beautiful things are the cultivated. For these
there is hope. They are the elect to whom
beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an
immoral book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is
the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a
glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of
romanticism is the rage of Caliban not
seeing his own face in a glass. The moral
life of man forms part of the subject-matter
of the artist, but the morality of art consists
in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even
things that are true can be proved. No artist
has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy
in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism
of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist
can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist
instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to
the artist materials for an art. From the point
of view of form, the type of all the arts is the
art of the musician. From the point of view
of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art
is at once surface and symbol. Those who
go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

-1-

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

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

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

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you
have ever done,"

said Lord Henry languidly.

"You must certainly send it next year to the
Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and
too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there,
there have been either so many people that I
have not been able to see the pictures,
which was dreadful, or so many pictures
that I have not been able to see the people,
which was worse. The Grosvenor is really
the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere,"

he answered, tossing his head back in that
odd way that used to make his friends laugh
at him at Oxford.

"No, I won't send it anywhere."

-2-

becomes all nose, or all forehead, or
something horrid. Look at the successful
men in any of the learned professions. How
perfectly hideous they are! Except, of
course, in the Church. But then in the Church
they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying
at the age of eighty what he was told to say
when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a
natural consequence he always looks
absolutely delightful."

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

"You don't understand me, Harry,"

answered the artist.

"Of course I am not like him. I know that
perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to
look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I
am telling you the truth. There is a fatality
about all physical and intellectual
distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to
dog through history the faltering steps of
kings. It is better not to be different from
one's fellows.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in
this world. They can sit at their ease and
gape at the play. If they know nothing of
victory, they are at least spared the
knowledge of defeat. They live as we all
should live--undisturbed, indifferent, and
without disquiet. They neither bring ruin
upon others, nor ever receive it from alien
hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my
brains, such as they are--my art, whatever

-3-

she does find me out, she makes no row at
all. I sometimes wish she would; but she
merely laughs at me."

"I hate the way you talk about your married
life, Harry,"

said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the
door that led into the garden.

"I believe that you are really a very good
husband, but that you are thoroughly
ashamed of your own virtues. You are an
extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral
thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
cynicism is simply a pose."

"Being natural is simply a pose, and the
most irritating pose I know,"

cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two
young men went out into the garden
together and ensconced themselves on a
long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of
a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over
the polished leaves. In the grass, white
daisies were tremulous.

After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his
watch.

"I am afraid I must be going, Basil,"

he murmured,

"and before I go, I insist on your answering a
question I put to you some time ago."

"What is that?"

said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on
the ground.

"You know quite well."

"I do not, Harry."

-4-

Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down,
plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the
grass and examined it.

"I am quite sure I shall understand it,"

he replied, gazing intently at the little golden,
white-feathered disk,

"and as for believing things, I can believe
anything, provided that it is quite incredible."

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

"The story is simply this,"

said the painter after some time.

"Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady
Brandon's. You know we poor artists have
to show ourselves in society from time to
time, just to remind the public that we are
not savages."

"With an evening coat and a white tie, as you
told me once, anybody, even a stock-
broker, can gain a reputation for being
civilized. Well, after I had been in the room
about ten minutes, talking to huge
overdressed dowagers 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

-5-

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-
century standard of immortality."

"Suddenly I found myself face to face with
the young man whose personality had so
strangely stirred me. We were quite close,
almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was
reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to
introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so
reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable.
We would have spoken to each other without
any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian
told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we
were destined to know each other."

"And how did Lady Brandon describe this
wonderful young man?"

asked his companion.

"I know she goes in for giving a rapid precis
of all her guests. I remember her bringing
me up to a truculent and red-faced old
gentleman covered all over with orders and
ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic
whisper which must have been perfectly
audible to everybody in the room, the most
astounding details. I simply fled".

"I like to find out people for myself. But Lady
Brandon treats her guests exactly as an
auctioneer treats his goods. She either
explains them entirely away, or tells one
everything about them except what one
wants to know."

"Poor Lady Brandon!

You are hard on her, Harry!"said Hallward
listlessly.

"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon,
and only succeeded in opening a

-6-

power, and consequently they all
appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I
think it is rather vain."

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

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

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

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

"Harry!"

exclaimed Hallward, frowning.

"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I
can't help detesting my relations. I suppose
it comes from the fact that none of us can
stand other people having the same faults
as ourselves. I quite sympathize with the
rage of the English democracy against what
they call the vices of the upper orders.

The masses feel that drunkenness,
stupidity, and immorality should be their
own special property, and that if any one of
us makes an ass of himself, he is poaching
on their preserves. When poor Southwark
got into the divorce court, their indignation
was quite magnificent. And yet I don't
suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat
live correctly."

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

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown
beard and tapped the toe of his patent-

-7-

to late Greek sculpture, and the face of
Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not
merely that I paint from him, draw from him,
sketch from him."

"Of course, I have done all that. But he is
much more to me than a model or a sitter. I
won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what
I have done of him, or that his beauty is such
that art cannot express it. There is nothing
that art cannot express, and I know that the
work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray,
is good work, is the best work of my life.

But in some curious way--I wonder will you
understand me?--his personality has
suggested to me an entirely new manner in
art, an entirely new mode of style. I see
things differently, I think of them differently.

I can now recreate life in a way that was
hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in
days of thought'--who is it who says that? I
forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been
to me. The merely visible presence of this
lad--for he seems to me little more than a
lad, though he is really over twenty his
merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can
you 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?"

-8-

run to many editions."

"I hate them for it,"cried Hallward."An artist
should create beautiful things, but should
put nothing of his own life into them. We live
in an age when men treat art as if it were
meant to be a form of autobiography. We
have lost the abstract sense of beauty.
Some day I will show the world what it is;
and for that reason the world shall never see
my portrait of Dorian Gray."

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

The painter considered for a few moments.

"He likes me,"

he answered after a pause;

"I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him
dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in
saying things to him that I know I shall be
sorry for having said. As a rule, he is
charming to me, and we sit in the studio and
talk of a thousand things.

Now and then, however, he is horribly
thoughtless, and seems to take a real
delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry,
that I have given away my whole soul to
some one who treats it as if it were a flower
to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to
charm his vanity, an ornament for a
summer's day."

"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to
linger,"murmured Lord Henry.

"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It
is a sad thing to think of, but there is no
doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty.
That accounts for the fact that we all take

-9-

delightful other people's emotions were!
much more delightful than their ideas, it
seemed to him. One's own soul, and the
passions of one's friends--those were the
fascinating things in life.

He pictured to himself with silent
amusement the tedious luncheon that he
had missed by staying so long with Basil
Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's, he
would have been sure to have met Lord
Goodbody there, and the whole
conversation would have been about the
feeding of the poor and the necessity for
model lodging-houses. Each class would
have preached the importance of those
virtues, for whose exercise there was no
necessity in their own lives.

The rich would have spoken on the value of
thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the
dignity of labour. It was charming to have
escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt,
an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to
Hallward and said,

"My dear fellow, I have just remembered."

