It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.

He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he
had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold
and foggy.  At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street,
a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of
his grey ulster turned up.  He had a bag in his hand.  Dorian
recognized him.  It was Basil Hallward.  A strange sense of fear, for
which he could not account, came over him.  He made no sign of
recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house.

But Hallward had seen him.  Dorian heard him first stopping on the
pavement and then hurrying after him.  In a few moments, his hand was
on his arm.

"Dorian!  What an extraordinary piece of luck!  I have been waiting for
you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on
your tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out.  I am
off to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see
you before I left.  I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as
you passed me.  But I wasn't quite sure.  Didn't you recognize me?"

"In this fog, my dear Basil?  Why, I can't even 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 ages.  But I suppose you will be back soon?"

"No:  I am going to be out of England for six months.  I intend to take
a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great
picture I have in my head.  However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to
talk.  Here we are at your door.  Let me come in for a moment.  I have
something to say to you."

"I shall be charmed.  But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray
languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
latch-key.

The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
watch.  "I have heaps of time," he answered.  "The train doesn't go
till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.  In fact, I was on my
way to the club to look for you, when I met you.  You see, I shan't
have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things.  All I
have with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty
minutes."

Dorian looked at him and smiled.  "What a way for a fashionable painter
to travel!  A Gladstone bag and an ulster!  Come in, or the fog will
get into the house.  And mind you don't talk about anything serious.
Nothing is serious nowadays.  At least nothing should be."

Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
library.  There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open
hearth.  The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case
stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on
a little marqueterie table.

"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.  He gave me
everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.  He is
a most hospitable creature.  I like him much better than the Frenchman
you used to have.  What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?"

Dorian shrugged his shoulders.  "I believe he 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?  But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad
servant.  I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about.  One
often imagines things that are quite absurd.  He was really very
devoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away.  Have another
brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
hock-and-seltzer myself.  There is sure to be some in the next room."

"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap
and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the
corner.  "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
Don't frown like that.  You make it so much more difficult for me."

"What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging
himself down on the sofa.  "I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired
of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."

"It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, "and
I must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour."

Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette.  "Half an hour!" he murmured.

"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
sake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know that
the most dreadful things are being said against you in London."

"I don't wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other
people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.  They have not got
the charm of novelty."

"They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his
good name.  You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and
degraded.  Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all
that kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind
you, I don't believe these rumours at all.  At least, I can't believe
them when I see you.  Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's
face.  It cannot be concealed.  People talk sometimes of secret vices.
There are no such things.  If a wretched man has a vice, it shows
itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the
moulding of his hands even.  Somebody--I won't mention his name, but
you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.  I had
never seen him before, and had never heard 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 pure-minded girl
should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the
same room with.  I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked
him what he meant.  He told me.  He told me right out before everybody.
It was horrible!  Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?  There
was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.  You were
his great friend.  There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England
with a tarnished name.  You and he were inseparable.  What about Adrian
Singleton and his dreadful end?  What about Lord Kent's only son and
his career?  I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street.  He
seemed broken with shame and sorrow.  What about the young Duke of
Perth?  What sort of life has he got now?  What gentleman would
associate with him?"

"Stop, Basil.  You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
said Dorian Gray, biting his 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 dinner-tables, and whisper
about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try
and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with
the people they slander.  In this country, it is enough for a man to
have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead
themselves?  My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite."

"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question.  England is bad
enough I know, and English society is all wrong.  That is the reason
why I want you to be fine.  You have not been fine.  One has a right to
judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.  Yours seem to
lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity.  You have filled them
with a madness for pleasure.  They have gone down into the depths.  You
led them there.  Yes:  you led them there, and yet you can smile, as
you are smiling now.  And there is worse behind.  I know you and Harry
are inseparable.  Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should
not have made his sister's name a by-word."

"Take care, Basil.  You go too far."

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

"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
turning almost white from fear.

"Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
voice, "to see your soul.  But only God can do that."

A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.  "You
shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the
table.  "Come:  it is your own handiwork.  Why shouldn't you look at
it?  You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose.
Nobody would believe you.  If they did believe you, they would like me
all the better for it.  I know the age better than you do, though you
will prate about it so tediously.  Come, I tell you.  You have
chattered enough about corruption.  Now you shall look on it face to
face."

There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.  He stamped
his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.  He felt a
terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret,
and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of
all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the
hideous memory of what he had done.

"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into
his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul.  You shall see the thing
that you fancy only God can see."

Hallward started back.  "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried.  "You
must not say things like that.  They are horrible, and they don't mean
anything."

"You think so?"  He laughed again.

"I know so.  As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your
good.  You know I have been always a stanch friend to you."

"Don't touch me.  Finish what you have to say."

A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.  He paused for
a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.  After all, what
right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?  If he had done a
tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered!
Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and
stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and
their throbbing cores of flame.

"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.

He turned round.  "What I have to say is this," he cried.  "You must
give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against
you.  If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to
end, I shall believe you.  Deny them, Dorian, deny them!  Can't you see
what I am going through?  My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and
corrupt, and shameful."

Dorian Gray smiled.  There was a curl of contempt in his lips.  "Come
upstairs, Basil," he said quietly.  "I keep a diary of my life from day
to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written.  I shall
show it to you if you come with me."

"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it.  I see I have missed my
train.  That makes no matter.  I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to
read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."

"That shall be given to you upstairs.  I could not give it here.  You
will not have to read long."

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 made some of the windows rattle.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the
floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock.  "You insist on
knowing, Basil?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes."

