The Picture of Dorian Gray...............................................................................................................................1

Oscar Wilde.............................................................................................................................................1

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

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the

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 subjectmatter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect

Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments

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

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

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making

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

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom,

innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honeysweet and

honeycoloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous 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 tussoresilk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary

Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jadefaced painters of Tokyo 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

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

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the fulllength 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

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

"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

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke

that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opiumtainted 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

"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."

"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 coalblack hair, and this young Adonis,

who looks as if he was made out of ivory and roseleaves. 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 destroys 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 always looks absolutely

delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really

fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be

always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want

something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."

"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly

well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There

is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history

the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the

best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they

are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should liveundisturbed, 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 aremy art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good

"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

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

a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life

mysterious or 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 awfully

"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 meetwe do meet occasionally,

when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke'swe tell each other the most absurd stories with the

most serious faces. My wife is very good at itmuch 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

"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that

led into the garden. "I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed

of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong

"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know," cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the

two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood

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

After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be going, Basil," he murmured, "and

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

"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."

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

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

Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pinkpetalled daisy from the grass and examined it. "I am

quite sure I shall understand it," he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, whitefeathered 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 lilacblooms, 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

dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart

"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

stockbroker, 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 halfway round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt

that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with

some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole

nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know

yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always

been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Thenbut 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 cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape."

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the tradename of the firm. That

"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either. However, whatever was my motiveand it

may have been pride, for I used to be very proudI 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.

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

"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters, and elderly

ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once

before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at

the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenthcentury standard

of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely

stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady

Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would

have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too,

"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his companion. "I know she goes in

for giving a rapid precis of all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and redfaced 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."

"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant. How could I admire

"Oh, something like, 'Charming boypoor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he

doesafraid he doesn't do anythingoh, yes, plays the pianoor is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither

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

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 difference between people. I choose my friends for their good

looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, 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."

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

"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the

fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with the

rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper orders. The masses feel that

drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes

an ass of himself, he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the divorce court, their

indignation was quite magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat live correctly."

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

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patentleather boot with a tasselled

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 Englishmanalways a rash thing to dohe never dreams of considering 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 politics, 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.

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

"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 oilpainting 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

wayI wonder will you understand me?his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art,

an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a

way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of thought'who is it who says that? I forget;

but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this ladfor he seems to me little

more than a lad, though he is really over twenty his merely visible presenceah! I wonder can you realize

all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it

all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and

body how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is

vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that

landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part with? It is one

of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while 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

Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some time he came back. "Harry,"

he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.

He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said,

of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

"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, Harrytoo much of myself!"

"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a

"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his

own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.

We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the

"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell

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,

"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry. "Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will.

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the

fact that we all take such pains to overeducate 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 wellinformed manthat is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly

wellinformed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bricabrac 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

proach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he

calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you have

told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind

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

"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 selfconscious 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 cloudshadows

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 friendsthose were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent

amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to

his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would

have been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodginghouses. Each class would have

preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The

rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was

charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to

"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 goodlooking. Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good

women have not. She said that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a

creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known

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

The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. "Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be

Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he said. "He has a simple and a beautiful

nature. Your aunt was quite right in what 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, smiling, and taking Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into

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

"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a lifesized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round

on the musicstool 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

"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have just been telling him what a capital

"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

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

"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you. And I don't think it really matters

about your not being there. The audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the

"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

"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Grayfar too charming." And Lord Henry flung

The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. He was looking worried, and

when he heard Lord Henry's last remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry, I

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

"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

"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,

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. Goodbye, 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

"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

"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

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

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoralimmoral from the scientific

"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 selfdevelopment. To realize one's nature perfectlythat is what each of us is here for.

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one

owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own

souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of

society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religionthese are the two

"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, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was

always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man were to live

out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to

every dreamI 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 selfdenial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we

strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action

is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for

the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and

unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the

brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rosered

youth and your rosewhite boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have

fined you with terror, daydreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with

"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 himwords 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

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 fierycoloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not

With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say

nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced,

and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that

he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He

had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!

Hallward painted away with that 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

"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, 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 halfparted 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

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

"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,

"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I have got to

work up this background, so I will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better

form for painting than I am today. 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 lilacblossoms,

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

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

"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

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, olivecoloured 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, 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

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

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

"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your

forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it

terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? . . . You have a wonderfully

beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius is higher, indeed, than

genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the

reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of

sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile. . .

. People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as

thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by

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 hollowcheeked, and dulleyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you

have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,

or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false

ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always

searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism that is what our century wants.

You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs

to you for a season. . . . The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are,

of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt 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 lastsuch a little time. The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum

will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after

year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy

that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our 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

Dorian Gray listened, openeyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A

furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe

of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when

things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find

expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.

After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The

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

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

They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two greenandwhite butterflies fluttered past them,

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

spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference

between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's arm. "In that case, let our friendship

be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his

Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker armchair 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 lefthand corner of the

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

"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr.

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

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he

drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had

recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that

Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came

on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be

merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them.

They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth,

his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow

of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when

his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and

deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to

make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate 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

"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.

"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 thatfor thatI would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole

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

Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You like your art better than your friends.

The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed

"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

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?

"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me.

Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives

something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I

am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some daymock 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

"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

Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tearstained eyes, looked at him

as he walked over to the deal paintingtable 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 paletteknife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He

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

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

"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you

like with yourself." And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of course,

"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

"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!" cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow

"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't really object to being reminded that

There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden teatray 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

globeshaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The

two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers.

"Let us go to the theatre tonight," said Lord Henry. "There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have

promised to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or

that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather

"It is such a bore putting on one's dressclothes," muttered Hallward. "And, when one has them on, they are

"Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre,

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

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

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

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

"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

"Don't go to the theatre tonight, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and dine with me."

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

The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the teatable with an amused

"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. Goodbye, Harry. Goodbye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.

"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. Goodbye, 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

At halfpast 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 roughmannered 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 entitled 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 secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the

time, and on succeeding 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

When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shootingcoat, smoking a cheroot

and grumbling over The Times. "Well, Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I

"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

"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole 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 with

Dartmoor's tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. What I want is information: not useful

"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? Examinations, 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

subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it

happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the marriage. There was an

ugly story about it. They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his

soninlaw in publicpaid 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 goodlooking chap."

"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

"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth induced her to

behave as she did, I never could understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad

after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were. The men were a poor lot, but, egad!

the women were wonderful. 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

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

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

Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are

"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that porkpacking is the most lucrative profession in

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American 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

"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry.

"Goodbye, Uncle George. I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the

information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old

"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

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 frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades

staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite

violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow. . . . There was something terribly enthralling in the

exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it

tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of

passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange

perfume: there was a real joy in thatperhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and

vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.... He was a

marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in Basil's studio, or could be

fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty

such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do with him. He could be made a

Titan or a toy. 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 herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because

in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful

things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of

symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose

shadow they made real: how strange it all was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato,

that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured

marbles of a sonnetsequence? 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 himhad already, indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his

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 diningroom.

He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was there.

Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek. Opposite was

the Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable goodnature 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 wellknown 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 hymnbook.

Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middleaged 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

"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the

"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American drygoods store," said Sir Thomas

"Drygoods! What are American drygoods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and

"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 exhausted his listeners. The duchess sighed and exercised her

privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our

"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr. Erskine; "I myself would say that it had

"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

"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe

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 provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely

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

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

Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans."

"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is

"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is

the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can

"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can make out what you are talking

about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give

up the East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his playing."

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

"I can sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot

sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, 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

"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

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 answered. "I am

quite content with philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an

overexpenditure 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."

Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If

"You are really very comforting," warbled the duchess. "I have always felt rather guilty when I came to see

your dear aunt, for I take no interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look her in the face

"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah!

He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days,

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

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

"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets 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."