"Remembered what, Harry?"

"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."

"Where was it?"

asked Hallward, with a slight frown.

"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my
aunt, Lady Agatha's. She told me she had
discovered a wonderful young man who
was going to help her in the East End, and
that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound
to state that she never told me he was good-
looking. Women have no appreciation of
good looks; at least, good women have
not."

-10-

you."

He spoke very slowly, and the words
seemed wrung out of him almost against his
will.

"What nonsense you talk!"

said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking
Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into
the house.

CHAPTER 2

As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He
was seated at the piano, with his back to
them, turning over the pages of a volume of
Schumann's "Forest Scenes."

"You must lend me these, Basil,"

he cried.

"I want to learn them. They are perfectly
charming."

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

"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a
life-sized portrait of myself,"

answered the lad, swinging round on the
music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner.
When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
blush coloured his cheeks for a moment,
and he started up.

"I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know
you had any one with you."

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

-11-

And Lord Henry flung himself down on the
divan and opened his cigarette-case.

The painter had been busy mixing his
colours and getting his brushes ready. He
was looking worried, and when he heard
Lord Henry's last remark, he glanced at
him, hesitated for a moment, and then said,

"Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day.
Would you think it awfully rude of me if I
asked you to go away?"

Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian
Gray.

"Am I to go, Mr. Gray?"

he asked.

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

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

-12-

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 life is
self-development. To realize one's nature
perfectly--that is what each of us is here
for.

People are afraid of themselves,
nowadays. They have forgotten the highest
of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's
self. Of course, they are charitable. They
feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But
their own souls starve, and are naked.
Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps
we never really had it. The terror of society,
which is the basis of morals, the terror of
God, which is the secret of religion--these
are the two things that govern us. And yet
Just turn your head a little more to the right,
Dorian, like a good boy," said the painter,
deep in his work and conscious only that a
look had come into the lad's face that he
had neverseen there before.

"And yet,"

continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical
voice, and with that graceful wave of the
hand that was always so characteristic of
him, and that he had even in his Eton days,

"I believe that if one man were to live out his
life fully and completely, were to give form

-13-

For nearly ten minutes he stood there,
motionless, with parted lips and eyes
strangely bright. He was dimly conscious
that entirely fresh influences were at work
within him. Yet they seemed to him to have
come really from himself.

The few words that Basil's friend had said
to him words spoken by chance, no doubt,
and with wilful paradox in them had touched
some secret chord that had never been
touched before, but that he felt was now
vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.

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

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

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

-14-

painting than I am to-day. This is going to be
my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it
stands."

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

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

"Yes,"

continued Lord Henry,

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

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head
away. He could not help liking the tall,
graceful young man who was standing by
him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and
worn expression interested him. There was
something in his low languid voice that was
absolutely fascinating. His cool, white,
flowerlike hands, even, had a curious
charm.

They moved, as he spoke, like music, and

-15-

a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't
frown. You have."

"And beauty is a form of genius is higher,
indeed, than genius, as it needs no
explanation. It is of the great facts of the
world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the
reflection in dark waters of that silver shell
we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It
has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes
princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah!
when you have lost it you won't smile."

". . . People say sometimes that beauty is
only superficial. That may be so, but at least
it is not so superficial as thought is. To me,
beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only
shallow people who do not judge by
appearances. The true mystery of the world
is the visible, not the invisible."

". . . Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been
good to you. But what the gods give they
quickly take away. You have only a few
years in which to live really, perfectly, and
fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will
go with it, and then you will suddenly
discover that there are no triumphs left for
you, or have to content yourself with those
mean triumphs that the memory of your past
will make more bitter than defeats. Every
month as it wanesbrings 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
tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
failure, or giving away your life to the
ignorant, the common, and the vulgar.
These are the sickly aims, the false ideals,
of our age."

-16-

for which we cannot find expression, or
when some thought that terrifies us lays
sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to
yield. After a time the bee flew away. He
saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a
Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to
quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.

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

"I am waiting,"

he cried.

"Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
you can bring your drinks."

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

'You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,"

said Lord Henry, looking at him.

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

"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes
me shudder when I hear it. Women are so
fond of using it. They spoil every romance
by trying to make it last for ever. It is a
meaningless word, too. The only difference
between a caprice and a lifelong 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,"

-17-

platform.

"Quite finished,"

said the painter.

"And you have sat splendidly to-day. I am
awfully obliged to you."

"That is entirely due to me,"

broke in Lord Henry.

"Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"

Dorian made no answer, but passed
listlessly in front of his picture and turned
towards it. When he saw it he drew back,
and his cheeks flushed for a moment with
pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes,
as if he had 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 compliments had seemed
to him to be merely the charming
exaggeration of friendship. He had listened
to them, laughed at them, forgotten them.
They had not influenced his nature. Then
had come Lord Henry Wotton with his
strange panegyric on youth, his terrible
warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at
the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the
shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality
of the description flashed across him.

Yes, there would be a day when his face
would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim
and colourless, the grace of his figure
broken and deformed. The scarlet would
pass away from his lips and the gold steal
from his hair. The life that was to make his

-18-

picture that was to grow old! For that--for
that--I would give everything! Yes, there is
nothing in the whole world I would not give! I
would give my soul for that!"

"You would hardly care for such an
arrangement, Basil,"

cried Lord Henry, laughing.

"It would be rather hard lines on your work."

"I should object very strongly, Harry,"

said Hallward.

Dorian Gray turned and looked at him.

"I believe you would, Basil. You like your art
better than your friends. I am no more to you
than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much,
I 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 when
one loses one's good looks, whatever they
may be, one loses everything. Your picture
has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is
perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth
having. When I find that I am growing old, I
shall kill myself."

Hallward turned pale and caught his hand.

"Dorian! Dorian!"

-19-

friends at once, but between you both you
have made me hate the finest piece of work
I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is
it but canvas and colour? I will not let it come
across our three lives and mar them."

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

With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the
couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore
the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the
end of the studio.

"Don't, Basil, don't!"

he cried.

"It would be murder!"

"I am glad you appreciate my work at last,
Dorian,"

said the painter coldly when he had
recovered from his surprise.

"I never thought you would."

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

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

-20-

"Let us go to the theatre to-night,"

said Lord Henry.

"There is sure to be something on,
somewhere. I have promised to dine at
White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I
can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or
that I am prevented from coming in
consequence of a subsequent
engagement. I think that would be a rather
nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of
candour."

"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-
clothes,"

muttered Hallward.

"And, when one has them on, they are so
horrid."

"Yes,"

answered Lord Henry dreamily,

"the costume of the nineteenth century is
detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing.
Sin is the only real colour-element left in
modern life."

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

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

"Before either."

"I should like to come to the theatre with you,
Lord Henry,"

said the lad.

"Then you shall come; and you will come,

-21-

"Stop and dine with me."

"I can't, Basil."

"Why?"

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

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

Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.

"I entreat you."

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

"I must go, Basil,"

he answered.