"I am delighted," he answered, smiling.  Then he added, somewhat
harshly, "You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know
everything about me.  You have had more to do with my life than you
think"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in.  A
cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in
a flame of murky orange.  He shuddered.  "Shut the door behind you," he
whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.

Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled 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
book-case--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and
a table.  As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was
standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered
with dust and that the carpet was in holes.  A mouse ran scuffling
behind the wainscoting.  There was a damp odour of mildew.

"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil?  Draw that
curtain back, and you will see mine."

The voice that spoke was cold and cruel.  "You are mad, Dorian, or
playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.

"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore
the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the
dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him.  There was
something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at!
The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that
marvellous beauty.  There was still some gold in the thinning hair and
some scarlet on the sensual mouth.  The sodden eyes had kept something
of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet
completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat.
Yes, it was Dorian himself.  But who had done it?  He seemed to
recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design.  The
idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid.  He seized the lighted candle,
and held it to the picture.  In the left-hand corner was his own name,
traced in long letters of bright vermilion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire.  He had never
done that.  Still, it was his own picture.  He knew it, and he felt as
if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice.  His
own picture!  What did it mean?  Why had it altered?  He turned and
looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man.  His mouth twitched,
and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate.  He passed his hand
across his forehead.  It was dank with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with
that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting.  There was neither
real sorrow in it nor real joy.  There was simply the passion of the
spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes.  He had taken
the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last.  His own voice sounded
shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in
his hand, "you met me, 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 prayer...."

"I remember it!  Oh, how well I remember it!  No! the thing is
impossible.  The room is damp.  Mildew has got into the canvas.  The
paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them.  I tell you the
thing is impossible."

"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.

"You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong.  It has destroyed me."

"I don't believe it is my picture."

"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly.

"My ideal, as you call it..."

"As you called it."

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.  You were to me such
an ideal as I shall never meet again.  This is the face of a satyr."

"It is the face of my soul."

"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped!  It has the eyes of a
devil."

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a
wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it.  "My God!  If it
is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,
why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you
to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it.  The
surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it.  It was
from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come.
Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were
slowly eating the thing away.  The rotting of a corpse in a watery
grave was not so fearful.

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and
lay there sputtering.  He placed his foot on it and put it out.  Then
he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table
and buried his face in his hands.

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson!  What an awful lesson!" There was no
answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window.  "Pray,
Dorian, pray," he murmured.  "What is it that one was taught to say in
one's boyhood?  'Lead us not 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 tear-dimmed
eyes.  "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.

"It is never too late, Dorian.  Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
remember a prayer.  Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?"

"Those words mean nothing to me now."

"Hush!  Don't say that.  You have done enough evil in your life.  My
God!  Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable
feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his
ear by those grinning lips.  The mad passions of a hunted animal
stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table,
more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything.  He glanced
wildly around.  Something glimmered on the top of the painted 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 again and again.

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, stiff-fingered hands in the air.  He stabbed him
twice more, but the man did not move.  Something began to trickle on
the floor.  He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down.  Then
he threw the knife on the table, and listened.

He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet.  He
opened the door and went out on the landing.  The house was absolutely
quiet.  No one was about.  For a few seconds he stood bending over the
balustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.
Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in
as he did so.

The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with
bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms.  Had it not been
for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was
slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was
simply asleep.

How quickly it had all been done!  He felt strangely calm, and walking
over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony.  The wind
had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's
tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.  He looked down and saw the
policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on
the doors of the silent houses.  The crimson spot of a prowling hansom
gleamed at the corner and then vanished.  A woman in a fluttering shawl
was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went.  Now and
then she stopped and peered back.  Once, she began to sing in a hoarse
voice.  The policeman strolled over and said something to her.  She
stumbled away, laughing.  A bitter blast swept across the square.  The
gas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their
black iron branches to and fro.  He 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 looked!  It was like a dreadful wax image.

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 own footsteps.

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 minutes to two.

He sat down and began to think.  Every year--every month, almost--men
were strangled in England for what he had done.  There had been a
madness of murder in the air.  Some red star had come too close to the
earth.... And yet, what evidence was there against him?  Basil Hallward
had left the house at eleven.  No one had seen him come in again.  Most
of the servants were at Selby Royal.  His valet had gone to bed....
Paris!  Yes.  It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight
train, as he had intended.  With his curious reserved habits, it would
be months before any suspicions would be roused.  Months!  Everything
could be destroyed long before then.

A sudden thought struck him.  He put on his fur coat and hat and went
out into the hall.  There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of
the policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the
bull's-eye reflected in the window.  He waited and held his breath.

After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting
the door very gently behind him.  Then he began ringing the bell.  In
about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very
drowsy.

"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in;
"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"

"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
blinking.

"Ten minutes past two?  How horribly late!  You must wake me at nine
to-morrow. I have some work to do."

"All right, sir."

"Did any one call this evening?"

"Mr. Hallward, sir.  He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away
to catch his train."

"Oh!  I am sorry I didn't see him.  Did he leave any message?"

"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
find you at the club."

"That will do, Francis.  Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."

"No, sir."

The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.

Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the
library.  For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room,
biting his lip and thinking.  Then he took down the Blue Book from one
of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves.  "Alan Campbell, 152,
Hertford Street, Mayfair."  Yes; that was the man he wanted.