He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured

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 pleasure, wearing, one

might fancy, her winestained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and

mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet

trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grapejuice 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 fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to

lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of

themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one

under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess

that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I

have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is

going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far

too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Goodbye, 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

"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you come"; and she swept out of the

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

"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

"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

"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if anything happens to our good duchess,

we shall all look on you as being primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The

generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are tired of London, come down to

Treadley and expound to me your philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate

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

"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman with a courteous bow. "And now I must bid goodbye to

your excellent aunt. I am due at the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there."

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

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

"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

"Ah! I have talked quite enough for today," said Lord Henry, smiling. "All I want now is to look at life. You

One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious armchair, in the little library of Lord

Henry's house in Mayfair. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of

olivestained oak, its creamcoloured frieze and ceiling of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet

strewn with silk, longfringed 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 parrottulips were

ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricotcoloured

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 bookcases. The formal

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

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

"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me introduce myself. I know you quite

"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 forgetmenot eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses

always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with

somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look

picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for

"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.

The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long

Dorian smiled and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so, Lady Henry. I never talk during musicat

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 become foreigners after a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a

compliment to art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to any of my parties, have

you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford orchids, but I share no expense in foreigners. They make one's

rooms look so picturesque. But here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask you something I

forget what it wasand I found Mr. Gray here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have

quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant. I am so glad I've

"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his dark, crescentshaped eyebrows and

looking at them both with an amused smile. "So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old

brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays people know the price of everything

"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly sudden

laugh. "I have promised to drive with the duchess. Goodbye, Mr. Gray. Goodbye, Harry. You are dining

"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

"Never marry a woman with strawcoloured hair, Dorian," he said after a few puffs.

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

"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

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they

say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of

"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, ultimately, 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 satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five women in

London worth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into decent society. However, tell me about your

"I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it. After all, it never would have happened if I

had not met you. You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I met you,

something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look

at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. Some of them

fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for

sensations. . . . Well, one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to go out in search of some adventure. I

felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid

sins, as you once phrased 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 wonderful evening when

we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. I don't know what I expected,

but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless

squares. About halfpast eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gasjets and gaudy

playbills. 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 stagebox. 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'tI should have missed the greatest romance

"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of

your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in

love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the

idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the

"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their

loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to

the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellectsimply 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

"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a vulgar dropscene 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 thirdrate weddingcake. 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 dresscircle. Women

went about with oranges and gingerbeer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on."

"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what on earth I should do when I caught

"I should think The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent. Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe.

The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good

"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 dropscene 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 beerbarrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the lowcomedian, 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 countrybooth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly

seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of darkbrown

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 voiceI never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes that

seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant

hautboy. In the gardenscene 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 mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at teaparties 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

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

"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

"People like youthe wilful sunbeams of lifedon'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 boythankswhat are

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 touching, Dorian," said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos

in his voice. "But why should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is in

love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the

"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the horrid old Jew came round to the box after

the performance was over and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was furious

with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a

marble tomb in Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that I

"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed

terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him,

"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other hand, judging from their appearance, most

"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 bankruptcies

were entirely due to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distinction."

"It was a distinction, my dear Doriana 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

"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 meat least I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed

determined to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her, wasn't it?"

"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 assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She said

quite simply to me, 'You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince Charming.'"

"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

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

"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came from? From her little head to her little

feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every night she is

"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I thought you must have some curious

"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have been to the opera with you several

"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

He shook his head. "Tonight she is Imogen," he answered, "and tomorrow night she will be Juliet."

"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. You

laugh, but I tell you she has genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the secrets of

life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of

the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into

consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He was walking up and

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

Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he was now from the shy 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 hidingplace had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet it on the way.

"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 yearsat 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

"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate artinstinct, in her, but she has personality also; and you

have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age."

"Not eight, Harry, please. Halfpast six. We must be there before the curtain rises. You must see her in the

"Halfpast six! What an hour! It will be like having a meattea, 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 portrait 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

"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,

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has

nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever

known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and

consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most

unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more

picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of secondrate sonnets makes a man quite

irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a

large, goldtopped bottle that stood on the table. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is

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 subjectmatter of that science

had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by

vivisecting others. Human lifethat appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there

was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure,

one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain

and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so

subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to

pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How

wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional

coloured life of the intellectto observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were

in unison, and at what point they were at discordthere was a delight in that! What matter what the cost

He was consciousand the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyesthat 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 complex 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 selfconscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful

face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to

end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one,

but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.

Soul and body, body and soulhow mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body

had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say

where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions

of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the

soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The

separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.

He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of

life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a

rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of

character, had praised it as 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

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 the workings of the imagination, changed into

something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more

dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that 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 fierycoloured life and wondered how

When he arrived home, about halfpast 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.

Mother, Mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in the lap of the faded, tiredlooking

woman who, with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one armchair that their dingy

sittingroom contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you must be happy, too!"

Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuthwhitened 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

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

"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

"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

"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrotphrase flung in answer. The waving of crooked, falsejewelled

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

Thinlipped 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

Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. This young man might be rich. If so,

marriage should be thought of. Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows

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 yetwhy, I cannot tellthough 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

The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with

a spasm of pain. Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "Forgive me, Mother. I

know it pains you to talk about our father. But it only pains you because you loved him so much. Don't look

so sad. I am as happy today 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 consideration.

Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical gestures that so often become a mode of

second nature to a stageplayer, 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 thickset of figure, and his hands and feet were large and

somewhat clumsy in movement. He was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly have guessed the

close relationship that existed 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 goodnatured grumble.

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

James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "I want you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I

don't suppose I shall ever see this horrid London again. I am sure I don't want to."

"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a

sigh, and beginning to patch it. She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would have

"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 societyso when you have made your

"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that. I should like to make some money to

"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 goodbye to some of your friends to Tom Hardy, who gave

you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is very sweet of you to let me

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,

"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 suspected 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 seafaring life," she said.

"You must remember that it is your own choice. You might have entered a solicitor's office. Solicitors are a

"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."

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

"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the profession we are accustomed to receive

a great deal of most gratifying attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was when

acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at present whether her attachment is serious or not.

But there is no doubt that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most polite to me.

Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely."

"No," answered his mother with a placid expression in her face. "He has not yet revealed his real name. I

"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special care. Of course, if this gentleman is

wealthy, there is no reason why she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the

aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant 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 windowpane with his coarse fingers. He had

"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes. Goodbye, Mother; I will have my

dinner at five o'clock. Everything is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."

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

"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, windblown sunlight and strolled down the dreary Euston Road. The

passersby glanced in wonder at the sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, illfitting clothes, was in the company

of such a graceful, refinedlooking girl. He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of some stranger. He had that dislike of

being stared at, which comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, however, was

quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. She was

thinking of Prince Charming, and, that she might think of him all the more, she did not talk of him, but

prattled on about the ship in which Jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the

wonderful heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, redshirted bushrangers. For he was not to

remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or whatever he was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor's existence was dreadful.

Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse, humpbacked waves 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 goodbye to the captain, and go off at once to the goldfields. Before a week was

over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and

bring it down to the coast in a 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 goldfields at all.

They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in barrooms, and used bad

language. He was to be a nice sheepfarmer, and one evening, as he was riding home, he was to see the

beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course, she

would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get married, and come home, and live in an

immense house in London. Yes, there were delightful things in store for him. But he must be very good, and

not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. She was only a year older than he was, but she knew so

much more of life. He must be sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his prayers each night

before he went to sleep. God was very good, and would watch over him. She would pray for him, too, and in

The lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. He was heartsick 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 raceinstinct 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

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 stagedoor, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had

been the lash of a huntingcrop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedgelike furrow, and with a

"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I am making the most delightful plans

"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."

"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

himwhen 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 tonight. 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;

tonight he will announce me as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, Prince Charming, my

wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor beside him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty

creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in

winter, and it is summer now; springtime for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."