"Very well,"

said Hallward, and he went over and laid
down his cup on the tray.

"It is rather late, and, as you have to dress,
you had better lose no time. Good-bye,
Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see
me soon. Come to-morrow."

"Certainly."

"You won't forget?"

"No, of course not,"

cried Dorian.

"And ... Harry!"

"Yes, Basil?"

-22-

had set himself to the serious study of the
great aristocratic art of doing absolutely
nothing.

He had two large town houses, but
preferred to live in chambers as it was less
trouble, and took most of his meals at his
club. He paid some attention to the
management of his collieries in the Midland
counties, excusing himself for this taint of
industry on the ground that the one
advantage of having coal was that it
enabled a gentleman to afford the decency
of burning wood on his own hearth. In
politics he was a Tory, except when the
Tories were in office, during which period
he roundly abused them for being a pack of
Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who
bullied him, and a terror to most of his
relations, whom he bullied in turn.

Only England could have produced him, and
he always said that the country was going to
the dogs. His principles were out of date,
but there was a good deal to be said for his
prejudices. When Lord Henry entered the
room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and
grumbling over The Times.

"Well, Harry,"

said the old gentleman,

"what brings you out so early? I thought you
dandies never got up till two, and were not
visible till five."

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

"Money, I suppose,"

said Lord Fermor, making a wry face.

"Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young

-23-

the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother
was a Devereux, Lady Margaret
Devereaux. I want you to tell me about his
mother. What was she like? Whom did she
marry? You have known nearly everybody in
your time, so you might have known her. I
am very much interested in Mr. Gray at
present. I have only just met him."

"Kelso's grandson! "

echoed the old gentleman.

"Kelso's grandson! ... Of course.... I knew
his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
christening. She was an extraordinarily
beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and
made all the men frantic by running away
with a penniless young fellow a mere
nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment,
or something of that kind."

"Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if
it happened yesterday. The poor chap was
killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the
marriage. There was an ugly story about it.
They said Kelso got some rascally
adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his
son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it,
paid him and that the fellow spitted his man
as if he had been a pigeon."

"The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso
ate his chop alone at the club for some time
afterwards. He brought his daughter back
with him, I was told, and she never spoke to
him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business.
The girl died, too, died within a year. So she
left a son, did she? I had forgotten that. What
sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother, he
must be a good-looking chap."

"He is very good-looking,"

assented Lord Henry.

-24-

English girls good enough for him?"

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

"I'll back English women against the world,
Harry,"

said Lord Fermor, striking the table with his
fist.

"The betting is on the Americans."

"They don't last, I am told,"

muttered his uncle.

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

"Who are her people?"

grumbled the old gentleman.

"Has she got any?"

Lord Henry shook his head.

"American girls are as clever at concealing
their parents, as English women are at
concealing their past,"

he said, rising to go.

"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"

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

"Is she pretty?"

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most

-25-

happiness cut short by a hideous,
treacherous crime.

Months of voiceless agony, and then a child
born in pain. The mother snatched away by
death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny
of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an
interesting background. It posed the lad,
made him more perfect, as it were.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed,
there was something tragic. Worlds had to
be in travail, that the meanest flower might
blow. . . And how charming he had been at
dinner the night before, as with startled
eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure
he had sat opposite to him at the club, the
red candleshades staining to a richer rose
the wakening wonder of his face. Talking to
him was like playing upon an exquisite
violin.

He answered to every touch and thrill of the
bow. . . There was something terribly
enthralling in the exercise of influence. No
other activity was like it. To project one's
soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry
there for a moment; to hear one's own
intellectual views echoed back to one with
all the added music of passion and youth; to
convey one's temperament into another as
though it were a subtle fluid or a strange
perfume: there was a real joy in that
perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in
an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and
grossly common in its aims. . .

He was a marvellous type, too, this lad,
whom by so curious a chance he had met in
Basil's studio, or could be fashioned into a
marvellous type, at any rate. Grace was his,
and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
such as old Greek marbles kept for us.
There was nothing that one could not do
with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy.

-26-

cried his aunt, shaking her head at him. He
invented a facile excuse, and having taken
the vacant seat next to her, looked round to
see who was there. Dorian bowed to him
shyly from the end of the table, a flush of
pleasure stealing into his cheek.

Opposite was the Duchess of Harley, a lady
of admirable good-nature and good
temper, much liked by every one who knew
her, and of those ample architectural
proportions that in women who are not
duchesses are described by contemporary
historians as stoutness.

Next to her sat, on her right, Sir Thomas
Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament,
who followed his leader in public life and in
private life followed the best cooks, dining
with the Tories and thinking with the
Liberals, in accordance with a wise and
well-known rule.

The post on her left was occupied by Mr.
Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of
considerable charm and culture, who had
fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,
having, as he explained once to Lady
Agatha, said everything that he had to say
before he was thirty.

His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur,
one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect
saint amongst women, but so dreadfully
dowdy that she reminded one of a badly
bound hymn-book.

Fortunately for him she had on the other
side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-
aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial
statement in the House of Commons, with
whom she was conversing in that intensely
earnest manner which is the one
unpardonable error, as he remarked once
himself, that all really good people fall into,
and from which none of them ever quite

-27-

"When America was discovered,"

said the Radical member and he began to
give some wearisome facts. Like all people
who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted
his listeners.

The duchess sighed and exercised her
privilege of interruption.

"I wish to goodness it never had been
discovered at all!"

she exclaimed.

"Really, our girls have no chance nowadays.
It is most unfair."

"Perhaps, after all, America never has been
discovered,"

said Mr. Erskine;

"I myself would say that it had merely been
detected."

"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the
inhabitants,"

answered the duchess vaguely.

"I must confess that most of them are
extremely pretty. And they dress well, too.
They get all their dresses in Paris. I wish I
could afford to do the same."

"They say that when good Americans die
they go to Paris,"

chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large
wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.

"Really! And where do bad Americans go to
when they die?"

inquired the duchess.

-28-

"I do, Lord Henry,"

murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.

"Paradoxes are all very well in their way. . ."

rejoined the baronet.

"Was that a paradox?"

asked Mr. Erskine.

"I did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the
way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test
reality we must see it on the tight rope. When
the verities become acrobats, we can
judge them."

"Dear me!"

said Lady Agatha,

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

"I want him to play to me,"

cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
down the table and caught a bright
answering glance.

"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel,"

continued Lady Agatha.

"I can sympathize with everything except
suffering,"

said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders.

"I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly,

-29-

"Terribly grave,"

echoed Lady Agatha.

Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine.

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the
world's original sin. If the caveman had
known how to laugh, history would have
been different."

"You are really very comforting,"

warbled the duchess.

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

"A blush is very becoming, Duchess,"

remarked Lord Henry.

"Only when one is young,"

she answered.

"When an old woman like myself blushes, it
is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish
you would tell me how to become young
again."

He thought for a moment.

"Can you remember any great error that you
committed in your early days, Duchess?"

he asked, looking at her across the table.

"A great many, I fear,"

she cried.

"Then commit them over again,"

-30-

dripping, sloping sides.

It was an extraordinary improvisation. He
felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed
on him, and the consciousness that
amongst his audience there was one
whose temperament he wished to fascinate
seemed to give his wit keenness and to
lend colour to his imagination. He was
brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible.

He charmed his listeners out of themselves,
and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian
Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like
one under a spell, smiles chasing each
other over his lips and wonder growing
grave in his darkening eyes.

At last, liveried in the costume of the age,
reality entered the room in the shape of a
servant to tell the duchess that her carriage
was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock
despair.

"How annoying!"

she cried.

"I must go. I have to call for my husband at
the club, to take him to some absurd
meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is
going to be in the chair."

"If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I
couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far
too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I
must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord
Henry, you are quite delightful and
dreadfully 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,"

-31-

" Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you
extremely dangerous, and if anything
happens to our good duchess, we shall all
look on you as being primarily responsible.
But I should like to talk to you about life.

The generation into which I was born was
tedious. Some day, when you are tired of
London, come down to Treadley and
expound to me your philosophy of pleasure
over some admirable Burgundy I am
fortunate enough to possess."

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

"You will complete it,"

answered the old gentleman with a
courteous bow.

"And now I must bid good-bye to your
excellent aunt. I am due at the Athenaeum. It
is the hour when we sleep there. "

"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"

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

Lord Henry laughed and rose.

"I am going to the park,"

he cried.

As he was passing out of the door, Dorian
Gray touched him on the arm.

"Let me come with you,"

he murmured.

"But I thought you had promised Basil

-32-

ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock annoyed
him. Once or twice he thought of going
away.

At last he heard a step outside, and the door
opened.

"How late you are, Harry!"

he murmured.

"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray,"

answered a shrill voice.

He glanced quickly round and rose to his
feet.

"I beg your pardon. I thought--"

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

"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"

"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him
the other night at the opera."

She laughed nervously as she spoke, and
watched him with her vague forget-me-not
eyes.

She was a curious woman, whose dresses
always looked as if they had been designed
in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was
usually in love with somebody, and, as her
passion was never returned, she had kept
all her illusions.

She tried to look picturesque, but only
succeeded in being untidy. Her name was
Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for
going to church.

-33-

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 odour of
frangipanni. Then he lit a cigarette and flung
himself down on the sofa.

"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured
hair, Dorian,"

he said after a few puffs.

"Why, Harry?"

"Because they are so sentimental."

-34-

are only two kinds of women, the plain and
the coloured. The plain women are very
useful.

If you want to gain a reputation for
respectability, you have merely to take them
down to supper. The other women are very
charming. They commit one mistake,
however. They paint in order to try and look
young. Our grandmothers painted in order
to try and talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit
used to go together. That is all over now.

As long as a woman can look ten years
younger than her own daughter, she is
perfectly satisfied. As for conversation,
there are only five women in London worth
talking to, and two of these can't be
admitted into decent society. However, tell
me about your genius. How long have you
known her?"

"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."

"Never mind that. How long have you known
her?"

"About three weeks."

"And where did you come across her?"

"I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn't be
unsympathetic about it. After all, it never
would have happened if I had not met you.
You filled me with a wild desire to know
everything about life. For days after I met
you, something seemed to throb in my
veins.

As I lounged in the park, or strolled down
Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who
passed me and wonder, with a mad
curiosity, what sort of lives they led. Some
of them fascinated me. Others filled me with
terror. There was an exquisite poison in the
air. I had a passion for sensations. . . . Well,

-35-

always be loved, and you will always be in
love with love.

A grande passion is the privilege of people
who have nothing to do. That is the one use
of the idle classes of a country. Don't be
afraid. There are exquisite things in store
for you. This is merely the beginning."

"Do you think my nature so shallow?"

cried Dorian Gray angrily.

"No; I think your nature so deep."

"How do you mean?"

"My dear boy, the people who love only
once in their lives are really the shallow
people. What they call their loyalty, and their
fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or
their lack of imagination.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what
consistency is to the life of the intellect--
simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness!
I must analyse it some day. The passion for
property is in it. There are many things that
we would throw away if we were not afraid
that others might pick them up. But I don't
want to interrupt you. Go on with your story."

"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little
private box, with a vulgar drop-scene
staring me in the face. I looked out from
behind the curtain and surveyed the house. It
was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-
cake.

The gallery and pit were 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

-36-

passion, lips that were like the petals of a
rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever
seen in my life.

You said to me once that pathos left you
unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty,
could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you,
Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist
of tears that came across me. And her
voice--I never heard such a voice. It was
very low at first, with deep mellow notes that
seemed to fall singly upon one's ear.

Then it became a little louder, and sounded
like a flute or a distant hautboy. In the
garden-scene it had all the tremulous
ecstasy that one hears just before dawn
when nightingales are singing. There were
moments, later on, when it had the wild
passion of violins. You know how a voice
can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never
forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them,
and each of them says something different.
I don't know which to follow. Why should I not
love her?

Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me
in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
One evening she is Rosalind, and the next
evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die
in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the
poison from her lover's lips. I have watched
her wandering through the forest of Arden,
disguised as a pretty boy in hose and
doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad,
and has come into the presence of a guilty
king, and given him rue to wear and bitter
herbs to taste of.

She has been innocent, and the black
hands of jealousy have crushed her
reedlike 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

-37-

cheeks and burning eyes.

"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"

"It is only the sacred things that are worth
touching, Dorian,"

said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of
pathos in his voice.

"But why should you be annoyed? I suppose
she will belong to you some day. When one
is in love, one always begins by deceiving
one's self, and one always ends by
deceiving others. That is what the world
calls a romance. You know her, at any rate, I
suppose?"

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

"I am not surprised."

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

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

-38-

There is something of a child about her. Her
eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder
when I told her what I thought of her
performance, and she seemed quite
unconscious of her power. I think we were
both rather nervous.

The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway
of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate
speeches about us both, while we stood
looking at each other like children. He would
insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to
assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the
kind. She said quite simply to me, 'You look
more like a prince. I must call you Prince
Charming.'"

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

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

"I know that look. It depresses me,"

murmured Lord Henry, examining his rings.

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

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

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

-39-

love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I
want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of
our passion to stir their dust into
consciousness, to wake their ashes into
pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!"

He was walking up and down the room as
he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his
cheeks. He was terribly excited.

Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense
of pleasure. How different he was now from
the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil
Hallward's studio! His nature had
developed like a flower, had borne
blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret
hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire
had come to meet it on the way.

"And what do you propose to do?"

said Lord Henry at last.

"I want you and Basil to come with me some
night and see her act. I have not the slightest
fear of the result. You are certain to
acknowledge her genius. Then we must get
her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound to
him for three years--at least for two years
and eight months from the present time. I
shall have to pay him something, of course.

When all that is settled, I shall take a West
End theatre and bring her out properly. She
will make the world as mad as she has
made me."