Late one night, Dorian runs into Basil Hallward on the street. Basil is delighted to see him, as he has been searching for Dorian all night, wanting to say goodbye before leaving on a six month trip to Paris. Basil has several hours before his train leaves, and the two adjourn to Dorian's home. The painter tells Dorian that he has been worried because "the most dreadful things are being said against in London." Dorian is annoyed, and tells his friend that he doesn't care for gossip, but makes no effort to defend himself. Disconcerted by his friend's apathy, Basil goes on to assure Dorian that, vicious and damning as many of the rumors are, he doesn't believe them because he trusts that Dorian is a good person, and that "sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed." Dorian looks as young and innocent as ever, and Basil believes his eyes. Once the artist begins listing the names of people whom Dorian is said to have led astray, Dorian rebukes him, saying that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and warning him to mind his own business. He argues that no person is without sin or temptation, and that corruption is not a thing that can be taught. Dorian only feels responsible for showing people their true selves. During their discussion, Basil remarks that he feels as if he doesn't know Dorian at all, and that in order to know him "I should have to see your soul." This sends Dorian into an odd state of defensive paranoia. Laughing, he tells Basil that "You shall see yourself tonight!" Basil is confused and frightened by Dorian's words. He wants his friend to deny the charges against him, and is unsure whether Dorian's refusal to do so amounts to an admission that they are, in fact, true. To answer all of Basil's doubts, Dorian invites the painter upstairs, to view his "diary". They ascend the stairs in Dorian's house, and enter the attic. Dorian tells Basil to open the curtain if he wishes to see his soul. Basil, thinking his friend is mad, hesitates, and Dorian reveals the painting himself. The artist is horrified, and at first doesn't even recognize Dorian in "the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him." He refuses to believe that it's actually his own painting, thinking it to be some "foul parody," until he recognizes the frame, and finds his own signature at the bottom. Dorian observes Basil's horrified reaction with apathy, and reminds him of the wish he made years ago at the painter's studio, right after the portrait had been completed. Basil is overwhelmed by disgust, unsure of what to believe, and exclaims that Dorian must have been a devil all along, and that if this picture accurately reflects the man's soul, that he "must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!" He urges Dorian to repent, to try and save his soul, at which point "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." In a frenzy, Dorian grabs a knife and plunges it into Basil's neck, stabbing him repeatedly, and then holds him down until he stops struggling and dies, a pool of blood spreading out across the table and weaving through the feet of his chair. Dorian is surprised at the ease with which he performed the murder. He feels relieved by the thought that the man "who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his life." He leaves the attic and determines that he will be able to get away with his crime, since Basil was supposed to leave for Paris that night, and since no one knew of his visit. He will destroy Basil's bag and overcoat, but in order to get rid of the body, he must call on Alan Campbell.

Basil speaks at length about Dorian's alleged sins, but never actually states what these sins are, only saying that Dorian's "name was implicated in the most terrible confession I'd ever read."  This propensity for only indirectly acknowledging the breaking of social taboos is an interesting tendency found in Victorian society, one shared by the narrator of Dorian Gray.  We have read that there are rumors of Dorian's misdeeds but unless we witness them first-hand, as we do the murder, we never learn what they actually are.  Like Basil, we can only assume the worst, based on the hideousness of the portrait. That Wilde chooses to portray Dorian's transgressions in such a manner is worth noting.  The narrator is clearly omniscient: he certainly appears capable of informing us about what, exactly, Dorian has done to spark so much gossip and disdain, but by only hinting at the nature of Dorian's transgressions, Wilde establishes a palpable sense of their illicitness, leading the reader to look for clues while also reinforcing the sense of Dorian's degradation. Basil's condemnation of Dorian's sins, and his fervent desire for Dorian to repent, indicate a religiosity in the artist that was absent in our last encounter with him.  Basil has acquired a sharply refined ethical sensibility.  This may explain the decline in his artistic output, since Wilde states in the preface that "An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style."  This "unpardonable mannerism" is partially responsible for Dorian's murderous rage, as it offends his artistic sensibility, which is the only claim to purity that he now feels justified in clinging to.  We are, however, told that the murder is prompted most directly by the portrait itself: "an uncontrollable feeling of hatred...came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas."  The image confronts Dorian with his shameful life, and Dorian blames Basil, the painter, for the pain that he feels. When the artist confronts Dorian, it is too much for him to bear, and he is driven to murder by "the mad passions of a hunted animal."  Ever since he first encountered Lord Henry, Dorian has made a point of surrendering to his passions.  Now, even the urge towards murderous violence cannot be checked.  Try as he might in later chapters, he is never able to write off this crime as simply another new and exciting "artistic" experience, as he was able to do with Sibyl's death. Violent images involving knives are found in several instances throughout the novel: in addition to Basil's murder, they are found when Basil threatens to destroy the portrait in chapter 2, and when Dorian reflects that he has killed Sibyl as if he had "cut her little throat with a knife" in chapter 8.

