OSCAR WILDE

The picture of
Dorian Gray
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
 Oscar Wilde

The picture
of Dorian Gray
Publicado por Ediciones del Sur. Córdoba. Argentina.
Agosto de 2004.

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 PREFACE

THE ARTIST is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of beautiful
things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a
mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings
in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful
things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean
only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral
book. Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the
rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is
the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
 The moral life of man forms part of the subject-
matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in
the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist
desires to prove anything. Even things that are true
can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies.
An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardon-
able mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The
artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instru-
ments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the
arts is the art of the musician.
From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft
is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their
peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really
mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that
the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with
himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as
long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for
making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

OSCAR WILDE

6
 I

THE STUDIO was filled with the rich odour of roses, and
when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees
of the garden, there came through the open door the
heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume
of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-
bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his cus-
tom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton
could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and
honey- coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremu-
lous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden
of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then
the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across
the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in
front of the huge window, producing a kind of momen-
tary Japanese effect, and making him think of those
pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the
medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to
convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen
murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the
long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous
insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling
woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppres-
sive. 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 an-
swered, tossing his head back in that odd way that
used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I
won’t send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at
him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of

8
smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his
heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere?
My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd
chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world
to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you
seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for
there is only one thing in the world worse than being
talked about, and that is not being talked about. A
portrait like this would set you far above all the young
men in England, and make the old men quite jealous,
if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I
really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself
into it.”
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and
laughed. “Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true,
all the same.” “Too much of yourself in it! Upon my
word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I
really can’t see any resemblance between you, with
your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and
this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of
ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a
Narcissus, and you— well, of course you have an
intellectual expression and all that. But beauty, real
beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and de-
stroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits
down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead,
or something horrid. Look at the successful men in
any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous
they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in
the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying
at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he
was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he

9
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 intelli-
gence. 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 per-
fectly 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 stu-
pid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at
their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing
of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of
defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed,
indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring
ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands.
Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they
are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s
good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have
given us, suffer terribly.”
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry,
walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to
you.”
“But why not?”
“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely,
I never tell their names to any one. It is like surren-

10
dering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It
seems to be the one thing that can make modern life
mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing
is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town
now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I
would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare
say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of
romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me aw-
fully foolish about it?”
“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my
dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and
the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of
deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
never know where my wife is, and my wife never
knows what I am doing. When we meet—we do meet
occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down
to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd
stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very
good at it—much better, in fact, than I am. She never
gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But
when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I
sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at
me.”
“I hate the way you talk about your married life,
Harry,” said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the
door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are
really a very good husband, but that you are thor-
oughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an ex-
traordinary 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

11
together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo
seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The
sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass,
white daisies were tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I
am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and
before I go, I insist on your answering a question I put
to you some time ago.”
“What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes
fixed on the ground.
“You know quite well.”
“I do not, Harry.”
“Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to ex-
plain to me why you won’t exhibit Dorian Gray’s pic-
ture. I want the real reason.”
“I told you the real reason.”
“No, you did not. You said it was because there
was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is childish.”
“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight
in the face, “every portrait that is painted with feeling
is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is
merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is
revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who,
on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I
will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I
have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”
Lord Henry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.
“I will tell you,” said Hallward; but an expression
of perplexity came over his face.
“I am all expectation, Basil,” continued his com-
panion, glancing at him.
“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,”
answered the painter; “and I am afraid you will hardly
understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe it.”

12
 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 some one whose mere personal-
ity was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it
would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my
very art itself. I did not want any external influence in
my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I
am by nature. I have always been my own master; had

13
at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—
but I don’t know how to explain it to you. Something
seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible
crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had
in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I
grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not
conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cow-
ardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same
things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the
firm. That is all.”
“I don’t believe that, Harry, and I don’t believe you
do either. However, whatever was my motive—and it
may have been pride, for I used to be very proud—I
certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I
stumbled against Lady Brandon. ‘You are not going to
run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?’ she screamed out.
You know her curiously shrill voice?”
“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,”
said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his
long nervous fingers.
“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to
royalties, and people with stars and garters, and
elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses.
She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met
her once before, but she took it into her head to lion-
ize 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 nine-
teenth-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

14
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 wonder-
ful young man?” asked his companion. “I know she
goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her guests. I
remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-
faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and
ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper
which must have been perfectly audible to everybody
in the room, the most astounding details. I simply
fled. I like to find out people for myself. But Lady
Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer
treats his goods. She either explains them entirely
away, or tells one everything about them except what
one wants to know.”
“Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!”
said Hallward listlessly.
“My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and
only succeeded in opening a restaurant. How could I
admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr.
Dorian Gray?”
“Oh, something like, ‘Charming boy—poor dear
mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget
what he does—afraid he— doesn’t do anything—oh,
yes, plays the piano—or is it the violin, dear Mr.
Gray?’ Neither of us could help laughing, and we
became friends at once.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friend-
ship, and it is far the best ending for one,” said the
young lord, plucking another daisy.

15
 Hallward shook his head. “You don’t understand
what friendship is, Harry,” he murmured—”or what
enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is
to say, you are indifferent to every one.”
“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry,
tilting his hat back and looking up at the little clouds
that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were
drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer
sky. “Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great differ-
ence between people. I choose my friends for their
good looks, my acquaintances for their good charac-
ters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I
have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of
some intellectual power, and consequently they all
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

16
their own special property, and that if any one of us
makes an ass of himself, he is poaching on their pre-
serves. When poor Southwark got into the divorce
court, their indignation was quite magnificent. And
yet I don’t suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat
live correctly.”
“I don’t agree with a single word that you have
said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure you don’t
either.”
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and
tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tas-
selled ebony cane. “How English you are Basil! That is
the second time you have made that observation. If
one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman—
always a rash thing to do—he never dreams of consid-
ering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only
thing he considers of any importance is whether one
believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has
nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the
man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are
that the more insincere the man is, the more purely
intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not
be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don’t propose to discuss poli-
tics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons
better than principles, and I like persons with no
principles better than anything else in the world. Tell
me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see
him?”
“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him
every day. He is absolutely necessary to me.”
“How extraordinary! I thought you would never
care for anything but your art.”

17
 “He is all my art to me now,” said the painter
gravely. “I sometimes think, Harry, that there are
only two eras of any importance in the world’s history.
The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
and the second is the appearance of a new personality
for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to
the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek
sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day
be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw
from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all
that. But he is much more to me than a model or a
sitter. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what
I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art
cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot
express, and I know that the work I have done, since I
met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my
life. But in some curious way—I wonder will you
understand me?—his personality has suggested to me
an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode
of style. I see things differently, I think of them differ-
ently. 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 pas-
sion 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

18
Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of
mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price
but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because,
while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.
Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for
the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland
the wonder I had always looked for and always missed.”
“Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian
Gray.”
Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and
down the garden. After some time he came back.
“Harry,” he said, “Dorian Gray is to me simply a mo-
tive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see every-
thing in him. He is never more present in my work
than when no image of him is there. He is a sugges-
tion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties
of certain colours. That is all.”
“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?” asked
Lord Henry.
“Because, without intending it, I have put into it
some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of
which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him.
He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I
will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My
heart shall never be put under their microscope.
There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too
much of myself!”
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know
how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a
broken heart will run to many editions.”

19
 “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 autobiogra-
phy. 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,” mur-
mured Lord Henry. “Perhaps you will tire sooner than
he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no
doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That ac-
counts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-
educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence,
we want to have something that endures, and so we
fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope
of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed
man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the
thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is

20
like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with
everything priced above its proper value. I think you
will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at
your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out
of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of colour, or
something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own
heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very
badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be per-
fectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it
will alter you. What you have told me is quite a ro-
mance, a romance of art one might call it, and the
worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves
one so unromantic.”
“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the
personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You
can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”
“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of
love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case
and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious
and satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in
a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in
the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-
shadows chased themselves across the grass like
swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden! And how
delightful other people’s emotions were!-- much more
delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s
own soul, and the passions of one’s friends—those
were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to
himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon
that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt’s, he would have
been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the

21
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 neces-
sity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on
the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over
the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped
all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to
strike him. He turned to Hallward and said, “My dear
fellow, I have just remembered.”
“Remembered what, Harry?”
“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”
“Where was it?” asked Hallward, with a slight
frown.
“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady
Agatha’s. She told me she had discovered a wonderful
young man who was going to help her in the East End,
and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to
state that she never told me he was good-looking.
Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least,
good women have not. She said that he was very ear-
nest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to
myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horri-
bly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I
had known it was your friend.”
“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you to meet him.”
“You don’t want me to meet him?”
“No.”
“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,” said the
butler, coming into the garden.
“You must introduce me now,” cried Lord Henry,
laughing.

22
 The painter turned to his servant, who stood blink-
ing in the sunlight. “Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I
shall be in in a few moments.” The man bowed and
went up the walk.
Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my
dearest friend,” he said. “He has a simple and a beau-
tiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she
said of him. Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to influence
him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide,
and has many marvellous people in it. Don’t take away
from me the one person who gives to my art whatever
charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on
him. Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly,
and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against
his will.
“What nonsense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smil-
ing, and taking Hallward by the arm, he almost led
him into the house.

23
 II

AS THEY entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated

at the piano, with his back to them, turning over the
pages of a volume of Schumann’s “Forest Scenes.”
“You must lend me these, Basil,” he cried. “I want to
learn them. They are perfectly charming.”
“That entirely depends on how you sit to-day,
Dorian.”
“Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don’t want a life-
sized portrait of myself,” answered the lad, swinging
round on the music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner.
When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush
coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.
“I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn’t know you had
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.”
“You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you,
Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, stepping forward and
extending his hand. “My aunt has often spoken to me
about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am
afraid, one of her victims also.”
“I am in Lady Agatha’s black books at present,”
answered Dorian with a funny look of penitence. “I
promised to go to a club in Whitechapel with her last
Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to
have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I
don’t know what she will say to me. I am far too fright-
ened to call.”
“Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is
quite devoted to you. And I don’t think it really mat-
ters about your not being there. The audience prob-
ably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits
down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for
two people.”
“That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to
me,” answered Dorian, laughing.
Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly
wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet
lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was
something in his face that made one trust him at once.
All the candour of youth was there, as well as all
youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had kept
himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil
Hallward worshipped him.
“You are too charming to go in for philanthropy,
Mr. Gray—far too charming.” And Lord Henry flung
himself down on the divan and opened his cigarette-
case.
The painter had been busy mixing his colours and
getting his brushes ready. He was looking worried,
and when he heard Lord Henry’s last remark, he
glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said,

25
“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. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon
Street. I am nearly always at home at five o’clock.
Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to
miss you.”
“Basil,” cried Dorian Gray, “if Lord Henry Wotton
goes, I shall go, too. You never open your lips while
you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a
platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay.
I insist upon it.”
“Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,”
said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. “It is
quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never
listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my
unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay.”

26
 “But what about my man at the Orleans?”
The painter laughed. “I don’t think there will be
any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry. And
now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don’t move
about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord
Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his
friends, with the single exception of myself.”
Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of
a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of
discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather
taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a
delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice.
After a few moments he said to him, “Have you really
a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil
says?”
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr.
Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from the
scientific point of view.”
“Why?”
“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s
own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or
burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not
real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins,
are borrowed. He becomes an echo of 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

27
terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these
are the two things that govern us. And yet—”
“Just turn your head a little more to the right,
Dorian, like a good boy,” said the painter, deep in his
work and conscious only that a look had come into the
lad’s face that he had never seen there before.
“And yet,” continued Lord Henry, in his low, musi-
cal voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that
was always so characteristic of him, and that he had
even in his Eton days, “I believe that if one man were
to live out his life fully and completely, were to give
form to every feeling, expression to every thought,
reality to every dream—I believe that the world would
gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget
all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the
Hellenic ideal— to something finer, richer than the
Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst
us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage
has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our
lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse
that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and
poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its
sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing re-
mains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the
luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a tempta-
tion is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick
with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself,
with desire for what its monstrous laws have made
monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the
great events of the world take place in the brain. It is
in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of
the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself,
with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boy-
hood, you have had passions that have made you

28
afraid, thoughts that have fined you with terror, day-
dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory
might stain your cheek with shame—”
“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder
me. I don’t know what to say. There is some answer to
you, but I cannot find it. Don’t speak. Let me think.
Or, rather, let me try not to think.”
For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless,
with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was
dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at
work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have
come really from himself. The few words that Basil’s
friend had said to him—words spoken by chance, no
doubt, and with wilful paradox in them— had touched
some secret chord that had never been touched before,
but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to
curious pulses.
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled
him many times. But music was not articulate. It was
not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it
created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they
were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not
escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there
was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic
form to formless things, and to have a music of their
own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words!
Was there anything so real as words?
Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he
had not understood. He understood them now. Life
suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to
him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not
known it?
With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him.
He knew the precise psychological moment when to

29
say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was
amazed at the sudden impression that his words had
produced, and, remembering a book that he had read
when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to
him much that he had not known before, he wondered
whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar
experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air.
Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!
Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold
touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect
delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from
strength. He was unconscious of the silence.
“Basil, I am tired of standing,” cried Dorian Gray
suddenly. “I must go out and sit in the garden. The air
is stifling here.”
“My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am paint-
ing, I can’t think of anything else. But you never sat
better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught the
effect I wanted— the half-parted lips and the bright
look in the eyes. I don’t know what Harry has been
saying to you, but he has certainly made you have the
most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been
paying you compliments. You mustn’t believe a word
that he says.”
“He has certainly not been paying me compli-
ments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don’t believe
anything he has told me.”
“You know you believe it all,” said Lord Henry,
looking at him with his dreamy languorous eyes. “I
will go out to the garden with you. It is horribly hot in
the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
something with strawberries in it.”
“Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when
Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got

30
to work up this background, so I will join you later on.
Don’t keep Dorian too long. I have never been in
better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going
to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands.”
Lord Henry went out to the garden and found
Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-
blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it
had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand
upon his shoulder. “You are quite right to do that,” he
murmured. “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses,
just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded,
and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and
tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of
fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils
quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of
his lips and left them trembling.
“Yes,” continued Lord Henry, “that is one of the
great secrets of life— to cure the soul by means of the
senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a
wonderful creation. You know more than you think
you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.
He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man
who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured
face and worn expression interested him. There was
something in his low languid voice that was absolutely
fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even,
had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like
music, and seemed to have a language of their own.
But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.
Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to
himself? He had known Basil Hallward for months,

31
but the friendship between them had never altered
him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life
who seemed to have disclosed to him life’s mystery.
And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a
schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.
“Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry.
“Parker has brought out the drinks, and if you stay
any longer in this glare, you will be quite spoiled, and
Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbe-
coming.”
“What can it matter?” cried Dorian Gray, laughing,
as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden.
“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”
“Why?”
“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and
youth is the one thing worth having.”
“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”
“No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are
old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared
your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your
lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel
it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the
world. Will it always be so?... You have a wonderfully
beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have. And
beauty is a form of genius— is higher, indeed, than
genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great
facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the
reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call
the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine
right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who
have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you
won’t smile... People say sometimes that beauty is
only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not

32
so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the won-
der of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not
judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world
is the visible, not the invisible... Yes, Mr. Gray, the
gods have been good to you. But what the gods give
they quickly take away. You have only a few years in
which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your
youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you
will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left
for you, or have to content yourself with those mean
triumphs that the memory of your past will make
more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes
brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is
jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your
roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked,
and dull- eyed. You will suffer horribly... Ah! realize
your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold
of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to im-
prove the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to
the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are
the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live
the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost
upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be
afraid of nothing... A new Hedonism— that is what
our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.
With your personality there is nothing you could not
do. The world belongs to you for a season... The mo-
ment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious
of what you really are, of what you really might be.
There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt
I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how
tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is
such a little time that your youth will last—such a
little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they

33
blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next
June as it is now. In a month there will be purple
stars on the clematis, and year after year the green
night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we
never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats
in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our
senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets,
haunted by the memory of the passions of which we
were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations
that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth!
There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”
Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.
The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A
furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment.
Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated
globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that
strange interest in trivial things that we try to de-
velop when things of high import make us afraid, or
when we are stirred by some new emotion for which
we cannot find expression, or when some thought that
terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on
us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He saw it
creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convol-
vulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed
gently to and fro.
Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the
studio and made staccato signs for them to come in.
They turned to each other and smiled.
“I am waiting,” he cried. “Do come in. The light is
quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks.”
They rose up and sauntered down the walk to-
gether. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past
them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden
a thrush began to sing.

34
 “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 differ-
ence 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,” he murmured, flushing at his
own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
resumed his pose.
Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-
chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the
brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke
the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward
stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In
the slanting beams that streamed through the open
doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy
scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.
After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped
painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and
then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of
one of his huge brushes and frowning. “It is quite
finished,” he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote
his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand
corner of the canvas.
Lord Henry came over and examined the picture.
It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a won-
derful likeness as well.

35
 “My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,”
he said. “It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr.
Gray, come over and look at yourself.”
The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.
“Is it really finished?” he murmured, stepping
down from the platform.
“Quite finished,” said the painter. “And you have
sat splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you.”
“That is entirely due to me,” broke in Lord Henry.
“Isn’t it, Mr. Gray?”
Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in
front of his picture and turned towards it. When he
saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a
moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his
eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time.
He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly con-
scious 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 exaggera-
tion of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at
them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his
nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his
strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its
brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as
he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness,
the full reality of the description flashed across him.
Yes, there would be a day when his face would be
wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the
grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet
would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from
his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar

36
his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and
uncouth.
As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck
through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre
of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst,
and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a
hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.
“Don’t you like it?” cried Hallward at last, stung a
little by the lad’s silence, not understanding what it
meant.
“Of course he likes it,” said Lord Henry. “Who
wouldn’t like it? It is one of the greatest things in
modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for
it. I must have it.”
“It is not my property, Harry.”
“Whose property is it?”
“Dorian’s, of course,” answered the painter.
“He is a very lucky fellow.”
“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his
eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I
shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this
picture will remain always young. It will never be
older than this particular day of June... If it were only
the other way! If it were I who was to be always young,
and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for
that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in
the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul
for that!”
“You would hardly care for such an arrangement,
Basil,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “It would be rather
hard lines on your work.”
“I should object very strongly, Harry,” said Hallward.
Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. “I believe
you would, Basil. You like your art better than your

37
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!” he cried, “don’t talk like that. I have never
had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such
another. You are not jealous of material things, are
you?— you who are finer than any of them!”
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not
die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of
me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every mo-
ment that passes takes something from me and gives
something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If
the picture could change, and I could be always what I
am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some
day—mock me horribly!” The hot tears welled into his
eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on
the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though
he was praying.
“This is your doing, Harry,” said the painter bitterly.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It is the real
Dorian Gray— that is all.”

38
 “It is not.”
“If it is not, what have I to do with it?”
“You should have gone away when I asked you,” he
muttered.
“I stayed when you asked me,” was Lord Henry’s
answer.
“Harry, I can’t quarrel with my two best friends at
once, but between you both you have made me hate
the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will
destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not
let it come across our three lives and mar them.”
Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pil-
low, 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 var-
nished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do
what you like with yourself.” And he walked across
the room and rang the bell for tea. “You will have tea,

39
of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you
object to such simple pleasures?”
“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They
are the last refuge of the complex. But I don’t like
scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you
are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a
rational animal. It was the most premature definition
ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
I am glad he is not, after all— though I wish you chaps
would not squabble over the picture. You had much
better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t
really want it, and I really do.”
“If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall
never forgive you!” cried Dorian Gray; “and I don’t
allow people to call me a silly boy.”
“You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to
you before it existed.”
“And you know you have been a little silly, Mr.
Gray, and that you don’t really object to being re-
minded that you are extremely young.”
“I should have objected very strongly this morning,
Lord Henry.”
“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”
There came a knock at the door, and the butler
entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a
small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and
saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two
globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page.
Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The
two men sauntered languidly to the table and exam-
ined what was under the covers.
“Let us go to the theatre to-night,” said Lord Henry.
“There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have
promised to dine at White’s, but it is only with an old

40
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 cos-
tume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so
sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-
element left in modern life.”
“You really must not say things like that before
Dorian, Harry.”
“Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out
tea for us, or the one in the picture?”
“Before either.”
“I should like to come to the theatre with you,
Lord Henry,” said the lad.
“Then you shall come; and you will come, too,
Basil, won’t you?”
“I can’t, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of
work to do.”
“Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.”
“I should like that awfully.”
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in
hand, to the picture. “I shall stay with the real Dorian,”
he said, sadly.
“Is it the real Dorian?” cried the original of the
portrait, strolling across to him. “Am I really like
that?”
“Yes; you are just like that.”
“How wonderful, Basil!”
“At least you are like it in appearance. But it will
never alter,” sighed Hallward. “That is something.”

41
 “What a fuss people make about fidelity!” exclaimed
Lord Henry. “Why, even in love it is purely a question
for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will.
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men
want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can
say.”
“Don’t go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,” said
Hallward. “Stop and dine with me.”
“I can’t, Basil.”
“Why?”
“Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to
go with him.”
“He won’t like you the better for keeping your
promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go.”
Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
“I entreat you.”
The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry,
who was watching them from the tea-table with an
amused smile.
“I must go, Basil,” he answered.
“Very well,” said Hallward, and he went over and
laid down his cup on the tray. “It is rather late, and, as
you have to dress, you had better lose no time. Good-
bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
Come to-morrow.”
“Certainly.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No, of course not,” cried Dorian.
“And ... Harry!”
“Yes, Basil?”
“Remember what I asked you, when we were in the
garden this morning.”
“I have forgotten it.”
“I trust you.”

42
 “I wish I could trust myself,” said Lord Henry,
laughing. “Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and
I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It
has been a most interesting afternoon.”
As the door closed behind them, the painter flung
himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into
his face.

43
 III

AT HALF-PAST twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton

strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call
on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-
mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world
called selfish because it derived no particular benefit
from him, but who was considered generous by Society
as he fed the people who amused him. His father had
been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was
young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from
the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of
annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris,
a post to which he considered that he was fully en-
titled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good
English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion
for pleasure. The son, who had been his father’s secre-
tary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeed-
ing some months later to the title, had set himself to
the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing
absolutely nothing. He had two large town houses, but
preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble,
and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some
attention to the management of his collieries in the
Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of
industry on the ground that the one advantage of
having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford
the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In
politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in
office, during which period he roundly abused them
for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his
valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his
relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England
could have produced him, and he always said that the
country was going to the dogs. His principles were out
of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his
prejudices.
When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his
uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a
cheroot and grumbling over The Times. “Well, Harry,”
said the old gentleman, “what brings you out so early?
I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were
not visible till five.”
“Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George.
I want to get something out of you.”
“Money, I suppose,” said Lord Fermor, making a
wry face. “Well, sit down and tell me all about it.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is ev-
erything.”
“Yes,” murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-
hole in his coat; “and when they grow older they know
it. But I don’t want money. It is only people who pay
their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never
pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and
one lives charmingly upon it. Besides, I always deal

45
with Dartmoor’s tradesmen, and consequently they
never bother me. What I want is information: not
useful information, of course; useless information.”
“Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English
Blue Book, Harry, although those fellows nowadays
write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic,
things were much better. But I hear they let them in
now by examination. What can you expect? Examina-
tions, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a
man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he
is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”
“Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books,
Uncle George,” said Lord Henry languidly.
“Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?” asked Lord Fermor,
knitting his bushy white eyebrows.
“That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George.
Or rather, I know who he is. He is the last Lord Kelso’s
grandson. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret
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 subal-
tern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind.
Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it hap-
pened 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

46
adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son- in-
law in public—paid him, sir, to do it, paid him— and
that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a
pigeon. The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate
his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards.
He brought his daughter back with him, I was told,
and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a
bad business. The girl died, too, died within a year. So
she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that. What sort
of boy is he? If he is like his mother, he must be a
good-looking chap.”
“He is very good-looking,” assented Lord Henry.
“I hope he will fall into proper hands,” continued
the old man. “He should have a pot of money waiting
for him if Kelso did the right thing by him. His mother
had money, too. All the Selby property came to her,
through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated
Kelso, thought him a mean dog. He was, too. Came to
Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was ashamed
of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English
noble who was always quarrelling with the cabmen
about their fares. They made quite a story of it. I
didn’t dare show my face at Court for a month. I hope
he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies.”
“I don’t know,” answered Lord Henry. “I fancy that
the boy will be well off. He is not of age yet. He has
Selby, I know. He told me so. And... his mother was
very beautiful?”
“Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest crea-
tures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth induced her to
behave as she did, I never could understand. She
could have married anybody she chose. Carlington
was mad after her. She was romantic, though. All the
women of that family were. The men were a poor lot,

47
but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington
went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She
laughed at him, and there wasn’t a girl in London at
the time who wasn’t after him. And by the way, Harry,
talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug
your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry
an American? Ain’t English girls good enough for him?”
“It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just
now, Uncle George.”
“I’ll back English women against the world, Harry,”
said Lord Fermor, striking the table with his fist.
“The betting is on the Americans.”
“They don’t last, I am told,” muttered his uncle.
“A long engagement exhausts them, but they are
capital at a steeplechase. They take things flying. I
don’t think Dartmoor has a chance.”
“Who are her people?” grumbled the old gentle-
man. “Has she got any?”
Lord Henry shook his head. “American girls are as
clever at concealing their parents, as English women
are at concealing their past,” he said, rising to go.
“They are pork-packers, I suppose?”
“I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor’s sake. I am
told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession
in America, after politics.”
“Is she pretty?”
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most Ameri-
can women do. It is the secret of their charm.”
“Why can’t these American women stay in their
own country? They are always telling us that it is the
paradise for women.”
“It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so
excessively anxious to get out of it,” said Lord Henry.
“Good-bye, Uncle George. I shall be late for lunch, if I

48
stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the information
I wanted. I always like to know everything about my
new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
“Where are you lunching, Harry?”
“At Aunt Agatha’s. I have asked myself and Mr.
Gray. He is her latest protégée.”
“Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to
bother me any more with her charity appeals. I am
sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have
nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads.”
“All right, Uncle George, I’ll tell her, but it won’t
have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense of
humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang
the bell for his servant. Lord Henry passed up the low
arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in
the direction of Berkeley Square.
So that was the story of Dorian Gray’s parentage.
Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred
him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern
romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a
mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short
by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless
agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother
snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an
interesting background. It posed the lad, made him
more perfect, as it were. Behind every exquisite thing
that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had
to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow...
And how charming he had been at dinner the night
before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in fright-
ened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club,
the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the

49
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 some-
thing 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 mo-
ment; 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 satisfy-
ing joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our
own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly
common in its aims... He was a marvellous type, too,
this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in
Basil’s studio, or could be fashioned into a marvellous
type, at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity
of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles
kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do
with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a
pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade!...
And Basil? From a psychological point of view, how
interesting he was! The new manner in art, the fresh
mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of
it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and
walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing her-
self, Dryadlike and not afraid, because in his soul who
sought for her there had been wakened that wonder-
ful vision to which alone are wonderful things re-
vealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becom-
ing, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symboli-
cal value, as though they were themselves patterns of
some other and more perfect form whose shadow they

50
made real: how strange it all was! He remembered
something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that
artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? Was it not
Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles
of a sonnet-sequence? But in our own century it was
strange... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what,
without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who
had fashioned the wonderful portrait. He would seek
to dominate him—had already, indeed, half done so.
He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
was something fascinating in this son of love and
death.
Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses.
He found that he had passed his aunt’s some distance,
and, smiling to himself, turned back. When he entered
the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that
they had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen
his hat and stick and passed into the dining-room.
“Late as usual, Harry,” cried his aunt, shaking her
head at him.
He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the
vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was
there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the
table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek. Op-
posite 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-

51
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 intelli-
gent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial
statement in the House of Commons, with whom she
was conversing in that intensely earnest manner
which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked
once himself, that all really good people fall into, and
from which none of them ever quite escape.
“We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry,”
cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across
the table. “Do you think he will really marry this
fascinating young person?”
“I believe she has made up her mind to propose to
him, Duchess.”
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Lady Agatha. “Really,
some one should interfere.”
“I am told, on excellent authority, that her father
keeps an American dry-goods store,” said Sir Thomas
Burdon, looking supercilious.
“My uncle has already suggested pork-packing Sir
Thomas.”
“Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?” asked
the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and
accentuating the verb.
“American novels,” answered Lord Henry, helping
himself to some quail.