"That would be impossible, my dear boy."

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

-40-

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

As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy
eyelids drooped, and he began to think.
Certainly few people had ever interested
him so much as Dorian Gray, and yet the
lad's mad adoration of some one else
caused him not the slightest pang of
annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by
it. It made him a more interesting study.

He had been always enthralled by the
methods of natural science, but the ordinary
subject-matter of that science had seemed
to him trivial and of no import. And so he had
begun by vivisecting himself, as he had
ended by vivisecting others. Human life--
that appeared to him the one thing worth
investigating. Compared to it there was
nothing else of any value.

It was true that as one watched life in its
curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one

-41-

sculpture, or painting.

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

Soul and body, body and soul--how
mysterious they were! There was
animalism in the soul, and the body had its
moments of spirituality. The senses could
refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who
could say where the fleshly impulse ceased,
or the psychical impulse began? How
shallow were the arbitrary definitions of
ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult
to decide between the claims of the various
schools!

Was the soul a shadow seated in the house
of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as
Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of
spirit from matter was a mystery, and the
union of spirit with matter was a mystery
also.

He began to wonder whether we could ever
make psychology so absolute a science
that each little spring of life would be
revealed to us. As it was, we always
misunderstood ourselves and rarely
understood others. Experience was of no
ethical value. It was merely the name men
gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a
rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had
claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the
formation of character, had praised it as

-42-

into scarlet gold the upper windows of the
houses opposite. The panes glowed like
plates of heated metal. The sky above was
like a faded rose. He thought of his friend's
young fiery-coloured life and wondered
how it was all going to end.

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

CHAPTER 5

"Mother, Mother, I am so happy!"

whispered the girl, burying her face in the
lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who,
with back turned to the shrill intrusive light,
was sitting in the one arm-chair that their
dingy sitting-room contained.

"I am so happy!"

she repeated,

"and you must be happy, too!"

Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-
whitened hands on her daughter's head.

"Happy!"

she echoed,

"I am only happy, Sibyl, when I see you act.
You must not think of anything but your
acting. Mr. Isaacs has been very good to us,
and we owe him money."

The girl looked up and pouted.

"Money, Mother?"

she cried,

-43-

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

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

Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The
wordy silence troubled her.

"Mother, Mother,"

she cried,

"why does he love me so much? I know why I
love him. I love him because he is like what
love himself should be. But what does he
see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet--
why, I cannot tell--though I feel so much
beneath him, I don't feel humble. I feel
proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love
my father as I love Prince Charming?"

The elder woman grew pale beneath the
coarse powder that daubed her cheeks,
and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of
pain. Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms
round her neck, and kissed her.

"Forgive me, Mother. I know it pains you to
talk about our father. But it only pains you
because you loved him so much. Don't look
so sad. I am as happy to-day as you were

-44-

face with tenderness.

"I want you to come out with me for a walk,
Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever see this
horrid London again. I am sure I don't want
to."

"My son, don't say such dreadful things,"

murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up a tawdry
theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning
to patch it. She felt a little disappointed that
he had not joined the group. It would have
increased the theatrical picturesqueness of
the situation.

"Why not, Mother? I mean it."

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

"Society!"

muttered the lad.

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

"Oh, Jim!"

said Sibyl, laughing,

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

-45-

by sudden and strange surrenders.

"I hope you will be contented, James, with
your sea-faring life,"

she said.

"You must remember that it is your own
choice. You might have entered a solicitor's
office. Solicitors are a very respectable
class, and in the country often dine with the
best families."

"I hate offices, and I hate clerks,"

he replied.

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

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

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

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

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

"You don't know his name, though,"

-46-

"I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at
five o'clock. Everything is packed, except
my shirts, so you need not trouble."

"Good-bye, my son,"

she answered with a bow of strained
stateliness.

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

"Kiss me, Mother,"

said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the
withered cheek and warmed its frost.

"My child! my child!"

cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
search of an imaginary gallery.

"Come, Sibyl,"

said her brother impatiently. He hated his
mother's affectations.

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

Jim frowned from time to time when he
caught the inquisitive glance of some
stranger. He had that dislike of being stared
at, which comes on geniuses late in life and
never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl,
however, was quite unconscious of the
effect she was producing.

-47-

be very good, and not lose his temper, or
spend his money foolishly.

She was only a year older than he was, but
she knew so much more of life. He must be
sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and
to say his prayers each night before he went
to sleep. God was very good, and would
watch over him. She would pray for him,
too, and in a few years he would come back
quite rich and happy.

The lad listened sulkily to her and made no
answer. He was heart-sick at leaving
home. Yet it was not this alone that made
him gloomy and morose. Inexperienced
though he was, he had still a strong sense of
the danger of Sibyl's position. This young
dandy who was making love to her could
mean her no good. He was a gentleman,
and he hated him for that, hated him through
some curious race-instinct for which he
could not account, and which for that reason
was all the more dominant within him.

He was conscious also of the shallowness
and vanity of his mother's nature, and in that
saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's
happiness. Children begin by loving their
parents; as they grow older they judge
them; sometimes they forgive them.

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

"You are not listening to a word I am saying,

-48-

in the world. Some day you will meet him--
when you come back from Australia. You
will like him so much. Everybody likes him,
and I ... love him. I wish you could come to
the theatre to-night.

He is going to be there, and I am to play
Juliet. Oh! how I shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to
be in love and play Juliet! To have him sitting
there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I
may frighten the company, frighten or
enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass
one's self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be
shouting 'genius' to his loafers at the bar.

He has preached me as a dogma; to-night
he will announce me as a revelation. I feel it.
And it is all his, his only, Prince Charming,
my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I
am poor beside him. Poor? What does that
matter?

When poverty creeps in at the door, love
flies in through the window. Our proverbs
want 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 sullenly.

"A prince!"

she cried musically.

"What more do you want?"

"He wants to enslave you."

"I shudder at the thought of being free."

"I want you to beware of him."

"To see him is to worship him; to know him

-49-

"Who?"

said Jim Vane.

"Prince Charming,"

she answered, looking after the victoria. He
jumped up and seized her roughly by the
arm.

"Show him to me. Which is he? Point him
out. I must see him!"

he exclaimed; but at that moment the Duke
of Berwick's four-in-hand came between,
and when it had left the space clear, the
carriage had swept out of the park.

"He is gone,"

murmured Sibyl sadly.

"I wish you had seen him."

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

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

"Come away, Jim; come away,"

she whispered. He followed her doggedly
as she passed through the crowd. He felt
glad at what he had said. When they
reached the Achilles Statue, she turned
round. There was pity in her eyes that
became laughter on her lips.

She shook her head at him.

"You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-
tempered boy, that is all. How can you say

-50-

"

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

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

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

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

After some time, he thrust away his plate
and put his head in his hands. He felt that he
had a right to know. It should have been told
to him before, if it was as he suspected.
Leaden with fear, his mother watched him.

Words dropped mechanically from her lips.
A tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her
fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up

-51-

"I don't care for myself,"

he exclaimed,

"but don't let Sibyl. . . . It is a gentleman, isn't
it, who is in love with her, or says he is?
Highly connected, too, I suppose.

For a moment a hideous sense of
humiliation came over the woman. Her head
drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking
hands. "

Sibyl has a mother,

""

she murmured;

"I had none."

The lad was touched. He went towards her,
and stooping down, he kissed her.

"I am sorry if I have pained you by asking
about my father,"

he said,

"but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-
bye. Don't forget that you will 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.

-52-

he cried.

"Impossible!"

"It is perfectly true."

"To whom?"

"To some little actress or other."

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

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

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

"Except in America,"

rejoined Lord Henry languidly.

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

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

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

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

"Oh, she is better than good--she is
beautiful,"

-53-

their egotism, and add to it many other
egos. They are forced to have more than
one life. They become more highly
organized, and to be highly organized is, I
should fancy, the object of man's
existence. Besides, every experience is of
value, and whatever one may say against
marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his
wife, passionately adore her for six months,
and then suddenly become fascinated by
some one else. He would be a wonderful
study."

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

Lord Henry laughed.

"The reason we all like to think so well of
others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We
think that we are generous because we
credit our neighbour with the possession of
those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to
us. We praise the banker that we may
overdraw our account, and find good
qualities in the highwayman in the hope that
he may spare our pockets. I mean
everything that I have said."

"I have the greatest contempt for optimism.
As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but
one whose growth is arrested. If you want to
mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
As for marriage, of course that would be
silly, but there are other and more
interesting bonds between men and
women. I will certainly encourage them.
They have the charm of being fashionable.
But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you
more than I can."

-54-

course, the scenery was dreadful and the
Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should have
seen her!"

"When she came on in her boy's clothes, she
was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-
coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon
sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose,
a dainty little green cap with a hawk's
feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded
cloak lined with dull red. She had never
seemed to me more exquisite. She had all
the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine
that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair
clustered round her face like dark leaves
round a pale rose."

"As for her acting--well, you shall see her
to-night. She is simply a born artist. I sat in
the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I forgot
that I was in London and in the nineteenth
century. I was away with my love in a forest
that no man had ever seen. After the
performance was over, I went behind and
spoke to her. As we were sitting together,
suddenly there came into her eyes a look
that I had never seen there before. My lips
moved towards hers. We kissed each other.
I can't describe to you what I felt at that
moment. It seemed to me that all my life had
been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-
coloured joy."

"She trembled all over and shook like a
white narcissus. Then she flung herself on
her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I
should not tell you all this, but I can't help it.
Of course, our engagement is a dead
secret. She has not even told her own
mother. I don't know what my guardians will
say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't
care."

"I shall be of age in less than a year, and
then I can do what I like. I have been right,
Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry

-55-

misery upon any one. His nature is too fine
for that."

Lord Henry looked across the table.

"Dorian is never annoyed with me,"

he answered.

"I asked the question for the best reason
possible, for the only reason, indeed, that
excuses one for asking any question simple
curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the
women who propose to us, and not we who
propose to the women. Except, of course,
in middle-class life. But then the middle
classes are not modern."

Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head.

"You are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don't
mind. It is impossible to be angry with you.
When you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that
the man who could wrong her would be a
beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot
understand how any one can wish to shame
the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to
place her on a pedestal of gold and to see
the world worship the woman who is mine."

"What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You
mock at it for that. Ah! don't mock. It is an
irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust
makes me faithful, her belief makes me
good. When I am with her, I regret all that you
have taught me. I become different from
what you have known me to be. I am
changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl
Vane's hand makes me forget you and all
your wrong, fascinating, poisonous,
delightful theories."

"And those are ... ?"

asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some
salad.

-56-

accept the standard of his age is a form of
the grossest immorality."

"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's
self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for
doing so?"

suggested the painter.

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

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

"What sort of ways, Basil?"

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

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders.

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

"I know what pleasure is,"

cried Dorian Gray.

"It is to adore some one."

"That is certainly better than being adored,"

he answered, toying with some fruits.

"Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat

-57-

and some cigarettes. No, don't mind the
cigarettes--I have some. Basil, I can't allow
you to smoke cigars. You must have a
cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a
perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it
leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one
want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond
of me. I represent to you all the sins you have
never had the courage to commit."

"What nonsense you talk, Harry!"

cried the lad, taking a light from a fire-
breathing silver dragon that the waiter had
placed on the table.

"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl
comes on the stage you will have a new
ideal of life. She will represent something to
you that you have never known."

"I have known everything,"

said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
eyes,

"but I am always ready for a new emotion. I
am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate,
there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much
more real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you
will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but
there is only room for two in the brougham.
You must follow us in a hansom."

They got up and put on their coats, sipping
their coffee standing. The painter was silent
and preoccupied. There was a gloom over
him. He could not bear this marriage, and
yet it seemed to him to be better than many
other things that might have happened.
After a few minutes, they all passed
downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had
been arranged, and watched the flashing
lights of the little brougham in front of him.

-58-

said Lord Henry.

"Yes!"

answered Dorian Gray.

"It was here I found her, and she is divine
beyond all living things. When she acts, you
will forget everything. These common rough
people, with their coarse faces and brutal
gestures, become quite different when she
is on the stage."

"They sit silently and watch her. They weep
and laugh as she wills them to do. She
makes them as responsive as a violin. She
spiritualizes them, and one feels that they
are of the same flesh and blood as one's
self."

"The same flesh and blood as one's self!
Oh, I hope not!"

exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning
the occupants of the gallery through his
opera-glass.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian,"

said the painter.

"I understand what you mean, and I believe
in this girl. Any one you love must be
marvellous, and any girl who has the effect
you describe must be fine and noble. To
spiritualize one's age--that is something
worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to
those who have lived without one, if she can
create the sense of beauty in people whose
lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can
strip them of their selfishness and lend them
tears for sorrows that are not their own, she
is worthy of all your adoration,"

"worthy of the adoration of the world. This
marriage is quite right. I did not think so at

-59-

were the curves of a white lily. Her hands
seemed to be made of cool ivory.

Yet she was curiously listless. She showed
no sign of joy when her eyes rested on
Romeo. The few words she had to speak
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too
much, Which mannerly devotion shows in
this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands
do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers'
kiss--with the brief dialogue that follows,
were spoken in a thoroughly artificial
manner. The voice was exquisite, but from
the point of view of tone it was absolutely
false. It was wrong in colour. It took away all
the life from the verse. It made the passion
unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.
He was puzzled and anxious. Neither of his
friends dared to say anything to him. She
seemed to them to be absolutely
incompetent. They were horribly
disappointed. Yet they felt that the true test
of any Juliet is the balcony scene of the
second act. They waited for that. If she
failed there, there was nothing in her. She
looked charming as she came out in the
moonlight. That could not be denied. But the
staginess of her acting was unbearable,
and grew worse as she went on. Her
gestures became absurdly artificial. She
overemphasized everything that she had to
say.

The beautiful passage--Thou knowest the
mask of night is on my face, Else would a
maiden blush bepaint my cheek For that
which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
was declaimed with the painful precision of
a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite
by some second-rate professor of
elocution. When she leaned over the balcony
and came to those wonderful lines Although

-60-

interrupted Hallward.

"We will come some other night."

"I wish she were ill,"

he rejoined.

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

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

"They are both simply forms of imitation,"

remarked Lord Henry.

"But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay
here any longer. It is not good for one's
morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't
suppose you will want your wife to act, so
what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a
wooden doll?"

"She is very lovely, and if she knows as little
about life as she does about acting, she will
be a delightful experience. There are only
two kinds of people who are really
fascinating people who know absolutely
everything, and people who know
absolutely nothing."

"Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so
tragic! The secret of remaining young is
never to have an emotion that is
unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil
and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and
drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is
beautiful. What more can you want?"

"Go away, Harry,"

-61-

have no idea what it was. You have no idea
what I suffered."

The girl smiled.

"Dorian,"

she answered, lingering over his name with
long-drawn music in her voice, as though it
were sweeter than honey to the red petals
of her mouth.

"Dorian, you should have understood. But
you understand now, don't you?"

"Understand what?"

he asked, angrily.

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

He shrugged his shoulders.

"You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you
shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous.
My friends were bored. I was bored."

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

"Dorian, Dorian,"

she cried,

"before I knew you, acting was the one
reality of my life. It was only in the theatre
that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was
Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The
joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the
sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I
believed in everything."

"The common people who acted with me

-62-

He flung himself down on the sofa and
turned away his face.

"You have killed my love,"

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

Then he leaped up and went to the door.

"Yes,"

he cried,

"you have killed my love. You used to stir my
imagination. Now you don't even stir my
curiosity. You simply produce no effect."

"I loved you because you were marvellous,
because you had genius and intellect,
because you realized the dreams of great
poets and gave shape and substance to the
shadows of art. You have thrown it all away.
You are shallow and stupid. My God! how
mad I was to love you! What a fool I have
been!"

"You are nothing to me now. I will never see
you again. I will never think of you. I will never
mention your name. You don't know what
you were to me, once. Why, once . . . Oh, I
can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never
laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the
romance of my life. How little you can know
of love, if you say it mars your art! Without
your art, you are nothing."

"I would have made you famous, splendid,
magnificent. The world would have
worshipped you, and you would have borne
my name. What are you now? A third-rate
actress with a pretty face."

-63-

"Don't be cruel to me, because I love you
better than anything in the world. After all, it
is only once that I have not pleased you. But
you are quite right, Dorian. I should have
shown myself more of an artist. It was
foolish of me, and yet I couldn't help it. Oh,
don't leave me, don't leave me."

A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She
crouched on the floor like a wounded thing,
and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes,
looked down at her, and his chiselled lips
curled in exquisite disdain.

There is always something ridiculous about
the emotions of people whom one has
ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him
to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and
sobs annoyed him.

"I am going,"

he said at last in his calm clear voice.

"I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't see you
again. You have disappointed me."

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

Where he went to he hardly knew. He
remembered wandering through dimly lit
streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed
archways and evil-looking houses. Women
with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had
called after him. Drunkards had reeled by,
cursing and chattering to themselves like
monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque
children huddled upon door-steps, and
heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy
courts.

As the dawn was just breaking, he found

-64-

riband, through the nacre-coloured air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of
some Doge's barge, that hung from the
ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of
entrance, lights were still burning from three
flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they
seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned
them out and, having thrown his hat and
cape on the table, passed through the
library towards the door of his bedroom,

a large octagonal chamber on the ground
floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury,
he had just had decorated for himself and
hung with some curious Renaissance
tapestries that had been discovered stored
in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was
turning the handle of the door, his eye fell
upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted
of him. He started back as if in surprise.
Then he went on into his own room, looking
somewhat puzzled.

After he had taken the button-hole out of his
coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally, he
came back, went over to the picture, and
examined it. In the dim arrested light that
struggled through the cream-coloured silk
blinds, the face appeared to him to be a
little changed. The expression looked
different. One would have said that there
was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was
certainly strange.

He turned round and, walking to the
window, drew up the blind. The bright dawn
flooded the room and swept the fantastic
shadows into dusky corners, where they lay
shuddering. But the strange expression that
he had noticed in the face of the portrait
seemed to linger there, to be more
intensified even. The quivering ardent
sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty
round the mouth as clearly as if he had been
looking into a mirror after he had done

-65-

regret came over him, as he thought of her
lying at his feet sobbing like a little child.

He remembered with what callousness he
had watched her. Why had he been made
like that? Why had such a soul been given to
him? But he had suffered also. During the
three terrible hours that the play had lasted,
he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon
aeon of torture. His life was well worth hers.
She had marred him for a moment, if he had
wounded her for an age.

Besides, women were better suited to bear
sorrow than men. They lived on their
emotions. They only thought of their
emotions. When they took lovers, it was
merely to have some one with whom they
could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him
that, and Lord Henry knew what women
were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl
Vane? She was nothing to him now.

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

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

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

-66-

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 contained the usual collection of
cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for
private views, programmes of charity
concerts, and the like that are showered on
fashionable young men every morning
during the season.

There was a rather heavy bill for a chased
silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had
not yet had the courage to send on to his
guardians, who were extremely old-
fashioned people and did not realize that
we live in an age when unnecessary things
are our only necessities;

and there were several very courteously
worded communications from Jermyn
Street money-lenders offering to advance
any sum of money at a moment's notice and
at the most reasonable rates of interest.

-67-

the whole thing! First in the dim twilight, and
then in the bright dawn, he had seen the
touch of cruelty round the warped lips. He
almost dreaded his valet leaving the room.
He knew that when he was alone he would
have to examine the portrait.

He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee
and cigarettes had been brought and the
man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell
him to remain. As the door was closing
behind him, he called him back. The man
stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked
at him for a moment.

"I am not at home to any one, Victor,"

he said with a sigh. The man bowed and
retired.

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

Should he move it aside, after all? Why not
let it stay there? What was the use of
knowing.? If the thing was true, it was
terrible. If it was not true, why trouble about
it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier
chance, eyes other than his spied behind
and saw the horrible change?

What should he do if Basil Hallward came
and asked to look at his own picture? Basil
would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to
be examined, and at once. Anything would
be better than this dreadful state of doubt.

He got up and locked both doors. At least he
would be alone when he looked upon the

-68-

hour rang its double chime, but Dorian Gray
did not stir. He was trying to gather up the
scarlet threads of life and to weave them
into a pattern; to find his way through the
sanguine labyrinth of passion through which
he was wandering.

He did not know what to do, or what to think.
Finally, he went over to the table and wrote
a passionate letter to the girl he had loved,
imploring her forgiveness and accusing
himself of madness. He covered page after
page with wild words of sorrow and wilder
words of pain.

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

Suddenly there came a knock to the door,
and he heard Lord Henry's voice outside.

"My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at
once. I can't bear your shutting yourself up
like this."

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

"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian,"

said Lord Henry as he entered.

"But you must not think too much about it."

"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?"

-69-

cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking
at him in perplexed amazement.

"But, my dear Dorian--"

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

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

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

"You know nothing then?"

"What do you mean?"

Lord Henry walked across the room, and
sitting down by Dorian Gray, took both his
hands in his own and held them tightly.

"Dorian,"

he said,

"my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell
you that Sibyl Vane is dead."

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

"Dead! Sibyl dead! It is not true! It is a
horrible lie! How dare you say it?"

"It is quite true, Dorian,"

said Lord Henry, gravely.

-70-

must not get yourself mixed up in it. I see by
The Standard that she was seventeen. I
should have thought she was almost
younger than that. She looked such a child,
and seemed to know so little about acting."

"Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your
nerves. You must come and dine with me,
and afterwards we will look in at the opera.
It is a Patti night, and everybody will be
there. You can come to my sister's box. She
has got some smart women with her."

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,"

said Dorian Gray, half to himself,

"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her
little throat with a knife. Yet the roses are not
less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as
happily in my garden. And to-night I am to
dine with you, and then go on to the opera,
and sup somewhere, I suppose,
afterwards."

"How extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had
read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would
have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
happened actually, and to me, it seems far
too wonderful for tears."

"Here is the first passionate love-letter I
have ever written in my life. Strange, that my
first passionate love-letter should have
been addressed to a dead girl. Can they
feel, I wonder, those white silent people we
call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know,
or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once! It
seems years ago to me now. She was
everything to me."

"Then came that dreadful night--was it
really only last night? when she played so
badly, and my heart almost broke. She
explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic.
But I was not moved a bit. I thought her

-71-

doing what was right. I remember your
saying once that there is a fatality about
good resolutions--that they are always
made too late. Mine certainly were."

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

"Harry,"

cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting
down beside him,

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

"You have done too many foolish things
during the last fortnight to be entitled to give
yourself that name, Dorian,"

answered Lord Henry with his sweet
melancholy smile. The lad frowned.

"I don't like that explanation, Harry,"

he rejoined,

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

"It is an interesting question,"

-72-

"I must sow poppies in my garden,"

sighed Dorian.

"There is no necessity,"

rejoined his companion.

"Life has always poppies in her hands. Of
course, now and then things linger. I once
wore nothing but violets all through one
season, as a form of artistic mourning for a
romance that would not die. Ultimately,
however, it did die. I forget what killed it. I
think it was her proposing to sacrifice the
whole world for me."

"That is always a dreadful moment. It fills
one with the terror of eternity. Well--would
you believe it?--a week ago, at Lady
Hampshire's, I found myself seated at
dinner next the lady in question, and she
insisted on going over the whole thing
again, and digging up the past, and raking
up the future. I had buried my romance in a
bed of asphodel."

"She dragged it out again and assured me
that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state
that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not
feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
showed! The one charm of the past is that it
is the past. But women never know when
the curtain has fallen."

"They always want a sixth act, and as soon
as the interest of the play is entirely over,
they propose to continue it. If they were
allowed their own way, every comedy would
have a tragic ending, and every tragedy
would culminate in a farce."

"They are charmingly artificial, but they have
no sense of art. You are more fortunate than
I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the
women I have known would have done for

-73-

"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty,
downright cruelty, more than anything else.
They have wonderfully primitive instincts.
We have emancipated them, but they
remain slaves looking for their masters, all
the same. They love being dominated. I am
sure you were splendid."

"I have never seen you really and absolutely
angry, but I can fancy how delightful you
looked. And, after all, you said something to
me the day before yesterday that seemed to
me at the time to be merely fanciful, but that I
see now was absolutely true, and it holds
the key to everything."

"What was that, Harry?"

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

"She will never come to life again now,"

muttered the lad, burying his face in his
hands.

"No, she will never come to life. She has
played her last part. But you must think of
that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-
room simply as a strange lurid fragment
from some Jacobean tragedy, as a
wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or
Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived,
and so she has never really died."

"To you at least she was always a dream, a
phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's
plays and left them lovelier for its presence,
a reed through which Shakespeare's music
sounded richer and more full of joy."

" The moment she touched actual life, she
marred it, and it marred her, and so she

-74-

club. We are rather late, as it is."

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

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

"I don't feel up to it,"

said Dorian listlessly.

"But I am awfully obliged to you for all that
you have said to me. You are certainly my
best friend. No one has ever understood me
as you have."

"We are only at the beginning of our
friendship, Dorian,"

answered Lord Henry, shaking him by the
hand.

"Good-bye. I shall see you before nine-
thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."

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

As soon as he had left, he rushed to the
screen and drew it back. No; there was no
further change in the picture. It had received
the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he
had known of it himself. It was conscious of
the events of life as they occurred.

The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines
of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the
very moment that the girl had drunk the
poison, whatever it was. Or was it

-75-

thought of the desecration that was in store
for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in
boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had
kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted
lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.

Morning after morning he had sat before the
portrait wondering at its beauty, almost
enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at
times. Was it to alter now with every mood to
which he yielded?

Was it to become a monstrous and
loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a
locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight
that had so often touched to brighter gold
the waving wonder of its hair? The pity of it!
the pity of it!

For a moment, he thought of praying that the
horrible sympathy that existed between him
and the picture might cease. It had changed
in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to
a prayer it might remain unchanged.

And yet, who, that knew anything about life,
would surrender the chance of remaining
always young, however fantastic that
chance might be, or with what fateful
consequences it might be fraught?

Besides, was it really under his control?
Had it indeed been prayer that had
produced the substitution? Might there not
be some curious scientific reason for it all?

If thought could exercise its influence upon a
living organism, might not thought exercise
an influence upon dead and inorganic
things? Nay, without thought or conscious
desire, might not things external to
ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods
and passions, atom calling to atom in secret
love or strange affinity?

But the reason was of no importance. He

-76-

"I called last night, and they told me you
were at the opera. Of course, I knew that
was impossible. But I wish you had left word
where you had really gone to. I passed a
dreadful evening, half afraid that one
tragedy might be followed by another."

"I think you might have telegraphed for me
when you heard of it first. I read of it quite by
chance in a late edition of The Globe that I
picked up at the club. I came here at once
and was miserable at not finding you. I can't
tell you how heart-broken I am about the
whole thing. I know what you must suffer."

"But where were you? Did you go down and
see the girl's mother? For a moment I
thought of following you there. They gave
the address in the paper. Somewhere in the
Euston Road, isn't it?"

"But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a
state she must be in! And her only child, too!
What did she say about it all?"

"My dear Basil, how do I know?"

murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some pale-
yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded
bubble of Venetian glass and looking
dreadfully bored.

"I was at the opera. You should have come
on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's
sister, for the first time. We were in her box.
She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang
divinely. Don't talk about horrid subjects."

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

-77-