It is the evening before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he has dined with Lord Henry. Around eleven o'clock, wrapped in furs against the cold, he walks through the heavy fog toward home. Basil passes him on the street from the opposite direction. Dorian, not eager to encounter the old friend, continues toward his house; Basil, however, turns and quickly catches up. Basil plans to leave for Paris, catching a night train to the English Channel. He feels fortunate to find Dorian since he must talk with him and has been waiting for him at Dorian's home. Dorian and Basil go to Dorian's home. Basil, discussing Dorian's reputation, notes that horrible things are being said about his young friend. Dorian's friendship seems destructive or even fatal to very young men: One committed suicide; another was forced to leave England with a "tarnished name"; a third found a "dreadful end"; a fourth lost his career; a fifth lost his social standing. Dorian responds with contempt. He is interested only in the scandals of others; his own so-called scandals lack "the charm of novelty." He answers that he is not responsible for the flaws of his acquaintances. Basil persists. Dorian's effect on his friends speaks for itself. He has "filled them with a madness for pleasure." Then there is Lady Gwendolyn, Lord Henry's sister. Prior to knowing Dorian, "not a breath of scandal had ever touched her." Now, no decent lady will even drive in the park with her. The list goes on. Dorian has been seen sneaking out of "dreadful houses" and visiting "the foulest dens" in London. Basil wants to hear Dorian deny the accusations against him. Basil says that he can't believe the rumors when he sees Dorian's innocent and pure face. However, he needs to know the truth, to see Dorian's soul; but, as Basil says, only God can do that. Dorian laughs bitterly at Basil's preaching. He agrees to allow Basil to see his soul -- the portrait. Mad with pride, he tells Basil that no one will believe it if Basil should tell them what he sees, or they will simply admire Dorian the more. He leads Basil up the stairs to see the portrait. In the attic schoolroom, Dorian challenges Basil: "So you think it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw the curtain back, and you will see mine." Basil hesitates, and Dorian tears the curtain from its rod and flings it to the floor. Basil is horrified to see the hideous face in the painting with its evil grin. The face is recognizable as Dorian's, but it is aged and corrupt. Basil is overcome by "disgust and loathing" and asks Dorian to explain what the image in the portrait means. Dorian recalls the wish that he made that fateful day in Basil's studio, and Basil is horrified and incredulous. Basil tries to rationalize the change in the portrait: Mildew has transformed the portrait, or perhaps the paints were fouled. Besides, Dorian had told him that he destroyed the painting. Dorian corrects him: "I was wrong. It has destroyed me." He bitterly asks if Basil can still see his "ideal" in the portrait. It is, after all, the face of Dorian's soul. Basil is overcome with the ugliness of the portrait and collapses in a chair. He implores Dorian to pray, pointing out that if Dorian's previous prayer of pride was answered, surely his prayer of repentance will be, too. Dorian's eyes fill with tears, and he is momentarily filled with despair. "It is too late, Basil," he answers. Basil pleads that it is never too late. They must repent; he, too, is guilty, but they can still be forgiven. At that moment, Dorian looks at the portrait, and it seems to send him a command. An "uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward" overwhelms him. He grabs a knife lying on a nearby chest and plunges it into a large vein behind Basil's ear. He stabs his old friend repeatedly, and after a brief struggle, Basil is dead. Quietly Dorian returns to the library and hides Basil's bag and coat in a secret closet where he keeps his disguises. Collecting his thoughts, he realizes that many men are hanged for what he has just done. However, there is little evidence against him. Basil had the odd habit of disappearing without telling people where he was going, and people will think he has gone to Paris. Feeling no remorse, Dorian quickly thinks of a plan to disguise his actions. Carefully he leaves the house, taking care to avoid the notice of a policeman on the street. Then he turns and rings his own doorbell. It takes nearly five minutes for Francis, the valet, to answer. Dorian establishes an alibi by checking the time with Francis: ten past two in the morning. He asks if anyone visited in his absence. Francis says that Mr. Hallward stayed until eleven, when he left to catch his train. Dorian asks to be wakened at nine in the morning, and Francis shuffles back to bed. Dorian reflects on the situation in the library. The chapter ends as Dorian takes down a directory and locates a name and address: Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.

Ever the playwright, Wilde divides this climactic action into two chapters in order to create a dramatic pause before the men ascend the staircase to view the portrait. Chapter 12 serves only to bring the two characters together and set up the critical events in Chapter 13. The three key events in Chapter 13 build to a dramatic climax just as they might on the stage. The first event is the shocking unveiling of the portrait. Unlike Lord Henry -- and now -- Dorian, Basil is a relatively unassuming, decent man. He has come to see Dorian because he is genuinely concerned about his young friend who has built quite a chilling reputation for himself in the past eighteen years. Basil wants to be told that the rumors about Dorian are wrong; his motivations for confronting Dorian are entirely selfless and honest. When he sees the painting, the sin it reveals leaves Basil shaken. The second key event in Chapter 13 -- Basil's asking Dorian to absolve his sins -- is an essential ingredient in the Faust theme. Realizing what has taken place with the portrait and Dorian's life, and feeling some guilt for his own involvement, Basil pleads with Dorian to let go of his pride and pray for absolution. His concern for Dorian's corrupted soul can be seen as the only truly good and pure act in the novel, and it provides a striking and tragic contrast to Dorian's response: "It is too late, Basil," and "Those words mean nothing to me now." Typically, the central figure in the Faust legend indulges in despair, feeling that his sin is so great that he no longer can be saved. He cannot be saved because the combination of pride and despair keep him from seeking forgiveness. Dorian's problem is essentially this, his unwillingness to ask for forgiveness. In addition, there is the question of whether Dorian even wants to change his life. He states that he does not know whether he regrets the wish that evidently made the contract. At this point, the third important event of the chapter occurs. Dorian seems to receive some sort of message from the image on the canvas and is driven to murder his old friend. Basil's death conveniently removes the most immediate and serious threat to Dorian's way of life and his pact with the forces of evil. After the murder, he feels oddly calm and goes about the business of removing evidence and establishing an alibi. In the coolness of Dorian's actions after he kills Basil, the reader sees that Dorian has spoken at least a few truthful words during his corrupt life -- his admission that it is too late to save his soul. Dorian kills the only real friend he has, and with that, he kills the only chance he has to redeem his soul. Glossary ulster a long, loose overcoat made of heavy, strong fabric; originally made in Ulster, Ireland. Gladstone bag light hand luggage consisting of two hinged compartments. Anglomanie a combination of New Latin and French, the term indicates a mania for things English. hock a white Rhine wine; wine from Hochheim in Germany. profligate a person given over to excessive devotion to pleasure. curate a clergyman in charge of a parish or one who assists a rector. cassone Italian, "large cabinet." wainscoting paneling; finishing the lower part of an interior wall with materials different from the upper part. parody a mocking imitation of a literary or an artistic work. Moorish regarding the Moslems of mixed Berber and Arab descent living mostly in northern Africa.


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.  He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.

The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as
he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he
had been lost in some delightful dream.  Yet he had not dreamed at all.
His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain.
But youth smiles without any reason.  It is one of its chiefest charms.

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his
chocolate.  The mellow November sun came streaming into the room.  The
sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air.  It was
almost like a morning in May.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent,
blood-stained 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 drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
strangle one itself.

When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual
care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once.  He spent a long time
also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his 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 thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once
said.

After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
table, sat down and wrote two letters.  One he put in his pocket, the
other he handed to the valet.

"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
is out of town, get his address."

As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon a
piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and
then human faces.  Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.  He frowned, and
getting up, went over to the book-case and took out a volume at hazard.
He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until
it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.

When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
of the book.  It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees, Charpentier's
Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching.  The binding was
of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
pomegranates.  It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton.  As he
turned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of
Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "_du supplice encore mal 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 stanzas upon Venice:

     Sur une gamme chromatique,
       Le sein de perles ruisselant,
     La Venus de l'Adriatique
       Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

     Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes
       Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
     S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
       Que souleve un soupir d'amour.

     L'esquif aborde et me depose,
       Jetant son amarre au pilier,
     Devant une facade rose,
       Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

How exquisite they were!  As one read them, one seemed to be floating
down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black
gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains.  The mere lines looked
to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as
one pushes out to the Lido.  The sudden flashes of colour reminded him
of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the
tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through
the dim, dust-stained arcades.  Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he
kept saying over and over to himself:

     "Devant une facade rose,
        Sur le marbre d'un escalier."

The whole of Venice was in those two lines.  He remembered the autumn
that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to
mad delightful follies.  There was romance in every place.  But Venice,
like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true
romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.  Basil had
been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.  Poor
Basil!  What a horrible way for a man to die!

He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget.  He read
of the swallows that fly in and out of the little _cafe_ at Smyrna where
the Hadjis sit 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,
lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and
white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with small beryl eyes
that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those
verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that
curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "_monstre
charmant_" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.  But after a
time the book fell from his hand.  He grew nervous, and a horrible fit
of terror came over him.  What if Alan Campbell should be out of
England?  Days would elapse before he could come back.  Perhaps he
might refuse to come.  What could he do then?  Every moment was of
vital importance.

They had been great friends once, five years before--almost
inseparable, indeed.  Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.
When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled:  Alan
Campbell never did.

He was an extremely clever young man, though he 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
together--music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to
be able to exercise whenever he wished--and, indeed, exercised often
without being conscious of it.  They had met at Lady Berkshire's the
night that Rubinstein played there, and after that used to be always
seen together at the opera and wherever good music was going on.  For
eighteen months their intimacy lasted.  Campbell was always either at
Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square.  To him, as to many others, Dorian
Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in
life.  Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one
ever knew.  But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when
they met and that Campbell seemed always to go away early from any
party at which Dorian Gray was present.  He had changed, too--was
strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearing
music, and would never 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
curious experiments.

This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for.  Every second he kept
glancing at the clock.  As the minutes went by he became horribly
agitated.  At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room,
looking like a beautiful caged thing.  He took long stealthy strides.
His hands were curiously cold.

The suspense became unbearable.  Time seemed to him to be crawling with
feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept 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,
slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being
dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its
grave, and showed it to him.  He stared at it.  Its very horror made
him stone.

At last the door opened and his servant entered.  He turned glazed eyes
upon him.

"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.

A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back
to his cheeks.

"Ask him to come in at once, Francis."  He felt that he was himself
again.  His mood of cowardice had passed away.

The man bowed and retired.  In a few moments, Alan Campbell walked in,
looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his
coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.

"Alan!  This is kind of you.  I thank you for coming."

"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray.  But you said it
was a matter of life and death."  His voice was hard and cold.  He
spoke with slow deliberation.  There was a look of contempt in the
steady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian.  He kept his hands in
the pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
gesture with which he had been greeted.

"Yes:  it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
person.  Sit down."

Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him.
The two men's eyes met.  In Dorian's there was infinite pity.  He knew
that what he was going to do was dreadful.

After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very
quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room
to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
He has been dead ten hours now.  Don't stir, and don't look at me like
that.  Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do
not concern you.  What you have to do is this--"

"Stop, Gray.  I don't want to know anything further.  Whether what you
have told me is true or not true doesn't concern me.  I entirely
decline to be mixed up in your life.  Keep your horrible secrets to
yourself.  They don't interest me any more."

"Alan, they will have to interest you.  This one will have to interest
you.  I am awfully sorry for you, Alan.  But I can't help myself.  You
are the one man who is able to save me.  I am forced to bring you into
the matter.  I have no option.  Alan, you are scientific.  You 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 I may scatter in the air."

"You are mad, Dorian."

"Ah!  I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."

"You are mad, I tell you--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to
help you, mad to make this monstrous confession.  I will have nothing
to do with this matter, whatever it is.  Do you think I am going to
peril my reputation for you?  What is it to me what devil's work you
are up to?"

"It was suicide, Alan."