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 different now. You are going to a new world, and I have found

They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulipbeds across the road flamed like throbbing rings

of fire. A white dust tremulous cloud of orrisroot it seemedhung in the panting air. The brightly

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 communicate 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

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 fourinhand came between, and when it had

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

She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air like a dagger. The people round began to

"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly as she passed through the crowd.

When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round. There was pity in her eyes that became laughter on

her lips. She shook her head at him. "You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a badtempered boy, that is all.

How can you say such horrible things? You don't know what you are talking about. You are simply jealous

and unkind. Ah! I wish you would fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said was wicked."

"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. Mother is no help to you. She doesn't understand

how to look after you. I wish now that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck the

"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those silly melodramas Mother used to be so

fond of acting in. I am not going to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect happiness.

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

In Sybil's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the

stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,

and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with real affection. There were tears in his

His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality, as he entered. He made no

answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the stained cloth.

Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of streetcabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring

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

"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.

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

An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," he exclaimed, "but don't let Sibyl. . . . It is a gentleman,

isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose."

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

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. Goodbye. 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

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

lodginghouse drudge bustled in and out. There was the bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in

vulgar details. It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the tattered lace handkerchief

from the window, as her son drove away. She was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She

consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she had only one child to

look after. She remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and

I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that evening as Hallward was shown into a little

"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

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

Hallward started and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he cried. "Impossible!"

"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly. "But I didn't say he was married. I said he was engaged

to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no

recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged."

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

"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

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

"Oh, she is better than goodshe is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and

orangebitters. "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 tonight, if that boy doesn't forget his appointment."

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

"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and down the room and biting his lip. "You

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent

into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never

interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that

personality selects is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts

Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interesting.

You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish.

And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that

marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to

have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy,

the object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against

marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore

her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study."

"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no

one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be."

Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with

the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may

overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I

mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is

spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. As for

marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and

women. I will certainly encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian

"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the lad, throwing off his evening cape

with its satinlined wings and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been so happy.

Of course, it is sudden all really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have

been looking for all my life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily

"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I don't quite forgive you for not having

"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

"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their seats at the small round table. "What

happened was simply this. After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that little

Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl

was playing Rosalind. Of course, the scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should

have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a

mosscoloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, crossgartered 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 actingwell, you shall see

her tonight. She is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I forgot that I was in

London and in the nineteenth century. I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After

the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came

into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I

can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one

perfect point of rosecoloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung

herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help it. Of

course, our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my

guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and

then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife

in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have

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

"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

Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me," be answered. "I asked the question

for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question simple

curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the

women. Except, of course, in middleclass 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,

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

"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."

"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of

purplelipped 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,

finepointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own lifethat is the

important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt

one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher

aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to

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

"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that

they can afford nothing but selfdenial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich."

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

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emotions are

out of date. One can use them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the

things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no

"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

"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad gravely. "They

"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

"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring

coffee, and finechampagne, and some cigarettes. No, don't mind the cigarettesI 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

"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a firebreathing silver dragon that the

waiter had placed on the table. "Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will have a

new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you have never known."

"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a new

emotion. I am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl may

thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so

sorry, Basil, but there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom."

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The painter was silent and preoccupied.

There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than

many other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He drove off

by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A

strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had

been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became

blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.

For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat Jew manager who met them at the

door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of

pompous humility, waving his fat 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 bankrupt over a

poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The heat was terribly oppressive, and the

huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery had taken

off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked to each other across the 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.

"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine beyond all living things. When she

acts, you will forget everything. These common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,

become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she

wills them to do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that they are

"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning the

"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 agethat is something worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have

lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if

she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of

all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right. I did not think so at first,

but I admit it now. The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."

"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew that you would understand me. Harry is

so cynical, he terrifies me. But here is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five

minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the

stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he

had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the

shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic house.

She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to

applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through his

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

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

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kisswith the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly

artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. It was

wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious. Neither of his friends dared to say

anything to him. She seemed to them to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of the second act. They waited for that. If she

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be denied. But the staginess of her

acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She

overemphasized everything that she had to say. The beautiful passageThou knowest the mask of night is

For that which thou hast heard me speak tonightwas declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl

who has been taught to recite by some secondrate professor of elocution. When she leaned over the balcony

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meetshe spoke the words as though they conveyed no

meaning to her. It was not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely

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 dresscircle,

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

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

"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely

altered. Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre actress."

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

"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. "But do let us go. Dorian, you must not

stay here any longer. It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't suppose you will want

your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she

knows as little about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There are only two

kinds of people who are really fascinating people who know absolutely everything, and people who know

absolutely nothing. Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The secret of remaining young is never

to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes

and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you want?"

"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must go. Ah! can't you see that my heart is

breaking?" The hot tears came to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he leaned up

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

A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose on the third act. Dorian Gray went

back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable.

Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots and laughing. The whole thing was a fiasco. The last

act was played to almost empty benches. The curtain went down on a titter and some groans.

As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the greenroom. The girl was standing there

alone, with a look of triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance about

When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy came over her. "How badly I acted

"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "Horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no

The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with longdrawn music in her voice, as

though it were sweeter than honey to the red petals of her mouth. "Dorian, you should have understood. But

"Why I was so bad tonight. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never act well again."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you shouldn't act. You make yourself

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

"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the

theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of

Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common

people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing

but shadows, and I thought them real. You cameoh, my beautiful love! and you freed my soul from

prison. You taught me what reality really is. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I saw through the

hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. Tonight, for the first

time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard

was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words,

were not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a

reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of

life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the

puppets of a play? When I came on tonight, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone

from me. I thought that I was going to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on

my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled. What

could they know of love such as ours? Take me away, Doriantake 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

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

Then he leaped up and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have killed my love. You used to stir my

imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you

were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and

gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My

God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you

again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what you were to me, once.

Why, once . . . Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the

romance of my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art, you are

nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, and

you would have borne my name. What are you now? A thirdrate actress with a pretty face."

The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and her voice seemed to catch in her

She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face, came across the room to him. She

put her hand upon his arm and looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he cried.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay there like a trampled flower. "Dorian,

Dorian, don't leave me!" she whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all the time.

But I will tryindeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across me, my love for you. I think I should never have

known it if you had not kissed me if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Don't go away

from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My brother . . . No; never mind. He didn't mean it.

He was in jest. . . . But you, oh! can't you forgive me for tonight? I will work so hard and try to improve.

Don't be cruel to me, because I love you better than anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have

not pleased you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an artist. It was foolish

of me, and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her.

She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at

her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the

emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.

"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

She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared

to be seeking for him. He turned on his heel and left the room. In a few moments he was out of the theatre.

Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt,

blackshadowed archways and evillooking 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 doorsteps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.

As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed

with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled

slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty

seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market and watched the men unloading

their waggons. A whitesmocked 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, jadegreen piles of

vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey, sunbleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded

girls, waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffeehouse in the

piazza. The heavy carthorses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.

Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Irisnecked and pinkfooted, the pigeons ran about

After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. For a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep,

looking round at the silent square, with its blank, closeshuttered 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 nacrecoloured air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great,

oakpanelled hall of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame

they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table,

passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor

that, in his newborn feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung with some curious

Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning

the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if

in surprise. Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken the

buttonhole 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 creamcoloured 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

He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The bright dawn flooded the room and swept

the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he had

noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering ardent

sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror

He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many

presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it

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

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

Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given

his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and

unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing

like a little child. He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like

that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that

the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His life was well worth hers.

She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to

bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took

lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and

Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now.

But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him

to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?

No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The horrible night that he had passed had left

phantoms behind it. Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men mad. The

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early

sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of

himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red

and white roses would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he

would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He

would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any morewould not, at any rate, listen to those

subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for

impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again. Yes,

it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel

to her. The fascination that she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together. His life

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 dewdrenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers

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 olivesatin curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows.

How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over his letters. One of them was from Lord

Henry, and had been brought by hand that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The

others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for

private views, programmes of charity concerts, and the like that are showered on fashionable young men

every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill for a chased silver LouisQuinze toiletset

that he had not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely oldfashioned 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 moneylenders offering to advance any

After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate dressinggown of silkembroidered

cashmere wool, passed into the onyxpaved 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 bluedragon bowl that, filled with sulphuryellow

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?"

Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply his own imagination that had made

him see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing

was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would make him smile.

And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in the dim twilight, and then in the bright

dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the room.

He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the

coffee and cigarettes had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell him to remain.

As the door was closing behind him, he called him back. The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked

at him for a moment. "I am not at home to any one, Victor," he said with a sigh. The man bowed and retired.

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 LouisQuatorze 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

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

Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered.

As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he found himself at first gazing at the

portrait with a feeling of almost scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place was incredible

to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped

themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what that

soul thought, they realized?that what it dreamed, they made true? Or was there some other, more terrible

reason? He shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture in

One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he

had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His unreal

and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and

the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him

what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for

remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of

Three o'clock struck, and four, and the halfhour rang its double chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was

trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the

sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to

think. Finally, he went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her

forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and

wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in selfreproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else

has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished

Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's voice outside. "My dear boy, I must see

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

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

"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

"I was brutal, Harryperfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am not sorry for anything that has happened.

"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I would find you plunged in remorse and

"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 moreat least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being

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

"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking at him in perplexed amazement. "But, my

"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

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

"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I was afraid there might be something in it

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 letterdon't be frightenedwas to tell you that Sibyl Vane is

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

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

"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the morning papers. I wrote down to you to

ask you not to see any one till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed

up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one

should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age. I

suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If they don't, it is all right. Did any one see you going

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!

"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 halfpast twelve or so, she said she had forgotten

something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again. They ultimately found

her lying dead on the floor of her dressingroom. 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

"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

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself, "murdered her as surely as if I had cut

her little throat with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my

garden. And tonight I am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose,

afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have

wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.

Here is the first passionate loveletter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate

loveletter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we

call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once! It seems years ago to

me now. She was everything to me. Then came that dreadful nightwas it really only last night? when

she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic. But I was

not moved a bit. I thought her shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell you

what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong. And now she is dead.

My God! My God! Harry, what shall I do? You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep

me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her."

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case and producing a goldlatten

matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all

possible interest in life. If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched. Of course, you would

have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would

have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her

husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's

husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been abjectwhich, of

course, I would not have allowed but I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an

"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room and looking horribly pale. "But I

thought it was my duty. It is not my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right. I

remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutionsthat they are always made too

"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their

result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a

certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a

"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him, "why is it that I cannot feel this

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

The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined, "but I am glad you don't think I am

heartless. I am nothing of the kind. I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened

does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It

has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not

"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's

unconscious egotism, "an extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this: It often

happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude

violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us

just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.

Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements

of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we

are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the

mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one

has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in

love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored methere have not been very many, but

there have been somehave 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

"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and

then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a

romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her

proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror

of eternity. Wellwould you believe it?a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner

next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and

raking up the future. I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again and assured me

that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety.

But what a lack of taste she showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know

when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely

over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic

ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense

of art. You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I have known

would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of

them do it by going in for sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may

be, or a woman over thirtyfive who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history. Others

find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They flaunt their

conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries

have all the charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can quite understand it. Besides, nothing

makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really

no end to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important

"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

"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have

wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters,

all the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have never seen you really and

absolutely angry, but I can fancy how delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day

before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful, but that I see now was absolutely true,

"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of romancethat 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 dressingroom simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene

from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To

you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier

for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment

she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia, if you

like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of

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

There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows crept

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,

"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories.

As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much

to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you. And now you had better dress and

"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

"Twentyseven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name on the door. But I am sorry you won't

"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.

"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, shaking him by the hand.

"Goodbye. I shall see you before ninethirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."

As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a few minutes Victor appeared with

the lamps and drew the blinds down. He waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an

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

picture. It had received the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious of

the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt,

appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to

results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some

day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.

Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked death on the stage. Then Death himself

had touched her and taken her with him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed him, as

she died? No; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to him now. She had

atoned for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life. He would not think any more of what she had

made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a

wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of love. A wonderful tragic

figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy

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 himlife, and his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion,

pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sinshe was to have all these things. The portrait was to

A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the

canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now

smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost

enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded? Was

it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the

sunlight that had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? The pity of it! the pity of it!

For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed between him and the picture

might cease. It had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged.

And yet, who, that knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young,

however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught? Besides, was

it really under his control? Had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution? Might there not be

some curious scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might

not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire,

might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in

secret love or strange affinity? But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt by a prayer

any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?

For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places.

This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it

would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring

trembles on the verge of summer. When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of chalk

with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade.

Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and

joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was

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

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

heartbroken I am about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. But where were you? Did you go

down and see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of following you there. They gave the address in the

paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that I could not

lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must be in! And her only child, too! What did she say about it all?"

"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some paleyellow wine from a delicate,

goldbeaded 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

"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of

an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't

want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful boy

who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural, and

affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don't know what has

come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. I see that."

The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few moments on the green, flickering,

sunlashed garden. "I owe a great deal to Harry, Basil," he said at last, "more than I owe to you. You only

"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "I don't know what you want. What do

"Basil," said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand on his shoulder, "you have come too late.

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

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

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

"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. It is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age.

As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or

something tedious. You know what I meanmiddleclass 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 hershe acted badly because she had known the reality of love. When she knew its unreality, she died,

as Juliet might have died. She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her.

Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty. But, as I was saying, you must

not think I have not suffered. If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment about halfpast five,

perhaps, or a quarter to six you would have found me in tears. Even Harry, who was here, who brought me

the news, in fact, had no idea what I was going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed away. I cannot

repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists. And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down

here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a

sympathetic person! You remind me of a story Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty

years of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law alteredI forget exactly what

it was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do,

almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really

want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of

view. Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? I remember picking up a little

vellumcovered book in your studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that

young man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say that

yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and

handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquerwork, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury,

pompthere is much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate

reveal, is still more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering

of life. I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed. I

was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am

different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course, I am

very fond of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not stronger you are too much afraid

of lifebut you are better. And how happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel

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

"Well, Dorian," he said at length, with a sad smile, "I won't speak to you again about this horrible thing, after

today. I only trust your name won't be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take place this

Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at the mention of the word "inquest."

There was something so crude and vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name," he

"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to any one. She told me once that

they were all rather curious to learn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince

Charming. It was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have something

"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you must come and sit to me yourself again.

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

The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "Do you mean to say you don't like what I

did of you? Where is it? Why have you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the best thing I

have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like

"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let him arrange my room for me? He settles

my flowers for me sometimes that is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait."

"Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for it. Let me see it." And Hallward walked

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

"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

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

"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want me to," he said, rather coldly, turning

on his heel and going over towards the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn't see my

own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it

another coat of varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not today?"

"To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over him.

Was the world going to be shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That was

"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.

Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of perspiration there. He felt that he was on

the brink of a horrible danger. "You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he cried. "Why

have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others

have. The only difference is that your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that you

assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition. You told

Harry exactly the same thing." He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered

that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest, "If you want to have a strange quarter of

an hour, get Basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it was a

revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He would ask him and try.

"Basil," he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight in the face, "we have each of us a secret.

Let me know yours, and I shall tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?"

The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you, you might like me less than you do, and you

would certainly laugh at me. I could not bear your doing either of those two things. If you wish me never to

look at your picture again, I am content. I have always you to look at. If you wish the best work I have ever

done to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or

"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

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

"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say. Dorian, from the moment I met you, your

personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you.

You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an

exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all

to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in

my art.... Of course, I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not

have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that

the world had become wonderful to my eyes too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is

peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them.... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew

more and more absorbed in you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour,

and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boarspear. Crowned with heavy lotusblossoms 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 beunconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to

paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress

and in your own time. Whether it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder of your own personality,

thus directly presented to me without mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake

and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I

felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I resolved

never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it

meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the picture was

finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as

soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in

imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely goodlooking and that I could

paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever

really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of

form and colourthat 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,

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

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

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

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

"Well, perhaps you are right. And now goodbye, 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

"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you felt that you admired me too much.

"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have

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

"No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn't talk about worship. It is foolish. You

"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible and

his evenings in doing what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I don't think I

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

"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 goodbye. 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

bow 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

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

When his servant entered, be looked at him steadfastly and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the

screen. The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked over to the

glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of 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 housekeeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the

framemaker 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 oldfashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs.

"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."

"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn't been opened for nearly five

He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him. "That does not matter," he

"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain

hands. "Here is the key. I'll have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don't think of living up there, sir, and

She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. He sighed and told her

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 seventeenthcentury Venetian

work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful

thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption

of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself something that would breed horrors and yet would

never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They

would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing

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 himfor it was really

love had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of

beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had

known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it

was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the

future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would

He took up from the couch the great purpleandgold 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 rosered lipsthey all were

there. It was simply the expression that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw

in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been! how shallow, and of

what little account! His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement. A

look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock came to the

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

writingtable he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something to read and

In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself, the celebrated framemaker of

South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat roughlooking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid,

redwhiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered by the inveterate

impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for

people to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something

"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands. "I thought I would do myself the

honour of coming round in person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old

Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."

"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in

and look at the frame though I don't go in much at present for religious artbut today 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

"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

"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial framemaker, 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

"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

"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they reached the top landing. And he wiped

"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 yearsnot, indeed, since he had used it first as a playroom

when he was a child, and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, wellproportioned

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 bookcase filled with his dogeared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was

hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,

while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he

remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled

the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be

hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him!

But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this. He had the key, and no one else

could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean.

What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the hideous

corruption of his soul? He kept his youth that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer,

after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might come across his

life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh

those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some

day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world

No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It

might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become

hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. The hair

would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old

men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blueveined hands, the twisted body, that he

remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed.

"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I am sorry I kept you so long. I was

"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the framemaker, who was still gasping for breath. "Where

"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just lean it against the wall. Thanks."

Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready

to leap upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret

of his life. "I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round."

"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you, sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped

downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough

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 teatray. 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 picturehad no doubt

missed it already, while he had been laying the teathings. The screen had not been set back, and a blank

space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the

door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house. He had heard of rich men who had been

blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a

card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of crumpled lace.

He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note. It was simply to say that he

sent him round the evening paper, and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at

eightfifteen. He opened The St. James's languidly, and looked through it. A red pencilmark on the fifth

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr.

Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal

Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed

for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of

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

Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian

Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.

His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards

the little, pearlcoloured 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 armchair 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.

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 worldspirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations

that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The

style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of

archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the

finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as

subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at

times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a

modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to

trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of

complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from

chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a coppergreen 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

It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found Lord Henry sitting alone, in the

"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fascinated me

"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 diningroom.

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

largepaper 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 entirely

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 knewnever, indeed, had any

cause to knowthat 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 placethat he used to read the latter part of the book, with its

really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost

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

Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange

conjecture among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs

to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of

the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and

now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the

contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more

and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes

with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around

the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of

age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the

There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately scented chamber, or in the

sordid room of the little illfamed 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

Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. Once or twice every month during the

winter, and on each Wednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world his

beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonders of

their art. His little dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted as much for

the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the

table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of

gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that

they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford

days, a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction

and perfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom Dante

describes as having sought to "make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one

And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be

but a preparation. Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism,

which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their

fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had

their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied

him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only

For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost immediately offered to him on his

coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London

of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been, yet in his inmost

heart he desired to be something more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a

jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life

that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses

The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of

terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of

sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature

of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the

world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them

elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As he

looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been

surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of

selftorture and selfdenial, 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

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it

from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its

service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the

sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits

of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar

profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights

that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through

the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life

that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy,

especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white

fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl

into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the

sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and

wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep

from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of

things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan

mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the

halfcut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that

we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal

shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off,

and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome

round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a

world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have

fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or

no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy

It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or amongst the

true objects, of life; and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess

that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that

he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it

were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that

is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain modern

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the

Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the

sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by

the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to

symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered

dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled,

lanternshaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis

caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the

chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet,

tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to

look with wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to

men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.

But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or

system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or

for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its

marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems

to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the

Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of

men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the

absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet,

as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life

itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and

experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily scented oils and

burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart

in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense

that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of

dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking

often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweetsmelling

roots and scented, pollenladen 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

At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilionandgold

ceiling and walls of olivegreen lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies tore wild

music from little zithers, or grave, yellowshawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous

lutes, while grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim

turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass and charmed or feigned to charmgreat

hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred

him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven

himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments

that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived

contact with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the

Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at and that even youths may not see till they have

been subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of

birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, and the sonorous green jaspers

that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with

pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does

not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the

sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the

teponaztli, that has two vibrating tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic

gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotlbells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like

grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz

saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a

description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the

thought that art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after

some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry,

listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of

On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral

of France, in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years, and,

indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in their

cases the various stones that be had collected, such as the olivegreen chrysoberyl that turns red by

lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver, the pistachiocoloured peridot, rosepink and

wineyellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, fourrayed stars, flamered

cinnamonstones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire.

He loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the

milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness of colour, and

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was

mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was

said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There

was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of golden letters and a

scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. According to the great alchemist,

Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. The

cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine.

The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour. The selenite waxed and

waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.

Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a certain

antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could

cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer

The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand, as the ceremony of his coronation.

The gates of the palace of John the Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake

inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable were "two golden apples, in which

were two carbuncles," so that the gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's strange

romance A Margarite of America, it was stated that in the chamber of the queen one could behold "all the

chaste ladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles,

sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rosecoloured pearls

in the mouths of the dead. A seamonster 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 storynor was it ever found again, though the

Emperor Anastasius offered five hundredweight 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 twentyone diamonds. Richard II had a

coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII, on his

way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered

with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The favourites

of James I wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of

redgold armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoisestones, and a skullcap

parseme with pearls. Henry II wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawkglove sewn with

twelve rubies and fiftytwo great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his

How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and decoration! Even to read of the luxury of

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 uphe was

almost saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any

rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and

nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or

stained his flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material things! Where had they passed to? Where

was the great crocuscoloured 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, giltreined steeds? He longed to see the curious tablenapkins wrought for the Priest

of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary

cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of

the Bishop of Pontus and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, huntersall, in fact,

that a painter can copy from nature"; and the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which

were embroidered the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis tout joyeux," the musical accompaniment

of the words being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four

pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy

and was decorated with "thirteen hundred and twentyone parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the

king's arms, and five hundred and sixtyone butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the

arms of the queen, the whole worked in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourningbed made for her of

black velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands,

figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a

room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV had gold

embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was

made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from the Koran. Its supports were of

silver gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken

from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt

And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens that he could find of textile

and embroidered work, getting the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with goldthread 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 fleursdelis,

birds and images; veils of lacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish velvets;

Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas, with their greentoned golds and their

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 selfinflicted pain. He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and goldthread

damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in sixpetalled formal blossoms, beyond

which on either side was the pineapple device wrought in seedpearls. The orphreys were divided into

panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured in

coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green

velvet, embroidered with heartshaped groups of acanthusleaves, from which spread longstemmed white

blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a

seraph's head in goldthread 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 ambercoloured 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

fleursdelis; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chaliceveils, and sudaria.

In the mystic offices to which such things were put, there was something that quickened his imagination.

For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of

forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be

almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his

boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real

degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the purpleandgold pall as a curtain. For weeks he

would not go there, would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, his wonderful

joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of

the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was driven

away. On his return he would sit in front of the her times, with that pride of individualism that is half the

fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that

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 walledin 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

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

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.

For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. He was very nearly blackballed at a

West End club of which his birth and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said

that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the smokingroom 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 twentyfifth year. It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with

foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and coiners

and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to

reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at

him with cold searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret.

Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his

frank debonair manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed

never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that

were circulated about him. It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most intimate with

him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all

social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray

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. Societycivilized society, at least is never very ready to believe

anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of

more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the

possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given

one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for

halfcold entrees, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is possibly a good

deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art.

Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should

combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to

us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our

Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who

conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being

with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies

of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved

to stroll through the gaunt cold picturegallery of his country house and look at the various portraits of those

whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, in his Memoires on

the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, as one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome

face, which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had some

strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that

ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's

studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here, in goldembroidered red doublet, jewelled

surcoat, and giltedged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silverandblack 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, heavylidded eyes seemed to look curiously at

him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The

face was saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles

fell over the lean yellow hands that were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth

century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion of

the Prince Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert?

How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he

bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star of

the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thinlipped woman in

black. Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady

Hamilton face and her moist, winedashed lipshe knew what he had got from her. He had got from her his

beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were

vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting had

withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him

Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament,

many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times

when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he

had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain

and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across

the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some

The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had himself known this curious fancy. In the

seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a

garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and

the fluteplayer mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had caroused with the greenshirted

jockeys in their stables and supped in an ivory manger with a jewelfrontleted 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 silvershod 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

Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the two chapters immediately following,

in which, as in some curious tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and beautiful

forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan,

who slew his wife and painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the dead

thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume

the title of Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of a

terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was

covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding

beside him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of

Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who

received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and

gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be

cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red

winethe son of the Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with

him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid

veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and

the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena

with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion

built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a

leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and

grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of love and death and

madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew

Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in

the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had

There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination in the

day. The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by

an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had

been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he

It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirtyeighth birthday, as he often remembered

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

But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying after him. In

"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

"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is somewhere

about here, but I don't feel at all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for

"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

"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps and

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 twelvefifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to the

club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my

heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes."

Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an

ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing is

Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library. There was a bright wood fire

blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spiritcase stood, with some

siphons of sodawater and large cutglass 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

goldtipped cigarettes. He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you used

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid, and has established her in Paris as

an English dressmaker. Anglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French,

doesn't it? Butdo 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 brandyandsoda? Or would you like

hockandseltzer? I always take hockandseltzer 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

"What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not

"It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, "and I must say it to you. I shall only keep

"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I think it right

that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London."

"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself

"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. SomebodyI

won't mention his name, but you know himcame to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen

him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since. He

offered an extravagant price. I refused him. There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. I

know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him. His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your

pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth I can't believe anything against you.

And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you,

and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it,

Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so

many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of

Lord Staveley. I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection

with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and said that you

might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pureminded girl should be allowed to

know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of

yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody. It was horrible!

Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed

suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished

name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord

Kent's only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken with shame

and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would

"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing," said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and

with a note of infinite contempt in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It is

because I know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine. With such blood as he

has in his veins, how could his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did I

teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what

is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people

chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinnertables, and whisper

about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society

and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction

and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as

being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. England is bad enough I know, and English society is all

wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a

man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You

have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes:

you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you

and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's

"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal

had ever touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park?

Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories stories that you have

been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.

Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me

shudder. What about your countryhouse and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don't know what is said

about you. I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying once that every man

who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and then proceeded

to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect

you. I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you

associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence.

Let it be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that

it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is

so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord

Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him

when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession

I ever read. I told him that it was absurdthat I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable of

anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see

"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear.

"Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deeptoned sorrow in his voice, "to see your soul. But only God

A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. "You shall see it yourself, tonight!" he

cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can

tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they

would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so

tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to

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

"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my

Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must not say things like that. They are

"I know so. As for what I said to you tonight, I said it for your good. You know I have been always a stanch

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 fireplace, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their

He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give me some answer to these horrible

charges that are made against you. If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I shall

believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what I am going through? My God! don't tell me

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

"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I can go

tomorrow. But don't ask me to read anything tonight. 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."

He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following close behind. They walked softly,

as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind

When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in

"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

Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. The room looked as if it had not been lived in for

years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty

bookcasethat was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a

halfburned 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

"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,

"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the

canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good

heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet

entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the

sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not

yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But

who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea

was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the lefthand

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.

The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees

on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real

sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in

his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me,

and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained

to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a

mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a

"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got

into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is

"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again.

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what

you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!"

He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as

he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange

quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on

it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" There was no answer, but he could hear the

young man sobbing at the window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say

in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that

together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I

worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished."

Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with teardimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he

"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'?"

"Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! Don't you see that accursed thing

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came

over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those

grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was

seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly around.

Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was.

It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away

with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he

seized it and turned round. Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him and dug

the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and stabbing

There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood. Three times the

outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque, stifffingered 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

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

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

How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and walking over to the window, opened it and

stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's

tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down and saw the policeman going his rounds and

flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling

hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. A woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the

railings, staggering as she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a

hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A bitter

blast swept across the square. The gaslamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their

black iron branches to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the window behind him.

Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. He did not even glance at the murdered man. He

felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal

portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. That was enough.

Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver

inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by

his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took it from

the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands

Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The woodwork creaked and seemed to cry

out as if in pain. He stopped several times and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the sound of his

When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They must be hidden away somewhere.

He unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises,

and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled out his watch. It was twenty

He sat down and began to think. Every yearevery month, almost men were strangled in England for

what he had done. There had been a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the

earth. . . . And yet, what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one

had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris!

Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious

reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be roused. Months! Everything could be

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'seye

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, halfdressed and looking very drowsy.

"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in; "but I had forgotten my latchkey.

"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 tomorrow. I have some work to do."

"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then be went away to catch his train."

"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not find you at the club."

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

At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray and opened the

shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.

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

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun came

streaming into the room. The sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, bloodstained feet into his brain and

reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered,

and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he

sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too,

and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.

He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken or grow mad. There were sins whose

fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more

than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or

could ever bring, to the senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be

When the halfhour 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

scarfpin and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the various

dishes, talking to his valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the servants at

Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of the letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him.

One he read several times over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face. "That awful

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

"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 bookcase and took

out a volume at hazard. He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until it became

When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the titlepage of the book. It was Gautier's Emaux et

Camees, Charpentier's Japanesepaper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of citrongreen

leather, with a design of gilt trelliswork and dotted pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian

Singleton. As he turned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold yellow

hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced at his

own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating down the green waterways of the

pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to

him like those straight lines of turquoiseblue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden

flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the opalandiristhroated birds that flutter round the tall

honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the dim, duststained arcades. Leaning

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!

He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He read of the swallows that fly in and out of

the little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke

their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde

that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotuscovered Nile,

where there are Sphinxes, and rosered 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 kissstained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the

"monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyryroom 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

They had been great friends once, five years before almost inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had

come suddenly to an end. When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan

He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever

little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant intellectual

passion was for science. At Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time working in the laboratory, and

had taken a good class in the Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted to the study of

chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the

annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for Parliament and had a vague idea that a

chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, however, as well, and

played both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had first brought him

and Dorian Gray togethermusic and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise

whenever he wished and, indeed, exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met at Lady

Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always seen together at the opera

and wherever good music was going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell was always

either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many others, Dorian Gray was the type of

everything that is wonderful and fascinating in life. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them

no one ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when they met and that Campbell

seemed always to go away early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed,

toowas strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearing music, and would never himself

play, giving as his excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had no time

left in which to practise. And this was certainly true. Every day he seemed to become more interested in

biology, and his name appeared once or twice in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain

This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he kept glancing at the clock. As the minutes

went by he became horribly agitated. At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room, looking like

a beautiful caged thing. He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by

monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what

was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as

though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was

useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror,

twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through

moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slowbreathing thing crawled no more,

and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave,

At last the door opened and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes upon him.

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

The man bowed and retired. In a few moments, Alan Campbell walked in, looking very stern and rather pale,

"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

"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

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

"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

"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But

I can't help myself. You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the matter. I

have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about chemistry and things of that kind. You have made

experiments. What you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs to destroy it so that not a

vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is

supposed to be in Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must be no trace of him

found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that

"You are mad, I tell youmad 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

"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I don't care what shame comes on you. You

deserve it all. I should not be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of all men

in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have thought you knew more about people's characters.

Your friend Lord Henry Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has taught

you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have come to the wrong man. Go to some of your

"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

"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

"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 deadhouses, and the horrors that

you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous dissectingroom or fetid laboratory you found this man

lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through, you would simply

look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not turn a hair. You would not believe that you were

doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the human race, or

increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind.

What I want you to do is merely what you have often done before. Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less

horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against

me. If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you help me."

"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do

"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."

"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,

"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do anything in the matter. It is insane of you

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

Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and opened it. As he read it, his face became

ghastly pale and he fell back in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if his heart

After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round and came and stood behind him, putting

"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 meno living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms."

"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The thing is quite simple. Come, don't

A groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece

seemed to him to be dividing time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne.

He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was

threatened had already come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. It was

"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of notepaper what you want and my servant

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

As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got up from the chair, went over to the

chimneypiece. He was shivering with a kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke.

A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.

As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at Dorian Gray, saw that his eyes were filled

with tears. There was something in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.

"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 dowhat you force me to do it is not of your life

"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian with a sigh, "I wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for

you." He turned away as he spoke and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.

After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest

of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps.

"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another errand for you. What is the name of the

"YesHarden. 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."

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.

"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at halfpast 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."

"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is! I'll take it for you. You bring the other

things." He spoke rapidly and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left the

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.

Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor

in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He remembered that the night before he had forgotten, for the first

time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.

What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas

had sweated blood? How horrible it was!more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent

thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the

spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.

He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with halfclosed eyes and averted head, walked

quickly in, determined that he would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down and taking

There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the pattern

before him. He heard Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that he had

required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what

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

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, goodbye. Let us never see each other again."

As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room. But the

That evening, at eightthirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large buttonhole of Parma violets, Dorian

Gray was ushered into Lady Narborough's drawingroom 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 wondering 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 excellent wife

to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum,

which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted

herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and French esprit when she could get it.

Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not

met him in early life. "I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say, "and

thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the

time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind,

that I never had even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully

shortsighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything."

Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby

fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse,

had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of

course I go and stay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me

must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don't know what an existence they

lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much to do,

and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the

neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You

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

middleaged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by

their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed woman of fortyseven, 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 Venetianred

hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British

faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a redcheeked, whitewhiskered creature

who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack

He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled

in gaudy curves on the mauvedraped 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

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 chaudfroid was being handed round, "what is the matter with you

"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous.

"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in love for a whole weeknot, in

"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 does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at Vienna thirty

"She is still decolletee," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very smart

gown she looks like an edition de luxe of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises.

Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold

"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean

"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

"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

"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. "It can only be the next world. This

"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."

"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really, if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous

"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

"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

"I wish it were fin du globe," said Dorian with a sigh. "Life is a great disappointment."

"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted life.

When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes

wish that I had been; but you are made to be good you look so good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord

"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through Debrett carefully tonight and draw

"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done in a hurry. I want it to be what The

"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "A man can be happy with any

"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

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past," he answered. "Or do you think that would make

"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton," she added, "I

"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going to limit myself, for the future."

"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More

Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to me some afternoon, Lord Henry.

"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal," cried Lady Narborough from the door.

The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the table and came up to the top.

Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice

about the situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word doctrinaireword

full of terror to the British mind reappeared from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative

prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. The inherited

stupidity of the racesound English common sense he jovially termed itwas shown to be the proper

"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of sorts at dinner."

"You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to you. She tells me she is going down to

"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

"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with Monmouth

"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have asked

"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 overeducated. He is a very modern type."

"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to Monte Carlo with his father."

"Ah! what a nuisance people's people 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?"

"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget

what I did. . . . How inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been doing. I always

want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at halfpast two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had

left my latchkey at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any corroborative evidence on the

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let us go up to the drawingroom. No

sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not

"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come round and see you tomorrow, 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 tomorrow at teatime. The duchess is coming."

"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove back to his own house, he was

conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual

questioning had made him lose his nerves for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things that were

dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.

Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked the door of his library, he opened the secret

press into which he had thrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log

on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. It took him threequarters of an

hour to consume everything. At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian pastilles in a

pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool muskscented vinegar.

Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed nervously at his underlip. Between two

of the windows stood a large Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. He

watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something that he

longed for and yet almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He lit a cigarette and

then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still

watched the cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over to it, and having

unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved

instinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese box of black and

golddust 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

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

"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

A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred streetlamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist. The publichouses

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

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 gaslamps 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

"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!" How the words rang in his

ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had been

spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was

impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush

it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he

had done? Who had made him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be

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

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. The monotony

Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottleshaped

kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness

some wandering seagull 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 roughpaven streets. Most of the windows were

dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched them

curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull

rage was in his heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two

men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The driver beat at them with his whip.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian

Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full

expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that without such

justification would still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and

the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and

fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for

that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of

disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of

impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the low roofs and jagged

chimneystacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to

Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and having got out hastily and given the driver

the extra fare he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a lantern

gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare

came from an outwardbound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh.

He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was being followed. In about seven or

eight minutes he reached a small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of the

After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and

he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as he

passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which

had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside and entered a long low room which looked as if it

had once been a thirdrate dancingsaloon. Shrill flaring gasjets, dulled and distorted in the flyblown

mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making

quivering disks of light. The floor was covered with ochrecoloured sawdust, trampled here and there into

mud, and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little charcoal stove,

playing with bone counters and showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one corner, with his head

buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete

side stood two haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an

expression of disgust. "He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The

At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its

three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered

with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp

"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps will speak to me now."

"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at last. George doesn't speak to me either. . .

. I don't care," he added with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I think I have

Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged

mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in

what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy.

They were better off than he was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating

his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he

could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would know

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more

Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A halfcaste, 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

A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "We are very proud

"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "What do you want?

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

"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.

"Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a

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

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

Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had

strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as Basil

Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad.

Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on

one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to

pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so

dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful

impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as

automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to

give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding

us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a

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 illfamed 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 polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the

"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 tonight by chance. Make your peace with God, for tonight you are

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 peaceno more. I go on board tonight for India, and I must do my job first. One

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," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under

James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. Then he seized Dorian Gray and

Dim and wavering as was the windblown 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

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

"You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his

James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot. After a little while, a black

shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him with

stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the women who

"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite close to his. "I knew you were

following him when you rushed out from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of

"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

The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered. "Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years

She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth," she cried.

"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,

"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't give me away to him," she whined; "I am

He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared.

A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of

Monmouth, who with her husband, a jadedlooking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was teatime,

and the mellow light of the huge, lacecovered 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 silkdraped wicker chair, looking at them. On a peachcoloured divan sat Lady

Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his

collection. Three young men in elaborate smokingsuits were handing teacakes to some of the women. The

houseparty consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day.

"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. "I

hope Dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."

"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes.

"I am quite satisfied with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."

"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of

flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my buttonhole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the

seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was

a fine specimen of Robinsoniana, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the

faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel

is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade

"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a label there is no escape! I refuse the

"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other

hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess. "What becomes of your simile about the

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the

"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth,

"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess, colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth

married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly."

"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I come in at ten minutes to nine and tell

"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one I wore at Lady Hilstone's

gardenparty? You don't, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made if out of nothing. All

"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every effect that one produces gives one an

"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

"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the duchess with mock sadness.

"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? Romance lives by repetition, and repetition

converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one

great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."

The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression in her eyes. "What do you say to

Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed. "I always agree with Harry,

"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure."

The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I don't go and dress, I shall have none this

"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his feet and walking down the

"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his cousin. "You had better take care. He is very

"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists."

She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go and help him. I have not yet told

"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he finished the sentence before from

the far end of the conservatory came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody

started up. The duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the

flapping palms to find Dorian Gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.

He was carried at once into the blue drawingroom and laid upon one of the sofas. After a short time, he

"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

"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather come down. I must not be alone."

He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but

now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the

conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching him.

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 miststained glass, and horror seemed

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of the night and set the hideous shapes

of punishment before him. Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination.

It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime

bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded.

Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been

prowling round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any footmarks been

found on the flowerbeds, the gardeners would have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's

brother had not come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some winter sea. From

him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he was. The

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

It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was something in the clear, pinescented air of

that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it was not

merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused the change. His own nature had revolted

against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle and

finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either

slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are

great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of

a terrorstricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and not a little of

After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden and then drove across the park to join

the shootingparty. The crisp frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue metal. A

At the corner of the pinewood 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.

"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open. I dare say it will be better after

Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown and red lights that glimmered in the

wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that

followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful freedom. He was dominated by the

Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front of them, with blacktipped 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

"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."

"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

Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alderclump, brushing the lithe swinging branches aside. In a

few moments they emerged, dragging a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It

seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man was really

dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with

faces. There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of voices. A great copperbreasted pheasant

After a few momentsthat were to him, in his perturbed state, like endless hours of painhe felt a hand laid

"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is stopped for today. It would not look

"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered bitterly. "The whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the

"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of shot in his chest. He must have died

They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty yards without speaking. Then Dorian

looked at Lord Henry and said, with a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."

"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this accident, I suppose. My dear fellow, it can't be helped. It was the

man's own fault. Why did he get in front of the guns? Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather awkward for

Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It makes people think that one is a wild shot. And

Geoffrey is not; he shoots very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter."

Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something horrible were going to happen to some

of us. To myself, perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.

The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which

there is no forgiveness. But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering about this

thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an

omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides, what on earth could

happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the world that a man can want. There is no one who would

"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

tonight. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must come and see my doctor, when we get

Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The man touched his hat, glanced for a

moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master.

Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am coming in," he said, coldly. The man turned

"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

"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched."

"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry, lighting a cigarette.

"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in his voice. "But I seem to have lost the

passion and forgotten the desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a

burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was silly of me to come down here at all. I think I

shall send a wire to Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."

"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what it is? You know I would help you."

"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered sadly. "And I dare say it is only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate

accident has upset me. I have a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."

"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailormade gown.

"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey is terribly upset. And it seems that you

"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. Some whim, I suppose. It looked the loveliest of

little live things. But I am sorry they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."

"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had

done the thing on purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know some one who had committed

"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to

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,

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

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

He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking for?" she inquired.

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 prefigure death for himself also. He had nearly

At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to pack his things for the nightexpress to

town, and to have the brougham at the door by eightthirty. He was determined not to sleep another night at

Selby Royal. It was an illomened place. Death walked there in the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been

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 headkeeper wished to see him. He frowned and bit his lip. "Send

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

"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?" asked Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I

should not like them to be left in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."

"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of coming to you about."

"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean? Wasn't he one of your men?"

The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. "A

"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.

"Some money, sirnot much, and a sixshooter. There was no name of any kind. A decentlooking man,

Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he

"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.

"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to bring my horse round. No. Never

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 gatepost and nearly threw him. He lashed her across the neck with

his crop. She cleft the dusky air like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.

At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He leaped from the saddle and threw

the reins to one of them. In the farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him that the

There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a discovery that would either make or mar

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,

Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take the handkerchief away, and called out

"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at the doorpost for support.

When the farmservant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of joy broke from his lips. The man who had

He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for

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 rosewater. "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

"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

"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 appleblossoms kept tumbling down on her

hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I

"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted

Lord Henry. "But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart. That was the

"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course, she

cried and all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and

"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "My dear

Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content now

with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning

ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she

will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even

as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some

"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

selfsacrifice 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."

"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine

"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the British public are really not equal

to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately,

however. They have had my own divorcecase and Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they have got the

mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for

Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil

never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San

Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a

"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light and

"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."

"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 musicroom, Dorian. You must play Chopin to

me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her.

The house is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one

regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part

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

"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his voice. "But don't people say that he was

"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

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar,

just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by

saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the

smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring

"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could

"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one of the

most important secrets of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do

anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he

had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell into the Seine off an

omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying

now on his back under those dullgreen 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

Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java

parrot, a large, greyplumaged 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

"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; "his painting had quite

gone off. It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great

friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never

forgave you. It's a habit bores have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I

don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had sent

it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! it was

really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since

then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be

"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

Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an

Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. "'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he

The elder man lay back and looked at him with halfclosed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause,

"'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and losehow does the quotation run? his own

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 shabbylooking people listening to some vulgar streetpreacher. As

I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic.

London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a

ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air

by shrill hysterical lipsit 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,

"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the

fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have you or I to do

with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a

nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have

some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really

wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do tonight. You remind me of the day I

saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course,

but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the

world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk

of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much

younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged,

I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened

yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in

everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin

write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is

marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I

want music tonight. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I

have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is

old, but that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are!

What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes

against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of

"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 builtup cells in which thought hides itself and passion

has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room

or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line

from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased

to play I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that

somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc

passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. I wish I could change

places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always

will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so

glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything

outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. "Yes, life has been exquisite," he

murmured, "but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things

to me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh.

"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne over again. Look at that great,

honeycoloured 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 youyoung Lord

Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him

"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired tonight, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It

"Do stay. You have never played so well as tonight. There was something in your touch that was wonderful.

"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

"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the

revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to

do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned

by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is

superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is

all. But we won't discuss literature. Come round tomorrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go

together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants

to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our

little duchess? She says she never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be.

"Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you."

"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated

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

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 rosewhite 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

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

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the

table, and the whitelimbed 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, teardimmed eyes looked into

its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with

these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your

lips rewrite history." The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.

Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath

his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those

two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a

mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.

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

A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He

had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.

As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. Surely it

was not still so horrible as it had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign

of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He would go and look.

He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his

strangely younglooking 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

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

loathsomemore loathsome, if possible, than beforeand the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed

brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him

do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh?

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all

these? And why was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over

the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had drippedblood even on

the hand that had not held the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself up and be

put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would

believe him? There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him had been

destroyed. He himself had burned what had been belowstairs. The world would simply say that he was mad.

They would shut him up if he persisted in his story. . . . Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame,

and to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to

heaven. Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his

shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it

was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there

been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But

who could tell? . . . No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had

worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.

But this murderwas it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to

confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself that was evidence.

He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and

growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he

had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions.

Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been

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 soullife, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and

There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and

crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the

great house. They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the bell several

times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After a

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 halfclad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other.

After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They

knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the

door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded easilytheir bolts

When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen

him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress,

with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had