52
 The duchess looked puzzled.
“Don’t mind him, my dear,” whispered Lady Agatha.
“He never means anything that he says.”
“When America was discovered,” said the Radical
member— and he began to give some wearisome facts.
Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he ex-
hausted his listeners. The duchess sighed and exer-
cised 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 discov-
ered,” 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 ward-
robe of Humour’s cast-off clothes.
“Really! And where do bad Americans go to when
they die?” inquired the duchess.
“They go to America,” murmured Lord Henry.
Sir Thomas frowned. “I am afraid that your nephew
is prejudiced against that great country,” he said to
Lady Agatha. “I have travelled all over it in cars pro-
vided by the directors, who, in such matters, are
extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to
visit it.”
“But must we really see Chicago in order to be
educated?” asked Mr. Erskine plaintively. “I don’t feel
up to the journey.”

53
 Sir Thomas waved his hand. “Mr. Erskine of
Treadley has the world on his shelves. We practical
men like to see things, not to read about them. The
Americans are an extremely interesting people. They
are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distin-
guishing characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an abso-
lutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no
nonsense about the Americans.”
“How dreadful!” cried Lord Henry. “I can stand
brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.
There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting
below the intellect.”
“I do not understand you,” said Sir Thomas, grow-
ing rather red.
“I do, Lord Henry,” murmured Mr. Erskine, with a
smile.
“Paradoxes are all very well in their way... .” re-
joined the baronet.
“Was that a paradox?” asked Mr. Erskine. “I did
not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of para-
doxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see
it on the tight rope. When the verities become acro-
bats, 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 in-
valuable. 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,” contin-
ued Lady Agatha.

54
 “I can sympathize with everything except suffer-
ing,” said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. “I
cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too hor-
rible, too distressing. There is something terribly
morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should
sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life.
The less said about life’s sores, the better.”
“Still, the East End is a very important problem,”
remarked Sir Thomas with a grave shake of the head.
“Quite so,” answered the young lord. “It is the
problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing
the slaves.”
The politician looked at him keenly. “What change
do you propose, then?” he asked.
Lord Henry laughed. “I don’t desire to change
anything in England except the weather,” he an-
swered. “I am quite content with philosophic contem-
plation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bank-
rupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I
would suggest that we should appeal to science to put
us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that they
lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it
is not emotional.”
“But we have such grave responsibilities,” ven-
tured Mrs. Vandeleur timidly.
“Terribly grave,” echoed Lady Agatha.
Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. “Human-
ity 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

55
the East End. For the future I shall be able to look her
in the face without a blush.”
“A blush is very becoming, Duchess,” remarked
Lord Henry.
“Only when one is young,” she answered. “When an
old woman like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign.
Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to
become young again.”
He thought for a moment. “Can you remember any
great error that you committed in your early days,
Duchess?” he asked, looking at her across the table.
“A great many, I fear,” she cried.
“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely.
“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat
one’s follies.”
“A delightful theory!” she exclaimed. “I must put it
into practice.”
“A dangerous theory!” came from Sir Thomas’s
tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but could not
help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great se-
crets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of
creeping common sense, and discover when it is too
late that the only things one never regrets are one’s
mistakes.”
A laugh ran round the table.
He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it
into the air and transformed it; let it escape and re-
captured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged
it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself
became young, and catching the mad music of plea-
sure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe
and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the

56
hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being
sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest
things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which
wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose
round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or
crawled in red foam over the vat’s black, dripping,
sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation.
He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on
him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience
there was one whose temperament he wished to fasci-
nate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend
colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic,
irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of them-
selves, 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,”
said Lord Henry with a bow.

57
 “Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you,” she
cried; “so mind you come”; and she swept out of the
room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other ladies.
When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine
moved round, and taking a chair close to him, placed
his hand upon his arm.
“You talk books away,” he said; “why don’t you
write one?”
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write
them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel
certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian
carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in
England for anything except newspapers, primers,
and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the world the
English have the least sense of the beauty of litera-
ture.”
“I fear you are right,” answered Mr. Erskine. “I
myself used to have literary ambitions, but I gave
them up long ago. And now, my dear young friend, if
you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
meant all that you said to us at lunch?”
“I quite forget what I said,” smiled Lord Henry.
“Was it all very bad?”
“Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely
dangerous, and if anything happens to our good duch-
ess, we shall all look on you as being primarily respon-
sible. 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 plea-
sure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate
enough to possess.”

58
 “I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a
great privilege. It has a perfect host, and a perfect
library.”
“You will complete it,” answered the old gentle-
man with a courteous bow. “And now I must bid good-
bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at the Athenaeum.
It is the hour when we sleep there.”
“All of you, Mr. Erskine?”
“Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising
for an English Academy of Letters.”
Lord Henry laughed and rose. “I am going to the
park,” he cried.
As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray
touched him on the arm. “Let me come with you,” he
murmured.
“But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to
go and see him,” answered Lord Henry.
“I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must
come with you. Do let me. And you will promise to
talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as
you do.”
“Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day,” said
Lord Henry, smiling. “All I want now is to look at life.
You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”

59
 IV

ONE AFTERNOON, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclin-

ing in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of
Lord Henry’s house in Mayfair. It was, in its way, a
very charming room, with its high panelled wainscot-
ing of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and
ceiling of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt
carpet strewn with silk, long-fringed Persian rugs. On
a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by Clodion,
and beside it lay a copy of Les Cent Nouvelles, bound
for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered
with the gilt daisies that Queen had selected for her
device. Some large blue china jars and parrot- tulips
were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the
small leaded panes of the window streamed the apri-
cot-coloured light of a summer day in London.
Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always
late on principle, his principle being that punctuality
is the thief of time. So the lad was looking rather
sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages
of an elaborately illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut
that he had found in one of the book-cases. The formal
monotonous ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock an-
noyed 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 pictur-
esque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name
was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to
church.
“That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?”
“Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner’s
music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can
talk the whole time without other people hearing
what one says. That is a great advantage, don’t you
think so, Mr. Gray?”
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her
thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long
tortoise-shell paper-knife.

61
 Dorian smiled and shook his head: “I am afraid I
don’t think so, Lady Henry. I never talk during mu-
sic—at least, during good music. If one hears bad
music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”
“Ah! that is one of Harry’s views, isn’t it, Mr. Gray?
I always hear Harry’s views from his friends. It is the
only way I get to know of them. But you must not
think I don’t like good music. I adore it, but I am
afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply
worshipped pianists— two at a time, sometimes,
Harry tells me. I don’t know what it is about them.
Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
ain’t they? Even those that are born in England be-
come foreigners after a time, don’t they? It is so clever
of them, and such a compliment to art. Makes it quite
cosmopolitan, doesn’t it? You have never been to any
of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I
can’t afford orchids, but I share no expense in foreign-
ers. They make one’s rooms look so picturesque. But
here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask
you something— I forget what it was—and I found Mr.
Gray here. We have had such a pleasant chat about
music. We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our
ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleas-
ant. 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 ev-
erything and the value of nothing.”
“I am afraid I must be going,” exclaimed Lady
Henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly

62
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.”
“But I like sentimental people.”
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because
they are tired; women, because they are curious: both
are disappointed.”
“I don’t think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too
much in love. That is one of your aphorisms. I am
putting it into practice, as I do everything that you
say.”
“Who are you in love with?” asked Lord Henry
after a pause.
“With an actress,” said Dorian Gray, blushing.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “That is a
rather commonplace début.”
“You would not say so if you saw her, Harry.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Sibyl Vane.”
“Never heard of her.”
“No one has. People will some day, however. She is
a genius.”
“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a
decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but

63
they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph
of matter over mind, just as men represent the tri-
umph of mind over morals.”
“Harry, how can you?”
“My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing
women at present, so I ought to know. The subject is
not so abstruse as I thought it was. I find that, ulti-
mately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain
and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If
you want to gain a reputation for respectability, you
have merely to take them down to supper. The other
women are very charming. They commit one mistake,
however. They paint in order to try and look young.
Our grandmothers painted in order to try and talk
brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to go together. That
is all over now. As long as a woman can look ten years
younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satis-
fied. 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 unsym-
pathetic about it. After all, it never would have hap-
pened 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.

64
There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a pas-
sion for sensations... Well, one evening about seven
o’clock, I determined to go out in search of some ad-
venture. I felt that this grey monstrous London of
ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners,
and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must
have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand
things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I
remembered what you had said to me on that wonder-
ful evening when we first dined together, about the
search for beauty being the real secret of life. I don’t
know what I expected, but I went out and wandered
eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy
streets and black grassless squares. About half-past
eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great
flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous Jew, in
the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life,
was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He
had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed
in the centre of a soiled shirt.’Have a box, my Lord?’
he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with
an air of gorgeous servility. There was something
about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a
monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I really
went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To
the present day I can’t make out why I did so; and yet
if I hadn’t— my dear Harry, if I hadn’t—I should have
missed the greatest romance of my life. I see you are
laughing. It is horrid of you!”
“I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laugh-
ing at you. But you should not say the greatest ro-
mance of your life. You should say the first romance of
your life. You will always be loved, and you will al-
ways be in love with love. A grande passion is the

65
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. Faith-
fulness 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 consumption of nuts going on.”
“It must have been just like the palmy days of the
British drama.”
“Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I
began to wonder what on earth I should do when I

66
caught sight of the play-bill. What do you think the
play was, Harry?”
“I should think The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Inno-
cent. Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I
believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I
feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is
not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les
grandpères ont toujours tort.”
“This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was
Romeo and Juliet. I must admit that I was rather
annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in
such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested,
in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for
the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided
over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano,
that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop- scene
was drawn up and the play began. Romeo was a stout
elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky
tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio
was almost as bad. He was played by the low-come-
dian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on
most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as
grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had
come out of a country- booth. But Juliet! Harry, imag-
ine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little,
flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils
of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of
passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She
was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You
said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that
beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I
tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist
of tears that came across me. And her voice—I never
heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep

67
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 transfigures them.
One knows their minds as easily as one knows their
bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mys-
tery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morn-
ing and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They
have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable
manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How
different an actress is! Harry! why didn’t you tell me
that the only thing worth loving is an actress?”
“Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.”

68
 “Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted
faces.”
“Don’t run down dyed hair and painted faces.
There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes,”
said Lord Henry.
“I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.”
“You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All
through your life you will tell me everything you do.”
“Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help
telling you things. You have a curious influence over
me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess it
to you. You would understand me.”
“People like you—the wilful sunbeams of life—
don’t commit crimes, Dorian. But I am much obliged
for the compliment, all the same. And now tell me—
reach me the matches, like a good boy—thanks—what
are your actual relations with Sibyl Vane?”
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks
and burning eyes. “Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!”
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touch-
ing, 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

69
blank look of amazement, that he was under the im-
pression that I had taken too much champagne, or
something.”
“I am not surprised.”
“Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the news-
papers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed
terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that
all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against
him, and that they were every one of them to be bought.”
“I should not wonder if he was quite right there.
But, on the other hand, judging from their appear-
ance, most of them cannot be at all expensive.”
“Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his
means,” laughed Dorian. “By this time, however, the
lights were being put out in the theatre, and I had to
go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I
arrived at the place again. When he saw me, he made
me a low bow and assured me that I was a munificent
patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though
he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He
told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bank-
ruptcies were entirely due to ‘The Bard,’ as he in-
sisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distinc-
tion.”
“It was a distinction, my dear Dorian—a great
distinction. Most people become bankrupt through
having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To
have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honour. But
when did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?”
“The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I
could not help going round. I had thrown her some
flowers, and she had looked at me—at least I fancied
that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed

70
determined to take me behind, so I consented. It was
curious my not wanting to know her, wasn’t it?”
“No; I don’t think so.”
“My dear Harry, why?”
“I will tell you some other time. Now I want to
know about the girl.”
“Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is
something of a child about her. Her eyes opened wide
in exquisite wonder when I told her what I thought of
her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of
her power. I think we were both rather nervous. The
old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty
greenroom, making elaborate speeches about us both,
while we stood looking at each other like children. He
would insist on calling me ‘My Lord,’ so I had to as-
sure 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 dress-
ing-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

71
little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine. Every
night of my life I go to see her act, and every night she
is more marvellous.”
“That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine
with me now. I thought you must have some curious
romance on hand. You have; but it is not quite what I
expected.”
“My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together
every day, and I have been to the opera with you
several times,” said Dorian, opening his blue eyes in
wonder.
“You always come dreadfully late.”
“Well, I can’t help going to see Sibyl play,” he
cried, “even if it is only for a single act. I get hungry
for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful
soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am
filled with awe.”
“You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can’t you?”
He shook his head. “To-night she is Imogen,” he
answered, “and to-morrow night she will be Juliet.”
“When is she Sibyl Vane?”
“Never.”
“I congratulate you.”
“How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines
of the world in one. She is more than an individual.
You laugh, but I tell you she has genius. I love her,
and I must make her love me. You, who know all the
secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love
me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead
lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad.
I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into
consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God,
Harry, how I worship her!” He was walking up and

72
down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned
on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of
pleasure. How different he was now from the shy
frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward’s studio!
His nature had developed like a flower, had borne
blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-
place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet
it on the way.
“And what do you propose to do?” said Lord Henry
at last.
“I want you and Basil to come with me some night
and see her act. I have not the slightest fear of the
result. You are certain to acknowledge her genius.
Then we must get her out of the Jew’s hands. She is
bound to him for three years—at least for two years
and eight months— from the present time. I shall
have to pay him something, of course. When all that is
settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her
out properly. She will make the world as mad as she
has made me.”
“That would be impossible, my dear boy.”
“Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate
art-instinct, in her, but she has personality also; and
you have often told me that it is personalities, not
principles, that move the age.”
“Well, what night shall we go?”
“Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-mor-
row. She plays Juliet to-morrow.”
“All right. The Bristol at eight o’clock; and I will
get Basil.”
“Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must
be there before the curtain rises. You must see her in
the first act, where she meets Romeo.”

73
 “Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having
a meat-tea, or reading an English novel. It must be
seven. No gentleman dines before seven. Shall you see
Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?”
“Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week.
It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my por-
trait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed
by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the
picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I
must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better
write to him. I don’t want to see him alone. He says
things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.”
Lord Henry smiled. “People are very fond of giving
away what they need most themselves. It is what I call
the depth of generosity.”
“Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to
me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known
you, Harry, I have discovered that.”
“Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charm-
ing in him into his work. The consequence is that he
has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his prin-
ciples, and his common sense. The only artists I have
ever known who are personally delightful are bad
artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make,
and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what
they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most
unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are
absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are,
the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of
having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes
a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he
cannot write. The others write the poetry that they
dare not realize.”

74
 “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 im-
port. 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 cru-
cible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over
one’s face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous
fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagi-
nation turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen
dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know
their properties one had to sicken of them. There
were maladies so strange that one had to pass through
them if one sought to understand their nature. And,
yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful
the whole world became to one! To note the curious
hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life
of the intellect—to observe where they met, and where
they separated, at what point they were in unison,
and at what point they were at discord—there was a

75
delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One
could never pay too high a price for any sensation.
He was conscious—and the thought brought a
gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it
was through certain words of his, musical words said
with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had
turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before
her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation.
He had made him premature. That was something.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its
secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of
life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the
art of literature, which dealt immediately with the
passions and the intellect. But now and then a com-
plex personality took the place and assumed the office
of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life
having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has,
or sculpture, or painting.
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his
harvest while it was yet spring. The pulse and passion
of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-con-
scious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beauti-
ful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to won-
der at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was des-
tined 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

76
impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary defi-
nitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how diffi-
cult 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 oth-
ers. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely
the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had,
as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed
for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of
character, had praised it as something that taught us
what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there
was no motive power in experience. It was as little of
an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really
demonstrated was that our future would be the same
as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and
with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
It was clear to him that the experimental method
was the only method by which one could arrive at any
scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian
Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to
promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love
for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no
small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had
much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new
experiences, yet it was not a simple, but rather a very
complex passion. What there was in it of the purely
sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by

77
the workings of the imagination, changed into some-
thing that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from
sense, and was for that very reason all the more dan-
gerous. It was the passions about whose origin we
deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over
us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature
we were conscious. It often happened that when we
thought we were experimenting on others we were
really experimenting on ourselves.
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a
knock came to the door, and his valet entered and
reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. He got
up and looked out into the street. The sunset had
smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the
houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of
heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He
thought of his friend’s young fiery-coloured life and
wondered how it was all going to end.
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve
o’clock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table. He
opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray. It was
to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl
Vane.

78
 V

“MOTHER, Mother, I am so happy!” whispered the girl,

burying her face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking
woman who, with back turned to the shrill intrusive
light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their dingy
sitting-room contained. “I am so happy!” she repeated,
“and you must be happy, too!”
Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-
whitened hands on her daughter’s head. “Happy!” she
echoed, “I am only happy, Sibyl, when I see you act.
You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr.
Isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him
money.”
The girl looked up and pouted. “Money, Mother?”
she cried, “what does money matter? Love is more
than money.”
“Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off
our debts and to get a proper outfit for James. You
must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds is a very
large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate.”
 “He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way
he talks to me,” said the girl, rising to her feet and
going over to the window.
“I don’t know how we could manage without him,”
answered the elder woman querulously.
Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. “We don’t
want him any more, Mother. Prince Charming rules
life for us now.” Then she paused. A rose shook in her
blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted
the petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern
wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty
folds of her dress. “I love him,” she said simply.
“Foolish child! foolish child!” was the parrot-phrase
flung in answer. The waving of crooked, false-jewelled
fingers gave grotesqueness to the words.
The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was
in her voice. Her eyes caught the melody and echoed
it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to
hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a
dream had passed across them.
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn
chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of
cowardice whose author apes the name of common
sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison of
passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with her.
She had called on memory to remake him. She had
sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him
back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her
eyelids were warm with his breath.
Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of
espial and discovery. This young man might be rich. If
so, marriage should be thought of. Against the shell of
her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The

80
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. “For-
give me, Mother. I know it pains you to talk about our
father. But it only pains you because you loved him so
much. Don’t look so sad. I am as happy to-day as you
were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy for ever!”
“My child, you are far too young to think of falling
in love. Besides, what do you know of this young man?
You don’t even know his name. The whole thing is
most inconvenient, and really, when James is going
away to Australia, and I have so much to think of, I
must say that you should have shown more consider-
ation. However, as I said before, if he is rich...”
“Ah! Mother, Mother, let me be happy!”
Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those
false theatrical gestures that so often become a mode
of second nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her
arms. At this moment, the door opened and a young
lad with rough brown hair came into the room. He was
thick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were large
and somewhat clumsy in movement. He was not so

81
finely bred as his sister. One would hardly have guessed
the close relationship that existed between them. Mrs.
Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile.
She mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an
audience. She felt sure that the tableau was interesting.
“You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl,
I think,” said the lad with a good-natured grumble.
“Ah! but you don’t like being kissed, Jim,” she
cried. “You are a dreadful old bear.” And she ran
across the room and hugged him.
James Vane looked into his sister’s face with ten-
derness. “I want you to come out with me for a walk,
Sibyl. I don’t suppose I shall ever see this horrid
London again. I am sure I don’t want to.”
“My son, don’t say such dreadful things,” mur-
mured Mrs. Vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress,
with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. She felt a little
disappointed that he had not joined the group. It
would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness
of the situation.
“Why not, Mother? I mean it.”
“You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from
Australia in a position of affluence. I believe there is
no society of any kind in the Colonies— nothing that I
would call society—so when you have made your
fortune, you must come back and assert yourself in
London.”
“Society!” muttered the lad. “I don’t want to know
anything about that. I should like to make some money
to take you and Sibyl off the stage. I hate it.”
“Oh, Jim!” said Sibyl, laughing, “how unkind of you!
But are you really going for a walk with me? That will
be nice! I was afraid you were going to say good-bye to
some of your friends— to Tom Hardy, who gave you

82
that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of
you for smoking it. It is very sweet of you to let me
have your last afternoon. Where shall we go? Let us go
to the park.”
“I am too shabby,” he answered, frowning. “Only
swell people go to the park.”
“Nonsense, Jim,” she whispered, stroking the
sleeve of his coat.
He hesitated for a moment. “Very well,” he said at
last, “but don’t be too long dressing.” She danced out
of the door. One could hear her singing as she ran
upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.
He walked up and down the room two or three
times. Then he turned to the still figure in the chair.
“Mother, are my things ready?” he asked.
“Quite ready, James,” she answered, keeping her
eyes on her work. For some months past she had felt
ill at ease when she was alone with this rough stern
son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled
when their eyes met. She used to wonder if he sus-
pected anything. The silence, for he made no other
observation, became intolerable to her. She began to
complain. Women defend themselves by attacking,
just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
“I hope you will be contented, James, with your sea-
faring life,” she said. “You must remember that it is
your own choice. You might have entered a 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.”

83
 “James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I
watch over Sibyl.”
“I hear a gentleman comes every night to the the-
atre and goes behind to talk to her. Is that right?
What about that?”
“You are speaking about things you don’t under-
stand, James. In the profession we are accustomed to
receive a great deal of most gratifying attention. I
myself used to receive many bouquets at one time.
That was when acting was really understood. As for
Sibyl, I do not know at present whether her attach-
ment is serious or not. But there is no doubt that the
young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is
always most polite to me. Besides, he has the appear-
ance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely.”
“You don’t know his name, though,” said the lad
harshly.
“No,” answered his mother with a placid expres-
sion in her face. “He has not yet revealed his real
name. I think it is quite romantic of him. He is prob-
ably a member of the aristocracy.”
James Vane bit his lip. “Watch over Sibyl, Mother,”
he cried, “watch over her.”
“My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is al-
ways under my special care. Of course, if this gentle-
man is wealthy, there is no reason why she should not
contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the
aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must
say. It might be a most brilliant marriage for Sibyl.
They would make a charming couple. His good looks
are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them.”
The lad muttered something to himself and
drummed on the window-pane with his coarse fingers.

84
He had just turned round to say something when the
door opened and Sibyl ran in.
“How serious you both are!” she cried. “What is the
matter?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “I suppose one must be
serious sometimes. Good-bye, Mother; I will have my
dinner at five o’clock. Everything is packed, except my
shirts, so you need not trouble.”
“Good-bye, my son,” she answered with a bow of
strained stateliness.
She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had
adopted with her, and there was something in his look
that had made her feel afraid.
“Kiss me, Mother,” said the girl. Her 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 dis-
like of being stared at, which comes on geniuses late
in life and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, how-
ever, was quite unconscious of the effect she was
producing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her
lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming, and, that
she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of
him, but prattled on about the ship in which Jim was

85
going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find,
about the wonderful heiress whose life he was to save
from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. For he was
not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or whatever he
was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor’s existence was dread-
ful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the
hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a
black wind blowing the masts down and tearing the
sails into long screaming ribands! He was to leave the
vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the
captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a
week was over he was to come across a large nugget of
pure gold, the largest nugget that had ever been dis-
covered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon
guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers
were to attack them three times, and be defeated with
immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the
gold-fields at all. They were horrid places, where men
got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and
used bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer,
and one evening, as he was riding home, he was to see
the beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber on a
black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course,
she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and
they would get married, and come home, and live in
an immense house in London. Yes, there were delight-
ful things in store for him. But he must be very good,
and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly.
She was only a year older than he was, but she knew
so much more of life. He must be sure, also, to write to
her by every mail, and to say his prayers each night
before he went to sleep. God was very good, and would
watch over him. She would pray for him, too, and in a
few years he would come back quite rich and happy.

86
 The lad listened sulkily to her and made no an-
swer. 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, Jim,”
cried Sibyl, “and I am making the most delightful
plans for your future. Do say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us,”
she answered, smiling at him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You are more likely to
forget me than I am to forget you, Sibyl.”
She flushed. “What do you mean, Jim?” she asked.

87
 “You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why
have you not told me about him? He means you no
good.”
“Stop, Jim!” she exclaimed. “You must not say
anything against him. I love him.”
“Why, you don’t even know his name,” answered
the lad. “Who is he? I have a right to know.”
“He is called Prince Charming. Don’t you like the
name. Oh! you silly boy! you should never forget it. If
you only saw him, you would think him the most
wonderful person in the world. Some day you will
meet him—when you come back from Australia. You
will like him so much. Everybody likes him, and I ...
love him. I wish you could come to the theatre to-
night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet.
Oh! how I shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and
play Juliet! To have him sitting there! To play for his
delight! I am afraid I may frighten the company, frighten
or enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass one’s self.
Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting ‘genius’ to
his loafers at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma;
to-night he will announce me as a revelation. I feel it.
And it is all his, his only, Prince Charming, my won-
derful 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 win-
dow. 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.”

88
 “I want you to beware of him.”
“To see him is to worship him; to know him is to
trust him.”
“Sibyl, you are mad about him.”
She laughed and took his arm. “You dear old Jim,
you talk as if you were a hundred. Some day you will
be in love yourself. Then you will know what it is.
Don’t look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to think
that, though you are going away, you leave me happier
than I have ever been before. Life has been hard for us
both, terribly hard and difficult. But it will be differ-
ent now. You are going to a new world, and I have
found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and
see the smart people go by.”
They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers.
The tulip-beds across the road flamed like throbbing
rings of fire. A white dust— tremulous cloud of orris-
root it seemed—hung in the panting air. The brightly
coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous
butterflies.
She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes,
his prospects. He spoke slowly and with effort. They
passed words to each other as players at a game pass
counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not commu-
nicate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth
was all the echo she could win. After some time she
became silent. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of golden
hair and laughing lips, and in an open carriage with
two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.
She started to her feet. “There he is!” she cried.
“Who?” said Jim Vane.
“Prince Charming,” she answered, looking after
the victoria.

89
 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 heav-
en, 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 laugh-
ter on her lips. She shook her head at him. “You are
foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that
is all. How can you say such horrible things? You don’t
know what you are talking about. You are simply
jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would fall in love.
Love makes people good, and what you said was
wicked.”
“I am sixteen,” he answered, “and I know what I
am about. Mother is no help to you. She doesn’t under-
stand how to look after you. I wish now that I was not
going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn’t been
signed.”
“Oh, don’t be so serious, Jim. You are like one of
the heroes of those silly melodramas Mother used to

90
be so fond of acting in. I am not going to quarrel with
you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect
happiness. We won’t quarrel. I know you would never
harm any one I love, would you?”
“Not as long as you love him, I suppose,” was the
sullen answer.
“I shall love him for ever!” she cried.
“And he?”
“For ever, too!”
“He had better.”
She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put
her hand on his arm. He was merely a boy.
At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which
left them close to their shabby home in the Euston
Road. It was after five o’clock, and Sibyl had to lie
down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
that she should do so. He said that he would sooner
part with her when their mother was not present. She
would be sure to make a scene, and he detested scenes
of every kind.
In Sybil’s own room they parted. There was jeal-
ousy in the lad’s heart, and a fierce murderous hatred
of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come
between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round
his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he
softened and kissed her with real affection. There
were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.
His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled
at his unpunctuality, as he entered. He made no an-
swer, 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.

91
 After some time, he thrust away his plate and put
his head in his hands. He felt that he had a right to
know. It should have been told to him before, if it was
as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother watched
him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A
tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her fingers.
When the clock struck six, he got up and went to the
door. Then he turned back and looked at her. Their
eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It
enraged him.
“Mother, I have something to ask you,” he said.
Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. She made
no answer. “Tell me the truth. I have a right to know.
Were you married to my father?”
She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The
terrible moment, the moment that night and day, for
weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at last,
and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure it
was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of
the question called for a direct answer. The situation
had not been gradually led up to. It was crude. It
reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
“No,” she answered, wondering at the harsh sim-
plicity of life.
“My father was a scoundrel then!” cried the lad,
clenching his fists.
She shook her head. “I knew he was not free. We
loved each other very much. If he had lived, he would
have made provision for us. Don’t speak against him,
my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed,
he was highly connected.”
An oath broke from his lips. “I don’t care for my-
self,” he exclaimed, “but don’t let Sibyl... It is a gentle-

92
man, 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. Trunks had to be carried down and
mufflers looked for. The lodging-house drudge bustled
in and out. There was the bargaining with the cabman.
The moment was lost in vulgar details. It was with a
renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the
tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her
son drove away. She was conscious that a great oppor-
tunity had been wasted. She consoled herself by tell-
ing Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now
that she had only one child to look after. She remem-
bered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat she
said nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed.
She felt that they would all laugh at it some day.

93
 VI

I SUPPOSE you have heard the news, Basil?” said Lord

Henry that evening as Hallward was shown into a
little private room at the Bristol where dinner had
been laid for three.
“No, Harry,” answered the artist, giving his hat
and coat to the bowing waiter. “What is it? Nothing
about politics, I hope! They don’t interest me. There is
hardly a single person in the House of Commons
worth painting, though many of them would be the
better for a little whitewashing.”
“Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,” said Lord
Henry, watching him as he spoke.
Hallward started and then frowned. “Dorian en-
gaged to be married!” he cried. “Impossible!”
“It is perfectly true.”
“To whom?”
“To some little actress or other.”
“I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”
“Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now
and then, my dear Basil.”
 “Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now
and then, Harry.”
“Except in America,” rejoined Lord Henry lan-
guidly. “But I didn’t say he was married. I said he was
engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I
have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I
have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am
inclined to think that I never was engaged.”
“But think of Dorian’s birth, and position, and
wealth. It would be absurd for him to marry so much
beneath him.”
“If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him
that, Basil. He is sure to do it, then. Whenever a man
does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the
noblest motives.”
“I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see
Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade
his nature and ruin his intellect.”
“Oh, she is better than good—she is beautiful,”
murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth
and orange-bitters. “Dorian says she is beautiful, and
he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the
personal appearance of other people. It has had that
excellent effect, amongst others. We are to see her to-
night, if that boy doesn’t forget his appointment.”
“Are you serious?”
“Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I
thought I should ever be more serious than I am at the
present moment.”
“But do you approve of it, Harry?” asked the painter,
walking up and down the room and biting his lip. “You
can’t approve of it, possibly. It is some silly infatua-
tion.”

95
 “I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now.
It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are
not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I
never take any notice of what common people say, and
I never interfere with what charming people do. If a
personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expres-
sion that personality selects is absolutely delightful to
me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who
acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he
wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interest-
ing. You know I am not a champion of marriage. The
real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unself-
ish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack
individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments
that marriage makes more complex. They retain their
egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are
forced to have more than one life. They become more
highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I
should fancy, the object of man’s existence. Besides,
every experience is of value, and whatever one may
say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife,
passionately adore her for six months, and then sud-
denly 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

96
are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker
that we may overdraw our account, and find good
qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may
spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said.
I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a
spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is
arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely
to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be
silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds
between men and women. I will certainly encourage
them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But
here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I
can.”
“My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both
congratulate me!” said the lad, throwing off his evening
cape with its satin-lined wings and shaking each of his
friends by the hand in turn. “I have never been so
happy. Of course, it is sudden— all really delightful
things are. And yet it seems to me to be the one thing
I have been looking for all my life.” He was flushed
with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordi-
narily handsome.
“I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,”
said Hallward, “but I don’t quite forgive you for not
having let me know of your engagement. You let Harry
know.”
“And I don’t forgive you for being late for dinner,”
broke in Lord Henry, putting his hand on the lad’s
shoulder and smiling as he spoke. “Come, let us sit
down and try what the new chef here is like, and then
you will tell us how it all came about.”
“There is really not much to tell,” cried Dorian as
they took their seats at the small round table. “What
happened was simply this. After I left you yesterday

97
evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you intro-
duced me to, and went down at eight o’clock to the
theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course, the
scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd. But
Sibyl! You should have seen her! When she came on in
her boy’s clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. She
wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon
sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty
little green cap with a hawk’s feather caught in a
jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had
never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the
delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have
in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her
face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her
acting—well, you shall see her to-night. She is simply
a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely en-
thralled. 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 perfor-
mance 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 per-
fect 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

98
what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take
my love out of poetry and to find my wife in
Shakespeare’s plays?
Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whis-
pered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of
Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”
“Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,” said
Hallward slowly.
“Have you seen her to-day?” asked Lord Henry.
Dorian Gray shook his head. “I left her in the
forest of Arden; I shall find her in an orchard in Verona.”
Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative
manner. “At what particular point did you mention
the word marriage, Dorian? And what did she say in
answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it.”
“My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business
transaction, and I did not make any formal proposal. I
told her that I loved her, and she said she was not
worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole
world is nothing to me compared with her.”
“Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured
Lord Henry, “much more practical than we are. In
situations of that kind we often forget to say anything
about marriage, and they always remind us.”
Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. “Don’t, Harry.
You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men.
He would never bring misery upon any one. His na-
ture is too fine for that.”
Lord Henry looked across the table. “Dorian is
never annoyed with me,” he answered. “I asked the
question for the best reason possible, for the only
reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any ques-
tion— simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is al-
ways the women who propose to us, and not we who

99
propose to the women. Except, of course, in middle-
class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”
Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. “You
are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don’t mind. It is
impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sibyl
Vane, you will feel that the man who could wrong her
would be a beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot
understand how any one can wish to shame the thing
he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a
pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the
woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irrevocable
vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don’t mock. It is an
irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes
me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with
her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become
different from what you have known me to be. I am
changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane’s hand
makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating,
poisonous, delightful theories.”
“And those are...?” asked Lord Henry, helping
himself to some salad.
“Oh, your theories about life, your theories about
love, your theories about pleasure. All your theories,
in fact, Harry.”
“Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory
about,” he answered in his slow melodious voice. «But
I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my own. It
belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature’s
test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are
always good, but when we are good, we are not always
happy.»
“Ah! but what do you mean by good?” cried Basil
Hallward.

100
 “Yes,” echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and
looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of
purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the
table, “what do you mean by good, Harry?”
“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,” he
replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his
pale, fine-pointed fingers. “Discord is to be forced to
be in harmony with others. One’s own life—that is the
important thing. As for the lives of one’s neighbours, if
one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt
one’s moral views about them, but they are not one’s
concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher
aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the stan-
dard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of cul-
ture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the
grossest immorality.”
“But, surely, if one lives merely for one’s self,
Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?” sug-
gested the painter.
“Yes, we are overcharged for everything 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 plea-

101
sure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a plea-
sure is.”
“I know what pleasure is,” cried Dorian Gray. “It is
to adore some one.”
“That is certainly better than being adored,” he
answered, toying with some fruits. “Being adored is a
nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its
gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to
do something for them.”
“I should have said that whatever they ask for they
had first given to us,” murmured the lad gravely.
“They create love in our natures. They have a right to
demand it back.”
“That is quite true, Dorian,” cried Hallward.
“Nothing is ever quite true,” said Lord Henry.
“This is,” interrupted Dorian. “You must admit,
Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their
lives.”
“Possibly,” he sighed, “but they invariably want it
back in such very small change. That is the worry.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire
us with the desire to do masterpieces and always
prevent us from carrying them out.”
“Harry, you are dreadful! I don’t know why I like
you so much.”
“You will always like me, Dorian,” he replied.
“Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring
coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. No,
don’t mind the cigarettes—I have some. Basil, I can’t
allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It
is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more
can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of

102
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 preoccu-
pied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear
this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better
than many other things that might have happened.
After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He
drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in
front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him.
He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him
all that he had been in the past. Life had come be-
tween them... His eyes darkened, and the crowded
flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the
cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he
had grown years older.

103
 VII

FOR SOME reason or other, the house was crowded that

night, and the fat Jew manager who met them at the
door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily tremu-
lous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort
of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands
and talking at the top of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed
him more than ever. He felt as if he had come to look
for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,
upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he
declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the
hand and assuring him that he was proud to meet a
man who had discovered a real genius and gone bank-
rupt over a poet. Hallward amused himself with watch-
ing the faces in the pit. The heat was terribly oppres-
sive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous
dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the
gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and
hung them over the side. They talked to each other
across the theatre and shared their oranges with the
tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were
laughing in the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill
and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks
came from the bar.
“What a place to find one’s divinity in!” said Lord
Henry.
“Yes!” answered Dorian Gray. “It was here I found
her, and she is divine beyond all living things. When
she acts, you will forget everything. These common
rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal ges-
tures, become quite different when she is on the stage.
They sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh
as she wills them to do. She makes them as responsive
as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that
they are of the same flesh and blood as one’s self.”
“The same flesh and blood as one’s self! Oh, I hope
not!” exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning the
occupants of the gallery through his opera-glass.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Dorian,” said the
painter. “I understand what you mean, and I believe in
this girl. Any one you love must be marvellous, and
any girl who has the effect you describe must be fine
and noble. To spiritualize one’s age—that is something
worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who
have lived without one, if she can create the sense of
beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and
ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and
lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own,
she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the
adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right. I
did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods
made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have
been incomplete.”
“Thanks, Basil,” answered Dorian Gray, pressing
his hand. “I knew that you would understand me.

105
Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here is the
orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for
about five minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you
will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life,
to whom I have given everything that is good in me.”
A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an ex-
traordinary turmoil of applause, Sibyl Vane stepped
on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look
at— one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
that he had ever seen. There was something of the
fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. A faint blush,
like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to
her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic
house. She stepped back a few paces and her lips
seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet
and began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a
dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry
peered through his glasses, murmuring, “Charming!
charming!”
The scene was the hall of Capulet’s house, and
Romeo in his pilgrim’s dress had entered with Mercutio
and his other friends. The band, such as it was, struck
up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through
the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl
Vane moved like a creature from a finer world. Her
body swayed, while she danced, as a plant sways in
the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of
a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool
ivory.
Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign
of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words
she had to speak—
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

106
 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 abso-
lutely 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 moon-
light. That could not be denied. But the staginess of
her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she
went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She
overemphasized everything that she had to say. The
beautiful passage—
Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night—
was declaimed with the painful precision of a
schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by some
second- rate professor of elocution. When she leaned
over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines—
Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, “It lightens.” Sweet, good-night!

107
 This bud of love by summer’s ripening breath
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet—
she spoke the words as though they conveyed no
meaning to her. It was not nervousness. Indeed, so far
from being nervous, she was absolutely self-contained.
It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
Even the common uneducated audience of the pit
and gallery lost their interest in the play. They got
restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle. The
Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only
person unmoved was the girl herself.
When the second act was over, there came a storm
of hisses, and Lord Henry got up from his chair and
put on his coat. “She is quite beautiful, Dorian,” he
said, “but she can’t act. Let us go.”
“I am going to see the play through,” answered the
lad, in a hard bitter voice. “I am awfully sorry that I
have made you waste an evening, Harry. I apologize to
you both.”
“My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was
ill,” interrupted Hallward. “We will come some other
night.”
“I wish she were ill,” he rejoined. “But she seems
to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely
altered. Last night she was a great artist. This evening
she is merely a commonplace mediocre actress.”
“Don’t talk like that about any one you love, Dorian.
Love is a more wonderful thing than art.”
“They are both simply forms of imitation,” re-
marked Lord Henry. “But do let us go. Dorian, you
must not stay here any longer. It is not good for one’s
morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don’t suppose you
will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if

108
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 exquisite to me. I
heard them hissing, and I smiled. What could they
know of love such as ours? Take me away, Dorian—
take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I
hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not
feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire.
Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it
signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation
for me to play at being in love. You have made me see
that.”
He flung himself down on the sofa and turned
away his face. “You have killed my love,” he muttered.
She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He
made no answer. She came across to him, and with her
little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt down and
pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away,
and a shudder ran through him.
Then he leaped up and went to the door. “Yes,” he
cried, “you have killed my love. You used to stir my
imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity.
You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you
were marvellous, because you had genius and intel-
lect, 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

109
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 wor-
shipped you, and you would have borne my name.
What are you now? A third- rate actress with a pretty
face.”
The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched
her hands together, and her voice seemed to catch in
her throat. “You are not serious, Dorian?” she mur-
mured. “You are acting.”
“Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well,” he
answered bitterly.
She rose from her knees and, with a piteous ex-
pression of pain in her face, came across the room to
him. She put her hand upon his arm and looked into
his eyes. He thrust her back. “Don’t touch me!” he
cried.
A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself
at his feet and lay there like a trampled flower. “Dorian,
Dorian, don’t leave me!” she whispered. “I am so sorry
I didn’t act well. I was thinking of you all the time.
But I will try—indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly
across me, my love for you. I think I should never have
known it if you had not kissed me— if we had not
kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Don’t go
away from me. I couldn’t bear it. Oh! don’t go away
from me. My brother... No; never mind. He didn’t
mean it. He was in jest... But you, oh! can’t you forgive

110
me for to-night? I will work so hard and try to im-
prove. 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 ri-
diculous about the emotions of people whom one has
ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be ab-
surdly 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 remem-
bered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt,
black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses.
Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had
called after him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing
and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. He
had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps,
and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself
close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and,
flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a

111
perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The
air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and
their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his
pain. He followed into the market and watched the
men unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter
offered him some cherries. He thanked him, wondered
why he refused to accept any money for them, and
began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at
midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered
into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped
tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of
him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green
piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey,
sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled
bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over.
Others crowded round the swinging doors of the
coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy cart-horses
slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking
their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were
lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked and pink-
footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove
home. For a few moments he loitered upon the door-
step, looking round at the silent square, with its blank,
close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds. The
sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses
glistened like silver against it. From some chimney
opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising. It curled,
a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some
Doge’s barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great,
oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were still burning
from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame

112
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 discov-
ered 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 expres-
sion that he had noticed in the face of the portrait
seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even.
The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of
cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been
looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful
thing.
He winced and, taking up from the table an oval
glass framed in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry’s
many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its

113
polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips.
What did it mean?
He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture,
and examined it again. There were no signs of any
change when he looked into the actual painting, and
yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had
altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing
was horribly apparent.
He threw himself into a chair and began to think.
Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had
said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture
had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly.
He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might
remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own
beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the
canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins;
that the painted image might be seared with the lines
of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all
the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just
conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been
fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed
monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was
the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the
mouth.
Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl’s fault,
not his. He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had
given his love to her because he had thought her
great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been
shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite
regret came over him, as he thought of her lying at his
feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with
what callousness he had watched her. Why had he
been made like that? Why had such a soul been given
to him? But he had suffered also. During the three

114
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 mo-
ment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides,
women were better suited to bear sorrow than men.
They lived on their emotions. They only thought of
their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely
to have some one with whom they could have scenes.
Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew
what women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl
Vane? She was nothing to him now.
But the picture? What was he to say of that? It
held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had
taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him
to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?
No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the
troubled senses. The horrible night that he had passed
had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly there had
fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that
makes men mad. The picture had not changed. It was
folly to think so.
Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred
face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the
early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of
infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image
of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and
would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its
red and white roses would die. For every sin that he
committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness.
But he would not sin. The picture, changed or un-
changed, would be to him the visible emblem of con-
science. He would resist temptation. He would not see
Lord Henry any more—would not, at any rate, listen
to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil

115
Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the
passion for impossible things. He would go back to
Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love
her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have
suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been
selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that she had
exercised over him would return. They would be
happy together. His life with her would be beautiful
and pure.
He got up from his chair and drew a large screen
right in front of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced
at it. “How horrible!” he murmured to himself, and he
walked across to the window and opened it. When he
stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath.
The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his
sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl. A faint
echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her
name over and over again. The birds that were singing
in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the
flowers about her.

116
 VIII

IT WAS long past noon when he awoke. His valet had

crept several times on tiptoe into the room to see if he
was stirring, and had wondered what made his young
master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded, and
Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of
letters, on a small tray of old Sevres china, and drew
back the olive-satin curtains, with their shimmering
blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows.
“Monsieur has well slept this morning,” he said,
smiling.
“What o’clock is it, Victor?” asked Dorian Gray
drowsily.
“One hour and a quarter, Monsieur.”
How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped
some tea, turned over his letters. One of them was
from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand that
morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it
aside. The others he opened listlessly. They contained
the usual collection of cards, invitations to dinner,
tickets for private views, programmes of charity con-
certs, and the like that are showered on fashionable
young men every morning during the season. There
was a rather heavy bill for a chased silver Louis-
Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet had the courage
to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-
fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an
age when unnecessary things are our only necessities;
and there were several very courteously worded
communications from Jermyn Street money- lenders
offering to advance any sum of money at a moment’s
notice and at the most reasonable rates of interest.
After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing
on an elaborate dressing-gown of silk-embroidered
cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom.
The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. He
seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through.
A dim sense of having taken part in some strange
tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the
unreality of a dream about it.
As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library
and sat down to a light French breakfast that had
been laid out for him on a small round table close to
the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm
air seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in and buzzed
round the blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-
yellow roses, stood before him. He felt perfectly happy.
Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had
placed in front of the portrait, and he started.
“Too cold for Monsieur?” asked his valet, putting
an omelette on the table. “I shut the window?”
Dorian shook his head. “I am not cold,” he mur-
mured.
Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed?
Or had it been simply his own imagination that had

118
made him see a look of evil where there had been a
look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter?
The thing was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell
Basil some day. It would make him smile.
And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the
whole thing! First in the dim twilight, and then in the
bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round
the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving
the room. He knew that when he was alone he would
have to examine the portrait. He was afraid of cer-
tainty. 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.

119
 He got up and locked both doors. At least he would
be alone when he looked upon the mask of his shame.
Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself face to
face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered.
As he often remembered afterwards, and always
with no small wonder, he found himself at first gazing
at the portrait with a feeling of almost scientific inter-
est. That such a change should have taken place was
incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there
some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that
shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas
and the soul that was within him? Could it be that
what that soul thought, they realized?—that what it
dreamed, they made true? Or was there some other,
more terrible reason? He shuddered, and felt afraid,
and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the
picture in sickened horror.
One thing, however, he felt that it had done for
him. It had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel,
he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to make
reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His
unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher
influence, would be transformed into some nobler
passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had
painted of him would be a guide to him through life,
would be to him what holiness is to some, and con-
science to others, and the fear of God to us all. There
were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the
moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of
the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign
of the ruin men brought upon their souls.
Three o’clock struck, and four, and the half-hour
rang its double chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir.
He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life

120
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 con-
fession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When
Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had
been forgiven.
Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he
heard Lord Henry’s voice outside. “My dear boy, I
must see you. Let me in at once. I can’t bear your
shutting yourself up like this.”
He made no answer at first, but remained quite
still. The knocking still continued and grew louder.
Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry in, and to explain
to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel
with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if
parting was inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen
hastily across the picture, and unlocked the door.
“I am so sorry for it all, Dorian,” said Lord Henry
as he entered. “But you must not think too much about
it.”
“Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?” asked the lad.
“Yes, of course,” answered Lord Henry, sinking
into a chair and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves.
“It is dreadful, from one point of view, but it was not
your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her,
after the play was over?”
“Yes.”

121
 “I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with
her?”
“I was brutal, Harry—perfectly brutal. But it is all
right now. I am not sorry for anything that has hap-
pened. It has taught me to know myself better.”
“Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I
was afraid I would find you plunged in remorse and
tearing that nice curly hair of yours.”
“I have got through all that,” said Dorian, shaking
his head and smiling. “I am perfectly happy now. I
know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what
you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don’t
sneer at it, Harry, any more—at least not before me. I
want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being
hideous.”
“A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I
congratulate you on it. But how are you going to be-
gin?”
“By marrying Sibyl Vane.”
“Marrying Sibyl Vane!” cried Lord Henry, standing
up and looking at him in perplexed amazement. “But,
my dear Dorian—”
“Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say.
Something dreadful about marriage. Don’t say it.
Don’t ever say things of that kind to me again. Two
days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to
break my word to her. She is to be my wife.”
“Your wife! Dorian!... Didn’t you get my letter? I
wrote to you this morning, and sent the note down by
my own man.”
“Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read
it yet, Harry. I was afraid there might be something in
it that I wouldn’t like. You cut life to pieces with your
epigrams.”

122
 “You know nothing then?”
“What do you mean?”
Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting
down by Dorian Gray, took both his hands in his own
and held them tightly. “Dorian,” he said, “my letter—
don’t be frightened—was to tell you that Sibyl Vane is
dead.”
A cry of pain broke from the lad’s lips, and he
leaped to his feet, tearing his hands away from Lord
Henry’s grasp. “Dead! Sibyl dead! It is not true! It is a
horrible lie! How dare you say it?”
“It is quite true, Dorian,” said Lord Henry, gravely.
“It is in all the morning papers. I wrote down to you to
ask you not to see any one till I came. There will have
to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed
up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in
Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. Here,
one should never make one’s début with a scandal.
One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s
old age. I suppose they don’t know your name at the
theatre? If they don’t, it is all right. Did any one see
you going round to her room? That is an important
point.”
Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was
dazed with horror. Finally he stammered, in a stifled
voice, “Harry, did you say an inquest? What did you
mean by that? Did Sibyl—? Oh, Harry, I can’t bear it!
But be quick. Tell me everything at once.”
“I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian,
though it must be put in that way to the public. It
seems that as she was leaving the theatre with her
mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time
for her, but she did not come down again. They ulti-

123
mately found her lying dead on the floor of her dress-
ing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake,
some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don’t know
what it was, but it had either prussic acid or white
lead in it. I should fancy it was prussic acid, as she
seems to have died instantaneously.”
“Harry, Harry, it is terrible!” cried the lad.
“Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not
get yourself mixed up in it. I see by The Standard that
she was seventeen. I should have thought she was
almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you
mustn’t let this thing get on your nerves. You must
come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look
in at the opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will
be there. You can come to my sister’s box. She has got
some smart women with her.”
“So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,” said Dorian
Gray, half to himself, “murdered her as surely as if I
had cut her little throat with a knife. Yet the roses are
not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as hap-
pily 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 won-
derful 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.

124
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 terri-
bly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her
shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me
afraid. I can’t tell you what it was, but it was terrible.
I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong.
And now she is dead. My God! My God! Harry, what
shall I do? You don’t know the danger I am in, and
there is nothing to keep me straight. She would have
done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It
was selfish of her.”
“My dear Dorian,” answered Lord Henry, taking a
cigarette from his case and producing a gold-latten
matchbox, “the only way a woman can ever reform a
man is by boring him so completely that he loses all
possible interest in life. If you had married this girl,
you would have been wretched. Of course, you would
have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to
people about whom one cares nothing. But she would
have soon found out that you were absolutely indiffer-
ent to her. And when a woman finds that out about
her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or
wears very smart bonnets that some other woman’s
husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social
mistake, which would have been abject—which, of
course, I would not have allowed— but I assure you
that in any case the whole thing would have been an
absolute failure.”
“I suppose it would,” muttered the lad, walking up
and down the room and looking horribly pale. “But I
thought it was my duty. It is not my fault that this
terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was
right. I remember your saying once that there is a

125
fatality about good resolutions—that they are always
made too late. Mine certainly were.” “Good resolu-
tions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is abso-
lutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those
luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm
for the weak. That is all that can be said for them.
They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank
where they have no account.”
“Harry,” cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sit-
ting down beside him, “why is it that I cannot feel this
tragedy as much as I want to? I don’t think I am heart-
less. 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 melan-
choly 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 wonder-
ful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek trag-
edy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by
which I have not been wounded.”
“It is an interesting question,” said Lord Henry,
who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the
lad’s unconscious egotism, “an extremely interesting
question. I fancy that the true explanation is this: It
often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in
such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their
crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their
absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

126
They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt
against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that
possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives.
If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing
simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Sud-
denly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the
spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We
watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spec-
tacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that
has really happened? Some one has killed herself for
love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experi-
ence. It would have made me in love with love for the
rest of my life. The people who have adored me—
there have not been very many, but there have been
some—have always insisted on living on, long after I
had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.
They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet
them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful
memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And
what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One
should absorb the colour of life, but one should never
remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”
“I must sow poppies in my garden,” sighed Dorian.
“There is no necessity,” rejoined his companion.
“Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now
and then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets
all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning
for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, how-
ever, 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

127
at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted
on going over the whole thing again, and digging up
the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my
romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again
and assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound
to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not
feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she showed!
The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But
women never know when the curtain has fallen. They
always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of
the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.
If they were allowed their own way, every comedy
would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would
culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial,
but they have no sense of art. You are more fortunate
than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the
women I have known would have done for me what
Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary women always con-
sole themselves. Some of them do it by going in for
sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears
mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over
thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means
that they have a history. Others find a great consola-
tion in suddenly discovering the good qualities of
their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity in
one’s face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the
charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can
quite understand it. Besides, nothing makes one so
vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience
makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end to
the consolations that women find in modern life.
Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important one.”
“What is that, Harry?” said the lad listlessly.

128
 “Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one
else’s admirer when one loses one’s own. In good
society that always whitewashes a woman. But really,
Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from
all the women one meets! There is something to me
quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am living
in a century when such wonders happen. They make
one believe in the reality of the things we all play
with, such as romance, passion, and love.”
“I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that.”
“I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, down-
right cruelty, more than anything else. They have
wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated
them, but they remain slaves looking for their mas-
ters, 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

129
died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phan-
tom that flitted through Shakespeare’s plays and left
them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which
Shakespeare’s music sounded richer and more full of
joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred
it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn
for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head be-
cause Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven
because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don’t
waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real
than they are.”
There was a silence. The evening darkened in the
room. Noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows
crept in from the garden. The colours faded wearily
out of things.
After some time Dorian Gray looked up. “You have
explained me to myself, Harry,” he murmured with
something of a sigh of relief. “I felt all that you have
said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not
express it to myself. How well you know me! But we
will not talk again of what has happened. It has been a
marvellous experience. That is all. I wonder if life has
still in store for me anything as marvellous.”
“Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There
is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good
looks, will not be able to do.”
“But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old,
and wrinkled? What then?”
“Ah, then,” said Lord Henry, rising to go, “then, my
dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victo-
ries. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must
keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beau-
tiful. We cannot spare you. And now you had better

130
dress and drive down to the club. We are rather late,
as it is.”
“I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel
too tired to eat anything. What is the number of your
sister’s box?”
“Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier.
You will see her name on the door. But I am sorry you
won’t come and dine.”
“I don’t feel up to it,” said Dorian listlessly. “But I
am awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to
me. You are certainly my best friend. No one has ever
understood me as you have.”
“We are only at the beginning of our friendship,
Dorian,” answered Lord Henry, shaking him by the
hand. “Good-bye. I shall see you before nine-thirty, I
hope. Remember, Patti is singing.”
As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray
touched the bell, and in a few minutes Victor ap-
peared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He
waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to
take an interminable time over everything.
As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and
drew it back. No; there was no further change in the
picture. It had received the news of Sibyl Vane’s death
before he had known of it himself. It was conscious of
the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty
that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt,
appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk
the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to
results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed
within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some
day he would see the change taking place before his
very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.

131
 Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She
had often mimicked death on the stage. Then Death
himself had touched her and taken her with him. How
had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she
cursed him, as she died? No; she had died for love of
him, and love would always be a sacrament to him
now. She had atoned for everything by the sacrifice
she had made of her life. He would not think any more
of what she had made him go through, on that horrible
night at the theatre. When he thought of her, it would
be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world’s
stage to show the supreme reality of love. A wonderful
tragic figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remem-
bered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways,
and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away
hastily and looked again at the picture.
He felt that the time had really come for making
his choice. Or had his choice already been made? Yes,
life had decided that for him—life, and his own infi-
nite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite pas-
sion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder
sins—he was to have all these things. The portrait
was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.
A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of
the desecration that was in store for the fair face on
the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he
had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that
now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning
he had sat before the portrait wondering at its beauty,
almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times.
Was it to alter now with every mood to which he
yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome
thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut
out from the sunlight that had so often touched to

132
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 influ-
ence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without
thought or conscious desire, might not things external
to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and
passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange
affinity? But the reason was of no importance. He
would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible
power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter. That
was all. Why inquire too closely into it?
For there would be a real pleasure in watching it.
He would be able to follow his mind into its secret
places. This portrait would be to him the most magical
of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so
it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter
came upon it, he would still be standing where spring
trembles on the verge of summer. When the blood
crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of
chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of
boyhood. Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever
fade. Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken.

133
Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and
fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened
to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be
safe. That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in
front of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed
into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting
for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord
Henry was leaning over his chair.

134
 IX

AS HE was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil

Hallward was shown into the room.
“I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,” he said
gravely. “I called last night, and they told me you were
at the opera. Of course, I knew that was impossible.
But I wish you had left word where you had really
gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that
one tragedy might be followed by another. I think you
might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it
first. I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of
The Globe that I picked up at the club. I came here at
once and was miserable at not finding you. I can’t tell
you how 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 ad-
dress in the paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road,
isn’t it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she
must be in! And her only child, too! What did she say
about it all?”
“My dear Basil, how do I know?” murmured Dorian
Gray, sipping some pale-yellow wine from a delicate,
gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass and looking
dreadfully bored. “I was at the opera. You should have
come on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry’s sister,
for the first time. We were in her box. She is perfectly
charming; and Patti sang divinely. Don’t talk about
horrid subjects. If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has
never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry
says, that gives reality to things. I may mention that
she was not the woman’s only child. There is a son, a
charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the stage.
He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about
yourself and what you are painting.”
“You went to the opera?” said Hallward, speaking
very slowly and with a strained touch of pain in his
voice. “You went to the opera while Sibyl Vane was
lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me
of other women being charming, and of Patti singing
divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet
of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in
store for that little white body of hers!”
“Stop, Basil! I won’t hear it!” cried Dorian, leaping
to his feet. “You must not tell me about things. What
is done is done. What is past is past.”
“You call yesterday the past?”
“What has the actual lapse of time got to do with
it? It is only shallow people who require years to get
rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can
end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I
don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want
to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

136
 “Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed
you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful
boy who, day after day, used to come down to my
studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple,
natural, and affectionate then. You were the most
unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don’t
know what has come over you. You talk as if you had
no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry’s influence. I
see that.”
The lad flushed up and, going to the window,
looked out for a few moments on the green, flickering,
sun-lashed garden. “I owe a great deal to Harry, Ba-
sil,” he said at last, “more than I owe to you. You only
taught me to be vain.”
“Well, I am punished for that, Dorian—or shall be
some day.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Basil,” he exclaimed,
turning round. “I don’t know what you want. What do
you want?”
“I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint,” said the
artist sadly.
“Basil,” said the lad, going over to him and putting
his hand on his shoulder, “you have come too late.
Yesterday, when I heard that Sibyl Vane had killed
herself—”
“Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt
about that?” cried Hallward, looking up at him with
an expression of horror.
“My dear Basil! Surely you don’t think it was a
vulgar accident? Of course she killed herself.”
The elder man buried his face in his hands. “How
fearful,” he muttered, and a shudder ran through him.
“No,” said Dorian Gray, “there is nothing fearful
about it. It is one of the great romantic tragedies of

137
the age. As a rule, people who act lead the most com-
monplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful
wives, or something tedious. You know what I mean—
middle-class virtue and all that kind of thing. How
different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy. She
was always a heroine. The last night she played— the
night you saw her—she acted badly because she had
known the reality of love. When she knew its unreal-
ity, she died, as Juliet might have died. She passed
again into the sphere of art. There is something of the
martyr about her. Her death has all the pathetic
uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty. But,
as I was saying, you must not think I have not suf-
fered. If you had come in yesterday at a particular
moment— about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter
to six— you would have found me in tears. Even Harry,
who was here, who brought me the news, in fact, had
no idea what I was going through. I suffered immensely.
Then it passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No
one can, except sentimentalists. And you are awfully
unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me. That
is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are
furious. How like a sympathetic person! You remind
me of a story Harry told me about a certain philan-
thropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to
get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law
altered—I forget exactly what it was. Finally he suc-
ceeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.
He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui,
and became a confirmed misanthrope. And besides,
my dear old Basil, if you really want to console me,
teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to
see it from a proper artistic point of view. Was it not
Gautier who used to write about la consolation des

138
arts? I remember picking up a little vellum-covered
book in your studio one day and chancing on that
delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young man
you told me of when we were down at Marlow to-
gether, the young man who used to say that yellow
satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I
love beautiful things that one can touch and handle.
Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved
ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there
is much to be got from all these. But the artistic tem-
perament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is
still more to me. To become the spectator of one’s own
life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I
know you are surprised at my talking to you like this.
You have not realized how I have developed. I was a
schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have
new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different,
but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you
must always be my friend. Of course, I am very fond of
Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You
are not stronger— you are too much afraid of life—but
you are better. And how happy we used to be together!
Don’t leave me, Basil, and don’t quarrel with me. I am
what I am. There is nothing more to be said.”
The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was
infinitely dear to him, and his personality had been
the great turning point in his art. He could not bear
the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his
indifference was probably merely a mood that would
pass away. There was so much in him that was good,
so much in him that was noble.
“Well, Dorian,” he said at length, with a sad smile,
“I won’t speak to you again about this horrible thing,
after to-day. I only trust your name won’t be men-

139
tioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take
place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?”
Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance
passed over his face at the mention of the word “in-
quest.” There was something so crude and vulgar
about everything of the kind. “They don’t know my
name,” he answered.
“But surely she did?”
“Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure
she never mentioned to any one. She told me once that
they were all rather curious to learn who I was, and
that she invariably told them my name was Prince
Charming. It was pretty of her. You must do me a
drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have some-
thing more of her than the memory of a few kisses and
some broken pathetic words.”
“I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would
please you. But you must come and sit to me yourself
again. I can’t get on without you.”
“I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impos-
sible!” he exclaimed, starting back.
The painter stared at him. “My dear boy, what
nonsense!” he cried. “Do you mean to say you don’t
like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have you
pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is
the best thing I have ever done. Do take the screen
away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful of your servant
hiding my work like that. I felt the room looked differ-
ent as I came in.”
“My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You
don’t imagine I let him arrange my room for me? He
settles my flowers for me sometimes— that is all. No;
I did it myself. The light was too strong on the por-
trait.”

140
 “Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an
admirable place for it. Let me see it.” And Hallward
walked towards the corner of the room.
A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray’s lips, and
he rushed between the painter and the screen. “Basil,”
he said, looking very pale, “you must not look at it. I
don’t wish you to.”
“Not look at my own work! You are not serious.
Why shouldn’t I look at it?” exclaimed Hallward,
laughing.
“If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour
I will never speak to you again as long as I live. I am
quite serious. I don’t offer any explanation, and you
are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you touch
this screen, everything is over between us.”
Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian
Gray in absolute amazement. He had never seen him
like this before. The lad was actually pallid with rage.
His hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes
were like disks of blue fire. He was trembling all over.
“Dorian!”
“Don’t speak!”
“But what is the matter? Of course I won’t look at
it if you don’t want me to,” he said, rather coldly,
turning on his heel and going over towards the win-
dow. “But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn’t
see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it
in Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it
another coat of varnish before that, so I must see it
some day, and why not to-day?”
“To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?” exclaimed
Dorian Gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over
him. Was the world going to be shown his secret?
Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That

141
was impossible. Something—he did not know what—
had to be done at once.
“Yes; I don’t suppose you will object to that. Georges
Petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a
special exhibition in the Rue de Seze, which will open
the first week in October. The portrait will only be
away a month. I should think you could easily spare it
for that time. In fact, you are sure to be out of town.
And if you keep it always behind a screen, you can’t
care much about it.”
Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.
There were beads of perspiration there. He felt that
he was on the brink of a horrible danger. “You told me
a month ago that you would never exhibit it,” he cried.
“Why have you changed your mind? You people who
go in for being consistent have just as many moods as
others have. The only difference is that your moods
are rather meaningless. You can’t have forgotten that
you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the
world would induce you to send it to any exhibition.
You told Harry exactly the same thing.” He stopped
suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He
remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once,
half seriously and half in jest, “If you want to have a
strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you why
he won’t exhibit your picture. He told me why he
wouldn’t, and it was a revelation to me.” Yes, perhaps
Basil, too, had his secret. He would ask him and try.
“Basil,” he said, coming over quite close and look-
ing him straight in the face, “we have each of us a
secret. Let me know yours, and I shall tell you mine.
What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my pic-
ture?”

142
 The painter shuddered in spite of himself. “Dorian,
if I told you, you might like me less than you do, and
you would certainly laugh at me. I could not bear your
doing either of those two things. If you wish me never
to look at your picture again, I am content. I have
always you to look at. If you wish the best work I have
ever done to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied.
Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or
reputation.”
“No, Basil, you must tell me,” insisted Dorian
Gray. “I think I have a right to know.” His feeling of
terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken its
place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward’s
mystery.
“Let us sit down, Dorian,” said the painter, looking
troubled. “Let us sit down. And just answer me one
question. Have you noticed in the picture something
curious?—something that probably at first did not
strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?”
“Basil!” cried the lad, clutching the arms of his
chair with trembling hands and gazing at him with
wild startled eyes.
“I see you did. Don’t speak. Wait till you hear what
I have to say. Dorian, from the moment I met you,
your personality had the most extraordinary influence
over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by
you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that
unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an
exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of
every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all
to myself. I was only happy when I was with you.
When you were away from me, you were still present
in my art... Of course, I never let you know anything
about this. It would have been impossible. You would

143
not have understood it. I hardly understood it myself.
I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and
that the world had become wonderful to my eyes— too
wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is
peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
keeping them... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew
more and more absorbed in you. Then came a new
development. I had drawn you as Paris in dainty
armour, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and
polished boar- spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-
blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge,
gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leaned
over the still pool of some Greek woodland and seen
in the water’s silent silver the marvel of your own
face. And it had all been what art should be—uncon-
scious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I some-
times think, I determined to paint a wonderful por-
trait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of
dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own
time. Whether it was the realism of the method, or the
mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly
presented to me without mist or veil, I cannot tell.
But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and film
of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew
afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt,
Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too
much of myself into it. Then it was that I resolved
never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a
little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it
meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed
at me. But I did not mind that. When the picture was
finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right...
Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as
soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of

144
its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in
imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than
that you were extremely good-looking and that I could
paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mis-
take to think that the passion one feels in creation is
ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is
always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour
tell us of form and colour—that is all. It often seems to
me that art conceals the artist far more completely
than it ever reveals him. And so when I got this offer
from Paris, I determined to make your portrait the
principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to
me that you would refuse. I see now that you were
right. The picture cannot be shown. You must not be
angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told you. As I
said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.”
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came
back to his cheeks, and a smile played about his lips.
The peril was over. He was safe for the time. Yet he
could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who
had just made this strange confession to him, and
wondered if he himself would ever be so dominated by
the personality of a friend. Lord Henry had the charm
of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was too
clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there
ever be some one who would fill him with a strange
idolatry? Was that one of the things that life had in
store?
“It is extraordinary to me, Dorian,” said Hallward,
“that you should have seen this in the portrait. Did
you really see it?”
“I saw something in it,” he answered, “something
that seemed to me very curious.”

145
 “Well, you don’t mind my looking at the thing
now?”
Dorian shook his head. “You must not ask me that,
Basil. I could not possibly let you stand in front of that
picture.”
“You will some day, surely?”
“Never.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye,
Dorian. You have been the one person in my life who
has really influenced my art. Whatever I have done
that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don’t know what it
cost me to tell you all that I have told you.”
“My dear Basil,” said Dorian, “what have you told
me? Simply that you felt that you admired me too
much. That is not even a compliment.”
“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a
confession. Now that I have made it, something seems
to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put
one’s worship into words.”
“It was a very disappointing confession.”
“Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn’t see
anything else in the picture, did you? There was noth-
ing else to see?”
“No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you
ask? But you mustn’t talk about worship. It is foolish.
You and I are friends, Basil, and we must always
remain so.”
“You have got Harry,” said the painter sadly.
“Oh, Harry!” cried the lad, with a ripple of laugh-
ter. “Harry spends his days in saying what is incred-
ible and his evenings in doing what is improbable.
Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I
don’t think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I
would sooner go to you, Basil.”

146
 “You will sit to me again?”
“Impossible!”
“You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian.
No man comes across two ideal things. Few come
across one.”
“I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit
to you again. There is something fatal about a portrait.
It has a life of its own. I will come and have tea with
you. That will be just as pleasant.”
“Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,” murmured
Hallward regretfully. “And now good-bye. I am sorry
you won’t let me look at the picture once again. But
that can’t be helped. I quite understand what you feel
about it.”
As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.
Poor Basil! How little he knew of the true reason! And
how strange it was that, instead of having been forced
to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by
chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How
much that strange confession explained to him! The
painter’s absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his
extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences— he
understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There
seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship
so coloured by romance.
He sighed and touched the bell. The portrait must
be hidden away at all costs. He could not run such a
risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to have
allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a
room to which any of his friends had access.

147
 X

WHEN his servant entered, be looked at him stead-

fastly and wondered if he had thought of peering
behind the screen. The man was quite impassive and
waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked
over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the
reflection of Victor’s face perfectly. It was like a placid
mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of,
there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-
keeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to
the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men
round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left
the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the
screen. Or was that merely his own fancy?
After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with
old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands,
Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for
the key of the schoolroom.
“The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?” she exclaimed.
“Why, it is full of dust. I must get it arranged and put
straight before you go into it. It is not fit for you to
see, sir. It is not, indeed.”
“I don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the
key.”
“Well, sir, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you go
into it. Why, it hasn’t been opened for nearly five
years—not since his lordship died.”
He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He
had hateful memories of him. “That does not matter,”
he answered. “I simply want to see the place— that is
all. Give me the key.”
“And here is the key, sir,” said the old lady, going
over the contents of her bunch with tremulously un-
certain hands. “Here is the key. I’ll have it off the
bunch in a moment. But you don’t think of living up
there, sir, and you so comfortable here?”
“No, no,” he cried petulantly. “Thank you, Leaf.
That will do.”
She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous
over some detail of the household. He sighed and told
her to manage things as she thought best. She left the
room, wreathed in smiles.
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket
and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large,
purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a
splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian
work that his grandfather had found in a convent near
Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful
thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the
dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corrup-
tion of its own, worse than the corruption of death
itself— something that would breed horrors and yet
would never die. What the worm was to the corpse,
his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas.

149
They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace.
They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet
the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that
he had not told Basil the true reason why he had
wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have
helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the
still more poisonous influences that came from his
own temperament. The love that he bore him—for it
was really love— had nothing in it that was not noble
and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admira-
tion of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies
when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo
had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and
Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.
But it was too late now. The past could always be
annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do
that. But the future was inevitable. There were pas-
sions in him that would find their terrible outlet,
dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-
gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his
hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face on the
canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was
unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.
Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips—they all were
there. It was simply the expression that had altered.
That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he
saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil’s
reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!— how shallow,
and of what little account! His own soul was looking
out at him from the canvas and calling him to judge-
ment. A look of pain came across him, and he flung the

150
rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock came
to the door. He passed out as his servant entered.
“The persons are here, Monsieur.”
He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He
must not be allowed to know where the picture was
being taken to. There was something sly about him,
and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down
at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,
asking him to send him round something to read and
reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen
that evening.
“Wait for an answer,” he said, handing it to him,
“and show the men in here.”
In two or three minutes there was another knock,
and Mr. Hubbard himself, the celebrated frame-maker
of South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat
rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a
florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for
art was considerably tempered by the inveterate
impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with
him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for
people to come to him. But he always made an excep-
tion in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something
about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a plea-
sure even to see him.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?” he said, rubbing
his fat freckled hands. “I thought I would do myself
the honour of coming round in person. I have just got a
beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old
Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably
suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray.”
“I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble
of coming round, Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop
in and look at the frame— though I don’t go in much at

151
present for religious art—but to-day I only want a
picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is
rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to lend me
a couple of your men.”
“No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of
any service to you. Which is the work of art, sir?”
“This,” replied Dorian, moving the screen back.
“Can you move it, covering and all, just as it is? I don’t
want it to get scratched going upstairs.”
“There will be no difficulty, sir,” said the genial
frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant,
to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by
which it was suspended. “And, now, where shall we
carry it to, Mr. Gray?”
“I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will
kindly follow me. Or perhaps you had better go in
front. I am afraid it is right at the top of the house. We
will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider.”
He held the door open for them, and they passed
out into the hall and began the ascent. The elaborate
character of the frame had made the picture extremely
bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman’s
spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything
useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to help them.
“Something of a load to carry, sir,” gasped the little
man when they reached the top landing. And he wiped
his shiny forehead.
“I am afraid it is rather heavy,” murmured Dorian
as he unlocked the door that opened into the room
that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life
and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
He had not entered the place for more than four
years—not, indeed, since he had used it first as a play-

152
room when he was a child, and then as a study when
he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well- propor-
tioned room, which had been specially built by the last
Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for
his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other
reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a
distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
changed. There was the huge Italian cassone, with its
fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt
mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as
a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled with his
dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was
hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a
faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,
while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded
birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remem-
bered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood
came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the
stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed hor-
rible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to
be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those
dead days, of all that was in store for him!
But there was no other place in the house so se-
cure from prying eyes as this. He had the key, and no
one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, the
face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden,
and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it.
He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the
hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth—
that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature
grow finer, after all? There was no reason that the
future should be so full of shame. Some love might
come across his life, and purify him, and shield him
from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in

153
spirit and in flesh— those curious unpictured sins
whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their
charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have
passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he
might show to the world Basil Hallward’s master-
piece.
No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week
by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old.
It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hid-
eousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would
become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow’s feet would
creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible.
The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would
gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths
of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat,
the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he
remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern
to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be con-
cealed. There was no help for it.
“Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please,” he said, wea-
rily, turning round. “I am sorry I kept you so long. I
was thinking of something else.”
“Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray,” answered
the frame-maker, who was still gasping for breath.
“Where shall we put it, sir?”
“Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don’t want to
have it hung up. Just lean it against the wall. Thanks.”
“Might one look at the work of art, sir?”
Dorian started. “It would not interest you, Mr.
Hubbard,” he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt
ready to leap upon him and fling him to the ground if
he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed
the secret of his life. “I shan’t trouble you any more

154
now. I am much obliged for your kindness in coming
round.”
“Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do
anything for you, sir.” And Mr. Hubbard tramped
downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced
back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough
uncomely face. He had never seen any one so marvel-
lous.
When the sound of their footsteps had died away,
Dorian locked the door and put the key in his pocket.
He felt safe now. No one would ever look upon the
horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his
shame.
On reaching the library, he found that it was just
after five o’clock and that the tea had been already
brought up. On a little table of dark perfumed wood
thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady
Radley, his guardian’s wife, a pretty professional
invalid who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo,
was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a
book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn
and the edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of
The St. James’s Gazette had been placed on the tea-
tray. It was evident that Victor had returned. He
wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they
were leaving the house and had wormed out of them
what they had been doing. He would be sure to miss
the picture—had no doubt missed it already, while he
had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not
been set back, and a blank space was visible on the
wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping
upstairs and trying to force the door of the room. It
was a horrible thing to have a spy in one’s house. He
had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all

155
their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or
overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an
address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
or a shred of crumpled lace.
He sighed, and having poured himself out some
tea, opened Lord Henry’s note. It was simply to say
that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book
that might interest him, and that he would be at the
club at eight-fifteen. He opened The St. James’s lan-
guidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on
the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the
following paragraph:

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.— An inquest was held this

morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby,
the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, a young
actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A
verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Consider-
able sympathy was expressed for the mother of the
deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of
her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made
the post-mortem examination of the deceased.

He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went

across the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly
it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things!
He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having
sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of
him to have marked it with red pencil. Victor might
have read it. The man knew more than enough En-
glish for that.
Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect
something. And, yet, what did it matter? What had
Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane’s death? There was
nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.

156
 His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry
had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went
towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal stand that
had always looked to him like the work of some strange
Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up
the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began
to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became
absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever
read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and
to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world
were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he
had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to
him. Things of which he had never dreamed were
gradually revealed.
It was a novel without a plot and with only one
character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study
of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to
realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and
modes of thought that belonged to every century
except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself
the various moods through which the world-spirit had
ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those
renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still
call sin. The style in which it was written was that
curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full
of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and
of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work
of some of the finest artists of the French school of
Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous
as orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the
senses was described in the terms of mystical philoso-
phy. One hardly knew at times whether one was
reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval

157
saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It
was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense
seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the
brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle
monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex
refrains and movements elaborately repeated, pro-
duced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chap-
ter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dream-
ing, that made him unconscious of the falling day and
creeping shadows.
Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a
copper-green sky gleamed through the windows. He
read on by its wan light till he could read no more.
Then, after his valet had reminded him several times
of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into
the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine
table that always stood at his bedside and began to
dress for dinner.
It was almost nine o’clock before he reached the
club, where he found Lord Henry sitting alone, in the
morning-room, looking very much bored.
“I am so sorry, Harry,” he cried, “but really it is
entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fasci-
nated me that I forgot how the time was going.”
“Yes, I thought you would like it,” replied his host,
rising from his chair.
“I didn’t say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated
me. There is a great difference.”
“Ah, you have discovered that?” murmured Lord
Henry. And they passed into the dining-room.

158
 XI

FOR YEARS, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the
influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that he never sought to free himself
from it. He procured from Paris no less than nine
large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them
bound in different colours, so that they might suit his
various moods and the changing fancies of a nature
over which he seemed, at times, to have almost en-
tirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young
Parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific
temperaments were so strangely blended, became to
him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed,
the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of
his own life, written before he had lived it.
In one point he was more fortunate than the novel’s
fantastic hero. He never knew—never, indeed, had
any cause to know—that somewhat grotesque dread of
mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water
which came upon the young Parisian so early in his
life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau
that had once, apparently, been so remarkable. It was
with an almost cruel joy— and perhaps in nearly
every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has
its place—that he used to read the latter part of the
book, with its really tragic, if somewhat overempha-
sized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who
had himself lost what in others, and the world, he had
most dearly valued.
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated
Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed
never to leave him. Even those who had heard the
most evil things against him— and from time to time
strange rumours about his mode of life crept through
London and became the chatter of the clubs— could
not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw
him. He had always the look of one who had kept
himself unspotted from the world. Men who talked
grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the
room. There was something in the purity of his face
that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to
recall to them the memory of the innocence that they
had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming
and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of
an age that was at once sordid and sensual.
Often, on returning home from one of those myste-
rious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such
strange conjecture among those who were his friends,
or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the
key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror,
in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted
of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the
canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed
back at him from the polished glass. The very sharp-

160
ness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of plea-
sure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own
beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of
his own soul. He would examine with minute care,
and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight,
the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead
or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wonder-
ing sometimes which were the more horrible, the
signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his
white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the
picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body
and the failing limbs.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying
sleepless in his own delicately scented chamber, or in
the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the
docks which, under an assumed name and in disguise,
it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin
he had brought upon his soul with a pity that was all
the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But
moments such as these were rare. That curiosity
about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him,
as they sat together in the garden of their friend,
seemed to increase with gratification. The more he
knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad
hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his
relations to society. Once or twice every month during
the winter, and on each Wednesday evening while the
season lasted, he would throw open to the world his
beautiful house and have the most celebrated musi-
cians of the day to charm his guests with the wonders
of their art. His little dinners, in the settling of which
Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted as much
for the careful selection and placing of those invited,

161
as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of
the table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of
exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique
plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many,
especially among the very young men, who saw, or
fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realiza-
tion of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton
or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something
of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and
distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the
world. To them he seemed to be of the company of
those whom Dante describes as having sought to
“make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.”
Like Gautier, he was one for whom “the visible world
existed.”
And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the
greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed
to be but a preparation. Fashion, by which what is
really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and
dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to
assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course,
their fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and
the particular styles that from time to time he af-
fected, had their marked influence on the young ex-
quisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club win-
dows, who copied him in everything that he did, and
tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his grace-
ful, though to him only half-serious fopperies.
For, while he was but too ready to accept the
position that was almost immediately offered to him
on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle plea-
sure in the thought that he might really become to the
London of his own day what to imperial Neronian
Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been, yet

162
in his inmost heart he desired to be something more
than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on
the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or
the conduct of a cane. He sought to elaborate some
new scheme of life that would have its reasoned phi-
losophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
The worship of the senses has often, and with
much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural
instinct of terror about passions and sensations that
seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
conscious of sharing with the less highly organized
forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray
that the true nature of the senses had never been
understood, and that they had remained savage and
animal merely because the world had sought to starve
them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead
of aiming at making them elements of a new spiritual-
ity, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the
dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man
moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling
of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such
little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections,
monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose
origin was fear and whose result was a degradation
infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation
from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to
escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out
the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the
desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field
as his companions.
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had proph-
esied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to
save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is

163
having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to
have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was
never to accept any theory or system that would in-
volve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experi-
ence. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and
not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they
might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses,
as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to
know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate
himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
moment.
There are few of us who have not sometimes wak-
ened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless
nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or
one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when
through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms
more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that
vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to
Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds
have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradu-
ally white fingers creep through the curtains, and
they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes,
dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and
crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds
among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to
their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming
down from the hills and wandering round the silent
house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and
yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave.
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colours of things are restored
to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world
in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their

164
mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had
left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that
we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had
worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid
to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems
to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that we had known. We have
to resume it where we had left off, and there steals
over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the con-
tinuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that
our eyelids might open some morning upon a world
that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for
our pleasure, a world in which things would have
fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have
other secrets, a world in which the past would have
little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no con-
scious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance
even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of
pleasure their pain.
It was the creation of such worlds as these that
seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or amongst
the true objects, of life; and in his search for sensa-
tions that would be at once new and delightful, and
possess that element of strangeness that is so essen-
tial to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of
thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature,
abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then,
having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied
his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious
indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardour
of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain
modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.

165
 It was rumoured of him once that he was about to
join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the
Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him.
The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the
sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by
its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by
the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eter-
nal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to
symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble
pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered
dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside
the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled,
lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer
that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the
“panis caelestis,” the bread of angels, or, robed in the
garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host
into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins.
The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace
and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers
had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out,
he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals
and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and
listen to men and women whispering through the
worn grating the true story of their lives.
But he never fell into the error of arresting his
intellectual development by any formal acceptance of
creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which
to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a
night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are
no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its
marvellous power of making common things strange
to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems
to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a
season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the

166
Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a
curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions
of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white
nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the
absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical
conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.
Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life
seemed to him to be of any importance compared with
life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
intellectual speculation is when separated from action
and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less
than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
And so he would now study perfumes and the
secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily scented
oils and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw
that there was no mood of the mind that had not its
counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to
discover their true relations, wondering what there
was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in
ambergris that stirred one’s passions, and in violets
that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk
that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained
the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real
psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pol-
len-laden flowers; of aromatic balms and of dark and
fragrant woods; of spikenard, that sickens; of hovenia,
that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to be
able to expel melancholy from the soul.
At another time he devoted himself entirely to
music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-
and- gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he
used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies
tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-

167
shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of
monstrous lutes, while grinning Negroes beat monoto-
nously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scar-
let mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long
pipes of reed or brass and charmed— or feigned to
charm—great hooded snakes and horrible horned
adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert’s
grace, and Chopin’s beautiful sorrows, and the mighty
harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his
ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
the strangest instruments that could be found, either
in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage
tribes that have survived contact with Western civili-
zations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that
women are not allowed to look at and that even youths
may not see till they have been subjected to fasting
and scourging, and the earthen jars of the Peruvians
that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human
bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, and
the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco
and give forth a note of singular sweetness. He had
painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when
they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans,
into which the performer does not blow, but through
which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon
tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day
long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a
distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that has two
vibrating tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks
that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from
the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of the Aztecs,
that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge

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cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great
serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he
went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of
whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a descrip-
tion. The fantastic character of these instruments
fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the
thought that art, like Nature, has her monsters, things
of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after
some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his
box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry,
listening in rapt pleasure to “Tannhäuser” and seeing
in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation
of the tragedy of his own soul.
On one occasion he took up the study of jewels,
and appeared at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse,
Admiral of France, in a dress covered with five hun-
dred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for
years, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him.
He would often spend a whole day settling and reset-
tling in their cases the various stones that be had
collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that
turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-
like line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-
pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery
scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame- red
cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and am-
ethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sap-
phire. He loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the
moonstone’s pearly whiteness, and the broken rain-
bow of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam
three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness of
colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche that was
the envy of all the connoisseurs.

169
 He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jew-
els. In Alphonso’s Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was
mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the roman-
tic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia
was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes
“with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs.”
There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus
told us, and “by the exhibition of golden letters and a
scarlet robe” the monster could be thrown into a
magical sleep and slain. According to the great alche-
mist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man
invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent.
The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth pro-
voked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes
of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus
deprived the moon of her colour. The selenite waxed
and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that
discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood
of kids. Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone
taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a
certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was
found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian
birds was the aspilates, that, according to Democritus,
kept the wearer from any danger by fire.
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a
large ruby in his hand, as the ceremony of his corona-
tion. The gates of the palace of John the Priest were
“made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within.”
Over the gable were “two golden apples, in which
were two carbuncles,” so that the gold might shine by
day and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge’s strange
romance A Margarite of America, it was stated that in

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the chamber of the queen one could behold “all the
chaste ladies of the world, inchased out of silver,
looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, car-
buncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults.” Marco
Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-
coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-
monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the
diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief,
and mourned for seven moons over its loss. When the
Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it
away— Procopius tells the story—nor was it ever
found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered
five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it. The King of
Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian a rosary of
three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that
he worshipped.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander
VI, visited Louis XII of France, his horse was loaded
with gold leaves, according to Brantome, and his cap
had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with
four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard II
had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which
was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry
VIII, on his way to the Tower previous to his corona-
tion, as wearing “a jacket of raised gold, the placard
embroidered with diamonds and other rich stones,
and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses.”
The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds
set in gold filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston
a suit of red-gold armour studded with jacinths, a
collar of gold roses set with turquoise- stones, and a
skull-cap parsemé with pearls. Henry II wore jewelled
gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove

171
sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients.
The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of
Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped
pearls and studded with sapphires.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in
its pomp and decoration! Even to read of the luxury of
the dead was wonderful.
Then he turned his attention to embroideries and
to the tapestries that performed the office of frescoes
in the chill rooms of the northern nations of Europe.
As he investigated the subject— and he always had an
extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed
for the moment in whatever he took up—he was al-
most saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time
brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and
the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and
nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but
he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or
stained his flowerlike bloom. How different it was
with material things! Where had they passed to?
Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
the gods fought against the giants, that had been
worked by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena?
Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched
across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple
on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo
driving a chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds?
He longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought
for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all
the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a
feast; the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its
three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that
excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus and

172
were figured with “lions, panthers, bears, dogs, for-
ests, rocks, hunters—all, in fact, that a painter can
copy from nature”; and the coat that Charles of Or-
leans once wore, on the sleeves of which were embroi-
dered the verses of a song beginning “Madame, je suis
tout joyeux,” the musical accompaniment of the words
being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square
shape in those days, formed with four pearls. He read
of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was deco-
rated with “thirteen hundred and twenty-one parrots,
made in broidery, and blazoned with the king’s arms,
and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose
wings were similarly ornamented with the arms of the
queen, the whole worked in gold.” Catherine de Médicis
had a mourning-bed made for her of black velvet
powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were
of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured
upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the
edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room
hung with rows of the queen’s devices in cut black
velvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV had gold embroi-
dered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment.
The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of
Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with
verses from the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt,
beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled
and jewelled medallions. It had been taken from the
Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of
Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of
its canopy.
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate
the most exquisite specimens that he could find of
textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty

173
Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates
and stitched over with iridescent beetles’ wings; the
Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are known
in the East as “woven air,” and “running water,” and
“evening dew”; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in
tawny satins or fair blue silks and wrought with fleurs-
de-lys, birds and images; veils of lacis worked in Hun-
gary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish velvets;
Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese
Foukousas, with their green-toned golds and their
marvellously plumaged birds.
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical
vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected
with the service of the Church. In the long cedar
chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had
stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of
what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ, who
must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she
may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by
the suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-
inflicted pain. He possessed a gorgeous cope of crim-
son silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a re-
peating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-
petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side
was the pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The
orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes
from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the
Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood.
This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. An-
other cope was of green velvet, embroidered with
heart-shaped groups of acanthus- leaves, from which
spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of
which were picked out with silver thread and coloured

174
crystals. The morse bore a seraph’s head in gold-
thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a
diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with
medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom
was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-
coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and
yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with
representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of
Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and
other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk
damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs-
de-lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen;
and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the
mystic offices to which such things were put, there
was something that quickened his imagination.
For these treasures, and everything that he col-
lected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of
forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a
season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to
be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the
lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his
boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible
portrait whose changing features showed him the real
degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped
the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he
would not go there, would forget the hideous painted
thing, and get back his light heart, his wonderful
joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere exist-
ence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out
of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue
Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day, until he
was driven away. On his return he would sit in front
of the her times, with that pride of individualism that
is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret

175
pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear
the burden that should have been his own.
After a few years he could not endure to be long
out of England, and gave up the villa that he had
shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as well as the
little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had
more than once spent the winter. He hated to be
separated from the picture that was such a part of his
life, and was also afraid that during his absence some
one might gain access to the room, in spite of the
elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon
the door.
He was quite conscious that this would tell them
nothing. It was true that the portrait still preserved,
under all the foulness and ugliness of the face, its
marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
from that? He would laugh at any one who tried to
taunt him. He had not painted it. What was it to him
how vile and full of shame it looked? Even if he told
them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down
at his great house in Nottinghamshire, entertaining
the fashionable young men of his own rank who were
his chief companions, and astounding the county by
the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendour of his
mode of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and
rush back to town to see that the door had not been
tampered with and that the picture was still there.
What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made
him cold with horror. Surely the world would know
his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it.
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a
few who distrusted him. He was very nearly black-
balled at a West End club of which his birth and social

176
position fully entitled him to become a member, and it
was said that on one occasion, when he was brought by
a friend into the smoking-room of the Churchill, the
Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a
marked manner and went out. Curious stories became
current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth
year. It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling
with foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of
Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and
coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His
extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when
he used to reappear again in society, men would whis-
per to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer,
or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though
they were determined to discover his secret.
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of
course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most
people his frank debonair manner, his charming boy-
ish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful
youth that seemed never to leave him, were in them-
selves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they
termed them, that were circulated about him. It was
remarked, however, that some of those who had been
most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to
shun him. Women who had wildly adored him, and for
his sake had braved all social censure and set conven-
tion at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame
or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
Yet these whispered scandals only increased in
the eyes of many his strange and dangerous charm.
His great wealth was a certain element of security.
Society—civilized society, at least— is never very
ready to believe anything to the detriment of those
who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively

177
that manners are of more importance than morals,
and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of
much less value than the possession of a good chef.
And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told
that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor
wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the
cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrées, as
Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the
subject, and there is possibly a good deal to be said for
his view. For the canons of good society are, or should
be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely
essential to it. It should have the dignity of a cer-
emony, as well as its unreality, and should combine
the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit
and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is
insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is
merely a method by which we can multiply our per-
sonalities.
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray’s opinion. He
used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those
who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, perma-
nent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a
being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a
complex multiform creature that bore within itself
strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose
very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of
the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold
picture-gallery of his country house and look at the
various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his
veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis
Osborne, in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Eliza-
beth and King James, as one who was “caressed by the
Court for his handsome face, which kept him not long
company.” Was it young Herbert’s life that he some-

178
times led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept
from body to body till it had reached his own? Was it
some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made
him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utter-
ance, in Basil Hallward’s studio, to the mad prayer
that had so changed his life? Here, in gold-embroi-
dered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged
ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with
his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet. What
had this man’s legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna
of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and
shame? Were his own actions merely the dreams that
the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from the
fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her
gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves.
A flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an
enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On a
table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There
were large green rosettes upon her little pointed
shoes. He knew her life, and the strange stories that
were told about her lovers. Had he something of her
temperament in him? These oval, heavy-lidded eyes
seemed to look curiously at him. What of George
Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic
patches? How evil he looked! The face was saturnine
and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted
with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean
yellow hands that were so overladen with rings. He
had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and
the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince
Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at
the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How
proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls

179
and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed?
The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had
led the orgies at Carlton House. The star of the Gar-
ter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the
portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin- lipped woman in
black. Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curi-
ous it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady
Hamilton face and her moist, wine-dashed lips—he
knew what he had got from her. He had got from her
his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others.
She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress.
There were vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled
from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the
painting had withered, but the eyes were still wonder-
ful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed
to follow him wherever he went.
Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in
one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and tempera-
ment, many of them, and certainly with an influence of
which one was more absolutely conscious. There were
times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole
of history was merely the record of his own life, not as
he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his
imagination had created it for him, as it had been in
his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had
known them all, those strange terrible figures that
had passed across the stage of the world and made sin
so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to
him that in some mysterious way their lives had been
his own.
The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influ-
enced his life had himself known this curious fancy. In
the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with laurel,
lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius,

180
in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round
him and the flute-player mocked the swinger of the
censer; and, as Caligula, had caroused with the green-
shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in an ivory
manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian,
had wandered through a corridor lined with marble
mirrors, looking round with haggard eyes for the
reflection of the dagger that was to end his days, and
sick with that ennui, that terrible taedium vitae, that
comes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had
peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of
the circus and then, in a litter of pearl and purple
drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard
men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as
Elagabalus, had painted his face with colours, and
plied the distaff among the women, and brought the
Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage
to the Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this
fantastic chapter, and the two chapters immediately
following, in which, as in some curious tapestries or
cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful
and beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and
weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke
of Milan, who slew his wife and painted her lips with
a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from
the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian,
known as Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to
assume the title of Formosus, and whose tiara, valued
at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used
hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body

181
was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him;
the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding
beside him and his mantle stained with the blood of
Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop
of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose
beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who
received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and
crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and
gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as
Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could
be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a
passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine—
the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and one who
had cheated his father at dice when gambling with
him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mock-
ery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid
veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish
doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and
the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome
as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena
with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d’Este in a
cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion
built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles
VI, who had so wildly adored his brother’s wife that a
leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming
on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and
grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards
painted with the images of love and death and mad-
ness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and
acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew
Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying
in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated

182
him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had
cursed him, blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He
saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination
in the day. The Renaissance knew of strange manners
of poisoning— poisoning by a helmet and a lighted
torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by
a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian
Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were mo-
ments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through
which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

183
 XII

IT WAS on the ninth of November, the eve of his own

thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered after-
wards.
He was walking home about eleven o’clock from
Lord Henry’s, where he had been dining, and was
wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South
Audley Street, a man passed him in the mist, walking
very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned
up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him.
It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for
which he could not account, came over him. He made
no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the
direction of his own house.
But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him
first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying
after him. In a few moments, his hand was on his arm.
“Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I
have been waiting for you in your library ever since
nine o’clock. Finally I took pity on your tired servant
and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to
Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted
to see you before I left. I thought it was you, or rather
your fur coat, as you passed me. But I wasn’t quite
sure. Didn’t you recognize me?”
“In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can’t even rec-
ognize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is some-
where about here, but I don’t feel at all certain about
it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen
you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?”
“No: I am going to be out of England for six months.
I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up
till I have finished a great picture I have in my head.
However, it wasn’t about myself I wanted to talk.
Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a mo-
ment. I have something to say to you.”
“I shall be charmed. But won’t you miss your train?”
said Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps
and opened the door with his latch-key.
The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and
Hallward looked at his watch. “I have heaps of time,”
he answered. “The train doesn’t go till twelve-fifteen,
and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I
shan’t have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on
my heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and
I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes.”
Dorian looked at him and smiled. “What a way for
a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and
an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the house.
And mind you don’t talk about anything serious. Noth-
ing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be.”
Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and fol-
lowed Dorian into the library. There was a bright

185
wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps
were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood,
with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass
tumblers, on a little marqueterie table.
“You see your servant made me quite at home,
Dorian. He gave me everything I wanted, including
your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a most hospi-
table creature. I like him much better than the French-
man you used to have. What has become of the French-
man, by the bye?”
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I believe he mar-
ried Lady Radley’s maid, and has established her in
Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomanie is very
fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of
the French, doesn’t it? But—do you know?—he was
not at all a bad servant. I never liked him, but I had
nothing to complain about. One often imagines things
that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to
me and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have
another brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-
and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself.
There is sure to be some in the next room.”
“Thanks, I won’t have anything more,” said the
painter, taking his cap and coat off and throwing them
on the bag that he had placed in the corner. “And now,
my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously. Don’t
frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for
me.”
“What is it all about?” cried Dorian in his petulant
way, flinging himself down on the sofa. “I hope it is
not about myself. I am tired of myself to-night. I should
like to be somebody else.”

186
 “It is about yourself,” answered Hallward in his
grave deep voice, “and I must say it to you. I shall only
keep you half an hour.”
Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. “Half an hour!”
he murmured.
“It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is
entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I think
it right that you should know that the most dreadful
things are being said against you in London.”
“I don’t wish to know anything about them. I love
scandals about other people, but scandals about my-
self don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of
novelty.”
“They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman
is interested in his good name. You don’t want people
to talk of you as something vile and degraded. Of
course, you have your position, and your wealth, and
all that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not
everything. Mind you, I don’t believe these rumours at
all. At least, I can’t believe them when I see you. Sin is
a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot
be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
There are no such things. If a wretched man has a
vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the
droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.
Somebody—I won’t mention his name, but you know
him—came to me last year to have his portrait done. I
had never seen him before, and had never heard any-
thing about him at the time, though I have heard a
good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I
refused him. There was something in the shape of his
fingers that I hated. I know now that I was quite right
in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But
you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and

187
your marvellous untroubled youth— I can’t believe
anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom,
and you never come down to the studio now, and when
I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous
things that people are whispering about you, I don’t
know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like
the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when
you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in
London will neither go to your house or invite you to
theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I met
him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come
up in conversation, in connection with the miniatures
you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley
curled his lip and said that you might have the most
artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no
pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and
whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room
with. I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and
asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me
right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why is
your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that
wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.
You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton,
who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You
and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Single-
ton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s
only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in
St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and
sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What
sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would
associate with him?”
“Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which
you know nothing,” said Dorian Gray, biting his lip,
and with a note of infinite contempt in his voice. “You

188
ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
is because I know everything about his life, not be-
cause he knows anything about mine. With such blood
as he has in his veins, how could his record be clean?
You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauch-
ery? If Kent’s silly son takes his wife from the streets,
what is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his
friend’s name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know
how people chatter in England. The middle classes air
their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables,
and whisper about what they call the profligacies of
their betters in order to try and pretend that they are
in smart society and on intimate terms with the people
they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to
have distinction and brains for every common tongue
to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these
people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My
dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite.”
“Dorian,” cried Hallward, “that is not the question.
England is bad enough I know, and English society is
all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be
fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge
of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours
seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of pu-
rity. You have filled them with a madness for plea-
sure. They have gone down into the depths. You led
them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can
smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse
behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely
for that reason, if for none other, you should not have
made his sister’s name a by-word.”
“Take care, Basil. You go too far.”

189
 “I must speak, and you must listen. You shall
listen. When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of
scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single decent
woman in London now who would drive with her in
the park? Why, even her children are not allowed to
live with her. Then there are other stories— stories
that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dread-
ful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest
dens in London. Are they true? Can they be true?
When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now,
and they make me shudder. What about your country-
house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don’t
know what is said about you. I won’t tell you that I
don’t want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying
once that every man who turned himself into an ama-
teur curate for the moment always began by saying
that, and then proceeded to break his word. I do want
to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will
make the world respect you. I want you to have a
clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of
the dreadful people you associate with. Don’t shrug
your shoulders like that. Don’t be so indifferent. You
have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for
evil. They say that you corrupt every one with whom
you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for
you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow
after. I don’t know whether it is so or not. How should
I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it
seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one
of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a
letter that his wife had written to him when she was
dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was
implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read.
I told him that it was absurd—that I knew you thor-

190
oughly and that you were incapable of anything of the
kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I
could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”
“To see my soul!” muttered Dorian Gray, starting
up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear.
“Yes,” answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-
toned sorrow in his voice, “to see your soul. But only
God can do that.”
A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of
the younger man. “You shall see it yourself, to-night!”
he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. “Come: it is
your own handiwork. Why shouldn’t you look at it?
You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you
choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe
you, they would like me all the better for it. I know
the age better than you do, though you will prate
about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chat-
tered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on
it face to face.”
There was the madness of pride in every word he
uttered. He stamped his foot upon the ground in his
boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible joy at the
thought that some one else was to share his secret,
and that the man who had painted the portrait that
was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for
the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what
he had done.
“Yes,” he continued, coming closer to him and
looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, “I shall show
you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy
only God can see.”
Hallward started back. “This is blasphemy, Dorian!”
he cried. “You must not say things like that. They are
horrible, and they don’t mean anything.”

191
 “You think so?” He laughed again.
“I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said
it for your good. You know I have been always a stanch
friend to you.”
“Don’t touch me. Finish what you have to say.”
A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter’s
face. He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of
pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry
into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of
what was rumoured about him, how much he must
have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and
walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking
at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their
throbbing cores of flame.
“I am waiting, Basil,” said the young man in a hard
clear voice.
He turned round. “What I have to say is this,” he
cried. “You must give me some answer to these hor-
rible charges that are made against you. If you tell me
that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end,
I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them!
Can’t you see what I am going through? My God! don’t
tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful.”
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt
in his lips. “Come upstairs, Basil,” he said quietly. “I
keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never
leaves the room in which it is written. I shall show it
to you if you come with me.”
“I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see
I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I can
go to-morrow. But don’t ask me to read anything to-
night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.”
“That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not
give it here. You will not have to read long.”

192
 XIII

HE PASSED out of the room and began the ascent, Basil

Hallward following close behind. They walked softly,
as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast fantas-
tic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind
made some of the windows rattle.
When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the
lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key, turned
it in the lock. “You insist on knowing, Basil?” he asked
in a low voice.
“Yes.”
“I am delighted,” he answered, smiling. Then he
added, somewhat harshly, “You are the one man in the
world who is entitled to know everything about me.
You have had more to do with my life than you think”;
and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went
in. A cold current of air passed them, and the light
shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. He
shuddered. “Shut the door behind you,” he whispered,
as he placed the lamp on the table.
 Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled ex-
pression. The room looked as if it had not been lived
in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained
picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty
book-case—that was all that it seemed to contain,
besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was light-
ing a half-burned candle that was standing on the
mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered
with dust and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse
ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a
damp odour of mildew.
“So you think that it is only God who sees the soul,
Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine.”
The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. “You are
mad, Dorian, or playing a part,” muttered Hallward,
frowning.
“You won’t? Then I must do it myself,” said the
young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and
flung it on the ground.
An exclamation of horror broke from the painter’s
lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the
canvas grinning at him. There was something in its
expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray’s own face that he
was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not
yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There
was still some gold in the thinning hair and some
scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had
kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the
noble curves had not yet completely passed away from
chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was
Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to
recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his
own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid.

194
He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the pic-
ture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced
in long letters of bright vermilion.
It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble
satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own
picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had
changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His
own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered?
He turned and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of
a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched
tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his
hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy
sweat.
The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf,
watching him with that strange expression that one
sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play
when some great artist is acting. There was neither
real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the
passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of
triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of
his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.
“What does this mean?” cried Hallward, at last.
His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.
“Years ago, when I was a boy,” said Dorian Gray,
crushing the flower in his hand, “you met me, flat-
tered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks.
One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who
explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished
a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of
beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don’t know
whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you
would call it a prayer...”
“I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No!
the thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has

195
got into the canvas. The paints I used had some
wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing
is impossible.”
“Ah, what is impossible?” murmured the young
man, going over to the window and leaning his fore-
head against the cold, mist-stained glass.
“You told me you had destroyed it.”
“I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”
“I don’t believe it is my picture.”
“Can’t you see your ideal in it?” said Dorian bit-
terly.
“My ideal, as you call it...”
“As you called it.”
“There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.
You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet
again. This is the face of a satyr.”
“It is the face of my soul.”
“Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It
has the eyes of a devil.”
“Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,”
cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.
Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at
it. “My God! If it is true,” he exclaimed, “and this is
what you have done with your life, why, you must be
worse even than those who talk against you fancy you
to be!” He held the light up again to the canvas and
examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undis-
turbed and as he had left it. It was from within, appar-
ently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through
some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of
sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a
corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.
His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket
on the floor and lay there sputtering. He placed his

196
foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the
rickety chair that was standing by the table and bur-
ied his face in his hands.
“Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful
lesson!” There was no answer, but he could hear the
young man sobbing at the window. “Pray, Dorian,
pray,” he murmured. “What is it that one was taught
to say in one’s boyhood? ‘Lead us not into temptation.
Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.’ Let us
say that together. The prayer of your pride has been
answered. The prayer of your repentance will be
answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am pun-
ished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We
are both punished.”
Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at
him with tear-dimmed eyes. “It is too late, Basil,” he
faltered.
“It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and
try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a
verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet
I will make them as white as snow’?”
“Those words mean nothing to me now.”
“Hush! Don’t say that. You have done enough evil
in your life. My God! Don’t you see that accursed thing
leering at us?”
Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly
an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward
came over him, as though it had been suggested to him
by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by
those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted
animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man
who was seated at the table, more than in his whole
life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted

197
chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what
it was. It was a knife that he had brought up, some
days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten
to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it,
passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got be-
hind him, he seized it and turned round. Hallward
stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed
at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is
behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the
table and stabbing again and again.
There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of
some one choking with blood. Three times the out-
stretched arms shot up convulsively, waving gro-
tesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him
twice more, but the man did not move. Something
began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment,
still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife
on the table, and listened.
He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the
threadbare carpet. He opened the door and went out
on the landing. The house was absolutely quiet. No
one was about. For a few seconds he stood bending
over the balustrade and peering down into the black
seething well of darkness. Then he took out the key
and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did
so.
The thing was still seated in the chair, straining
over the table with bowed head, and humped back,
and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red
jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that
was slowly widening on the table, one would have said
that the man was simply asleep.
How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely
calm, and walking over to the window, opened it and

198
stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the
fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock’s
tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked
down and saw the policeman going his rounds and
flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of
the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling
hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. A
woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by
the railings, staggering as she went. Now and then she
stopped and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a
hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said
something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A
bitter blast swept across the square. The gas-lamps
flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees
shook their black iron branches to and fro. He shiv-
ered and went back, closing the window behind him.
Having reached the door, he turned the key and
opened it. He did not even glance at the murdered
man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not
to realize the situation. The friend who had painted
the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due
had gone out of his life. That was enough.
Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather
curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull
silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and
studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be
missed by his servant, and questions would be asked.
He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and
took it from the table. He could not help seeing the
dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the
long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.
Having locked the door behind him, he crept qui-
etly downstairs. The woodwork creaked and seemed
to cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times and

199
waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the
sound of his own footsteps.
When he reached the library, he saw the bag and
coat in the corner. They must be hidden away some-
where. He unlocked a secret press that was in the
wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious
disguises, and put them into it. He could easily burn
them afterwards. Then he pulled out his watch. It was
twenty minutes to two.
He sat down and began to think. Every year—
every month, almost— men were strangled in England
for what he had done. There had been a madness of
murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to
the earth... And yet, what evidence was there against
him? Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No
one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants
were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed... Paris!
Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the
midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious
reserved habits, it would be months before any suspi-
cions would be roused. Months! Everything could be
destroyed long before then.
A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur
coat and hat and went out into the hall. There he
paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman
on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the
bull’s-eye reflected in the window. He waited and held
his breath.
After a few moments he drew back the latch and
slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him.
Then he began ringing the bell. In about five minutes
his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very
drowsy.

200
 “I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,”
he said, stepping in; “but I had forgotten my latch-key.
What time is it?”
“Ten minutes past two, sir,” answered the man,
looking at the clock and blinking.
“Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You
must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to
do.”
“All right, sir.”
“Did any one call this evening?”
“Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and
then be went away to catch his train.”
“Oh! I am sorry I didn’t see him. Did he leave any
message?”
“No, sir, except that he would write to you from
Paris, if he did not find you at the club.”
“That will do, Francis. Don’t forget to call me at
nine to-morrow.”
“No, sir.”
The man shambled down the passage in his slip-
pers.
Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table
and passed into the library. For a quarter of an hour
he walked up and down the room, biting his lip and
thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one
of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. “Alan
Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.” Yes; that
was the man he wanted.

201
 XIV

AT NINE o’clock the next morning his servant came in

with a cup of chocolate on a tray and opened the shut-
ters. Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on
his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play,
or study.
The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder
before he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint
smile passed across his lips, as though he had been
lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed
at all. His night had been untroubled by any images of
pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any
reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow,
began to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun
came streaming into the room. The sky was bright,
and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was al-
most like a morning in May.
Gradually the events of the preceding night crept
with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and re-
constructed themselves there with terrible distinct-
ness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of
loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill
him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he
grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting
there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that
was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not
for the day.
He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone
through he would sicken or grow mad. There were
sins whose fascination was more in the memory than
in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified
the pride more than the passions, and gave to the
intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy
they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But
this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven
out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be
strangled lest it might strangle one itself.
When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand
across his forehead, and then got up hastily and dressed
himself with even more than his usual care, giving a
good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once. He
spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the
various dishes, talking to his valet about some new
liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his correspon-
dence. At some of the letters, he smiled. Three of
them bored him. One he read several times over and
then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his
face. “That awful thing, a woman’s memory!” as Lord
Henry had once said.

203
 After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he
wiped his lips slowly with a napkin, motioned to his
servant to wait, and going over to the table, sat down
and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
other he handed to the valet.
“Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis,
and if Mr. Campbell is out of town, get his address.”
As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and
began sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing first
flowers and bits of architecture, and then human
faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he
drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil
Hallward. He frowned, and getting up, went over to
the book-case and took out a volume at hazard. He
was determined that he would not think about what
had happened until it became absolutely necessary
that he should do so.
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he
looked at the title-page of the book. It was Gautier’s
Emaux et Camees, Charpentier’s Japanese-paper
edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was
of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-
work and dotted pomegranates. It had been given to
him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages,
his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire,
the cold yellow hand “du supplice encore mal lavé:e,”
with its downy red hairs and its “doigts de faune.” He
glanced at his own white taper fingers, shuddering
slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came
to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:
Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de peries ruisselant,
La Vénus de l’Adriatique
Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.

204
 Les dômes, sur l’azur des ondes
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S’enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que soulève un soupir d’amour.
L’esquif aborde et me dépose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
How exquisite they were! As one read them, one
seemed to be floating down the green water-ways of
the pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with
silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines
looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-
blue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The
sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of
the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the
tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such
stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades.
Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying
over and over to himself:
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He
remembered the autumn that he had passed there,
and a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad
delightful follies. There was romance in every place.
But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for
romance, and, to the true romantic, background was
everything, or almost everything. Basil had been with
him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.
Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!
He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried
to forget. He read of the swallows that fly in and out
of the little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit count-

205
ing their amber beads and the turbaned merchants
smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to
each other; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la
Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely
sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-
covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red
ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and
crocodiles with small beryl eyes that crawl over the
green steaming mud; he began to brood over those
verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble,
tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a
contralto voice, the “monstre charmant” that couches
in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time
the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan
Campbell should be out of England? Days would elapse
before he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse to
come. What could he do then? Every moment was of
vital importance.
They had been great friends once, five years be-
fore— almost inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy
had come suddenly to an end. When they met in soci-
ety now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan
Campbell never did.
He was an extremely clever young man, though he
had no real appreciation of the visible arts, and what-
ever little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed
he had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant
intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he
had spent a great deal of his time working in the
laboratory, and had taken a good class in the Natural
Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still de-
voted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory
of his own in which he used to shut himself up all day

206
long, greatly to the annoyance of his mother, who had
set her heart on his standing for Parliament and had a
vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up
prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, however,
as well, and played both the violin and the piano
better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that
had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—
music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian
seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished—
and, indeed, exercised often without being conscious
of it. They had met at Lady Berkshire’s the night that
Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be
always seen together at the opera and wherever good
music was going on. For eighteen months their inti-
macy lasted. Campbell was always either at Selby
Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many
others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is
wonderful and fascinating in life. Whether or not a
quarrel had taken place between them no one ever
knew. But suddenly people remarked that they scarce-
ly spoke when they met and that Campbell seemed
always to go away early from any party at which Dorian
Gray was present. He had changed, too—was strangely
melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hear-
ing music, and would never himself play, giving as his
excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so ab-
sorbed in science that he had no time left in which to
practise. And this was certainly true. Every day he
seemed to become more interested in biology, and his
name appeared once or twice in some of the scientific
reviews in connection with certain curious experi-
ments.
This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for.
Every second he kept glancing at the clock. As the

207
minutes went by he became horribly agitated. At last
he got up and began to pace up and down the room,
looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long
stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.
The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to
him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by mon-
strous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge
of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was
waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering,
crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though
he would have robbed the very brain of sight and
driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was use-
less. The brain had its own food on which it battened,
and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted
and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like
some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through
moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him.
Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more,
and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly
on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its
grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very
horror made him stone.
At last the door opened and his servant entered.
He turned glazed eyes upon him.
“Mr. Campbell, sir,” said the man.
A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and
the colour came back to his cheeks.
“Ask him to come in at once, Francis.” He felt that
he was himself again. His mood of cowardice had
passed away.
The man bowed and retired. In a few moments,
Alan Campbell walked in, looking very stern and
rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his coal-
black hair and dark eyebrows.

208
 “Alan! This is kind of you. I thank you for coming.”
“I had intended never to enter your house again,
Gray. But you said it was a matter of life and death.”
His voice was hard and cold. He spoke with slow
deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the
steady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He
kept his hands in the pockets of his Astrakhan coat,
and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with
which he had been greeted.
“Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to
more than one person. Sit down.”
Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat
opposite to him. The two men’s eyes met. In Dorian’s
there was infinite pity. He knew that what he was
going to do was dreadful.
After a strained moment of silence, he leaned
across and said, very quietly, but watching the effect
of each word upon the face of him he had sent for,
“Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a
room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead
man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours
now. Don’t stir, and don’t look at me like that. Who
the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that
do not concern you. What you have to do is this—”
“Stop, Gray. I don’t want to know anything further.
Whether what you have told me is true or not true
doesn’t concern me. I entirely decline to be mixed up
in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
They don’t interest me any more.”
“Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will
have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan.
But I can’t help myself. You are the one man who is
able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You

209
know about chemistry and things of that kind. You
have made experiments. What you have got to do is to
destroy the thing that is upstairs— to destroy it so
that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this
person come into the house. Indeed, at the present
moment he is supposed to be in Paris. He will not be
missed for months. When he is missed, there must be
no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change
him, and everything that belongs to him, into a hand-
ful of ashes that I may scatter in the air.”
“You are mad, Dorian.”
“Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.”
“You are mad, I tell you—mad to imagine that I
would raise a finger to help you, mad to make this
monstrous confession. I will have nothing to do with
this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to
peril my reputation for you? What is it to me what
devil’s work you are up to?”
“It was suicide, Alan.”
“I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I
should fancy.”
“Do you still refuse to do this for me?”
“Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing
to do with it. I don’t care what shame comes on you.
You deserve it all. I should not be sorry to see you
disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me,
of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this hor-
ror? I should have thought you knew more about
people’s characters. Your friend Lord Henry Wotton
can’t have taught you much about psychology, what-
ever else he has taught you. Nothing will induce me to
stir a step to help you. You have come to the wrong
man. Go to some of your friends. Don’t come to me.”

210
 “Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don’t know
what he had made me suffer. Whatever my life is, he
had more to do with the making or the marring of it
than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended
it, the result was the same.”
“Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have
come to? I shall not inform upon you. It is not my
business. Besides, without my stirring in the matter,
you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a
crime without doing something stupid. But I will have
nothing to do with it.”
“You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait
a moment; listen to me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of
you is to perform a certain scientific experiment. You
go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that
you do there don’t affect you. If in some hideous dis-
secting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man
lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in
it for the blood to flow through, you would simply look
upon him as an admirable subject. You would not turn
a hair. You would not believe that you were doing
anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably
feel that you were benefiting the human race, or in-
creasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or grati-
fying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind.
What I want you to do is merely what you have often
done before. Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less
horrible than what you are accustomed to work at.
And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against
me. If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be
discovered unless you help me.”
“I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am
simply indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to
do with me.”

211
 “Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in.
Just before you came I almost fainted with terror. You
may know terror yourself some day. No! don’t think of
that. Look at the matter purely from the scientific
point of view. You don’t inquire where the dead things
on which you experiment come from. Don’t inquire
now. I have told you too much as it is. But I beg of you
to do this. We were friends once, Alan.”
“Don’t speak about those days, Dorian—they are
dead.”
“The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will
not go away. He is sitting at the table with bowed
head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! If you don’t
come to my assistance, I am ruined. Why, they will
hang me, Alan! Don’t you understand? They will hang
me for what I have done.”
“There is no good in prolonging this scene. I abso-
lutely refuse to do anything in the matter. It is insane
of you to ask me.”
“You refuse?”
“Yes.”
“I entreat you, Alan.”
“It is useless.”
The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray’s
eyes. Then he stretched out his hand, took a piece of
paper, and wrote something on it. He read it over
twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the
table. Having done this, he got up and went over to
the window.
Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took
up the paper, and opened it. As he read it, his face
became ghastly pale and he fell back in his chair. A
horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if

212
his heart was beating itself to death in some empty
hollow.
After two or three minutes of terrible silence,
Dorian turned round and came and stood behind him,
putting his hand upon his shoulder.
“I am so sorry for you, Alan,” he murmured, “but
you leave me no alternative. I have a letter written
already. Here it is. You see the address. If you don’t
help me, I must send it. If you don’t help me, I will
send it. You know what the result will be. But you are
going to help me. It is impossible for you to refuse
now. I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to
admit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You
treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me—no
living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to
dictate terms.”
Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shud-
der passed through him.
“Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You
know what they are. The thing is quite simple. Come,
don’t work yourself into this fever. The thing has to be
done. Face it, and do it.”
A groan broke from Campbell’s lips and he shiv-
ered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantel-
piece seemed to him to be dividing time into separate
atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly
tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with
which he was threatened had already come upon him.
The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of
lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.
“Come, Alan, you must decide at once.”
“I cannot do it,” he said, mechanically, as though
words could alter things.

213
 “You must. You have no choice. Don’t delay.”
He hesitated a moment. “Is there a fire in the room
upstairs?”
“Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos.”
“I shall have to go home and get some things from
the laboratory.”
“No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out
on a sheet of notepaper what you want and my servant
will take a cab and bring the things back to you.”
Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and
addressed an envelope to his assistant. Dorian took
the note up and read it carefully. Then he rang the
bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as
soon as possible and to bring the things with him.
As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously,
and having got up from the chair, went over to the
chimney-piece. He was shivering with a kind of ague.
For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke.
A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of
the clock was like the beat of a hammer.
As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round,
and looking at Dorian Gray, saw that his eyes were
filled with tears. There was something in the purity
and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage
him. “You are infamous, absolutely infamous!” he
muttered.
“Hush, Alan. You have saved my life,” said Dorian.
“Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You
have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you
have culminated in crime. In doing what I am going to
do—what you force me to do— it is not of your life
that I am thinking.”
“Ah, Alan,” murmured Dorian with a sigh, “I wish
you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I

214
have for you.” He turned away as he spoke and stood
looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.
After about ten minutes a knock came to the door,
and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany
chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and plati-
num wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps.
“Shall I leave the things here, sir?” he asked
Campbell.
“Yes,” said Dorian. “And I am afraid, Francis, that
I have another errand for you. What is the name of the
man at Richmond who supplies Selby with orchids?”
“Harden, sir.”
“Yes—Harden. You must go down to Richmond at
once, see Harden personally, and tell him to send
twice as many orchids as I ordered, and to have as few
white ones as possible. In fact, I don’t want any white
ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a
very pretty place— otherwise I wouldn’t bother you
about it.”
“No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?”
Dorian looked at Campbell. “How long will your
experiment take, Alan?” he said in a calm indifferent
voice. The presence of a third person in the room
seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
Campbell frowned and bit his lip. “It will take
about five hours,” he answered.
“It will be time enough, then, if you are back at
half-past seven, Francis. Or stay: just leave my things
out for dressing. You can have the evening to yourself.
I am not dining at home, so I shall not want you.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the man, leaving the room.
“Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How
heavy this chest is! I’ll take it for you. You bring the
other things.” He spoke rapidly and in an authorita-

215
tive manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They
left the room together.
When they reached the top landing, Dorian took
out the key and turned it in the lock. Then he stopped,
and a troubled look came into his eyes. He shuddered.
“I don’t think I can go in, Alan,” he murmured.
“It is nothing to me. I don’t require you,” said
Campbell coldly.
Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw
the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight. On the
floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He re-
membered that the night before he had forgotten, for
the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and
was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a
shudder.
What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed,
wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the
canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was!—
more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than
the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the
table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow
on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not
stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.
He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little
wider, and with half-closed eyes and averted head,
walked quickly in, determined that he would not look
even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down
and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it
right over the picture.
There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and
his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the
pattern before him. He heard Campbell bringing in
the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things
that he had required for his dreadful work. He began

216
to wonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and,
if so, what they had thought of each other.
“Leave me now,” said a stern voice behind him.
He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the
dead man had been thrust back into the chair and that
Campbell was gazing into a glistening yellow face. As
he was going downstairs, he heard the key being
turned in the lock.
It was long after seven when Campbell came back
into the library. He was pale, but absolutely calm. “I
have done what you asked me to do,” he muttered
“And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other
again.”
“You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot
forget that,” said Dorian simply.
As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs.
There was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room.
But the thing that had been sitting at the table was
gone.

217
 XV

THAT evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and

wearing a large button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian
Gray was ushered into Lady Narborough’s drawing-
room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing
with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but
his manner as he bent over his hostess’s hand was as
easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps one never seems so
much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.
Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night
could have believed that he had passed through a
tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those
finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a
knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on
God and goodness. He himself could not help wonder-
ing at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment
felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.
It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by
Lady Narborough, who was a very clever woman with
what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains of
really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excel-
lent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and
having buried her husband properly in a marble mau-
soleum, which she had herself designed, and married
off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men,
she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French
fiction, French cookery, and French esprit when she
could get it.
Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she
always told him that she was extremely glad she had
not met him in early life. “I know, my dear, I should
have fallen madly in love with you,” she used to say,
“and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your
sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of
at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecom-
ing, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise
the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with any-
body. However, that was all Narborough’s fault. He
was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure
in taking in a husband who never sees anything.”
Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The
fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very
shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up
quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters
worse, had actually brought her husband with her. “I
think it is most unkind of her, my dear,” she whis-
pered. “Of course I go and stay with them every sum-
mer after I come from Homburg, but then an old wom-
an like me must have fresh air sometimes, and be-
sides, I really wake them up. You don’t know what an
existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulter-
ated country life. They get up early, because they have
so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have
so little to think about. There has not been a scandal
in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Eliza-

219
beth, and consequently they all fall asleep after din-
ner. You shan’t sit next either of them. You shall sit by
me and amuse me.”
Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and
looked round the room. Yes: it was certainly a tedious
party. Two of the people he had never seen before,
and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of
those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London
clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly dis-
liked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed
woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was
always trying to get herself compromised, but was so
peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no
one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs.
Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and
Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess’s
daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those charac-
teristic British faces that, once seen, are never re-
membered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-
whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was
under the impression that inordinate joviality can
atone for an entire lack of ideas.
He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady
Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock
that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped
mantelshelf, exclaimed: “How horrid of Henry Wotton
to be so late! I sent round to him this morning on
chance and he promised faithfully not to disappoint
me.”
It was some consolation that Harry was to be
there, and when the door opened and he heard his
slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere
apology, he ceased to feel bored.

220
 But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate
after plate went away untasted. Lady Narborough
kept scolding him for what she called “an insult to
poor Adolphe, who invented the menu specially for
you,” and now and then Lord Henry looked across at
him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner.
From time to time the butler filled his glass with
champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed
to increase.
“Dorian,” said Lord Henry at last, as the chaud-
froid was being handed round, “what is the matter
with you to-night? You are quite out of sorts.”
“I believe he is in love,” cried Lady Narborough,
and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be
jealous. He is quite right. I certainly should.”
“Dear Lady Narborough,” murmured Dorian, smil-
ing, “I have not been in love for a whole week—not, in
fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town.”
“How you men can fall in love with that woman!”
exclaimed the old lady. “I really cannot understand it.”
“It is simply because she remembers you when you
were a little girl, Lady Narborough,” said Lord Henry.
“She is the one link between us and your short frocks.”
“She does not remember my short frocks at all,
Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at Vienna
thirty years ago, and how décolletée she was then.”
“She is still décolletée,” he answered, taking an
olive in his long fingers; “and when she is in a very
smart gown she looks like an édition de luxe of a bad
French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of
surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraor-
dinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned
quite gold from grief.”
“How can you, Harry!” cried Dorian.

221
 “It is a most romantic explanation,” laughed the
hostess. “But her third husband, Lord Henry! You
don’t mean to say Ferrol is the fourth?”
“Certainly, Lady Narborough.”
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most inti-
mate friends.”
“Is it true, Mr. Gray?”
“She assures me so, Lady Narborough,” said Dorian.
“I asked her whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she
had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle.
She told me she didn’t, because none of them had had
any hearts at all.”
“Four husbands! Upon my word that is trop de
zèle.”
“Trop d’audace, I tell her,” said Dorian.
“Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my
dear. And what is Ferrol like? I don’t know him.”
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to
the criminal classes,” said Lord Henry, sipping his
wine.
Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. “Lord
Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says
that you are extremely wicked.”
“But what world says that?” asked Lord Henry,
elevating his eyebrows. “It can only be the next world.
This world and I are on excellent terms.”
“Everybody I know says you are very wicked,”
cried the old lady, shaking her head.
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. “It
is perfectly monstrous,” he said, at last, “the way
people go about nowadays saying things against one
behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely
true.”

222
 “Isn’t he incorrigible?” cried Dorian, leaning for-
ward in his chair.
“I hope so,” said his hostess, laughing. “But really,
if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous
way, I shall have to marry again so as to be in the
fashion.”
“You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,”
broke in Lord Henry. “You were far too happy. When
a woman marries again, it is because she detested her
first husband. When a man marries again, it is because
he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men
risk theirs.”
“Narborough wasn’t perfect,” cried the old lady.
“If he had been, you would not have loved him, my
dear lady,” was the rejoinder. “Women love us for our
defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive
us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask
me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady
Narborough, but it is quite true.”
“Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did
not love you for your defects, where would you all be?
Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a
set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that
would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men
live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married
men.”
“Fin de siècle,” murmured Lord Henry.
“Fin du globe,” answered his hostess.
“I wish it were fin du globe,” said Dorian with a
sigh. “Life is a great disappointment.”
“Ah, my dear,” cried Lady Narborough, putting on
her gloves, “don’t tell me that you have exhausted life.
When a man says that one knows that life has ex-
hausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I some-

223
times wish that I had been; but you are made to be
good— you look so good. I must find you a nice wife.
Lord Henry, don’t you think that Mr. Gray should get
married?”
“I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough,”
said Lord Henry with a bow.
“Well, we must look out for a suitable match for
him. I shall go through Debrett carefully to-night and
draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies.”
“With their ages, Lady Narborough?” asked Dorian.
“Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But
nothing must be done in a hurry. I want it to be what
The Morning Post calls a suitable alliance, and I want
you both to be happy.”
“What nonsense people talk about happy mar-
riages!” exclaimed Lord Henry. “A man can be happy
with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
“Ah! what a cynic you are!” cried the old lady,
pushing back her chair and nodding to Lady Ruxton.
“You must come and dine with me soon again. You are
really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir
Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me what
people you would like to meet, though. I want it to be
a delightful gathering.”
“I like men who have a future and women who
have a past,” he answered. “Or do you think that
would make it a petticoat party?”
“I fear so,” she said, laughing, as she stood up. “A
thousand pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton,” she added,
“I didn’t see you hadn’t finished your cigarette.”
“Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great
deal too much. I am going to limit myself, for the
future.”

224
 “Pray don’t, Lady Ruxton,” said Lord Henry. “Mod-
eration is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal.
More than enough is as good as a feast.”
Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. “You must
come and explain that to me some afternoon, Lord
Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory,” she murmured,
as she swept out of the room.
“Now, mind you don’t stay too long over your poli-
tics and scandal,” cried Lady Narborough from the
door. “If you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs.”
The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up sol-
emnly from the foot of the table and came up to the
top. Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by
Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud
voice about the situation in the House of Commons.
He guffawed at his adversaries. The word doctri-
naire—word full of terror to the British mind— reap-
peared from time to time between his explosions. An
alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.
He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought.
The inherited stupidity of the race—sound English
common sense he jovially termed it—was shown to be
the proper bulwark for society.
A smile curved Lord Henry’s lips, and he turned
round and looked at Dorian.
“Are you better, my dear fellow?” he asked. “You
seemed rather out of sorts at dinner.”
“I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all.”
“You were charming last night. The little duchess
is quite devoted to you. She tells me she is going down
to Selby.”
“She has promised to come on the twentieth.”
“Is Monmouth to be there, too?”
“Oh, yes, Harry.”

225
 “He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he
bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman.
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the
feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.
Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay.
White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been
through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it
hardens. She has had experiences.”
“How long has she been married?” asked Dorian.
“An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to
the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with
Monmouth must have been like eternity, with time
thrown in. Who else is coming?”
“Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife,
our hostess, Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have
asked Lord Grotrian.”
“I like him,” said Lord Henry. “A great many people
don’t, but I find him charming. He atones for being
occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always
absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type.”
“I don’t know if he will be able to come, Harry. He
may have to go to Monte Carlo with his father.”
“Ah! what a nuisance people’s people are! Try and
make him come. By the way, Dorian, you ran off very
early last night. You left before eleven. What did you
do afterwards? Did you go straight home?”
Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned.
“No, Harry,” he said at last, “I did not get home till
nearly three.”
“Did you go to the club?”
“Yes,” he answered. Then he bit his lip. “No, I don’t
mean that. I didn’t go to the club. I walked about. I
forget what I did... How inquisitive you are, Harry!
You always want to know what one has been doing. I

226
always want to forget what I have been doing. I came
in at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time.
I had left my latch-key at home, and my servant had to
let me in. If you want any corroborative evidence on
the subject, you can ask him.”
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “My dear
fellow, as if I cared! Let us go up to the drawing-room.
No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. Something has
happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are
not yourself to-night.”
“Don’t mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of
temper. I shall come round and see you to-morrow, or
next day. Make my excuses to Lady Narborough. I
shan’t go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home.”
“All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-
morrow at tea-time. The duchess is coming.”
“I will try to be there, Harry,” he said, leaving the
room. As he drove back to his own house, he was
conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had
strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry’s casual
questioning had made him lose his nerves for the
moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things that
were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He
hated the idea of even touching them.
Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when
he had locked the door of his library, he opened the
secret press into which he had thrust Basil Hallward’s
coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled an-
other log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and
burning leather was horrible. It took him three- quar-
ters of an hour to consume everything. At the end he
felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian pas-
tilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands
and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar.

227
 Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely
bright, and he gnawed nervously at his underlip.
Between two of the windows stood a large Florentine
cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and
blue lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing
that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held
something that he longed for and yet almost loathed.
His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him.
He lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids
drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his
cheek. But he still watched the cabinet. At last he got
up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went
over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hid-
den spring. A triangular drawer passed slowly out.
His fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in,
and closed on something. It was a small Chinese box of
black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the
sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken
cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited
metal threads. He opened it. Inside was a green paste,
waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persis-
tent.
He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely
immobile smile upon his face. Then shivering, though
the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew
himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty
minutes to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the
cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bedroom.
As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the
dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed commonly, and with a
muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of
his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a
good horse. He hailed it and in a low voice gave the
driver an address.

228
 The man shook his head. “It is too far for me,” he
muttered.
“Here is a sovereign for you,” said Dorian. “You
shall have another if you drive fast.”
“All right, sir,” answered the man, “you will be
there in an hour,” and after his fare had got in he
turned his horse round and drove rapidly towards the
river.

229
 XVI

A COLD rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps

looked ghastly in the dripping mist. The public- houses
were just closing, and dim men and women were
clustering in broken groups round their doors. From
some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter.
In others, drunkards brawled and screamed.
Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over
his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes
the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then
he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had
said to him on the first day they had met, “To cure the
soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
of the soul.” Yes, that was the secret. He had often
tried it, and would try it again now. There were opium
dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror
where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by
the madness of sins that were new.
The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull.
From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a
long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew fewer,
and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the
man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A
steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles.
The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a
grey-flannel mist.
“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the
senses by means of the soul!” How the words rang in
his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to death. Was it
true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had
been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that
there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was
impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he
was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to
crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung
one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to
him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over
others? He had said things that were dreadful, hor-
rible, not to be endured.
On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it
seemed to him, at each step. He thrust up the trap
and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous
hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat
burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously
together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick.
The driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in
answer, and the man was silent.
The way seemed interminable, and the streets like
the black web of some sprawling spider. The mo-
notony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened,
he felt afraid.
Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog
was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-
shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire.
A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the

231
darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The
horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke
into a gallop.
After some time they left the clay road and rattled
again over rough-paven streets. Most of the windows
were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were
silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched
them curiously. They moved like monstrous mari-
onettes and made gestures like live things. He hated
them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a
corner, a woman yelled something at them from an
open door, and two men ran after the hansom for
about a hundred yards. The driver beat at them with
his whip.
It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.
Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of
Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words
that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and
justified, by intellectual approval, passions that with-
out such justification would still have dominated his
temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the one
thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of
all man’s appetites, quickened into force each trem-
bling nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been
hateful to him because it made things real, became
dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was
the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den,
the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness
of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense
actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of
art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he
needed for forgetfulness. In three days he would be
free.

232
 Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of
a dark lane. Over the low roofs and jagged chimney-
stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships.
Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the
yards.
“Somewhere about here, sir, ain’t it?” he asked
huskily through the trap.
Dorian started and peered round. “This will do,”
he answered, and having got out hastily and given the
driver the extra fare he had promised him, he walked
quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a
lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchant-
man. The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A
red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that
was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet
mackintosh.
He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now
and then to see if he was being followed. In about
seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby
house that was wedged in between two gaunt facto-
ries. In one of the top-windows stood a lamp. He
stopped and gave a peculiar knock.
After a little time he heard steps in the passage
and the chain being unhooked. The door opened qui-
etly, and he went in without saying a word to the
squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the
shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a
tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the
gusty wind which had followed him in from the street.
He dragged it aside and entered a long low room
which looked as if it had once been a third-rate danc-
ing-saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted
in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged
round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed

233
them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was
covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here
and there into mud, and stained with dark rings of
spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little
charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and show-
ing their white teeth as they chattered. In one corner,
with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled
over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran
across one complete side stood two haggard women,
mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of
his coat with an expression of disgust. “He thinks he’s
got red ants on him,” laughed one of them, as Dorian
passed by. The man looked at her in terror and began
to whimper.
At the end of the room there was a little staircase,
leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up
its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met
him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quiv-
ered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man
with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a
lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and
nodded in a hesitating manner.
“You here, Adrian?” muttered Dorian.
“Where else should I be?” he answered, listlessly.
“None of the chaps will speak to me now.”
“I thought you had left England.”
“Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother
paid the bill at last. George doesn’t speak to me ei-
ther... I don’t care,” he added with a sigh. “As long as
one has this stuff, one doesn’t want friends. I think I
have had too many friends.”
Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque
things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged
mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the

234
staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in
what strange heavens they were suffering, and what
dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new
joy. They were better off than he was. He was prisoned
in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eat-
ing his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see
the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt
he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton
troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would
know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
“I am going on to the other place,” he said after a
pause.
“On the wharf?”
“Yes.”
“That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won’t have
her in this place now.”
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I am sick of women
who love one. Women who hate one are much more
interesting. Besides, the stuff is better.”
“Much the same.”
“I like it better. Come and have something to
drink. I must have something.”
“I don’t want anything,” murmured the young man.
“Never mind.”
Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed
Dorian to the bar. A half-caste, in a ragged turban and
a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he
thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
them. The women sidled up and began to chatter.
Dorian turned his back on them and said something in
a low voice to Adrian Singleton.
A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed
across the face of one of the women. “We are very
proud to-night,” she sneered.

235
 “For God’s sake don’t talk to me,” cried Dorian,
stamping his foot on the ground. “What do you want?
Money? Here it is. Don’t ever talk to me again.”
Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman’s
sodden eyes, then flickered out and left them dull and
glazed. She tossed her head and raked the coins off
the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
watched her enviously.
“It’s no use,” sighed Adrian Singleton. “I don’t care
to go back. What does it matter? I am quite happy
here.”
“You will write to me if you want anything, won’t
you?” said Dorian, after a pause.
“Perhaps.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night,” answered the young man, passing up
the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a hand-
kerchief.
Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in
his face. As he drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh
broke from the painted lips of the woman who had
taken his money. “There goes the devil’s bargain!” she
hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
“Curse you!” he answered, “don’t call me that.”
She snapped her fingers. “Prince Charming is what
you like to be called, ain’t it?” she yelled after him.
The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke,
and looked wildly round. The sound of the shutting of
the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if in
pursuit.
Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the
drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had
strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of
that young life was really to be laid at his door, as

236
Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of
insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes
grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him?
One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s
errors on one’s shoulders. Each man lived his own life
and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was
one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to
pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with
man, destiny never closed her accounts.
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when
the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so
dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as
every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fear-
ful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose
the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible
end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them,
and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all,
lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedi-
ence its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not
of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that
high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven,
it was as a rebel that he fell.
Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind,
and soul hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened
on, quickening his step as he went, but as he darted
aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as
a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going,
he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and
before be had time to defend himself, he was thrust
back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his
throat.
He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort
wrenched the tightening fingers away. In a second he
heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a

237
polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the
dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.
“What do you want?” he gasped.
“Keep quiet,” said the man. “If you stir, I shoot
you.”
“You are mad. What have I done to you?”
“You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane,” was the
answer, “and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed
herself. I know it. Her death is at your door. I swore I
would kill you in return. For years I have sought you.
I had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have
described you were dead. I knew nothing of you but
the pet name she used to call you. I heard it to-night
by chance. Make your peace with God, for to- night
you are going to die.”
Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. “I never knew
her,” he stammered. “I never heard of her. You are
mad.”
“You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I
am James Vane, you are going to die.” There was a
horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to say or
do. “Down on your knees!” growled the man. “I give
you one minute to make your peace—no more. I go on
board to-night for India, and I must do my job first.
One minute. That’s all.”
Dorian’s arms fell to his side. Paralysed with
terror, he did not know what to do. Suddenly a wild
hope flashed across his brain. “Stop,” he cried. “How
long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!”
“Eighteen years,” said the man. “Why do you ask
me? What do years matter?”
“Eighteen years,” laughed Dorian Gray, with a
touch of triumph in his voice. “Eighteen years! Set me
under the lamp and look at my face!”

238
 James Vane hesitated for a moment, not under-
standing what was meant. Then he seized Dorian
Gray and dragged him from the archway.
Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet
it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed,
into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he
had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than
a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed
at all, than his sister had been when they had parted
so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not
the man who had destroyed her life.
He loosened his hold and reeled back. “My God!
my God!” he cried, “and I would have murdered you!”
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. “You have been
on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man,”
he said, looking at him sternly. “Let this be a warning
to you not to take vengeance into your own hands.”
“Forgive me, sir,” muttered James Vane. “I was
deceived. A chance word I heard in that damned den
set me on the wrong track.”
“You had better go home and put that pistol away,
or you may get into trouble,” said Dorian, turning on
his heel and going slowly down the street.
James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He
was trembling from head to foot. After a little while, a
black shadow that had been creeping along the drip-
ping wall moved out into the light and came close to
him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his
arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the
women who had been drinking at the bar.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she hissed out, putting
haggard face quite close to his. “I knew you were
following him when you rushed out from Daly’s. You

239
fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money,
and he’s as bad as bad.”
“He is not the man I am looking for,” he answered,
“and I want no man’s money. I want a man’s life. The
man whose life I want must be nearly forty now. This
one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not
got his blood upon my hands.”
The woman gave a bitter laugh. “Little more than a
boy!” she sneered. “Why, man, it’s nigh on eighteen
years since Prince Charming made me what I am.”
“You lie!” cried James Vane.
She raised her hand up to heaven. “Before God I
am telling the truth,” she cried.
“Before God?”
“Strike me dumb if it ain’t so. He is the worst one
that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the
devil for a pretty face. It’s nigh on eighteen years
since I met him. He hasn’t changed much since then. I
have, though,” she added, with a sickly leer.
“You swear this?”
“I swear it,” came in hoarse echo from her flat
mouth. “But don’t give me away to him,” she whined;
“I am afraid of him. Let me have some money for my
night’s lodging.”
He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the
corner of the street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared.
When he looked back, the woman had vanished also.

240
 XVII

A WEEK later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conserva-

tory at Selby Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of
Monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking
man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea- time,
and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp
that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and
hammered silver of the service at which the duchess
was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily
among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at
something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord
Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair,
looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady
Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke’s de-
scription of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added
to his collection. Three young men in elaborate smok-
ing-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women.
The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there
were more expected to arrive on the next day.
“What are you two talking about?” said Lord Henry,
strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. “I
hope Dorian has told you about my plan for rechris-
tening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea.”
“But I don’t want to be rechristened, Harry,” re-
joined the duchess, looking up at him with her won-
derful eyes. “I am quite satisfied with my own name,
and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his.”
“My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for
the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly
of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my button-
hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as
the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I
asked one of the gardeners what it was called. He told
me it was a fine specimen of Robinsoniana, or some-
thing dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we
have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions.
My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I
hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could
call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It
is the only thing he is fit for.”
“Then what should we call you, Harry?” she asked.
“His name is Prince Paradox,” said Dorian.
“I recognize him in a flash,” exclaimed the duchess.
“I won’t hear of it,” laughed Lord Henry, sinking
into a chair. “From a label there is no escape! I refuse
the title.”
“Royalties may not abdicate,” fell as a warning
from pretty lips.
“You wish me to defend my throne, then?”
“Yes.
“I give the truths of to-morrow.”
“I prefer the mistakes of to-day,” she answered.
“You disarm me, Gladys,” he cried, catching the
wilfulness of her mood.

242
 “Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear.”
“I never tilt against beauty,” he said, with a wave
of his hand.
“That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value
beauty far too much.”
“How can you say that? I admit that I think that it
is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the
other hand, no one is more ready than I am to ac-
knowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?”
cried the duchess. “What becomes of your simile about
the orchid?”
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys.
You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer,
the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our
England what she is.”
“You don’t like your country, then?” she asked.
“I live in it.”
“That you may censure it the better.”
“Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on
it?” he inquired.
“What do they say of us?”
“That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and
opened a shop.”
“Is that yours, Harry?”
“I give it to you.”
“I could not use it. It is too true.”
“You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never
recognize a description.”
“They are practical.”
“They are more cunning than practical. When they
make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth,
and vice by hypocrisy.”
“Still, we have done great things.”

243
 “Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys.”
“We have carried their burden.”
“Only as far as the Stock Exchange.”
She shook her head. “I believe in the race,” she
cried.
“It represents the survival of the pushing.”
“It has development.”
“Decay fascinates me more.”
“What of art?” she asked.
“It is a malady.”
“Love?”
“An illusion.”
“Religion?”
“The fashionable substitute for belief.”
“You are a sceptic.”
“Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith.”
“What are you?”
“To define is to limit.”
“Give me a clue.”
“Threads snap. You would lose your way in the
labyrinth.”
“You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one else.”
“Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was
christened Prince Charming.”
“Ah! don’t remind me of that,” cried Dorian Gray.
“Our host is rather horrid this evening,” answered
the duchess, colouring. “I believe he thinks that
Monmouth married me on purely scientific principles
as the best specimen he could find of a modern butter-
fly.”
“Well, I hope he won’t stick pins into you, Duch-
ess,” laughed Dorian.
“Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when
she is annoyed with me.”

244
 “And what does she get annoyed with you about,
Duchess?”
“For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure
you. Usually because I come in at ten minutes to nine
and tell her that I must be dressed by half-past eight.”
“How unreasonable of her! You should give her
warning.”
“I daren’t, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me.
You remember the one I wore at Lady Hilstone’s
garden-party? You don’t, but it is nice of you to pre-
tend that you do. Well, she made if out of nothing. All
good hats are made out of nothing.”
“Like all good reputations, Gladys,” interrupted
Lord Henry. “Every effect that one produces gives one
an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
“Not with women,” said the duchess, shaking her
head; “and women rule the world. I assure you we
can’t bear mediocrities. We women, as some one says,
love with our ears, just as you men love with your
eyes, if you ever love at all.”
“It seems to me that we never do anything else,”
murmured Dorian.
“Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray,” an-
swered the duchess with mock sadness.
“My dear Gladys!” cried Lord Henry. “How can you
say that? Romance lives by repetition, and repetition
converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time
that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.
Difference of object does not alter singleness of pas-
sion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but
one great experience at best, and the secret of life is
to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
“Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?”
asked the duchess after a pause.

245
 “Especially when one has been wounded by it,”
answered Lord Henry.
The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray
with a curious expression in her eyes. “What do you
say to that, Mr. Gray?” she inquired.
Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his
head back and laughed. “I always agree with Harry,
Duchess.”
“Even when he is wrong?”
“Harry is never wrong, Duchess.”
“And does his philosophy make you happy?”
“I have never searched for happiness. Who wants
happiness? I have searched for pleasure.”
“And found it, Mr. Gray?”
“Often. Too often.”
The duchess sighed. “I am searching for peace,”
she said, “and if I don’t go and dress, I shall have none
this evening.”
“Let me get you some orchids, Duchess,” cried
Dorian, starting to his feet and walking down the
conservatory.
“You are flirting disgracefully with him,” said Lord
Henry to his cousin. “You had better take care. He is
very fascinating.”
“If he were not, there would be no battle.”
“Greek meets Greek, then?”
“I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a
woman.”
“They were defeated.”
“There are worse things than capture,” she an-
swered.
“You gallop with a loose rein.”
“Pace gives life,” was the riposte.
“I shall write it in my diary to-night.”

246
 “What?”
“That a burnt child loves the fire.”
“I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.”
“You use them for everything, except flight.”
“Courage has passed from men to women. It is a
new experience for us.”
“You have a rival.”
“Who?”
He laughed. “Lady Narborough,” he whispered.
“She perfectly adores him.”
“You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to
antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists.”
“Romanticists! You have all the methods of sci-
ence.”
“Men have educated us.”
“But not explained you.”
“Describe us as a sex,” was her challenge.
“Sphinxes without secrets.”
She looked at him, smiling. “How long Mr. Gray
is!” she said. “Let us go and help him. I have not yet
told him the colour of my frock.”
“Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys.”
“That would be a premature surrender.”
“Romantic art begins with its climax.”
“I must keep an opportunity for retreat.”
“In the Parthian manner?”
“They found safety in the desert. I could not do
that.”
“Women are not always allowed a choice,” he
answered, but hardly had he finished the sentence
before from the far end of the conservatory came a
stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy
fall. Everybody started up. The duchess stood motion-
less in horror. And with fear in his eyes, Lord Henry

247
rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian
Gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a
deathlike swoon.
He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room
and laid upon one of the sofas. After a short time, he
came to himself and looked round with a dazed ex-
pression.
“What has happened?” he asked. “Oh! I remember.
Am I safe here, Harry?” He began to tremble.
“My dear Dorian,” answered Lord Henry, “you
merely fainted. That was all. You must have overtired
yourself. You had better not come down to dinner. I
will take your place.”
“No, I will come down,” he said, struggling to his
feet. “I would rather come down. I must not be alone.”
He went to his room and dressed. There was a
wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at
table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through
him when he remembered that, pressed against the
window of the conservatory, like a white handker-
chief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching
him.

248
 XVIII

THE NEXT day he did not leave the house, and, indeed,
spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a
wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.
The consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked
down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did
but tremble in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves
that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to
him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets.
When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor’s face
peering through the mist- stained glass, and horror
seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart.
But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had
called vengeance out of the night and set the hideous
shapes of punishment before him. Actual life was
chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse
to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that
made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the
common world of fact the wicked were not punished,
nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the

249
strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers. Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-
beds, the gardeners would have reported it. Yes, it
had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane’s brother had not
come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship
to founder in some winter sea. From him, at any rate,
he was safe. Why, the man did not know who he was,
could not know who he was. The mask of youth had
saved him.
And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how
terrible it was to think that conscience could raise
such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form,
and make them move before one! What sort of life
would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime
were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him
from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at
the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!
As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale
with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become
suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of madness
he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory
of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail
came back to him with added horror. Out of the black
cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the
image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six
o’clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
break.
It was not till the third day that he ventured to go
out. There was something in the clear, pine-scented
air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him
back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it was
not merely the physical conditions of environment

250
that had caused the change. His own nature had re-
volted against the excess of anguish that had sought to
maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle
and finely wrought temperaments it is always so.
Their strong passions must either bruise or bend.
They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow
sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and
sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own
plenitude. Besides, he had convinced himself that he
had been the victim of a terror-stricken imagination,
and looked back now on his fears with something of
pity and not a little of contempt.
After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an
hour in the garden and then drove across the park to
join the shooting-party. The crisp frost lay like salt
upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue
metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown
lake.
At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of
Sir Geoffrey Clouston, the duchess’s brother, jerking
two spent cartridges out of his gun. He jumped from
the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare
home, made his way towards his guest through the
withered bracken and rough undergrowth.
“Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?” he asked.
“Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds
have gone to the open. I dare say it will be better after
lunch, when we get to new ground.”
Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aro-
matic air, the brown and red lights that glimmered in
the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out
from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns
that followed, fascinated him and filled him with a
sense of delightful freedom. He was dominated by the

251
carelessness of happiness, by the high indifference of
joy.
Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some
twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears
erect and long hinder limbs throwing it forward,
started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir
Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was
something in the animal’s grace of movement that
strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out at
once, “Don’t shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live.”
“What nonsense, Dorian!” laughed his companion,
and as the hare bounded into the thicket, he fired.
There were two cries heard, the cry of a hare in pain,
which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is
worse.
“Good heavens! I have hit a beater!” exclaimed Sir
Geoffrey. “What an ass the man was to get in front of
the guns! Stop shooting there!” he called out at the top
of his voice. “A man is hurt.”
The head-keeper came running up with a stick in
his hand.
“Where, sir? Where is he?” he shouted. At the
same time, the firing ceased along the line.
“Here,” answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying
towards the thicket. “Why on earth don’t you keep
your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the day.”
Dorian watched them as they plunged into the
alder-clump, brushing the lithe swinging branches
aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging a
body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in
horror. It seemed to him that misfortune followed
wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the
man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of
the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become

252
suddenly alive with faces. There was the trampling of
myriad feet and the low buzz of voices. A great copper-
breasted pheasant came beating through the boughs
overhead.
After a few moments—that were to him, in his
perturbed state, like endless hours of pain—he felt a
hand laid on his shoulder. He started and looked
round.
“Dorian,” said Lord Henry, “I had better tell them
that the shooting is stopped for to-day. It would not
look well to go on.”
“I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry,” he an-
swered bitterly. “The whole thing is hideous and
cruel. Is the man ... ?”
He could not finish the sentence.
“I am afraid so,” rejoined Lord Henry. “He got the
whole charge of shot in his chest. He must have died
almost instantaneously. Come; let us go home.”
They walked side by side in the direction of the
avenue for nearly fifty yards without speaking. Then
Dorian looked at Lord Henry and said, with a heavy
sigh, “It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen.”
“What is?” asked Lord Henry. “Oh! this accident, I
suppose. My dear fellow, it can’t be helped. It was the
man’s own fault. Why did he get in front of the guns?
Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather awkward for
Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters.
It makes people think that one is a wild shot. And
Geoffrey is not; he shoots very straight. But there is
no use talking about the matter.”
Dorian shook his head. “It is a bad omen, Harry. I
feel as if something horrible were going to happen to
some of us. To myself, perhaps,” he added, passing his
hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.

253
 The elder man laughed. “The only horrible thing in
the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for
which there is no forgiveness. But we are not likely to
suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering
about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the
subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such
thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds.
She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides, what on
earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have every-
thing in the world that a man can want. There is no
one who would not be delighted to change places with
you.”
“There is no one with whom I would not change
places, Harry. Don’t laugh like that. I am telling you
the truth. The wretched peasant who has just died is
better off than I am. I have no terror of death. It is the
coming of death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings
seem to wheel in the leaden air around me. Good
heavens! don’t you see a man moving behind the trees
there, watching me, waiting for me?”
Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the
trembling gloved hand was pointing. “Yes,” he said,
smiling, “I see the gardener waiting for you. I suppose
he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on
the table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my
dear fellow! You must come and see my doctor, when
we get back to town.”
Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gar-
dener approaching. The man touched his hat, glanced
for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating manner,
and then produced a letter, which he handed to his
master. “Her Grace told me to wait for an answer,” he
murmured.

254
 Dorian put the letter into his pocket. “Tell her
Grace that I am coming in,” he said, coldly. The man
turned round and went rapidly in the direction of the
house.
“How fond women are of doing dangerous things!”
laughed Lord Henry. “It is one of the qualities in them
that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in
the world as long as other people are looking on.”
“How fond you are of saying dangerous things,
Harry! In the present instance, you are quite astray. I
like the duchess very much, but I don’t love her.”
“And the duchess loves you very much, but she
likes you less, so you are excellently matched.”
“You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never
any basis for scandal.”
“The basis of every scandal is an immoral cer-
tainty,” said Lord Henry, lighting a cigarette.
“You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake
of an epigram.”
“The world goes to the altar of its own accord,” was
the answer.
“I wish I could love,” cried Dorian Gray with a
deep note of pathos in his voice. “But I seem to have
lost the passion and forgotten the desire. I am too
much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away,
to forget. It was silly of me to come down here at all. I
think I shall send a wire to Harvey to have the yacht
got ready. On a yacht one is safe.”
“Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble.
Why not tell me what it is? You know I would help
you.”
“I can’t tell you, Harry,” he answered sadly. “And I
dare say it is only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate

255
accident has upset me. I have a horrible presentiment
that something of the kind may happen to me.”
“What nonsense!”
“I hope it is, but I can’t help feeling it. Ah! here is
the duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailor-made
gown. You see we have come back, Duchess.”
“I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray,” she answered.
“Poor Geoffrey is terribly upset. And it seems that you
asked him not to shoot the hare. How curious!”
“Yes, it was very curious. I don’t know what made
me say it. Some whim, I suppose. It looked the loveli-
est of little live things. But I am sorry they told you
about the man. It is a hideous subject.”
“It is an annoying subject,” broke in Lord Henry.
“It has no psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey
had done the thing on purpose, how interesting he
would be! I should like to know some one who had
committed a real murder.”
“How horrid of you, Harry!” cried the duchess.
“Isn’t it, Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is
going to faint.”
Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled.
“It is nothing, Duchess,” he murmured; “my nerves are
dreadfully out of order. That is all. I am afraid I walked
too far this morning. I didn’t hear what Harry said.
Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I
think I must go and lie down. You will excuse me,
won’t you?”
They had reached the great flight of steps that led
from the conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass
door closed behind Dorian, Lord Henry turned and
looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes. “Are
you very much in love with him?” he asked.

256
 She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing
at the landscape. “I wish I knew,” she said at last.
He shook his head. “Knowledge would be fatal. It
is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes
things wonderful.”
“One may lose one’s way.”
“All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.”
“What is that?”
“Disillusion.”
“It was my debut in life,” she sighed.
“It came to you crowned.”
“I am tired of strawberry leaves.”
“They become you.”
“Only in public.”
“You would miss them,” said Lord Henry.
“I will not part with a petal.”
“Monmouth has ears.”
“Old age is dull of hearing.”
“Has he never been jealous?”
“I wish he had been.”
He glanced about as if in search of something.
“What are you looking for?” she inquired.
“The button from your foil,” he answered. “You
have dropped it.”
She laughed. “I have still the mask.”
“It makes your eyes lovelier,” was his reply.
She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white
seeds in a scarlet fruit.
Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying
on a sofa, with terror in every tingling fibre of his
body. Life had suddenly become too hideous a burden
for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky
beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had
seemed to him to pre-figure death for himself also. He

257
had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a
chance mood of cynical jesting.
At five o’clock he rang his bell for his servant and
gave him orders to pack his things for the night-ex-
press to town, and to have the brougham at the door
by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep an-
other night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place.
Death walked there in the sunlight. The grass of the
forest had been spotted with blood.
Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him
that he was going up to town to consult his doctor and
asking him to entertain his guests in his absence. As
he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to
the door, and his valet informed him that the head-
keeper wished to see him. He frowned and bit his lip.
“Send him in,” he muttered, after some moments’
hesitation.
As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his
chequebook out of a drawer and spread it out before
him.
“I suppose you have come about the unfortunate
accident of this morning, Thornton?” he said, taking
up a pen.
“Yes, sir,” answered the gamekeeper.
“Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people
dependent on him?” asked Dorian, looking bored. “If
so, I should not like them to be left in want, and will
send them any sum of money you may think neces-
sary.”
“We don’t know who he is, sir. That is what I took
the liberty of coming to you about.”
“Don’t know who he is?” said Dorian, listlessly.
“What do you mean? Wasn’t he one of your men?”

258
 “No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor,
sir.”
The pen dropped from Dorian Gray’s hand, and he
felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. “A
sailor?” he cried out. “Did you say a sailor?”
“Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor;
tattooed on both arms, and that kind of thing.”
“Was there anything found on him?” said Dorian,
leaning forward and looking at the man with startled
eyes. “Anything that would tell his name?”
“Some money, sir—not much, and a six-shooter.
There was no name of any kind. A decent-looking man,
sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we think.”
Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope flut-
tered past him. He clutched at it madly. “Where is the
body?” he exclaimed. “Quick! I must see it at once.”
“It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir.
The folk don’t like to have that sort of thing in their
houses. They say a corpse brings bad luck.”
“The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me.
Tell one of the grooms to bring my horse round. No.
Never mind. I’ll go to the stables myself. It will save
time.”
In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was
galloping down the long avenue as hard as he could
go. The trees seemed to sweep past him in spectral
procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves
across his path. Once the mare swerved at a white
gate-post and nearly threw him. He lashed her across
the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air like an
arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.
At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were
loitering in the yard. He leaped from the saddle and
threw the reins to one of them. In the farthest stable a

259
light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him
that the body was there, and he hurried to the door
and put his hand upon the latch.
There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was
on the brink of a discovery that would either make or
mar his life. Then he thrust the door open and en-
tered.
On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying
the dead body of a man dressed in a coarse shirt and a
pair of blue trousers. A spotted handkerchief had been
placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a bottle,
sputtered beside it.
Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not
be the hand to take the handkerchief away, and called
out to one of the farm-servants to come to him.
“Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it,” he
said, clutching at the door-post for support.
When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped
forward. A cry of joy broke from his lips. The man who
had been shot in the thicket was James Vane.
He stood there for some minutes looking at the
dead body. As he rode home, his eyes were full of
tears, for he knew he was safe.

260
 XIX

THERE is no use your telling me that you are going to

be good,” cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers
into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. “You are
quite perfect. Pray, don’t change.”
Dorian Gray shook his head. “No, Harry, I have
done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not
going to do any more. I began my good actions yester-
day.”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn
by myself.”
“My dear boy,” said Lord Henry, smiling, “anybody
can be good in the country. There are no temptations
there. That is the reason why people who live out of
town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not
by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are
only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by
being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country
people have no opportunity of being either, so they
stagnate.”
 “Culture and corruption,” echoed Dorian. “I have
known something of both. It seems terrible to me now
that they should ever be found together. For I have a
new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have
altered.”
“You have not yet told me what your good action
was. Or did you say you had done more than one?”
asked his companion as he spilled into his plate a
little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and,
through a perforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed
white sugar upon them.
“I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell
to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but
you understand what I mean. She was quite beautiful
and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl,
don’t you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was
not one of our own class, of course. She was simply a
girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure
that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that
we have been having, I used to run down and see her
two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a
little orchard. The apple- blossoms kept tumbling
down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to
have gone away together this morning at dawn. Sud-
denly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had
found her.”
“I should think the novelty of the emotion must
have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” inter-
rupted Lord Henry. “But I can finish your idyll for
you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart.
That was the beginning of your reformation.”
“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t say these
dreadful things. Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course,

262
she cried and all that. But there is no disgrace upon
her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint
and marigold.”
“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord
Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. “My
dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods.
Do you think this girl will ever be really content now
with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be
married some day to a rough carter or a grinning
ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and
loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and
she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I
cannot say that I think much of your great renuncia-
tion. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do
you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present
moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-
lilies round her, like Ophelia?”
“I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at everything,
and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am
sorry I told you now. I don’t care what you say to me. I
know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I
rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face
at the window, like a spray of jasmine. Don’t let us
talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me
that the first good action I have done for years, the
first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is
really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I am going to
be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is
going on in town? I have not been to the club for days.”
“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s disap-
pearance.”
“I should have thought they had got tired of that by
this time,” said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine
and frowning slightly.

263
 “My dear boy, they have only been talking about it
for six weeks, and the British public are really not
equal to the mental strain of having more than one
topic every three months. They have been very fortu-
nate lately, however. They have had my own divorce-
case and Alan Campbell’s suicide. Now they have got
the mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland
Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who
left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of
November was poor Basil, and the French police
declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I sup-
pose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has
been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but
every one who disappears is said to be seen at San
Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all
the attractions of the next world.”
“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked
Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light and
wondering how it was that he could discuss the mat-
ter so calmly.
“I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to
hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I
don’t want to think about him. Death is the only thing
that ever terrifies me. I hate it.”
“Why?” said the younger man wearily.
“Because,” said Lord Henry, passing beneath his
nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, “one
can survive everything nowadays except that. Death
and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth
century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our
coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin
to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played
Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of
her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course,

264
married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then
one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Per-
haps one regrets them the most. They are such an
essential part of one’s personality.”
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and
passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and
let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory
of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he
stopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, “Harry,
did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?”
Lord Henry yawned. “Basil was very popular, and
always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have
been murdered? He was not clever enough to have
enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius for
painting. But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet
be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He
only interested me once, and that was when he told
me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you
and that you were the dominant motive of his art.”
“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian with a note
of sadness in his voice. “But don’t people say that he
was murdered?”
“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me
to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful places
in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have
gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief
defect.”
“What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had
murdered Basil?” said the younger man. He watched
him intently after he had spoken.
“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing
for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is
vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in you,
Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your

265
vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime
belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame
them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime
was to them what art is to us, simply a method of
procuring extraordinary sensations.”
“A method of procuring sensations? Do you think,
then, that a man who has once committed a murder
could possibly do the same crime again? Don’t tell me
that.”
“Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too
often,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “That is one of the
most important secrets of life. I should fancy, how-
ever, that murder is always a mistake. One should
never do anything that one cannot talk about after
dinner. But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could
believe that he had come to such a really romantic end
as you suggest, but I can’t. I dare say he fell into the
Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed
up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I
see him lying now on his back under those dull-green
waters, with the heavy barges floating over him and
long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don’t
think he would have done much more good work.
During the last ten years his painting had gone off
very much.”
Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled
across the room and began to stroke the head of a
curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged bird with
pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a
bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it
dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black,
glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and for-
wards.

266
 “Yes,” he continued, turning round and taking his
handkerchief out of his pocket; “his painting had quite
gone off. It seemed to me to have lost something. It
had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great
friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it
separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never
forgave you. It’s a habit bores have. By the way, what
has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I
don’t think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh!
I remember your telling me years ago that you had
sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or
stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity!
it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to
buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil’s best
period. Since then, his work was that curious mixture
of bad painting and good intentions that always en-
titles a man to be called a representative British
artist. Did you advertise for it? You should.”
“I forget,” said Dorian. “I suppose I did. But I never
really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the
thing is hateful to me. Why do you talk of it? It used to
remind me of those curious lines in some play—Ham-
let, I think—how do they run?—
Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart.
Yes: that is what it was like.”
Lord Henry laughed. “If a man treats life artisti-
cally, his brain is his heart,” he answered, sinking into
an arm-chair.
Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft
chords on the piano. “‘Like the painting of a sorrow,’“
he repeated, “‘a face without a heart.’“
The elder man lay back and looked at him with
half-closed eyes. “By the way, Dorian,” he said after a

267
pause, “‘what does it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose—how does the quotation run?— his
own soul’?”
The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and
stared at his friend. “Why do you ask me that, Harry?”
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Henry, elevating his
eyebrows in surprise, “I asked you because I thought
you might be able to give me an answer. That is all. I
was going through the park last Sunday, and close by
the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-
looking people listening to some vulgar street- preacher.
As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that ques-
tion to his audience. It struck me as being rather
dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that
kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mack-
intosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof
of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung
into the air by shrill hysterical lips—it was really very
good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling
the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not.
I am afraid, however, he would not have understood
me.”
“Don’t, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can
be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be
poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one
of us. I know it.”
“Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?”
“Quite sure.”
“Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one
feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is
the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. How
grave you are! Don’t be so serious. What have you or I
to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have
given up our belief in the soul. Play me something.

268
Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me,
in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You
must have some secret. I am only ten years older than
you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You
are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked
more charming than you do to-night. You remind me
of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky,
very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have
changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you
would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I
would do anything in the world, except take exercise,
get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is noth-
ing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.
The only people to whose opinions I listen now with
any respect are people much younger than myself.
They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them
her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict
the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their
opinion on something that happened yesterday, they
solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when
people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and
knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you
are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca,
with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt
spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously
romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art
left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I want
music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young
Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have
sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know noth-
ing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but
that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own
sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an
exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of

269
everything. You have crushed the grapes against your
palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has
all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has
not marred you. You are still the same.”
“I am not the same, Harry.”
“Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of
your life will be. Don’t spoil it by renunciations. At
present you are a perfect type. Don’t make yourself
incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian,
don’t deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or
intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and
slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and
passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe
and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour
in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that
you had once loved and that brings subtle memories
with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had
come across again, a cadence from a piece of music
that you had ceased to play— I tell you, Dorian, that it
is on things like these that our lives depend. Brown-
ing writes about that somewhere; but our own senses
will imagine them for us. There are moments when
the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me,
and I have to live the strangest month of my life over
again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian.
The world has cried out against us both, but it has
always worshipped you. It always will worship you.
You are the type of what the age is searching for, and
what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you
have never done anything, never carved a statue, or
painted a picture, or produced anything outside of
yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself
to music. Your days are your sonnets.”

270
 Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand
through his hair. “Yes, life has been exquisite,” he
murmured, “but I am not going to have the same life,
Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things
to me. You don’t know everything about me. I think
that if you did, even you would turn from me. You
laugh. Don’t laugh.”
“Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back
and give me the nocturne over again. Look at that
great, honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky
air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you
play she will come closer to the earth. You won’t? Let
us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening,
and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at
White’s who wants immensely to know you—young
Lord Poole, Bournemouth’s eldest son. He has already
copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce
him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds
me of you.”
“I hope not,” said Dorian with a sad look in his
eyes. “But I am tired to-night, Harry. I shan’t go to the
club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early.”
“Do stay. You have never played so well as to-
night. There was something in your touch that was
wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
heard from it before.”
“It is because I am going to be good,” he answered,
smiling. “I am a little changed already.”
“You cannot change to me, Dorian,” said Lord
Henry. “You and I will always be friends.”
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should
not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will
never lend that book to any one. It does harm.”

271
 “My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.
You will soon be going about like the converted, and
the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of
which you have grown tired. You are much too de-
lightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are
what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being
poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art
has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire
to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
calls immoral are books that show the world its own
shame. That is all. But we won’t discuss literature.
Come round to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven.
We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming
woman, and wants to consult you about some tapes-
tries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or
shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says she
never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys?
I thought you would be. Her clever tongue gets on
one’s nerves. Well, in any case, be here at eleven.”
“Must I really come, Harry?”
“Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don’t
think there have been such lilacs since the year I met
you.”
“Very well. I shall be here at eleven,” said Dorian.
“Good night, Harry.” As he reached the door, he hesi-
tated for a moment, as if he had something more to
say. Then he sighed and went out.

272
 XX

IT WAS a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat

over his arm and did not even put his silk scarf round
his throat. As he strolled home, smoking his cigarette,
two young men in evening dress passed him. He heard
one of them whisper to the other, “That is Dorian
Gray.” He remembered how pleased he used to be
when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about.
He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the
charm of the little village where he had been so often
lately was that no one knew who he was. He had often
told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he
was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her
once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him
and answered that wicked people were always very
old and very ugly. What a laugh she had!—just like a
thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her
cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing,
but she had everything that he had lost.
When he reached home, he found his servant
waiting up for him. He sent him to bed, and threw
himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to
think over some of the things that Lord Henry had
said to him.
Was it really true that one could never change? He
felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his
boyhood— his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had
once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself,
filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his
fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and
had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of
the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the
fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought
to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no
hope for him?
Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and
passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear
the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied
splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been
due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had
brought its sure swift penalty along with it. There was
purification in punishment. Not “Forgive us our sins”
but “Smite us for our iniquities” should be the prayer
of man to a most just God.
The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had
given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on
the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round
it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night
of horror when be had first noted the change in the
fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked
into its polished shield. Once, some one who had
terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter,
ending with these idolatrous words: “The world is
changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The
curves of your lips rewrite history.” The phrases came

274
back to his memory, and he repeated them over and
over to himself. Then he loathed his own beauty, and
flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver
splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had
ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had
prayed for. But for those two things, his life might
have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him
but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth
at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow
moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its
livery? Youth had spoiled him.
It was better not to think of the past. Nothing
could alter that. It was of himself, and of his own
future, that he had to think. James Vane was hidden
in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell
had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had
not revealed the secret that he had been forced to
know. The excitement, such as it was, over Basil
Hallward’s disappearance would soon pass away. It
was already waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor,
indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed
most upon his mind. It was the living death of his own
soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait
that had marred his life. He could not forgive him
that. It was the portrait that had done everything.
Basil had said things to him that were unbearable,
and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder
had been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan
Campbell, his suicide had been his own act. He had
chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.
A new life! That was what he wanted. That was
what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it al-
ready. He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate.

275
He would never again tempt innocence. He would be
good.
As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to won-
der if the portrait in the locked room had changed.
Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been?
Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to
expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps
the signs of evil had already gone away. He would go
and look.
He took the lamp from the table and crept up-
stairs. As he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted
across his strangely young-looking face and lingered
for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good,
and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would
no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had
been lifted from him already.
He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as
was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from
the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke from
him. He could see no change, save that in the eyes
there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the
curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still
loathsome—more loathsome, if possible, than before—
and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed
brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he
trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made
him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new
sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mock-
ing laugh? Or that passion to act a part that some-
times makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?
Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain
larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a
horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. There was
blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had

276
dripped—blood even on the hand that had not held
the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to con-
fess? To give himself up and be put to death? He
laughed. He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides,
even if he did confess, who would believe him? There
was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Every-
thing belonging to him had been destroyed. He him-
self had burned what had been below-stairs. The
world would simply say that he was mad. They would
shut him up if he persisted in his story... Yet it was
his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to
make public atonement. There was a God who called
upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heav-
en. Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he
had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoul-
ders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little
to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was
an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was
looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there
been nothing more in his renunciation than that?
There had been something more. At least he thought
so. But who could tell?... No. There had been nothing
more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy
he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity’s
sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized
that now.
But this murder—was it to dog him all his life?
Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he
really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of
evidence left against him. The picture itself— that
was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it
so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it
changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such
pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he

277
had been away, he had been filled with terror lest
other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melan-
choly across his passions. Its mere memory had marred
many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to
him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed
Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till
there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and
glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill
the painter’s work, and all that that meant. It would
kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be
free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and with-
out its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He
seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so
horrible in its agony that the frightened servants
woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen,
who were passing in the square below, stopped and
looked up at the great house. They walked on till they
met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang
the bell several times, but there was no answer. Ex-
cept for a light in one of the top windows, the house
was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in
an adjoining portico and watched.
“Whose house is that, Constable?” asked the elder
of the two gentlemen.
“Mr. Dorian Gray’s, sir,” answered the policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked away,
and sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton’s
uncle.
Inside, in the servants’ part of the house, the half-
clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each
other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her
hands. Francis was as pale as death.

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 After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coach-
man and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They
knocked, but there was no reply. They called out.
Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to
force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down
on to the balcony. The windows yielded easily—their
bolts were old.
When they entered, they found hanging upon the
wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had
last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth
and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was with-
ered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till
they had examined the rings that they recognized who
it was.

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