"I am glad of that.  But who drove him to it?  You, I should fancy."

"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"

"Of course I refuse.  I will have absolutely nothing to do with it.  I
don't care what shame comes on you.  You deserve it all.  I should not
be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced.  How dare you ask
me, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this 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 friends.  Don't
come to me."

"Alan, it was murder.  I killed him.  You don't know what he had made
me suffer.  Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or
the marring of it than poor Harry has had.  He may not have intended
it, the result was the same."

"Murder!  Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to?  I shall not
inform upon you.  It is not my business.  Besides, without my stirring
in the matter, you are certain to be arrested.  Nobody ever commits a
crime without doing something stupid.  But I will have nothing to do
with it."

"You must have something to do with it.  Wait, wait a moment; listen to
me.  Only listen, Alan.  All I ask of you is to perform a certain
scientific experiment.  You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
horrors that you do there don't affect you.  If in some hideous
dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a
leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow
through, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject.  You
would not turn a hair.  You would not believe that you were doing
anything wrong.  On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were
benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the
world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind.
What I want you to do is merely what you have often done before.
Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are
accustomed to work at.  And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence
against me.  If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be
discovered unless you help me."

"I have no desire to help you.  You forget that.  I am simply
indifferent to the whole thing.  It has nothing to do with me."

"Alan, I entreat you.  Think of the position I am in.  Just before you
came I almost fainted with terror.  You may know terror yourself some
day.  No! don't think of that.  Look at the matter purely from the
scientific point of view.  You don't inquire where the dead things on
which you experiment come from.  Don't inquire now.  I have told you
too much as it is.  But I beg of you to do this.  We were friends once,
Alan."

"Don't speak about those days, Dorian--they are dead."

"The dead linger sometimes.  The man upstairs will not go away.  He is
sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms.  Alan!
Alan!  If you don't come to my assistance, I am ruined.  Why, they will
hang me, Alan!  Don't you understand?  They will hang me for what I
have done."

"There is no good in prolonging this scene.  I absolutely refuse to do
anything in the matter.  It is insane of you to ask me."

"You refuse?"

"Yes."

"I entreat you, Alan."

"It is useless."

The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes.  Then he stretched
out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it.  He
read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the
table.  Having done this, he got up and went over to the window.

Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and
opened it.  As he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell
back in his chair.  A horrible sense of sickness came over him.  He
felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.

After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round and
came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.

"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no
alternative.  I have a letter written already.  Here it is.  You see
the address.  If you don't help me, I must send it.  If you don't help
me, I will send it.  You know what the result will be.  But you are
going to help me.  It is impossible for you to refuse now.  I tried to
spare you.  You will do me the justice to admit that.  You were stern,
harsh, offensive.  You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat
me--no living man, at any rate.  I bore it all.  Now it is for me to
dictate terms."

Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.

"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan.  You know what they are.
The thing is quite simple.  Come, don't work yourself into this fever.
The thing has to be done.  Face it, and do it."

A groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered all over.  The
ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing
time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
borne.  He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his
forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already
come upon him.  The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead.
It was intolerable.  It seemed to crush him.

"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."

"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter
things.

"You must.  You have no choice.  Don't delay."

He hesitated a moment.  "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"

"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."

"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."

"No, Alan, you must not leave the house.  Write out on a sheet of
notepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab and bring the
things back to you."

Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope
to his assistant.  Dorian took the note up and read it carefully.  Then
he rang the bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as
soon as possible and to bring the things with him.

As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got up
from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a
kind of ague.  For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke.  A
fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was
like the beat of a hammer.

As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at Dorian
Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears.  There was something in
the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him.
"You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.

"Hush, Alan.  You have saved my life," said Dorian.

"Your life?  Good heavens! what a life that is!  You have gone from
corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime.  In
doing what I am going to do--what you force me to do--it is not of your
life that I am thinking."

"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian with a sigh, "I wish you had a thousandth
part of the pity for me that I 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.

"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.

"Yes," said Dorian.  "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another
errand for you.  What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies
Selby with orchids?"

"Harden, sir."

"Yes--Harden.  You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden
personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered,
and to have as few white ones as possible.  In fact, I don't want any
white ones.  It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty
place--otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it."

"No trouble, sir.  At what time shall I be back?"

Dorian looked at Campbell.  "How long will your experiment take, Alan?"
he said in a calm indifferent voice.  The presence of a third person in
the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.

Campbell frowned and bit his lip.  "It will take about five hours," he
answered.

"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
Francis.  Or stay:  just leave my things out for dressing.  You can
have the evening to yourself.  I am not dining at home, so I shall not
want you."

"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.

"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost.  How heavy this chest is!
I'll take it for you.  You bring the other things."  He spoke rapidly
and in an authoritative manner.  Campbell felt dominated by him.  They
left the room together.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned
it in the lock.  Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his
eyes.  He shuddered.  "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured.

"It is nothing to me.  I don't require you," said Campbell coldly.

Dorian half opened the door.  As he did so, he saw the face of his
portrait leering in the sunlight.  On the floor in front of it the torn
curtain was lying.  He remembered that the night before he had
forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas,
and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.

What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on
one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?  How horrible
it was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the
silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing
whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that
it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.

He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with
half-closed eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, determined that
he would not look even once upon the dead man.  Then, stooping down and
taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the
picture.

There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed
themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him.  He heard
Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other
things that he had required for his dreadful work.  He began to wonder
if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had
thought of each other.

"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.

He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been
thrust back into the chair and that Campbell was gazing into a
glistening yellow face.  As he was going downstairs, he heard the key
being turned in the lock.

It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library.  He
was pale, but absolutely calm.  "I have done what you asked me to do,"
he muttered. "And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again."

"You have saved me from ruin, Alan.  I cannot forget that," said Dorian
simply.

As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs.  There was a horrible
smell of nitric acid in the room.  But the thing that had been sitting
at the table was gone.

Dorian awakes from a dreamless sleep and gradually remembers the terrible events of the previous night. He writes a letter summoning Alan Campbell, and sends his servant to deliver it. While he is waiting, he distracts himself from his guilt by reading poetry from a book given to him by a man named Adrian Singleton, and reflects on the course of his friendship with Alan Campbell. The two men first met at a party. Alan was a man of science, a chemist, but the two initially bonded over their shared love of music. Alan "was an extremely clever young man," but "whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian." For a while the two were inseparable, but for unspecified reasons Alan began leaving parties whenever Dorian showed up and refusing to speak with him or interact with him in any way. Alan withdrew from society almost entirely, immersing himself in his experiments. The long wait nags at Dorian, but Alan eventually arrives. Dorian speaks cordially, but his guest is cold, curt, and suspicious of his host's motives. Cutting to the chase, Dorian tells him that he needs him to get rid of a dead body, the result of a suicide. Alan refuses and wants nothing to do with the situation - or with Dorian at all, for that matter. Dorian, hoping to win Alan's sympathy, confesses that it was murder, and says that he only needs Alan to pretend to carry out an experiment. It becomes clear that Alan is determined to resist all of Dorian's tactics. Reluctantly, Dorian turns to blackmail, showing him a letter that he promises to send unless the scientist agrees to help. Alan succumbs to "the disgrace with which he was threatened," and writes a letter for his assistant, detailing the tools to be brought at once to Dorian's house. The tools are delivered, and Dorian dismisses his servant for the evening so that he does not become suspicious. The two men haul the heavy trunk of tools upstairs. Dorian realizes that for the first time he has forgotten to cover the painting before leaving the attic. He rushes to throw the curtain over it, but before he does so he notices the sickening gleam of red blood on the hands of his doppelganger. Alan arrives with the trunk, locks himself in the attic, and goes to work. Around seven in the evening, the deed is done. Basil's body has been incinerated, and Alan leaves with the words "Let us never see each other again."

Until now, we have heard the names Alan Campbell and Adrian Singleton mentioned on the list of names of those Dorian has corrupted, but this chapter contains the first instance of a face-to-face interaction with one of them.  Aside from Sibyl, these two are the only people whose lives Dorian has ruined who actually appear in the book.  Once again, the narrator refuses to state the reasons for the bitterness Alan displays towards Dorian, or the content of Dorian's blackmail letter, but these omissions only heighten our sense of how allegedly unspeakable their transgressions must have been.  We learn that Alan no longer wishes to show his face in public, and we have learned in earlier chapters that Adrian is likewise ostracized.  The likeliest causes for this shame - homosexual encounters - are, however, only tacitly present. When Wilde himself stood trial for accusations of sodomy in the years following this book's publication, he wrote of "the note of doom that...runs through...Dorian Gray"; it was instances such as these that Wilde was referring to.  Wilde revised later editions of the book in an effort to reduce the prominence of the homosexual undertones, but they were too integral an aspect of the interactions between the main characters to be eliminated entirely. Dorian's cordiality towards Alan when his guest first arrives is a facade.  His seeming reluctance to blackmail the man is insincere, an indication that Dorian actually takes pleasure from the manipulative power he holds over Alan.  Alan is not fooled by Dorian's pretense of kindness, but has no choice but to comply with his wishes.  In this interaction, we witness how refined Dorian's capacity for social persuasion has become during the 18 years glossed over in chapter 11.  He has been a good student of Lord Henry, now equalling, or parhaps surpassing, the older man's powers of manipulation. The poem that Dorian reads while waiting for Alan is significant for several reasons.  First, it is from a book given to him by Adrian Singleton.  Dorian relies on the gift of a man that he has somehow betrayed for comfort. The lines that he repeats over and over to himself, "Devant une facade rose/ Sur le marbre d'un escalier," are translated as "Upon a red-faced town/ On the marble of a stairway."  These lines seem to encapsulate Venice for Dorian, who has visited the city with Basil.  Remembering the painter, however, only leads him to remark "Poor Basil! What a horrible way to die!"  Dorian is unwilling to openly admit that he is directly responsibile for Basil's death.  In fact, Dorian instead blames Basil for the suffering caused by the painting.  This is, of course, highly delusional behavior.  It would make more sense to blame Lord Henry, his corruptor, but even this would be inaccurate.  Dorian himself is responsible for wishing the enchantment into existence.  However, the genuine acceptance of responsibility for his misdeeds is well beyond Dorian's ethical capacities at this point.

The next morning, Dorian is awakened at nine by his valet. At first, he doesn't remember what happened the night before--his sleep was untroubled by conscience. Then, the memories come back; Dorian can't stop thinking about how much he suffered, but totally unsympathetic towards Basil . Dorian tries not to think too much about all of this unpleasant stuff, and goes about his business, getting dressed, reading letters, and having breakfast. He then writes two letters, and has one sent to the mysterious Alan Campbell. Dorian then lounges about in the library, comforting himself with poetry. Caught up in emotion, he briefly feels a little bad for Basil, then tries again to forget about it. However, though Dorian keeps trying to think of more pleasant things , he is overcome by nerves. What if Alan Campbell doesn't show up? We learn that Alan is one of the ex-friends that now hates Dorian. He's a brilliant young man--a scientist--and he and Dorian were great friends for a while. They were brought together by their love for music and were totally besties for about a year and half. Then, all of a sudden, they weren't friends anymore--nobody knows why. Alan then devoted his life to science. While Dorian's waiting for Alan, time drags on. He might not realize it, but this is the thing called "fear" that the rest of us are well acquainted with. Finally, Alan shows up. He's cold and unsympathetic--we have to wonder what terrible thing Dorian did to him. Dorian knows that he has to do another terrible thing to Alan, and there's pity in his eyes. He tells Alan about the corpse upstairs, and requests that Alan use "science" to get rid of it. You know, because "science" can do anything, including make dead bodies disappear. Trying to get the reluctant Alan on his side, Dorian claims that Basil committed suicide, but then admits to the murder when Alan still refuses. The two ex-friends argue fruitlessly for a while. When it seems as though Alan's just going to keep refusing, Dorian pulls out all the stops and resorts to blackmail. He writes something on a piece of paper and shows it to the astonished, horrified Alan. Whatever it is, it must be damning. Alan is totally miserable--wouldn't you be? Dorian has him backed into a corner; he has to take this mission, or Dorian will ruin his life. Alan agrees to dispose of the body. Dorian sends his servant to get Alan's lab equipment and supplies from his house, and, while they wait, things are totally, horrifically awkward. Finally, the servant returns, and Dorian dismisses him for the rest of the day. They're ready to start the gruesome "experiment." Dorian takes Alan upstairs, and leaves him in the schoolroom with the dead man. He flees the room, and Alan begins what he has to do. Hours later, Alan emerges, pale and drawn. He's finished the job, and he never wants to see Dorian again. Dorian goes to check out the schoolroom--it smells like acid, but Alan got the job done. The body is gone.

The next morning, Dorian wakes from a long and untroubled sleep, but the events of the previous night begin to bother him. Basil is still in the attic room, sitting dead in the sunlight. Dorian feels that he must take action reasonably soon. At breakfast, he looks at the morning mail. He writes two letters, sticking one in his pocket and directing Francis, his newly hired servant, to deliver the other to Mr. Campbell. As he waits to hear from Mr. Campbell, Dorian seeks distraction. He sketches, but every drawing he does reminds him of Basil. Finally, he pulls a book at random from the shelf. It is Theophile Gautier's Emaux et Camees, a book of poems that inspired other French Aesthetes, including Charles Baudelaire. Especially touched by a poem about Venice, he is momentarily transported from the horrible situation he finds himself in. As he thinks about Venice, he suddenly recalls that Basil was with him during his last visit there; although he tries to read other poems, his attempts to distract himself fail and he is drawn back to the reality of the murder. He grows increasingly more nervous and wonders what he will do if he cannot find Alan Campbell. Campbell is a passionate scientist, very knowledgeable, and has his own laboratory. The man had been a close friend of Dorian's five years before, but their friendship ended abruptly. Time passes so slowly that it seems to stop. In a typically self-centered moment, Dorian imagines a "hideous future" for himself. Finally, the servant announces Campbell's arrival. Campbell clearly feels bitterly hostile toward Dorian. He is there only because Dorian's letter mentioned a "matter of life and death." Dorian confirms the graveness of the situation and confides that there is a corpse in the attic room, dead now ten hours. Campbell interrupts, saying that he does not want to hear more about the matter. Dorian first claims that the body is that of a suicide but finally admits to having committed murder. He blames the victim for shaping his life, although perhaps unwittingly. He pleads with Campbell to help, reasoning that because Campbell often works with corpses, he will know how to destroy a body. The job will be no worse than many that Campbell has performed on corpses at the morgue. When Campbell still refuses to help, Dorian writes a few words on a piece of paper and gives the secret message to Campbell. As the scientist reads the brief note, he turns white and falls back in his chair. Dorian expresses pity for Campbell's situation but announces that he has already written a letter regarding the secret. He threatens to send the letter unless Campbell cooperates. Campbell makes one last, lame effort to avoid helping Dorian. He says that he cannot do the job. When Dorian reminds him that he has no choice, Campbell finally gives in; he writes a list of the required equipment, and Francis is dispatched to Campbell's laboratory to pick up the supplies. Upstairs, Dorian discovers that he forgot to cover the portrait when he left the room the previous night. There is a "loathsome red dew . . . wet and glistening" on one of the hands in the picture. Momentarily, the portrait seems more real and horrible to Dorian than Basil's corpse. Dorian hastily covers the portrait, and Campbell brings in his equipment. The job takes the full five hours that Campbell has predicted. Dorian is waiting downstairs in the library when Campbell enters, pale but calm, well after seven that evening. The scientist curtly states that he has done what he was asked to do and hopes never to see Dorian again. He then leaves. When Dorian enters the attic room, he detects a horrible smell. However, there is no sign of Basil Howard.

Throughout the novel, Wilde only hints at the nature of Dorian's secret life, leaving the reader to wonder what sins Dorian commits. Wilde surely could have been more specific about Dorian's secretive passions, but he deliberately keeps the issue vague so that readers must define sin for themselves. In this way, Wilde draws readers closer to the story. In a similar way, Wilde doesn't say what secret Dorian holds over Campbell. Most likely, it is something that the scientist did years ago while under Dorian's influence. In any case, Dorian is fully aware that blackmailing Campbell into helping him is dreadful, but he doesn't hesitate for a moment to do so. In fact, he scolds Campbell for not wanting to help him at first, and he even seems to take pleasure in forcing Campbell to comply eventually. