
the wonderful young Parisian, in whom the romantic
and the scientific temperament were, so strangely
blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of
himself. And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him
to contain the story of his own life, written before he
had lived it.

In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's
fantastic hero. He never knew — never, indeed, had
any cause to know — that somewhat grotesque dread
of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
water, which came upon the young Parisian so early
in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of
a beauty that had once, apparently, been so remark-
able. It was with an almost cruel joy — and perhaps
in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure,
cruelty has its place — that he used to read the latter
part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat
over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and despair
of one who had himself lost what in others, and in
the world, he had most dearly valued.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated
Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed
never to leave him. Even those who had heard the
most evil things against him (and from time to time
strange rumors about his mode of life crept through
London and became the chatter of the clubs) could not
believe anything to his dishonor when they saw him.
He had always the look of one who had kept himself
unspotted from the world. Men who talked grossly
became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room.
There was something in the purity of his face that re-
buked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to
them the memory of the innocence that they had tar-
nished. They wondered how one so charming and
graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an
age that was at once sordid and sensual.

Often, on returning home from one of those mys-
terious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such
strange conjecture among those who were his friends,
or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
up-stairs to the locked room, open the door with the
key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror,
in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had
painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face
on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that
laughed back at him from the polished glass. The
very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his
sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamored
of his own beauty, more and more interested in the
corruption of his own soul. He would examine with
minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the
wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy,
sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the
more horrible the signs of sin or the signs of age.
154

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He would place his white hands beside the coarse,
bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked
the misshapen body and the failing limbs.

There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying
sleepless in his own delicately scented chamber, or in
the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the
Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in dis-
guise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of
the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that
was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish.
But moments such as these were rare. That curiosity
about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him,
as they sat together in the garden of their friend,
seemed to increase with gratification. The more he
knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad
hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate, in his
relation to society. Once or twice every month dur-
ing the winter, and on each Wednesday evening while
the season lasted, he would throw open to the world
his beautiful house, and have the most celebrated
musicians of the day to charm his guests with the
wonders of their art. His little dinners, in the set-
tling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were
noted as much for the careful selection and placing
of those invited as for the exquisite taste shown in the
decoration of the table, with its subtle symphonic ar-
rangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths,
and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there
were many, especially among the very young men,
who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the
true realization of a type of which they had often
dreamed in Eton or Oxford days — a type that was to
combine something of the real culture of the scholar
with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be
of the company whom Dante describes as having
sought to "make themselves perfect by the worship of
beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom "the
visible world existed."

And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the
greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts
seemed to be but a preparation. Fashion, by which
what is really fantastic becomes for a moment univer-
sal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an at-
tempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had,
of course, their fascination for him. His mode of
dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
time he affected, had their marked influence on the
young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall
club windows, who copied him in everything that he
did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his
graceful, though to him only half -serious fopperies.

For while he was but too ready to accept the posi-
tion that was almost immediately offered to him on his
coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in
the thought that he might really become to the Lon-
don of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome
the author of the "Satyricon" once had been, yet in
his inmost heart he desired to be something more t7 **i
a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the
wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the
conduct of a cane. He sought to elaborate some new
scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy
and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualiz-
ing of the senses its highest realization.

The worship of the senses has often, and with much

justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of

terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger

than themselves, and that they are conscious of shar-

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ing with the less highly organized forms of existence.
But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature
of the senses had never been understood, and that they
had remained savage and animal merely because the
world had sought to starve them into submission or to
kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them
elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct
for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As
he looked back upon man moving through History, he
was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been
surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had
been mad, wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-
torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and
whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible
than that fancied degradation from which, in their
ignorance, they had sought to escape, Nature, in her
wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed
with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the
hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.

Yes, there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophe-
sied, a new Hedonism that was to re-create life, and to
save it from that harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is
having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to
have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was
never to accept any theory or system that would in-
volve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experi-
ence. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself,
and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they
might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses,
as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to
know nothing. But it was to teach man to concen-
trate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself
but a moment.

There are few of us who have not sometimes
wakened before dawn, either after one of those dream-

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

S less nights that make us almost enamored of death, or
one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when
through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms
more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that
vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends
to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds
have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Grad-
ually white fingers creep through the curtains, and
they appear to tremble. In black, fantastic shapes,
dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and
crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds
among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to
their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming
down from the hills and wandering round the silent
house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and
yet must needs call forth Sleep from her purple cave.
Veil after veil of thin, dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to
them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in
its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their
mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had
left them, and beside them lies the half -cut book that
we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had
worn at the ball, or the letter we had been afraid to
read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems
to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the
night comes back the real life that we had known.
We have to resume it where we had left off, and
there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity
for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome
round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may
be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a
world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness
for our pleasure, a world in which things would have
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other
secrets, a world in which the past would have little or
no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form
of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy
having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure
their pain.

It was the creation of such worlds as these that
seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or
among the true objects, of life; and in his search for
sensations that would be at once new and delightful,
and possess that element of strangeness that is so es-
sential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes
of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature,
abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then,
having, as it were, caught their color and satisfied his
intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious in-
difference that is not incompatible with a real ardor of
temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain
modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.

It was rumored of him once that he was about to
join the Roman Catholic communion; and certainly
the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for
him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all
the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much
by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses
as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the
eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought
to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold
marble pavement, and watch the priest, in his stiffv
flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands mov-
ing aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft
the jeweled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pal-
lid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed
the "panis ccdestis" the bread of angels, or robed in
the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his
sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in
their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt
flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he
passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black
confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of
one of them and listen to men and women whispering
through the worn grating the true story of their
lives.

But he never fell into the error of arresting his
intellectual development by any formal acceptance of
creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which
to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a
night, or for a few hours of a night in which there
are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism,
with its marvelous power of making common things
strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that
always seems to accompany it, moved him for a sea-
son; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic
doctrines of the "Darwinismus" movement in Ger-
many, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the
thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in
the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting
in the conception of the absolute dependence of the
spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or
healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of
him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of
any importance compared with life itself. He felt
keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual spec-
ulation is when separated from action and experiment.
He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have
their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

And so he would now study perfumes, and the
secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily scented
oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to
discover their true relations, wondering what there
was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in
ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk
that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained
the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real
psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-
laden flowers, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fra-
grant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that
makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able
to expel melancholy from the soul.

At another time he devoted himself entirely to mu-
sic, and in a long, latticed room, with a vermillion-and-
gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used
to give curious concerts in which mad gypsies tore wild
music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled
Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous
lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon
copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim
turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or
brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded
snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh inter-
vals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him
at times when Schubert's grace and Chopin's beauti-
ful sorrows and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven
himself fell unheeded on his ear. He collected to-
gether from all parts of the world the strangest instru-
ments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead
nations or among the few savage tribes that have sur-
vived contact with Western civilizations, and loved to
touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis
of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAX GRAY

to look at, and that even youths may not see till they
have been subjected to fasting and scourging, and the
earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries
of birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso
de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jas-
pers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note
of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled
with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the
long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer
does not blow, but through which he inhales the air;
the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded
by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and
can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues ;
the teponaztU, that has two vibrating tongues of wood,
and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an
elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants;
the yotl-be\ls of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters
like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered
with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Ber-
nal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexi-
can temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us
so vivid a description. The fantastic character of
these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious
delight in the thought that Art, like Nature, has her
monsters — things of bestial shape and with hideous
voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and
would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with
Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tann-
hauser," and seeing in the prelude to that great work
of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.

On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and
appeared at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Ad-
miral of France, in a dress covered with five hundred
and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years,
and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. He
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

would often spend a whole day settling and resettling
in their cases the various stones that he had collected,
such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by
lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of
silver, the pistachio-colored peridot, rose-pink and
wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with
tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon-
stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with
their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved
the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's
pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky
opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emer-
alds of extraordinary size and richness of color, and
had a turquois de la vieille roche that was the envy
of all the connoisseurs.

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels.
In Alphonso's "Clericalis Disciplina" a serpent was
mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the roman-
tic history of Alexander, the conqueror of Emathia
was said to have found in the vale of Jordon snakes
"with collars of real emeralds growing on their
backs." There was a gem in the brain of the dragon,
Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of golden
letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown
into a magical sleep, and slain. According to the
great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond ren-
dered a man invisible, and the agate of India made
him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the
hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away
the fumes of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and
the hydropicus deprived the Moon of her color. The
selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the
meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only
by the blood of kids. Leonardus Camillus had seen a
white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

that was a certain antidote against poison. The be-
zoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer,
was a charm that could cure the plague. In the nests
of Arabian birds was the aspilates, that, according to
Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger by fire.

The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a
large ruby in his hand, as the ceremony of his coro-
nation. The gates of the palace of John the Priest
were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned
snake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison
within." Over the gable were "two golden apples,
in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold might
shine by day and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's
strange romance, "A Margarite of America," it was
stated that in the chamber of the queen one could be-
hold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased out
of silver, looking through fair mirrors of chrysolites,
carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco
Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-
colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea mon-
ster had been enamored of the pearl that the diver
brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and
mourned for seven moons over its loss. When the
Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it
away — Procopius tells the story — nor was it ever
found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered
five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it. The King
of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian a rosary
of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god
that he worshiped.

When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander
VI., visited Louis XII. of France, his horse was loaded
with gold leaves, according to Brantome, and his cap
had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard II.
had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which
was covered with balas-rubies. Hall described Henry
VIII., on his way to the Tower previous to his corona-
tion, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placard
embroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and
a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses."
The favorites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds
set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gave to Piers Gav-
eston a suit of red-gold armor studded with jacinths,
a collar of gold roses set with turquois stones, and a
skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II. wore
jeweled gloves reaching to the elbow and had a
hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two
great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the
last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with
pear-shaped pearls, and studded with sapphires.

How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous
in its pomp and decoration! Even to read of the
luxury of the dead was wonderful.

Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to
the tapestries that performed the office of frescos in
the chill rooms of the northern nations of Europe. As
he investigated the subject — and he always had an ex-
traordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed
for the moment in whatever he took up — he was almost
saddened by the reflection of the ruin that Time
brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at
any rate, had escaped that. Summer followed sum-
mer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many
times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their
shame, .but he was unchanged. No winter marred his
face or stained his flower-like bloom. How different
it was with material things ! Where had they passed
to? Where was the great crocus-colored robe, on

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

which the gods fought against the giants, that had
been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of
Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had
stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan
sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky
and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white gilt-
reigned steeds? He longed to see the curious table-
napkins wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which
were displayed all the dainties and viands that could
be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of King
Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees ; the fan-
tastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop
of Pontus, and were figured with "lions, panthers,
bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters — all, in fact, that
a painter can copy from nature"; and the coat that
Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which
were embroidered the verses of a song beginning
"Madame, je suis tout joyeuoc" the musical accom-
paniment of the words being wrought in gold thread,
and each note, of square shape in those days, formed
with four pearls. He read of the room that was pre-
pared at the palace at Rheims for the use of Queen
Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery,
and blazoned with the king's arms, and five hundred
and sixty -one butterflies, whose wings were similarly
ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole
worked in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourn-
ing-bed made for her of black velvet powdered with
crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask, with
leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and
silver ground, and fringed along the edges with
broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with
rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
cloth and silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. The
state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of
Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with
verses from the Koran. Its supports were of silver
gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enam-
eled and jeweled medallions. It had been taken from
the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard
of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt
of its canopy.

And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate
the most exquisite specimens that he could find of
textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty
Delhi muslins, finely wrought, with gold-thread pal-
mates, and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings ;
the Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are
known in the East as "woven air," and "running
water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths
from Java ; elaborate yellow Chinese hangings ; books
bound in tawny satins or fair blue silks, and wrought
with fteurs-de-lysy birds, and images; veils of lads
worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins,
and Japanese Foukousas with their green-toned golds
and their marvelously plumaged birds.

He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vest-
ments, as indeed he had for everything connected with
the service of the Church. In the long cedar chests
that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored
away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is
really the raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must
wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may
hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the
suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-
inflicted pain. He possessed a gorgeous cope of crim-
son silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in
six-petaled formal blossoms, beyond which, on either
side, was the pineapple device wrought in seed-pearls.
The orphreys were divided into panels representing
scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation
of the Virgin was figured in colored silks upon the
hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenth cen-
tury. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered
with heart-shaped groups of acanthus leaves, from
which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details
of which were picked out with silver thread and col-
ored crystals. The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-
thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a
diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with
medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom
was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-
colored silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yel-
low silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with
representations of the passion and Crucifixion of
Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and
other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk
damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs-
de-lys; altar f rentals of crimson velvet and blue linen;
and many corporals, chalice veils, and sudaria. In
the mystic offices to which such things were put there
was something that quickened his imagination.

For these treasures, and everything that he col-
lected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of
forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a
season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to
be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of
the lonely locked room where he had spent so much
of his boyhood he had hung with his own hands the
terrible portrait whose changing features showed him
the real degradation of his life, and in front of it had
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

draped the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For
weeks he would not go there, would forget the hideous
painted thing, and get back his light heart, his won-
derful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere
existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would
creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places
near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
until he was driven away. On his return he would
sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and
himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of
individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and
smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow
that had to bear the burden that should have been his
own.

After a few years he could not endure to be long out
of England, and gave up the villa that he had shared
at Trouville with Lord Henry, as well as the little
white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated
from the picture that was such a part of his life, and
was also afraid that during his absence some one
might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate
bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.

He was quite conscious that this would tell them
nothing. It was true that the portrait still preserved,
under all the foulness and ugliness of the face, its
marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
from that? He would laugh at any one who tried to
taunt him. He had not painted it. What was it to
him how vile and full of shame it looked? Even if
he told them, would they believe it?

Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down
at his great house in Nottinghamshire, entertaining
the fashionable young men of his own rank who were
his chief companions, and astounding the county by

169

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode
of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and rush
back to town to see that the door had not been
tampered with and that the picture was still there.
What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made
him cold with horror. Surely the world would know
his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected
it.

For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few
who distrusted him. He was very nearly blackballed
at a West End club of which his birth and social
position fully entitled him to become a member, and it
was said that on one occasion, when he was brought
by a friend into the smoking-room of the Churchill,
the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up
in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories
became current about him after he had passed his
twenty-fifth year. It was rumored that he had been
seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the
distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted
with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of
their trade. His extraordinary absences became no-
torious, and, when he used to reappear again in society,
men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass
him with a sneer, or look at him with cold, searching
eyes, as though they were determined to discover his
secret.

Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of
course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most
people his frank, debonnair manner, his charming,
boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful
youth that seemed never to leave him, were in them-
selves a sufficient answer to the calumnies ( for so they
termed them) that were circulated about him. It was
remarked, however, that some of those who had been
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun
him. Women who had wildly adored him, and for his
sake had braved all social censure and set convention
at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.

Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the
eyes of many his strange and dangerous charm. His
great wealth was a certain element of security.
Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready
to believe anything to the detriment of those who are
both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that
manners are of more importance than morals, and, in
its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less
value than the possession of a good chef. And, after
all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man
who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irre-
proachable in his private life. Even the cardinal
virtues can not atone for half -cold entries, as Lord
Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject;
and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his
views. For the canons of good society are, or should
be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely
essential to it. It should have the dignity of a
ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine
the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit
and beauty that makes such plays delightful to us.
Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It
is merely a method by which we can multiply our
personalities.

Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He
used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those
who conceive the Ego in man as a thing simple,
permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man
was a being with myriad lives* and myriad sensations,
a complex multiform creature that bore within itself

171

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose
very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of
the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt, cold
picture-gallery of his country-house and look at the
various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his
veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by
Francis Osborne, in his "Memoirs on the Reigns of
Queen Elizabeth and King James," as one who was
"caressed by the court for his handsome face, which
kept him not long company." Was it young
Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had some
strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till
it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of
that ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and
almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hall-
ward's studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed
his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet,
jeweled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wristbands,
stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black
armor piled at his feet. What had this man's legacy
been? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples be-
queathed him some inheritance of sin and shame?
Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead
man had not dared to realize? Here, from the fading
canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze
hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A
flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an
enameled collar of white and damask roses. On a
table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There
were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes.
He knew her life, and the strange stories that were
told about her lovers. Had he something of her
temperament in him? These oval, heavy-lidded eyes
seemed to look curiously at him. What of George
Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

patches? How evil he looked! The face was satur-
nine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be
twisted with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the
lean yellow hands that were so over-laden with rings.
He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century,
and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What
of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the
Prince Regent in his wildest days, and one of the
witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitz-
herbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his
chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had
he bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as
infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House.
The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast.
Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-
lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred
within him. How curious it all seemed! And his
mother, with her Lady Hamilton face and her moist,
wine-dashed lips — he knew what he had got from her.
He had got from her his beauty and his passion for the
beauty of others. She laughed at him in her loose
Bacchante dress. There were vine leaves in her hair.
The purple spilled from the cup she was holding.
The carnations of the painting had withered, but the
eyes were still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy
of color. They seemed to follow him wherever he
went.

Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in
one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and tempera-
ment, many of them, and certainly with an influence
of which one was more absolutely conscious. There
were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the
whole of history was merely the record of his own life,
not as he has lived it in act and circumstance, but as
his imagination had created it for him, as it had been

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had
known them all, those strange, terrible figures that
had passed across the stage of the world and made sin
so marvelous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to
him that in some mysterious way their lives had been
his own.

The hero of the wonderful novel that had so in-
fluenced his life had himself known this curious fancy.
In the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with
laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful
books of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks
strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the
swinger of the censor; and, as Caligula, had caroused
with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and
supped in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted
horse; and, as Domitian, had wandered through a
corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with
haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was
to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible
tcedium vitce, that comes on those to whom life denies
nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at
the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of
pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been
carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a
House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as
he passed by ; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face
with colors, and plied the distaff among the women,
and brought the Moon from Carthage, and given her
in mystic marriage to the Sun.

Over and over again Dorian used to read this fan-
tastic chapter, and the two chapters immediately
following, in which, as in some curious tapestries or
cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful
and beautiful forms of those whom Vice and Blood

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

and Weariness had made monstrous or mad : _

Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted her
lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck
death from the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi,
the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, who sought
in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins,
was bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria
Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men, and
whose murdered body was covered with roses by a
harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white
horse, with Fratricide riding beside him, and his
mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro
Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,
child and minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty was
equaled only by his debauchery, and who received
Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson
silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy
that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or
Hylas ; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only
by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for
red blood, as other men have for red wine — the son of
the Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated
his father at dice when gambling with him for his own
soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the
name of Innocent, and into whose torpid veins the
blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor;
Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord
of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the
enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena
with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a
cup of emerald, and in honor of a shameful passion
built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles
VI., who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that
a leper had warned him of the insanity that was

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

coming on him, and who, when his brain had thickened
and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen
cards painted with images of Love and Death and
Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jeweled cap
and acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew
Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying
in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated
him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who
had cursed him, blessed him.

There was a horrible fascination in them all. He
saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination
in the day. The Renaissance knew of strange
manners of poisoning — poisoning by a helmet and
a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jeweled
fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain.
Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There
were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode
^ through which he could realize his conception of the
beautiful.

176

IT was on the 9th day of November, the eve of his
own thirty-eighth birthday, as he often re-
membered afterward.

He was walking home about eleven o'clock from
Lord Henry's, where he had been dining, and was
wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and
South Audley Street a man passed him in the mist,
walking very fast, and with the collar of his grey
ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian
recognized him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange
sense of fear, for which he could not account, came
over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went
on quickly in the direction of his own house.

But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him
first stopping on the pavement, and then hurrying
after him. In a few moments his hand was upon his
arm.

"Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck!
I have been waiting for you in your library ever since
nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on your tired
servant, and told him to go to bed, as he let me out.
I am off to Paris by the midnight train, and I
particularly wanted to see you before I left. I
thought it was you, or, rather, your fur coat, as you
passed me. But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you
recognize me?"

"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even
recognize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is

177

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certain
about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have
not seen you for ages. But I suppose you will be
back soon?"

"No, I am going to be out of England for six
months. I intend to take a studio in Paris, and shut
myself up till I have finished a great picture I have
in my head. However, it wasn't about myself I
wanted to talk. Here we are at your door. Let
me come in for a moment. I have something to say
to you."

"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your
train?" said Dorian Gray, languidly, as he passed up
the steps and opened the door with his latch-key.

The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and
Hallward looked at his watch. "I have heaps of
time," he answered. "The train doesn't go till twelve-
fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on
my way to the club to look for you when I met you.
You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I
have sent on my heavy things. All I have with me is
in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty
minutes."

Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way
for a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag
and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the
house. And mind you don't talk about anything
serious. Nothing is serious nowadays — at least,
nothing should be."

Hallward shook his head as he entered, and followed
Dorian into the library. There was a bright wood fire
blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps were lit,
and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some
siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on
a little marqueterie table.
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"You see your servant made me quite at home,
Dorian. He gave me everything I wanted, including
your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a most
hospitable creature. I like him much better than the
Frenchman you used to have. What has become of
the Frenchman, by the bye?"

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he mar-
ried Lady Radley's maid, and has established her in
Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomanie is very
fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of
the French, doesn't it? But — do you know? — he was
not at all a bad servant. I never liked him, but I had
nothing to complain about. One often imagines
things that are quite absurd. He was really very
devoted to me, and seemed quite sorry when he went
away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Or would
you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-
seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next

room."

"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the
painter, taking his cap and coat off, and throwing
them on the bag that he had placed in the corner.
"And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you
seriously. Don't frown like that. You make it so
much more difficult for me."

"What is it all about?" cried Dorian, in his petu-
lant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope
it is not about myself. I am tired of myself to-night.
I should like to be somebody else."

"It is about yourself," answered Hallward, in his
grave, deep voice, "and I must say it to you. I shall
only keep you half an hour."

Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Half an
hour!" he murmured.

"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I
think it right that you should know that the most
dreadful things are being said against you in London."

"I don't wish to know anything about them. I
love scandals about other people, but scandals about
myself don't interest me. They have not got the
charm of novelty."

"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentle-
man is interested in his good name. You don't want
people to talk of you as something vile and degraded.
Of course you have your position, and your wealth,
and all that kind of thing. But position and wealth
are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these
rumors at all — at least, I can't believe them when I
see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a
man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk
sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things.
If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the
lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the mold-
ing of his hands even. Somebody — I won't mention
his name, but you know him — came to me last year to
have his portrait done. I had never seen him before,
and had never heard anything about him at the time,
though I have heard a good deal since. He offered
an extravagant price. I refused him. There was
something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I
know now that I was quite right in what I fancied
about him. His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian,
-with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your
-marvelous, untroubled youth — I can't believe any-
thing against you. And yet I see you very seldom,
and you never come down to the studio now, and when
I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous
things that people are whispering about you, I don't
know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club
when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentle-
men in London will neither go to your house nor invite
you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord
Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your
name happened to come up in conversation, in connec-
tion with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition
at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip, and said that
you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you
were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be
allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should
sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was
a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. He
told me. He told me right out before everybody. It
was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
young men? There was that wretched boy in the
Guards who committed suicide. You were his great
friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to
leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he
were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and
his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son,
and his career? I met his father yesterday in St.
James's Street. He seemed broken with shame and
sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth?
What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman
would associate with him?"

"Stop, Basil! You are talking about things of
which you know nothing," said Dorian Gray, biting
his lips, and with a note of infinite contempt in his
voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room
when I enter it. It is because I know everything
about his life, not because he knows anything about
mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how
could his record be clean? You ask me about Henry
Ashton and young Perth. Did I teach the one his

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

vices and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly
son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?
If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a
bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter in
England. The middle classes air their moral preju-
dices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about
what they call the profligacies of their betters in order
to try and pretend that they are in smart society, and
on intimate terms with the people they slander. In
this country it is enough for a man to have distinction
and brains for every common tongue to wag against
him. And what sort of lives do these people, who
pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear
fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the
hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the ques-
tion! England is bad enough, I know, and English
society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want
you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a
right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his
friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honor, of
goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a
madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the
depths. You led them there. Yes, you led them
there ; and yet you can smile as you are smiling now.
And there is worse behind. I know you and
Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if
for none other, you should not have made his sister's
name a byword."

"Take care, Basil. You go too far."
"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall
listen. When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath
of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single
decent woman in London now who would drive with
her in the Park? Why, even her children are not
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories
—stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn
out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into
the foulest dens in London. Are they true? Can
they be true? When I first heard them I laughed. I
hear them now, and they make me shudder. What
about your country-house, and the life that is led
there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about
you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to
you. I remember Harry saying once that every man
who turned himself into an amateur curate for the
moment always, began by saying that, and then
proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach
to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the
world respect you. I want you to have a clean name
and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dread-
ful people you associate with. Don't shrug your
shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You
have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not
for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with
whom you become intimate, and that it is quite
sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some
kind to follow after* I don't know whether it is so
or not. How should I know? But it is said of you.
I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.
Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at
Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had
written to him when she was dying alone in her villa
at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most
terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it was
absurd — that I knew you thoroughly, and that you
were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you?
I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer
that I should have to see your soul."

"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

up from the sofa and turning almost white with fear.

"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-
toned sorrow in his voice — "to see your soul. But
only God can do that."

A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the
younger man. "You shall see it yourself to-night!"
he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "Come, it
is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at
it? You can tell the world all about it afterward if
you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did
believe you, they would like me all the better for it.
I know the age better than you do, though you will
prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You
have chattered enough about corruption. Now you
shall look on it face to face."

There was the madness of pride in every word he
uttered. He stamped his foot upon the ground in his
boyish, insolent manner. He felt a terrible joy at the
thought that some one else was to share his secret,
and that the man who had painted the portrait that
was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for
the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what
he had done.

"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and
looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "I shall show
you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy
only God can see."

Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Do-
rian !" he cried. "You must not say things like that.
They are horrible, and they don't mean anything."

"You think so?" He laughed again.

"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I
said it for your good. You know I have been always
a stanch friend to you."

"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.
He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity
came over him. After all, what right had he to pry
into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe
of what was rumored about him, how much he must
have suffered ! Then he straightened himself up, and
walked over to the fireplace, and stood there, looking
at the burning logs with their f rostlike ashes and their
throbbing cores of flame.

"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man, in a
hard, clear voice.

He turned round. "What I have to say is this,"
he cried. "You must give me some answer to these
horrible charges that are made against you. If you
tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning
to end, I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny
them! Can't you see what I am going through?
My God! don't tell me' that, you are bad and corrupt
and shameful!"

Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt
in his lips. "Come up-stairs, Basil," he said, quietly.
"I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it
never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
show it to you if you come with me."

"I shall come with you>. Dorian, if you wish it. I
see I have missed my train. That makes no matter.
I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to read any-
thing to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my
question."

"That shall be given to you up-stairs. I could not
give it here. You will not have to read long."

185

XIII

HE passed out of the room, and began the ascent,
Basil Hallward following close behind. They
walked softly, as men do instinctively at night.
The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and stair-
case. A rising wind made some of the windows rattle.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the
lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key turned
it in the lock. "You insist on knowing, Basil?" he
asked, in a low voice.

"Yes."

"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he
added, somewhat harshly: "You are the one man in
the world who is entitled to know everything about
me. You have had more to do with my life than you
think." And, taking up the lamp, he opened the door
and went in. A cold current of air passed them, and
the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky
orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind
you," he whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.

Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expres-
sion. The room looked as if it had not been lived in
for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained pic-
ture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty book-
case— that was all that it seemed to contain besides a
chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a
half -burned candle that was standing on the mantel-
shelf, he saw that the whole was covered with dust,
and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran
186

THE PICTURE OF DOEIAN GRAY

shuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp
odor of mildew.

"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul,
Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see

mine."

The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are
mad, Dorian, or playing a part," muttered Hallward,
frowning.

"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the
young man ; and he tore the curtain from its rod, and
flung it on the ground.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's
lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the
canvas grinning at him. There was something in its
expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
Good heavens ! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he
was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had
not yet entirely spoiled that marvelous beauty. There
was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scar-
let on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept
something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble
curves had not yet completely passed away from chis-
eled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was
Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed
to recognize his own brush-work, and the frame was
his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt
afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to
the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own
name, traced in long letters of bright vermillion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble
satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own
picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had
changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His
own picture! What did it mean? Why had it

187

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

altered? He turned, and looked at Dorian Gray with
the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his
parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He
passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank
with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantel-
shelf, watching him with that strange expression that
one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a
play when some great artist is acting. Thbre-was
neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was sim-
ply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker
of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out
of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to
do so.

"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last.
His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray,
crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flat-
tered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks.
One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who
explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished
a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of
beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I don't
know whether I regret or not, I made a wish — per-
haps you would call it a prayer . . ."

"I remember it! — oh, how well I remember it!
No; the thing is impossible. The room is damp.
Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used
had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you
the thing is impossible."

"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young
man, going over to the window, and leaning his fore-
head against the cold, mist-stained glass.

"You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I don't believe it is my picture."

"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian
bitterly.

"My ideal as you call it . . ."

"As you called it."

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.
You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet
again. This is the face of a satyr."

"It is the face of my soul."

"Christ! what a thing I must have worshiped 1 It
has the eyes of a devil."

"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil!"
cried Dorian, with a wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at
it. "My God! if it is true," he exclaimed, "and
this is what you have done with your life, why, you
must be worse, even, than those who talk against you
fancy you to be!" He held the light up again to the
canvas, and examined it. The surface seemed to be
quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from
within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had
come. Through some strange quickening of inner
life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing
away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was
not so fearful.

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket
on the floor, and lay there sputtering. He placed his
foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into
the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
buried his face in his hands.

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful
lesson!" There was no answer, but he could hear
the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray,
Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one
was taught to say in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not

189

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away
our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer
of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your
repentance will be answered also. I worshiped you
too much. I am punished for it. You worshiped
yourself too much. We are both punished."

Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at
him with tear-dimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil,"
he faltered.

"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down
and try if we can not remember a prayer. Isn't there
a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be as scarlet,
yet I will make them as white as snow' ?"

"Those words mean nothing to me now."

"Hush! don't say that. You have done enough
evil in your life. My God ! don't you see that accursed
thing leering at us?"

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly
an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hall-
ward came over him, as though it had been suggested
to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his
ear by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a
hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the
man who was seated at the table more than in his
whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced
wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of
the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it.
He knew what it was. It was a k^ife that he had
brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord,
and had forgotten to take away with him. He
moved slowly toward it, passing Hallward as he did
so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and
turned round. Hallward stirred in his chair as if he
was going to rise. He rushed at him, and dug the
knife into the great vein thai; is behind the ear, crush-
190

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ing the man's head down on the table, and stabbing
again and again.

There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of
some one choking with blood. Three times the out-
stretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque,
stiiF-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice
more, but the man did not move. Something began
to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still
pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on
the table and listened.

He could hear nothing but the drip, drip on the
threadbare carpet. He opened the door and went out
on the landing. The house was absolutely quiet.
No one was about. For a few seconds he stood
bending over the balustrade, and peering down into
the black, seething well of darkness. Then he took
out the key and returned to the room, locking himself
in as he did so.

The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over
the table with bowed head, and humped back, and
long, fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red,
jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool
that was slowly widening on the table, one would have
said that the man was simply asleep.

How quickly it had all been done!. He felt
strangely calm, and, walking over to the window,
opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind
had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a mon-
strous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden
eyes. He looked down, and saw the policeman going
his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern
on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot
of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then
vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl was creep-
ing slowly by the railings, staggering as she went.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once
she began to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman
strolled over and said something to her. She stumbled
away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the
Square. The gas-lamps flickered and became blue,
and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches
to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the
window behind him.

Having reached the door, he turned the key, and
opened it. He did not even glance at the murdered
man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was
not to realize the situation. The friend who had
painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery
had been due had gone out of his life. That was
enough.

Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather
curious one of a Moorish workmanship, made of dull
silver, inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel and
studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be
missed by his servant, and questions would be asked.
He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and
took it from the table. He could not help seeing the
dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white
the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax
image.

Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly
down-stairs. The woodwork creaked, and seemed to
cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times, and
waited. No ; everything was still. It was merely the
sound of his own footsteps.

When he reached the library he saw the bag and
coat in the corner. They must be hidden away some-
where. He unlocked a secret press that was in the
wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious
disguises, and put them into it. He could easily burn
192

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

them afterward. Then he pulled out his watch. It
was twenty minutes to two.

He sat down and began to think. Every year —
every month, almost — men were strangled in England
for what he had done. There had been a madness of
murder in the air. Some red star had come too close
to the earth. . . . And yet what evidence was
there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house
at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most
of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had
gone to bed. . . . Paris ! Yes. It was to Paris
that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he
had intended. With his curious, reserved habits, it
would be months before any suspicions would be
aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed
long before then.

A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur
coat and hat, and went out into the hall. There he
paused, hearing the slow, heavy tread of the policeman
on the pavement outside, and seeing the flash of the
bull's eye reflected in the window. He waited, and
held his breath.

After a few moments he drew back the latch and
slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him.
Then he began ringing the bell. In about five min-
utes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very
drowsy.

"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,"
he said, stepping in; "but I had forgotten my latch-
key. What time is it?"

"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man,
looking at the clock and blinking.

"Ten minutes past two ? How horribly late ! You
must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work
to do."

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"All right, sir."

"Did any one call this evening?"

"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven,
and then he went away to catch his train."

"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave
any message?"

"No, sir, except that he would write to you from
Paris, if he did not find you at the club."

"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at
nine to-morrow."

"No, sir."

The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.

Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table,
and passed into the library. For a quarter of an hour
he walked up and down the room biting his lip and
thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from
one of the shelves, and began to turn over the leaves.
"Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair."
Yes; that was the man he wanted.

194.

XIV

AT nine o'clock the next morning his servant
came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray,
and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleep-
ing quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one
hand underneath his cheek. He looked like a boy who
had been tired out with play or study.

The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder be-
fore he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint smile
passed across his lips, as though he had been lost in
some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at
all. His night had been untroubled by any images of
pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any
reason. It is one of its chief est charms.

He turned round, and, leaning upon his elbow, be-
gan to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun
came streaming into the room. The sky was bright,
and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was al-
most like a morning in May.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept
with silent blood-stained feet into his brain, and recon-
structed themselves there with terrible distinctness.
He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered,
and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing
for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he
sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold
with passion. The dead man was still sitting there,
too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was !
Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the
day.

195

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone
through he would sicken or grow mad. There were
sins whose fascination was more in the memory than
in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified
the pride more than the passions, and gave to the in-
tellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy
they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But
this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven
out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be
strangled lest it might strangle one itself.

When the half -hour struck he passed his hand across
his forehead, and then got up hastily, and dressed him-
self with even more than his usual care, giving a good
deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and scarf-
pin, and changing his rings more than once. He
spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the
various dishes, talking to his valet about some new
liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his correspond-
ence. At some of the letters he smiled. Three of
them bored him. One he read several times over, and
then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his
face. "That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as
Lord Henry had once said.

After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped
his lips slowly with a napkin, motioned to his servant
to wait, and, going over to the table, sat down and
wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the other
he handed to the valet.

"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis,
and if Mr. Campbell is out of town, get his address."
As soon as he was alone he lit a cigarette, and be-
gan sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing first
flowers and bits of architecture, and then human faces.
Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
196

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.
He frowned, and, getting up, went over to the book-
case and took out a volume at hazard. He was de-
termined that he would not think about what had hap-
pened until it became absolutely necessary that he
should 'do so.

When he had stretched himself on the sofa he looked
at the title-page of the book. It was Gautier's
"Emaux et Camees," Charpentier's Japanese paper
edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding
was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt
trelliswork and dotted pomegranates. It had been
given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over
the pages his eye fell upon the poem about the hand
of Lacenaire, the cold, yellow hand ffdu supplice en-
core mal lavee" with its downy red hairs and its
ffdoigts de faune." He glanced at his own white taper
fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and
passed on till he came to those lovely stanzas upon
Venice:

Sur une gamme chromatlque,

Le sein de perles ruisselant.
La Venus de FAdriatique

Sort de I'eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les domes, sur I'azur des ondes
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,

S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que souleve un soupir d' amour.

ISesquif aborde et me depose,

Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une facade rose,

Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

197

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one
seemed to be floating down the green waterways of the
pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with
silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines
looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue
that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The
sudden flashes of color reminded him of the gleam of
the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the
tall honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with such
stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades.
Leaning back with half -closed eyes, he kept saying
over and over to himself:

Devant une fapade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He
remembered the autumn that he had passed there, and
a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad, de-
lightful follies. There was romance in every place.
But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for
romance, and, to the true romantic, background was
everything, or almost everything. Basil had been
with him part of the time, and had gone wild over
Tintoret. Poor Basil! what a horrible way for a man
to die!

He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried
to forget. He read of the swallows that fly in and out
of the little cafe at Smyrna, where the Hadjis sit
counting their amber beads, and the turbaned mer-
chants smoke their long tasseled pipes and talk gravely
to each other ; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la
Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely
sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hot lotus-
covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red
198

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and croco-
diles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl over the green
steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses
which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of
that curious statue that Gautier compares to a con-
tralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in
the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time
the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan
Campbell should be out of England? Days would
elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might
refuse to come. What could he do then? Every
moment was of vital importance.

They had been great friends once, five years before
— almost inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had
come suddenly to an end. When they met in society
now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan
Campbell never did.

He was an extremely clever young man, though he
bad no real appreciation of the visible arts, and what-
ever little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed he
had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant in-
tellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he
had spent a great deal of his time working in the Lab-
oratory, and had taken a good class in the Natural
Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still de-
voted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory
of his own, in which he used to shut himself up all day
long, greatly to the annoyance of his mother, who had
set her heart on his standing for Parliament, and had a
vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up
prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, how-
ever, as well, and played both the violin and the piano
better than most amateurs ; in fact, it was music that
had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—

199

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian
seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished, and
indeed exercised often without being conscious of it.
They had met at Lady Berkshire's the night that
Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be
always seen together at the Opera, and wherever good
music was going on. For eighteen months their
intimacy lasted. Campbell was always either at Selby
Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many
others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is
wonderful and fascinating in life. Whether or not
a quarrel had taken place between them no one ever
knew. But suddenly people remarked that they
scarcely spoke when they met, and that Campbell
seemed always to go away early from any party at
which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed,
too — was strangely melancholy at times, appeared
almost to dislike hearing music, and would never him-
self play, giving as his excuse, when he was called
upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no
time left in which to practise. And this was certainly
true. Every day he seemed to become more interested
in biology, and his name appeared once or twice in
some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain
curious experiments.

This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for.
Every second he kept glancing at the clock. As the
minutes went by he became horribly agitated. At last
he got up, and began to pace up and down the room,
looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long,
stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to
him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by
monstrous winds was being swept toward the jagged
200

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

edge of some black cleft or precipice. He knew what
was waiting for him there — saw it, indeed; and,
shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids,
as though he would have robbed the very brain of
sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It
was useless. The brain had its own food on which it
battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by
terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
danced like some foul puppet on a stand, and grinned
through moving masks. Then, suddenly, Time stop-
ped for him. Yes, that blind, slow-breathing thing
crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, Time being
dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous
future from its grave, and showed it to him. He
stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.

At last the door opened, and his servant entered.
He turned glazed eyes upon him.

"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.

A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the
color came back to his cheeks.

"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt
that he was himself again. His mood of cowardice
had passed away.

The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments
Alan Campbell walked in, looking very stern and
rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his coal-
black hair and dark eyebrows.

"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for
coming."

"I had intended never to enter your house again,
Gray. But you said it was a matter of life and
death." His voice was hard and cold. He spoke
with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt
in the steady, searching gaze that he turned on Dorian.

201

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He kept his hands in the pockets of his Astrakhan
coat, and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with
which he had been greeted.

"Yes, it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to
more than one person. Sit down."

Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat
opposite to him. The two men's eyes met. In
Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that what
he was going to do was dreadful.

After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across
and said, very quietly, but watching the effect of each
word upon the face of him he had sent for: "Alan,
in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to
which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is
seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now.
Don't stir, and don't look at me like that. Who the
man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do
not concern you. What you have to do is this — "

"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything
further. Whether what you have told me is true or
not true doesn't concern me. I entirely decline to be
mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to
yourself. They don't interest me any more."

"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one
will have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you,
Alan. But I can't help myself. You are the one
man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you
into the matter. I have no option. Alan, you are
scientific. You know about chemistry, and things of
that kind. You have made experiments. What you
have got to do is to destroy the thing that is up-stairs
— to destroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left.
Nobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed,
at the present moment he is supposed to be in Paris.
He will not be missed for months. When he is
202

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

missed, there must be no trace of him found here.
You, Alan, you must change him, and everything that
belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
scatter in the air."

"You are mad, Dorian."

"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."

"You are mad, I tell you — mad to imagine that I
would raise a finger to help you, mad to make this
monstrous confession. I will have nothing to do with
this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going
to peril my reputation for you? What is it to me
what devil's work you are up to?"

"It was a suicide, Alan."

"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it?
You, I should fancy."

"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"

"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing
to do with it. I don't care what shame comes on you.
You deserve it all. I should not be sorry to see you
disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me,
of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this
horror? I should have thought you knew more about
people's characters. Your friend Lord Henry Wot-
ton can't have taught you much about psychology,
whatever else he has taught you. Nothing will induce
me to stir a step to help you. You have come to the
wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't
come to me."

"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't
know what he had made me suffer. Whatever my
life is, he had more to do with the making or the
marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not
have intended it, the result was the same."

"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you
have come to? I shall not inform upon you. It is

203

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

not my business. Besides, without my stirring in the
matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever
commits a crime without doing something stupid.
But I will have nothing to do with it."

"You must have something to do with it. Wait,
wait a moment ; listen to me. Only listen, Alan. All
I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experi-
ment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in
some hideous dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you
found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters
scooped out in it for the blood to flow through, you
would simply look upon him as an admirable subject.
You would not turn a hair. You would not believe
that you were doing anything wrong. On the
contrary, you would probably feel that you were
benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of
knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual
curiosity, or something of that kind. What I want
you to do is merely what you have often done before.
Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than
what you are accustomed to work at. And, remember,
it is the only piece of evidence against me. If it is
discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered
unless you help me."

"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I
am simply indifferent to the whole thing. It has
nothing to do with me,"

"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am
in. Just before you came I almost fainted with
terror. You may know terror yourself some day.
No! Don't think of that. Look at the matter purely
from the scientific point of view. You don't inquire
where the dead things on which you experiment come
from. Don't inquire now. I have told you too much
204

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were
friends once, Alan."

"Don't speak about those days, Dorian; they are
dead."

"The dead linger sometimes. The man up-stairs
will not go away. He is sitting at the table with
bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! if
you don't come to my assistance I am ruined. Why,
they will hang me, Alan! Don't you understand?
They will hang me for what I have done."

"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I abso-
lutely refuse to do anything in the matter. It is
insane of you to ask me."

"You refuse?"

"Yes."

"I entreat you, Alan."

"It is useless."

The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's
eyes. Then he stretched out his hand, took a piece
of paper, and wrote something on it. He read it over
twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the
table. Having done this, he got up, and went over to
the window.

Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took
up the paper and opened it. As he read it his face
became ghastly pale, and he fell back in his chair. A
horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as
if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty
hollow.

After two or three minutes of terrible silence Dorian
turned round, and came and stood behind him, putting
his hand upon his shoulder.

"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured,
"but you leave me no alternative. I have a letter
written already. Here it is. You see the address.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't
help me, I will send it. You know what the result will
be. But you are going to help me. It is impossible
for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you. You
will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern,
harsh, offensive. You treated me as no man has ever
dared to treat me — no living man, at any rate. I bore
it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms."

Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a
shudder passed through him.

"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You
know what they are. The thing is quite simple.
Come, don't work yourself into this fever. The thing
has to be done. Face it and do it."

A groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered
all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece
seemed to him to be dividing Time into separate
atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to
be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly
tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace
with which he was threatened had already come
upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed
like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to
crush him.

"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."

"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though
words could alter things.

"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."

He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the
room up-stairs?"

"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."

"I shall have to go home and get some things from
the laboratory."

"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write
out on a sheet of note-paper what you want, and my
206

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

servant will take a cab and bring the things back to
you."

Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and
addressed an envelope to his assistant. Dorian took
the note up and read it carefully. Then he rang the
bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as
soon as possible, and to bring the things with him.

As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously,
and, having got up from the chair, went over to the
chimneypiece. He was shivering with a kind of
ague. For nearly twenty minutes neither of the men
spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the
ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.

As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round,
and, looking at Dorian Gray, saw that his eyes were
filled with tears. There was something in the purity
and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage
him. "You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he
muttered.

"Hush, Alan, you have saved my life," said Dorian.

"Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is!
You have gone from corruption to corruption, and
now you have culminated in crime. In doing what I
am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of
your life that I am thinking."

"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian, with a sigh, "I
wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that
I have for you." He turned away as he spoke, and
stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no
answer.

After about ten minutes a knock came to the door,
and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany
chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and
platinum wire, and two rather curiously shaped iron
clamps.

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked
Campbell.

"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis,
that I have another errand for you. What is the
name of the man at Richmond who supplies Selby
with orchids?"

"Harden, sir."

"Yes — Harden. You must go down to Richmond
at once, see Harden personally, and tell him to send
twice as many orchids as I ordered, and to have as few
white ones as possible — in fact, I don't want any
white ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond
is a very pretty place, otherwise I wouldn't bother you
about it."

"No trouble sir. At what time shall I be back?"

Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your
experiment take, Alan?" he said, in a calm, indiffer-
ent voice. The presence of a third person in the room
seemed to give him extraordinary courage.

Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "It will take
about five hours," he answered.

"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at
half -past seven, Francis — or, stay; just leave my
things out for dressing. You can have the evening to
yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not
want you."

"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.

"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost.
How heavy this chest is! I'll take it for you. You
bring the other things." He spoke rapidly, and in
an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated
by him. They left the room together.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out
the key and turned it in the lock. Then he stopped,
and a troubled look came into his eyes. He shud-
208

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

dered. "I don't think I can go in Alan," he
murmured.

"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said
Campbell, coldly.

Dorian half opened the door. As he did so he saw
the face of his portrait learing in the sunlight. On
the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He
remembered that the night before he had forgotten,
for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas,
and was about to rush forward, when he drew back
with a shudder.

What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed,
wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the
canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was! —
more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than
the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the
table, the thing whose grotesque, misshapen shadow
on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not
stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.

He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little
wider, and, with half -closed eyes and averted head,
walked quickly in, determined that he would not look
even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down,
and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung
it right over the picture.

There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and
his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the
pattern before him. He heard Campbell bringing in
the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things
that he required for his dreadful work. He began to
wonder if he,scnd Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if
so what they had thought of each other.

"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.

He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the
dead man had been thrust back into the chair, and

209

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

that Campbell was gazing into a glistening, yellow
face. As he was going down-stairs he heard the key
being turned in the lock.

It was long after seven when Campbell came back
into the library. He was pale, but absolutely calm.
"I have done what you asked me to do," he muttered.
"And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other
again."

"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot
forget that," said Dorian, simply.

As soon as Campbell had left he went up-stairs.
There was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room.
But the thing that had been sitting at the table was
gone.

210

XV

fT^HAT evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely
dressed, and wearing a large buttonhole of
Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into
Lady Narborough's drawing-room by bowing
servants. His forehead was throbbing with mad-
dened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his
manner as .he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy
and graceful as ever. Perhaps one never seems so
much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night
could have believed that he had passed through a
tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those
finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife
for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God
and goodness. He himself could not help wondering
at the calm of his demeanor, and for a moment felt
keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.

It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by
Lady Narborough, who was a very clever woman,
with what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains
of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an ex-
cellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors,
and having buried her husband properly in a marble
mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and mar-
ried off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men,
she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French
fiction, French cookery, and French esprit — when she
could get it.

Dorian was one of her especial favorites, and she

211

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

always told him she was extremely glad she had not
met him in early life. "I know, my dear, I should
have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your
sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought
of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbe-
coming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to
raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with
anybody. However, that was all Narborough's fault.
He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no
pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees any-
thing."

Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The
fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very
shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up
quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters
worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I
think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whis-
pered. "Of course, I go and stay with them every
summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old
woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and,
besides, I really wake them up. You don't know
what an existence they lead down there. It is pure,
unadulterated country life. They get up early, be-
cause they have so much to do, and go to bed early
because they have so little to think about. There has
not been a scandal in the neighborhood since the time
of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall
asleep after dinner. You sha'n't sit next either of
them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me."

Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and
looked round the room. Yes, it was certainly a tedious
party. Two of the people he had never seen before,
and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of
those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London
212

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly dis-
liked by their friends; Lady Roxton, an overdressed
woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was
always trying to get herself compromised, but was so
peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no
one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs.
Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp,
and Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his
hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of
those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are
never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,
white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his
class, was under the impression that inordinate jovial-
ity can atone for an entire lack of ideas.

He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Nar-
borough, looking at the great ormulo gilt clock that
sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped man-
tel-shelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton
to be so late! I sent round to him this morning on
chance, and he promised faithfully not to disappoint

me."

It was some consolation that Harry was to be there,
and when the door opened, and he heard his slow
musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology,
he ceased to feel bored.

But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate
after plate went away untasted. Lady Narborough
kept scolding him for what she called "an insult to
poor Adolphe, who invented the menu specially for
you," and now and then Lord Henry looked across at
him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner.
From time to time the butler filled his glass with
champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed
to increase.

"Dorian," said Lord Henry, at last, as the chaud-

213

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

froid was being handed round, "what is the matter
with you to-night? You are quite out of sorts."

"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough,
"and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be
jealous. He is quite right. I certainly should."

"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian,
smiling, "I have not been in love for a whole week —
not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town."

"How you men can fall in love with that woman!"
exclaimed the old lady. "I really cannot understand
it."

"It is simply because she remembered you when
you were a little girl, Lady Narborough," said Lord
Henry. "She is the one link between us and your
short frocks."

"She does not remember my short frocks at all,
Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at
Vienna thirty years ago, and how decolletee she was
then."

She is still decolletee" he answered, taking an
olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very
smart gown she looks like an edition de luxe of a bad
French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of
surprises. Her capacity for family affection is ex-
traordinary. When her third husband died, her hair
turned quite gold from grief."

"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.

"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the
hostess. "But her third husband, Lord Henry! You
don't mean to say that Ferrol is the fourth?"

"Certainly, Lady Narborough."

"I don't believe a word of it."

"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most in-
timate friends."

"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said
Dorian. "I asked her whether, like Marguerite de
Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at
her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of
them had had any hearts at all."

Four husbands! Upon my word, that is trop de

"Trop d' audace, I tell her," said Dorian.

"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my
dear. And what is Ferrol like? I don't know him."

"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to
the criminal classes," said Lord Henry, sipping his
wine.

Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord
Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says
that you are extremely wicked."

"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry,
elevating his eyebrows. "It can only be the next
world. This world and I are on excellent terms."

"Everybody I know says you are very wicked!"
cried the old lady, shaking her head.

Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It
is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way
people go about nowadays saying things against one
behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely
true."

"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning for-
ward in his chair.

"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But,
really, if you all worship Madame de Terrol in this
ridiculous way, J shall have to marry again so as to
be in the fashion."

"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,"
broke in Lord Henry. "You were far too happy.
When a woman marries again, it is because she de-

215

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

tested her first husband. When a man marries again,
it is because he adored his first wife. Women try
£ their luck; men risk theirs."

"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.

"If he had been, you would not have loved him,
my dear lady," was the rejoinder. "Women love us
for our defects. If we have enough of them, they
will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You
will never ask me to dinner again, after saying this,
I am afraid, Lady Narborough; but it is quite true."

"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women
did not love you for your defects, where would you
all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You
would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, how-
ever, that that would alter you much. Nowadays all
the married men live like bachelors, and all the bache-
lors like married men."

"Fin de siecle" murmured Lord Henry.

"Fin du globe" answered his hostess.

"I wish it were fin du globe" said Dorian, with a
sigh. "Life is a great disappointment."

"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on
her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted
Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has
exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I
sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to
be good — you look so good. I must find you a nice
wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray
should get married?"

"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough,"
said Lord Henry, with a bow.

"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for
him. I shall go through Debrett carefully to-night,
and draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies."
216

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked
Dorian.

"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But
nothing must be done in a hurry. I want it to be
what The Morning Post calls a suitable alliance, and
I want you both to be happy."

"What nonsense people talk about happy mar-
riages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "A man can be
happy with any woman, as long as he does not love
her."'

"Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady,
pushing back her chair, and nodding to Lady Ruxton.
"You must come and dine with me soon again. You
are really an admirable tonic, much better than what
Sir Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me
what people you would like to meet though. I want
it to be a delightful gathering."

"I like men who have a future and women who
have a past," he answered. "Or do you think that
would make it a petticoat party?"

"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up.
"A thousand pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton," she
added, "I didn't see you hadn't finished your ciga-
arette."

"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great
deal too much. I am going to limit myself for the
future."

"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry.
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as
a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast."

Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You
must come and explain that to me some afternoon,
Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she
murmured, as she swept out of the room.

217

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your pol-
itics and scandal," cried Lady Nar borough from the
door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble up-
stairs."

The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up sol-
emnly from the foot of the table and came up to the
top. Dorian Gray changed his seat, and went and sat
by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a
loud voice about the situation in the House of Com-
mons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word
doctrinaire — word full of terror to the British mind —
reappeared from time to time between his explosions.
An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of
oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles
of Thought. The inherited stupidity of the race —
sound English common sense, he jovially termed it —
was shown to be the proper bulwark of Society.

A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned
round and looked at Dorian.

"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked.
"You seemed rather out of sorts at dinner."

"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is
all"

"You were charming last night. The little Duchess
is quite devoted to you. She tells me she is going
down to Selby."

"She has promised to come on the twentieth."

"Is Monmouth to be there too?"

"Oh, yes, Harry."

"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he
bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman.
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is
the feet of clay that make the gold of image precious.
Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay
218

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

— white porcelain feet, if you like. They have been
through the fire, and what fire does not destroy it
hardens. She has had experiences."

"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.

"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to
the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with Mon-
mouth must have been like eternity, with time thrown
in. Who else is coming ?"

"Oh, the Willoughby's, Lord Rugby and his wife,
our hostess, Geoffrey Clouston — the usual set. I have
asked Lord Grotian."

"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many
people don't, but I find him charming. He atones for
being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being al-
ways absolutely overeducated. He is a very modern
type."

"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry.
He may have to go to Monte Carlo with his father."

"Ah, what a nuisance people's people arel Try
and make him come. By the way, Dorian, you ran
off very early last night. You left before eleven.
What did you do afterward? Did you go straight
home?"

Dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned.
"No, Harry," he said at last, "I did not get home
till nearly three."

"Did you go to the club?"

"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No,
I don't mean that. I didn't go to the club. I walked
about. I forget what I did. . . . How inquis-
itive you are, Harry! You always want to know
what one has been doing. I always want to forget
what I have been doing. I came in at half -past two,
if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my

219

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in.
If you want any corroborative evidence on the subject
you can ask him."

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear
fellow, as if I cared! Let us go up to the drawing-
room. — No cherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. — Some-
thing has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it
is. You are not yourself to-night."

"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable and out of
temper. I shall come round and see you to-morrow or
next day. Make my excuses to Lady Narborough.
I shan't go up-stairs. I shall go home. I must go
home."

"All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-
morrow at tea-time. The Duchess is coming."

"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving
the room.

As Dorian Gray drove back to his own house, he
was conscious that the sense of terror he thought he
had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's
casual questioning had made him lose his nerve for
the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things
that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced.
He hated the idea of even touching them. Yet it had
to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked
the door of his library, he opened the secret press into
which he had thrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag.
A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log on it.
The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather
was horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour
to consume everything. At the end he felt faint and
sick, and having lit some Algerian pastilles in a pierced
copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with
a cool musk-scented vinegar.
220

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely
bright, and he gnawed nervously at his under-lip.
Between two of the windows stood a large Florentine
cabinet, made out of ebony, and inlaid with ivory and
blue lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing
that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held
something that he longed for and yet almost loathed.
His breath quickened. A mad craving came over
him. He lit a cigarette, and then threw it away. His
eyelids drooped till the long, fringed lashes almost
touched his cheek. But he still watched the cabinet.
At last he got up from the sofa on which he had
been lying, went over to it, and, having unlocked it,
touched some hidden spring. A triangular drawer
passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively
toward it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was
a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer,
elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved
waves, and the silken cords hung with round crystals
and tasseled with plaited metal threads. He opened
it. Inside was a green paste, waxy in luster, the odor
curiously heavy and persistent.

He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely
immobile smile upon his face. Then shivering, though
the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew
himself up, and glanced at the clock. It was twenty
minutes to twelve. He put the box back, shutting
the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bed-
room.

As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the
dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed commonly, and with
a muffler wrapped around his throat, crept quietly out
of his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom
with a good horse. He hailed it, and in a low voice
gave the driver an address.

221

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

The man shook his head. "It is too far for me,"
he muttered.

"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You
will have another if you drive fast."

"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be
there in an hour." And after his fare got in he
turned his horse round, and drove rapidly toward the
river.

XVI

A COLD rain began to fall, and the blurred
street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping
mist. The public-houses were just closing,
and dim men and women were clustering in broken
groups round their doors. From some of the bars
came the sound of horrible laughter. In others,
drunkards brawled and screamed.

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over
his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes
the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then
he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had
said to him on the first day they had met: "To cure
the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by
means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret. He
had often tried it, and would try it again now. There
were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion — dens
of horror, where the memory of old sins could be de-
stroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

The moon hung low in the sky, like a yellow skull.
From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a
long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew
fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.
Once the man lost his way, and had to drive back half
a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up
the puddles. The side-windows of the hansom were
clogged with a grey flannel mist.

"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the
senses by means of the soul!" How the words rang
in his ears I His soul, certainly, was sick to death.

223

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent
blood had been spilt. What could atone for that?
Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though for-
giveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible
still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the
thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder
that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to
have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made
him a judge over others? He had said things that
were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.

On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it
seemed to him, at each step. He thrust up the trap,
and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous
hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat
burned, and his delicate hands twitched nervously to-
gether. He struck at the horse madly with his stick.
The driver laughed, and whipped up. He laughed in
answer, and the man was silent.

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like
the black web of some sprawling spider. The monot-
ony became unbearable, and, as the mist thickened,
he felt afraid.

Then they passed by lonely brick-fields. The fog
was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-
shaped kilns, with their orange fan-like tongues of
fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in
the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The
horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside, and broke
into a gallop.

After some time they left the clay road, and rattled
again over rough-paven streets. Most of the windows
were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were
silhouetted against some lamp-lit blind. He watched
them curiously. They moved like monstrous marion-
ettes, and made gestures like live things. He hated
224

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned
a corner a woman yelled something at them from an
open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about
a hundred yards. The driver beat at them with his
whip.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.
Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of
Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words
that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and
justified, by intellectual approval, passions that with-
out such justification would still have dominated his
temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the one
thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of
all man's appetites, quickened into force each trem-
bling nerve and fiber. Ugliness that had once been
hateful to him because it made things real, became
dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was
the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den,
the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness
of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense
actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of
Art, the dreamy shadows of Song. They were what
he needed for f orgetf ulness. In three days he would
be free.

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top
of a dark lane. Over the low roofs and jagged
chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of
ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails
to the yards.

"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked,
huskily, through the trap.

Dorian started, and peered round. "This will do,"
he answered, and, having got out hastily, and given
the driver the extra fare he had promised him, he

225

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here
and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge
merchantman. The light shook and splintered in the
puddles. A red glare came from an outward-bound
steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked
like a wet mackintosh.

He hurried on toward the left, glancing back now
and then to see if he was being followed. In about
seven or eight minutes he reached a small, shabby
house, that was wedged in between two gaunt fac-
tories. In one of the top windows stood a lamp. He
stopped, and gave a peculiar knock.

After a little time he heard steps in the passage and
the chain being unhooked. The door opened quietly,
and he went in without saying a word to the squat,
misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow
as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered
green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind
which had followed him in from the street. He
dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room, which
looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing
saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in
the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged
round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin
backed them, making quivering discs of light. The
floor was covered with ocher-colored sawdust, trampled
here and there into mud, and stained with dark rings
of spilt liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a
little charcoal stove playing with bone counters, and
showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one
corner, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor
sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar,
that ran across one complete side, stood two haggard
women mocking an old man who was brushing the
sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust.
226

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one
of them as Dorian passed by. The man looked at
her in terror and began to whimper.

At the end of the room there was a little staircase,
leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried
up its three rickety steps, the heavy odor of opium
met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils
quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young
man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over
a lamp lighting a long, thin pipe, looked up at him,
and nodded in a hesitating manner.

"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.

"Where else should I be?" he answered listlessly.
"None of the chaps will speak to me now."

"I thought you had left England."

"Darlington is not going to do anything. My
brother paid the bill at last. George doesn't speak to
me, either. ... I don't care," he added, with a
sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't
want friends. I think I have had too many
friends."

Dorian winced, and looked round at the grotesque
things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged
mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths,
the staring, lusterless eyes, fascinated him. He knew
in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what
dull hells were teaching them the, secret of some new
joy. They were better off than he was. He was
prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady,
was eating his soul away. From time to time he
seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at
him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of
Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be
where no one would know who he was. He wanted
to escape from himself.

227

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I am going on to the other place," he said, after
a pause.

"On the wharf?"

"Yes."

"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't
have her in this place now."

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of
women who love one. Women who hate one are
much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better."

"Much the same."

"I like it better. Come and have something to
drink. I must have something."

"I don't want anything," murmured the young
man.

"Never mind."

Adrian Singleton rose up wearily, and followed
Dorian to the bar. A half-caste, in a ragged turban
and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he
thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
them. The women sidled up, and began to chatter.
Dorian turned his back on them, and said something
in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.

A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across
the face of one of the women. "We are very proud
to-night," she sneered.

"For God's sake don't talk to me!" cried Dorian,
stamping his foot on the ground. "What do you
want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk to me
again."

Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's
sodden eyes, then flickered out, and left them dull and
glazed. She tossed her head, and raked the coins off
the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
watched her enviously.
228

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't
care to go back. What does it matter? I am quite
happy here."

"You will write to me if you want anything, won't
you?" said Dorian, after a pause.

"Perhaps."

"Good-night, then."

"Good-night," answered the young man, passing
up the steps, and wiping his parched mouth with a
handkerchief.

Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his
face. As he drew the curtain aside a hideous laugh
broke from the painted lips of the woman who had
taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain,"
she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.

"Curse you," he answered, "don't call me that."

She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is
what you like to be called, ain't it?" she yelled after
him.

The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke,
and looked wildly round. The sound of the shutting
of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if
in pursuit.

Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the
drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton
had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the
ruin of the young life was really to be laid at his door,
as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of
insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes
grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him?
One's days were too brief to take the burden of
another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived
his own life, and paid his own price for living it. The
only pity was one had to pay so often for a single

229

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed.
In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her
accounts.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the
passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dom-
inates a nature that every fiber of the body, as every
cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful im-
pulses. Men and women at such moments lose the
freedom of their will. They move to their terrible
end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them,
and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives
but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience
its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of
reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that
high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven,
it was as a rebel that he fell.

Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and
soul hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on,
quickening his steps as he went. But as he darted
aside into a dim archway that had served him often as
a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going,
he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and be-
fore he had time to defend himself he was thrust back
against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.

He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort
wrenched the tightening fingers away. In a second
he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of
a polished barrel pointing straight at his head, and
the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.

"What do you want?" he gasped.

"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot
you."

"You are mad. What have I done to you?"

"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the
answer, "and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed
230

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

herself. I know it. Her death is at your door. I
swore I would kill you in return. For years I have
sought you. I had no clue, no trace. The two people
who could have described you were dead. I knew
nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you.
I heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with
God, for to-night you are going to die."

Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew
her," he stammered. "I never heard of her. You
are mad."

"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I
am James Vane you are going to die." There was a
horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to say
or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man.
"I give you one minute to make your peace — no more.
I go on board to-night for India, and I must do my
job first. One minute. That's all."

Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralyzed with
terror, he did not know what to do. Suddenly a wild
hope flashed across his brain. "Stop!" he cried.
"How long ago is it since your sister died. Quick,
tell me!"

"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you
ask me? What do years matter?"

"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a
touch of triumph in his voice. "Eighteen years ! Set
me under the lamp and look at my face!"

James Vane hesitated for a moment, not under-
standing what was meant. Then he seized Dorian
Gray and dragged him from the archway.

Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet
it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed,
into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he
had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all
the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more

231

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older
indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had
parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this
was not the man who had destroyed her life.

He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God!
my God!" he cried, "and I would have murdered
you!"

Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been
on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man,"
he said, looking at him sternly. "Let this be a warn-
ing to you not to take vengeance into your own hands."

"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane, "I was
deceived. A chance word I had heard in that damned
den set me on the wrong track."

"You had better go home and put that pistol away,
or you may get into trouble," said Dorian, turning on
his heel and going slowly down the street.

James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He
was trembling from head to foot. After a little while
a black shadow that had been creeping along the drip-
ping wall moved out into the light, and came close to
him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on
his arm, and looked round with a start. It was one
of the women who had been drinking at the bar.

"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, put-
ting her haggard face quite close to his. "I knew
Sm were following him when you rushed out from
aly's. You fool ! You should have killed him. He
has lots of money, and he's as bad as bad."

"He is not the man I'm looking for," he exclaimed,
"and I want no man's money. I want a man's life.
The man whose life I want must be nearly forty now.
This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I
have not got his blood upon my hands."

The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more
232

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

than a boy!" she sneered. "Why, man, it's nigh
on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
what I am."

"You lie!" cried James Vane.

She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I
am telling the truth!" she cried.

"Before God?"

"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst
one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to
the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on eighteen
years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since
then. I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer.

"You swear this?"

"I swear it," came in a hoarse echo from her flat
mouth. "But don't give me away to him," she
whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some
money for my night's lodging."

He broke from her with an oath, and rushed to the
corner of the street; but Dorian Gray had disap-
peared. When he looked back the woman had van-
ished also.

233

XVII

A WEEK later Dorian Gray was sitting in the
conservatory at Selby Royal talking to the
pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her
husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was among his
guests. It was tea-time, and the mellow light of the
huge lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up
the delicate china and hammered silver of the service
at which the Duchess was presiding. Her white
hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her
full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian
had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back
in a silk-draped wicker chair looking at them. On a
peach-colored divan sat Lady Narborough, pretend-
ing to listen to the Duke's description of the last
Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection.
Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were
handling tea-cakes to some of the women. The house-
party consisted of twelve people, and there were more
expected to arrive on the next day.

"What are you two talking about?" said Lord
Henry, strolling over to the table, and putting his cup
down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my plan
for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delight-
ful idea."

"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," re-
joined the Duchess, looking up at him with her won-
derful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my own name,
and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."

"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for
234

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking
chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid for my
buttonhole. It was a marvelous spotted thing, as
effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless
moment I asked one of my gardeners what it was
called. He told me it was a fine specimen of Robin-
soniana, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a
sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely
names to things. Names are everything. I never
quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words.
That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature.
The man who could call a spade a spade should be X
compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit
for."

"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she
asked.

"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.

"I recognize him in a flash 1" exclaimed the Duch-
ess.

"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking
into a chair. "From a label there is no escape. I
refuse the title."

"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning
from pretty lips.

"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"

"Yes."

"I give the truths of to-morrow."

"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.

"You disarm me, Gladys!" he cried, catching the
wilfulness of her mood.

"Of your shield, Harry; not of your spear."

"I never tilt against Beauty," he said with a wave
of his hand.

"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value
beauty far too much."

235

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"How can you say that? I admit that I think
that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But,
on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to
acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be
ugly."

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?"
cried the Duchess. "What becomes of your simile
about the orchid?"

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues,
Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate
them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues
have made our England what she is."

"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.

"I live in it."

"That you may censure it the better."

"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe
on it?" he inquired.

"What do they say of us?"

"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and
opened a shop."

"Is that yours, Harry?"

"I give it to you."

"I could not use it. It is too true."

"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never
recognize a description."

"They are practical."

"They are more cunning than practical. When
they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by
wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."

"Still we have done great things."

"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."

"We have carried their burden."

"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."

She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she
cried.

236

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"It represents the survival of the pushing."

"It has development."

"Decay fascinates me more."

"What of Art?" she asked.

"It is a malady."

"Love?"

"An illusion."

"Religion?"

"The fashionable substitute for Belief."

"You are a sceptic."

"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."

"What are you?"

"To define is to limit."

"Give me a clue."

"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the
labyrinth."

"You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one
else."

"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was
christened Prince Charming."

"Ah! don't remind me of that!" cried Dorian
Gray.

"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered
the Duchess, coloring. "I believe he thinks that
Monmouth married me on purely scientific principles
as the best specimen he could find of a modern but-
terfly."

"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you,
Duchess," laughed Dorian.

"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when
she is annoyed with me."

"And what does she get annoyed with you about,
Duchess?"

"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure
you. Usually because I come in at ten minutes to

237

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

nine and tell her that I must be dressed by half -past
eight."

"How unreasonable of her! You should give her
warning."

"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for
me. You remember the one I wore at Lady
Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is nice
of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out
of nothing. All good hats are made out of nothing."

"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted
Lord Henry. "Every effect that one produces gives
one an enemy. To be popular one must be a medi-
ocrity."

"Not with women," said the Duchess, shaking her
head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we
can't bear mediocrities. We women, as some one says,
love with our ears, just as you men love with your
eyes, if you ever love at all."

"It seems to me that we never do anything else,"
murmured Dorian.

"Ah! then you never really love, Mr. Gray,"
answered the Duchess, with mock sadness.

"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How
can you say that? Romance lives by repetition, and
repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides,
each time that one loves is the only time one has ever
loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness
of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have
in life but one great experience at best, and the secret
of life is to reproduce that experience as often as
possible."

"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?"
asked the Duchess, after a pause.

"Especially when one has been wounded by it/'
answered Lord Henry.
238

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

The Duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray
with a curious expression in her eyes. "What do you
say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired.

Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his
head back and laughed. "I always agree with
Harry, Duchess."

"Even when he is wrong?"

"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."

"And does his philosophy make you happy?"

"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants
happiness? I have searched for pleasure."

"And found it, Mr. Gray?"

"Often. Too often."

The Duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace,"
she said, "and if I don't go and dress, I shall have
none this evening."

"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried
Dorian, starting to his feet, and walking down the
conservatory.

"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said
Lord Henry to his cousin. "You had better take
care. He is very fascinating."

"If he were not there would be no battle."

"Greek meets Greek, then?"

"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for

a woman."

"They were defeated."

"There are worse things than capture," she
answered.

"You gallop with a loose rein."
"Pace gives life," was the riposte.
"I shall write it in my diary to-night."
"What?"

"That a burnt child loves the fire."
"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."

239

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"You use them for everything, except flight."

"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a
new experience for us."

"You have a rival."

"Who?"

He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered.
"She perfectly adores him."

"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to
Antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists."

"Romanticists! You have all the methods of
science."

"Men have educated us."

"But not explained you."

"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.

"Sphynxes without secrets."

She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray
is!" she said. "Let us go and help him. I have
not yet told him the color of my frock."

"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers,
Gladys."*

"That would be a premature surrender."

"Romantic Art begins with its climax."

"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."

"In the Parthian manner?"

"They found safety in the desert. I could not do
that."

"Women are not always allowed a choice," he
answered; but hardly had he finished the sentence
before from the far end of the conservatory came a
stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy
fall. Everybody started up. The Duchess stood
motionless in horror. And with fear in his eyes Lord
Henry rushed through the flapping palms, to find
Dorian Gray lying face downward on the tiled floor
in a deathlike swoon.
240

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room,
and laid upon one of the sofas. After a short time
he came to himself, and looked round with a dazed
expression.

"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I re-
member. Am I safe here, Harry?" He began to
tremble.

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you
merely fainted. That was all. You must have over-
tired yourself. You had better not come down to
dinner. I will take your place."

"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his
feet. "I would rather come down. I must not be
alone."

He went to his room and dressed. There was a
wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat
at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran
through him when he remembered that, pressed
against the window of the conservatory, like a white
handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane
watching him.

241

XVIII

next day he did not leave the house, and,
indeed, spent most of the time in his own
room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and
yet indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of
being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to
dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble in the
wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown
against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own
wasted resolutions and wild regrets. When he closed
his eyes he saw again the sailor's face peering through
the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more
to lay its hand upon his heart.

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had
called vengeance out of the night, and set the hideous
shapes of punishment before him. Actual life was
chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse
to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that
made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the
common world of fact the wicked were not punished,
nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the
strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
house he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers. Had any footmarks been found on the
flowerbeds, the gardeners would have reported it.
Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's brother
had not come back to kill him. He had sailed away
in his ship to founder in some winter sea. From
242

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did
not know who he was, could not know who he was.
The mask of youth had saved him.

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how
terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such
fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and
make them move before one ! What sort of life would
his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to
peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from
secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the
feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!
As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale
with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become
suddenly colder. Oh ! in what a wild hour of madness
he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere
memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each
hideous detail came back to him with added horror.
Out of the black cave of Time, terrible and swathed
in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord
Henry came in at six o'clock he found him crying as
one whose heart would break.

It was not till the third day that he ventured to go
out. There was something in the clear, pine-scented
air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him
back his joyousness and his ardor for life. But it was
not merely the physical conditions of environment that
had caused the change. His own nature had revolted
against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim
and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle and
finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their
strong passions must either bruise or bend. They
either slay the man or themselves die. Shallow sor-
rows and shallow loves live on. The loves and
sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own
plenitude. Besides, he had convinced himself that he

243

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

had been the victim of a terror-stricken imagination,
and looked back now on his fears with something of
pity and not a little of contempt.

After breakfast he walked with the Duchess for an
hour in the garden, and then drove across the park
to join the shooting-party. The crisp frost lay like
salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of
blue metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-
grown lake.

At the corner of the pine wood he caught sight of
Sir Geoffrey Clouston, the Duchess's brother, jerking
two spent cartridges out of his gun. He jumped
from the cart, and, having told the groom to take the
mare home, made his way toward his guest through
the withered bracken and rough undergrowth.

"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.

"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds
have gone to the open. I dare say it will be better
after lunch, when we get to new ground."

Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen,
aromatic air, the brown and red lights that glimmered
in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out
from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns
that followed, fascinated him with a sense of delight-
ful freedom. He was dominated by the carelessness
of happiness, by the high indifference of joy.

Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass, some
twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears
erect, and long hinder limbs throwing it forward,
started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir
Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was
something in the animal's graceful movement that
strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out at
once : "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey ! Let it live 1"

"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion,
244

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

and as the hare bounded into the thicket, he fired.
There were two cries heard, the one cry of a hare in
pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony,
which is worse.

"Good heavens! I have hit a beater!" exclaimed
Sir Geoffrey. "What an ass the man was to get in
front of the guns! Stop shooting there!" he called
out at the top of his vqjce. "A man is hurt!"

The head keeper came running up with a stick in
his hand.

"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the
same time the firing ceased along the line.

"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey, angrily, hurrying
toward the thicket. "Why on earth don't you keep
your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the day."

Dorian watched them as they plunged into the
alder-clump, brushing the lithe, swinging branches
aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging a
body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in
horror. It seemed to him that misfortune followed
wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask
whether the man was really dead, and the affirmative
answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him to
have become suddenly alive with faces. There was
the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of
voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant came beat-
ing through the boughs overhead.

After a* few moments, that were to him, in his
perturbed state, like endless hours of pain, he felt a
hand laid on his shoulder. He started, and looked
round.

"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them
that the shooting is stopped for to-day. It would not
look well to go on."

"I wish it were stopped forever, Harry," he

245

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

answered, bitterly. "The whole thing is hideous and
cruel. Is the man . . . ?"

He could not finish the sentence.

"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got
the whole charge of shot in his chest. He must have
died almost instantaneously. Come; let us go home."

They walked side by side in the direction of the
avenue for nearly fifty yards without speaking.
Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry, and said, with a
heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry — a very bad

omen."

"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this acci-
dent, I suppose. My dear fellow, it can't be helped.
It was the man's own fault. Why did he get in front
of the guns ? Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather
awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to
pepper beaters. It makes people think that one is
a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he shoots very
straight. But there is no use talking about the
matter."

Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry.
I feel as if something horrible were going to happen
to some of us. To myself, perhaps," he added,
passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.

The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing
in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for
which there is no forgiveness. But we are not likely
to suffer from it, unless these fellows keep chattering
about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the
subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no
such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us
heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Be-
sides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian?
You have everything in the world that a man can
246

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

want. There is no one who would not be delighted to
change places with you."

"There is no one with whom I would not change
places, Harry. Don't laugh like that. I am telling
you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just
died is better off than I am. I have no terror of
Death. It is the coming of Death that terrifies me.
Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air
around me. Good heavens! don't you see a man
moving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting
for me?"

Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the
trembling gloved hand was pointing. "Yes," he
said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for you. I
suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to
have on the table to-night. How absurdly nervous
you are, my dear fellow ! You must come and see my
doctor when we get back to town."

Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the
gardener approaching. The man touched his hat,
glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed
to his master. "Her Grace told me to wait for an
answer," he murmured.

Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her
Grace that I am coming in," he said coldly. The man
turned round and went rapidly in the direction of the
house.

"How foixd women are of doing dangerous things 1"
laughed Lord Henry. "It is one of the qualities in
them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with
anybody in the world as long as other people are
looking on."

"How fond you are of saying dangerous things,

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Harry ! In the present instance you are quite astray.
I like the Duchess very much, but I don't love her."

"And the Duchess loves you very much, but she
likes you less, so you are excellently matched."

"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never
any basis for scandal."

"The basis of every scandal is an immoral cer-
tainty," said Lord Henry, lighting a cigarette.

"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake
of an epigram."

"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was
the answer.

"I wish I could love!" cried Dorian Gray, with a
deep note of pathos in his voice. "But I seem to have
lost the passion and forgotten the desire. I am too
much concentrated on myself. My own personality
has become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go
away, to forget. It was silly of me to come down here
at all. I think I shall send a wire to Harvey to have
the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."

"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some
trouble. Why not tell me what it is? You know I
would help you."

"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered, sadly.
"And I dare say it is only a fancy of mine. This
unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a horrible
presentiment that something of the kind may happen
to me."

"What nonsense!"

"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here
is the Duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailor-made
gown — You see we have come back, Duchess."

"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered.
"Poor Geoffrey is terribly upset. And it seems that
you asked him not to shoot the hare. How curious !"
248

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what
made me say it. Some whim, I suppose. It looked
the loveliest of little live things. But I am sorry they
told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."

"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry.
"It has no psychological value at all. Now, if Geof-
frey had done the thing on purpose, how interesting
he would be! I should like to know some one who
had committed a real murder."

"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the Duchess.
"Isn't it, Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again.
He is going to faint."

Dorian drew himself up with an effort, and smiled.
"It is nothing, Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves
are dreadfully out of order. That is all. I am afraid
I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what
Harry said. Was it very bad? You must tell me
some other time. I think I must go and lie down.
You will excuse me, won't you?"

They had reached the great flight of steps that led
from the conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass
door closed behind Dorian, Lord Henry turned and
looked at the Duchess with his slumberous eyes.
"Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.

She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing
at the landscape. "I wish I knew," she said at last.

He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal.
It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes
things wonderful."

"One may lose one's way."

"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."

"What is that?"

"Disillusion."

"It was my debut in life," she sighed.

"It came to you crowned."

249

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"I am tired of strawberry leaves."

"They become you."

"Only in public."

"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.

"I will not part with a petal."

"Monmouth has ears."

"Old age is dull of hearing."

"Has he never been jealous?"

"I wish he had been."

He glanced about as if in search of something.
"What are you looking for?" she inquired.

"The button from your foil," he answered. "You
have dropped it."

She laughed. "I have still the mask."

"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.

She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white
seeds in a scarlet fruit.

Up -stairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying
on a sofa, with terror in every tingling fiber of his
body. Life had suddenly become too hideous a
burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the
unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal,
had seemed to him to prefigure death for himself also.
He had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said
in a chance mood of cynical jesting.

At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant, and
gave him orders to pack his things for the night
express to town, and to have the brougham at the
door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep
another night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened
place. Death walked there in the sunlight. The
grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.

Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him
that he was going up to town to consult his doctor,
and asking him to entertain his guests in his absence.
250

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came
to the door, and his valet informed him that the head
keeper wished to see him. He frowned, and bit his
lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after some
moments' hesitation.

As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his
cheque-book out of a drawer, and spread it out before
him.

"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate
accident this morning, Thornton?" he said, taking
up a pen.

"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.

"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any
people dependent on him?" asked Dorian, looking
bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left in
want, and will send them any sum of money you may
think necessary."

"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I
took the liberty of coming to you about."

"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly.
"What do you mean? Wasn't he one of your men?"

"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a
sailor, sir."

The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he
felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. "A
sailor!" he cried out. "Did you say a sailor?"

"Yes sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of
sailor; tattooed on both arms, and that kind of thing."

"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian,
leaning forward and looking at the man with startled
eyes. "Anything that would tell his name?"

"Some money, sir — not much, and a six-shooter.
There was no name of any kind. A decent-looking
man sir, but roughlike. A sort of sailor, we think."

Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered

251

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

past him. He clutched at it madly. "Where is the
body?" he exclaimed. "Quick, I must see it at once."

"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir.
The folk don't like to have that sort of thing in their
houses. They say a corpse brings bad luck."

"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me.
Tell one of the grooms to bring my horse round. No.
Never mind. I'll go to the stables myself. It will
save time."

In less than a quarter of an hour Dorian Gray was
galloping down the long avenue as hard as he could
go. The trees seemed to sweep past him in spectral
procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across
his path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post
and nearly threw him. He lashed her across the neck
with his crop. She cleft the dusky air like an arrow.
The stones flew from her hoofs.

At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men
were loitering in the yard. He leaped from the saddle
and threw the reins to one of them. In the farthest
stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed
to tell him that the body was there, and he hurried to
the door, and put his hand upon the latch.

There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was
on the brink of a discovery that would either make or
mar his life. Then he thrust the door open, and
entered.

On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying
the dead body of a man dressed in a coarse shirt and
a pair of blue trousers. A spotted handkerchief had
been placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a
bottle, sputtered beside it.

Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not
be the hand to take the handkerchief away, and called
out to one of the farm-servants to come to him.
252

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it,"
he said, clutching at the door-post for support.

When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped for-
ward. A cry of joy broke from his lips. The man
who had been shot in the thicket was James Vane.

He stood there for some minutes, looking at the
dead body. As he rode home his eyes were full of
tears, for he knew he was safe.

253

XIX

4 4fT^HEKE is no use your telling me that you are

going to be good!" cried Lord Henry, dip-

ping his white fingers into a red copper bowl

filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect.

Pray, don't change."

Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have
done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not
going to do any more. I began my good actions
yesterday."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little
inn by myself."

"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "any-
body can be good in the country. There are no
temptations there. That is the reason why people
\ who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized.
Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to
attain to. There are only two ways by which men can
reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being
corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of be-
^ ing either, so they stagnate."

"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have
known something of both. It seems terrible to me
now that they should ever be found together. For
I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I
think I have altered."

"You have not yet told me what your good action
was. Or did you say you had done more than one?"
asked his companion, as he spilt into his plate a little
254

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through
a perforated, shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar
upon them.

"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could
tell to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds
vain, but you understand what I mean. She was
quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I
think it was that which first attracted me to her. You
remember Sibyl, don't you? How long ago that
seems? Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of
course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I
really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her.
All during this wonderful May that we have been
having I used to run down and see her two or three
times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little
orchard. The apple blossoms kept tumbling down on
her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have
gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly
I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had found
her."

"I should think the novelty of the emotion must
have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," inter-
rupted Lord Henry.- "But I can finish your idyl for
you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart.
That was the beginning of your reformation."

"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these
dreadful things. Hetty's heart is not broken. Of
course, she cried, and all that. But there is no dis-
grace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her
garden of mint and marigold."

"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord
Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "My
dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish
moods. Do you think* this girl will ever be really con-
tented now with any one of her own rank? I suppose

255

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

she will be married some day to a rough carter or a
grinning plowman. Well the fact of having met you,
and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband,
and she will be wretched. From a moral point of
view, I cannot say that I think much of your great
renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Be-
sides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at
the present moment in some star-lit mill-pond, with
lovely waterlilies round her, like Ophelia?"

"I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at every-
thing, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I
am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you say
to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor
Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning I saw
her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine.
Don't let me talk about it any more, and don't try to
persuade me that the first good action I have done for
years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever
known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I
am going to be better. Tell me something about
yourself. What is going on in town? I have not
been to the club for days."

"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disap-
pearance."

"I should have thought they had got tired of that
by this time," said Dorian, pouring himself out some
wine, and frowning slightly.

"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it
for six weeks, and the British public are really not
equal to the mental strain of having more than one
topic every three months. They have been very
fortunate lately, however. They have had my own
divorce case and Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they
have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.
Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey
256

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the
9th of November was poor Basil, and the French
police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all.
I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he
has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing,
but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San
Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess
all the attraction of the next world."

"What do you think has happened to Basil?"
asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the
light, and wondering how it was that he could discuss
the matter so calmly.

"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to
hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead,
I don't want to think about him. Death is the only
thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it."

"Why?" said the younger man, wearily.

"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his
nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box,
"one can survive everything nowadays except that.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the
nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian.
You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom
my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor
Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is
rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is
merely a habit — a bad habit. But then one regrets
the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one re-
grets them the most. They are such an essential part
of one's personality."

Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and,
passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and
let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory
of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he

257

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said:
"Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was mur-
dered?"

Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular,
and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should
he have been murdered? He was not clever enough
to have enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful
genius for painting. But a man can paint like Velas-
quez, and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was really
rather dull. He only interested me once, and that
was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild
adoration for you, and that you were the dominant
motive of his art."

"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian, with a
note of sadness in his voice. "But don't people say
that he was murdered?"

"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to
me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful
places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to
have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his
chief defect."

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I
had murdered Basil?" said the younger man. He
watched him intently after he had spoken.

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were pos-
ing for a character that doesn't suit you. All crime
is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in
you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt
your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true.
Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I
don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should
fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."

"A method of procuring sensations? Do you
think, then, that a man who has once committed a
258

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

murder could possibly do the same crime again?
Don't tell me that."

"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it
too often," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one
of the most important secrets of life. I should fancy,
however, that murder is always a mistake. One
should never do anything that one cannot talk about
after dinner. But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish
I could believe that he had come to such a really ro-
mantic end as you suggest; but I can't. I dare say
he fell into the Seine off an omnibus, and that the
conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes, I should
fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his
back under those dull-green waters with the heavy
barges floating over him, and long weeds catching in
his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would have
done much more good work. During the last ten
years his painting had gone off very much."

Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled
across the room and began to stroke the head of a
curious Java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird, with
pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a
bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it
dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black
glass-like eyes, and began to sway backward and
forward.

"Yes," he continued, turning round, and taking
his handkerchief out of his pocket, "his painting had
quite gone off. It seemed to me to have lost some-
thing. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased
to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist.
What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you.
If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores have.
By the way, what has become of that wonderful por-
trait he did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it
J 259

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

since he finished it. Oh! I remember your telling
me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and
that it got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never
got it back? What a pity! It was really a master-
piece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had

^ now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then
his work was that curious mixture of bad painting
•and good intentions that always entitles a man to be

y^called a representative British artist. Did you ad-
vertise for it? You should."

"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I
never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The
memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why do you
talk about it? It used to remind me of those curious
lines in some play — 'Hamlet/ I think — how do they
run? —

fffLike the painting of a sorrow,
[4 face without a heart/

Yes, that is what it was like."

Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artis-
tically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking
into an arm-chair.

Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft
chords on the piano. ' 'Like the painting of a sor-
row,' " he repeated, " *a face without a heart.' '

The elder man lay back and looked at him with
half -closed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said,
after a pause, " 'what does it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose ' — how does the quotation
run? — 'his own soul'?"

The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and
stared at his friend. "Why do you ask me that,
Harry?"
260

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his
eyebrows in surprise, "I asked you because I thought
you might be able to give me an answer. That is all.
I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close
by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of
shabby -looking people listening to some vulgar street-
preacher. As I passed by I heard the man yelling
out that question to his audience. It struck me as
being rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious
effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth
Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces
under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a
wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill, hyster-
ical lips — it was really very good in its way, quite a
suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that
Art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid,
however, he would not have understood me."

"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It
can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can
be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each
one of us. I know it."

"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"

"Quite sure."

"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one
feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is
the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance.
How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What
have you or I to do with the superstitions of our age?
No; we have given up our belief in the soul. Play
me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as
you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept
your youth. You must have some secret. I am only
ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and
worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian.
You have never looked more charming than you do

261

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first.
You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely ex-
traordinary. You have changed, of course, but not
in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret.
,To get back my youth I would do anything in the
^world, except take exercise, get up early, or be re-
spectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's
absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only
people to whose opinions I listen now with any
respect are people much younger than myself. They
seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her
latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict
the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their
opinion on something that happened yesterday, they
solemnly give the opinions current in 1820, when
people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and
knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you
you are playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at
Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and
the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is mar-
velously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is
one art left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop.
I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are
the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas listening to
you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even
you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not
that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed
sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how
happy you are ! What an exquisite life you have had !
You have drunk deeply of everything. You have
crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has
been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no
more than the sound of music. It has not marred
you. You are still the same."
"I am not the same, Harry."
262

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest
of your life will be. Don't spoil it by renunciations.
At present you are a perfect type. Don't make your-
self incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You
need not shake your head; you know you are.
Besides, Dorian, don't deceive yourself. Life is not
governed by will or intention. Life is a question of
nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which
thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You
may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong.
But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky,
a particular perfume that you had once loved and that
brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten
poem that you had come across again, a cadence from
a piece of music that you had ceased to play — I tell
you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our
lives depend. Browning writes about that some-
where; but our own senses will imagine them for us.
There are moments when the odor of lilas blanc passes
suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest
month of my life over again. I wish I could change
places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out
against us both, but it has always worshiped you. It
always will worship you. You are the type of what
the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has
found. I am so glad that you have never done any-
thing— never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or
produced anything outside of yourself! Life has
been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your
days are your sonnets."

Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand
through his hair. "Yes, life has been exquisite," he
murmured, "but I am not going to have the same
life, Harry. And you must not say these extrava-
gant things to me. You don't know everything about

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

me. I think that if you did, even you would turn
from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."

"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go
back and give me the nocturne over again. Look at
that great honey-colored moon that hangs in the
dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and
if you play she will come closer to the earth. You
won't. Let us go to the club, then. It has been a
charming evening, and we must end it charmingly.
There is some one at White's who wants immensely
to know you — young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's
eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and
has begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite
delightful, and rather reminds me of you."

"I hope not," said Dorian, with a sad look in his
eyes. "But I am tired to-night, Harry, I sha'n't go
to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to
bed early."

"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-
night. There was something in your touch that was
wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
heard from it before."

"It is because I am going to be good," he answered,
smiling. "I am a little changed already."

"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord
Henry. "You and I will always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should
not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will
never lend that book to any one. It does harm."

"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.
You will soon be going about like the converted and
the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of
which you have grown tired. You are much too de-
lightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I
are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for
264

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as
that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihi-
lates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The
books that the world calls immoral are books that show
the world its own shame. That is all. But we won't
discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am
going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and
I will take you to lunch afterward with Lady Brank-
some. She is a charming woman, and wants to con-
sult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buy-
ing. Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our
little Duchess? She says she never sees you now.
Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you
would be. Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves.
Well, in any case be here at eleven.

"Must I really come, Harry?"

"Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I
don't think there have been such lilacs since the year
I met you."

"Very well. I will be here at eleven," said Dorian.
"Good-night, Harry." As he reached the door he
hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more
to say. Then he sighed and went out.

265

XX

IT was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his
coat over his arm, and did not even put his silk
scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening
dress passed him. He heard one of them whisper
to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He remem-
bered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed
out, or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of
hearing his own name now. Half the charm of the
little village where he had been so often lately was
that no one knew who he was. He had often told the
girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor,
and she had believed him. He had told her once that
he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and an-
swered that wicked people were always very old and
very ugly. What a laugh she had ! — just like a thrush
singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton
dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but
she had everything that he had lost.

When he reached home he found his servant wait-
ing up for him. He sent him to bed, and threw him-
self down on the sofa in the library, and began to
think over some of the things that Lord Henry had
said to him.

Was it really true that one could never change?
He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his
boyhood — his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had
once called it. He knew that he had tarnished him-
self, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror
266

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to
others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so;
and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had
been the fairest and the most full of promise that he
had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable?
Was there no hope for him?

Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and pas-
sion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the
burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendor
of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to
that. Better for him that each sin of his life had
brought its sure, swift penalty along with it. There
was purification in punishment. Not "Forgive us
our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be
the prayer of man to a most just God.

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had
given to him, so many years ago now, was standing
on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed
round it as of old. He took it up as he had done on
that night of horror, when he had first noted the
change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-
dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once,
some one who had terribly loved him, had written to
him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words :
"The world is changed because you are made of ivory
and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."
The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated
them over and over to himself. Then he loathed his
own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor
crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It
was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and
the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two
things his life might have been free from stain. His
beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a
mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an

267

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

unripe time — a time of shallow moods and sickly
thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had
spoiled him.

It was better not to think of the past. Nothing
could alter that. It was of himself and of his own fu-
ture that he had to think. James Vane was hidden in
a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Camp-
bell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but
had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to
know. The excitement, such as it was, over Basil
Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It
was already waning. He was perfectly safe there.
Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that
weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death
of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted
the portrait that had marred his life. He could not
forgive him that. It was the portrait that had done
everything. Basil had said things to him that were
unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience.
The murder had been simply the madness of a mo-
ment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been
his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was noth-
ing to him.

A new life ! That was what he wanted. That was
what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it
already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any
rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He
would be good.

As he thought of Hettie Merton he began to won-
der if the portrait in the locked room had changed.
Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been?
Perhaps if his life became pure he would be able to
expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Per-
haps the signs of evil had already gone away. He
would go and look.
268

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

He took the lamp from the table and crept up-
stairs. As he unbarred the door a smile of joy flitted
across his strangely young-looking face and lingered
for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good,
and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would
no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load
had been lifted from him already.

He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as
was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from
the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke
from him. He could see no change, save that in the
eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth
the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was
still loathsome — more loathsome, if possible, than be-
fore— and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand
seemed brighter, and more Kke blood newly spilled.
Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that
had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire
of a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with
his mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part
that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are
ourselves? Or, perhaps all these? And why was the
red stain larger than it had been? It seemed to have
crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers.
There was blood on the painted feet, as though the
blood had dripped — blood even on the hand that had
not held the knife. Confess? Did it -mean that he
was to confess? To give himself up, and be put to
death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was
monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who
would believe him? There was no trace of the mur-
dered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him
had been destroyed. He himself had burned what
had been below-stairs. The world would simply say
that he was mad. They would shut him up if he

269

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

persisted in his story. . . . Yet it was his duty
to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public
atonement. There was a God who called upon men
to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Noth-
ing that he could do would cleanse him till he had
told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his
shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very
little to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton.
For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul
that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypoc-
risy? Had there been nothing more in his renuncia-
tion than that? There had been something more.
At least, he thought so. But who could tell? . . .
No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity
he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the
mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried
the denial of himself. He recognized that now.

But this murder — was it to dog him all his life?
Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he
really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of
evidence left against him. The picture itself — that
was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he
kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to
watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had
felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night.
When he had been away he had been filled with terror
lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought
melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had
marred many moments of joy. It had been like con-
science to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He
would destroy it.

He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed

Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till

there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and

glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would

27Q

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. It
would kill the past, and when that was dead he would
be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and
without its hideous warnings he would be at peace.
He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.

There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry ,was
so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants
woke, and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen,
who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and
looked up at the great house. They walked on till
they met a policeman, and brought him back. The
man rang the bell several times, but there was no an-
swer. Except for a light in one of the top windows,
the house was all dark. After a time he went away,
and stood in an adjoining portico and watched.

"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder
of the two gentlemen.

"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.

They looked at each other as they walked away, and
sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton's
uncle.

Inside, in the servant's part of the house, the half-
clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each
other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying, and wringing her
hands. Francis was as pale as death.

After about a quarter of an hour he got the coach-
man and one of the footmen, and crept up-stairs.
They knocked, but there was no reply. They called
out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly
trying to force the door, they got on the roof, and
dropped down onto the balcony. The windows
yielded easily; their bolts were old.

When they entered they found hanging upon the
wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had
last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth

271

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was
withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was
not till they had examined the rings that they recog-
nized who it was.

272

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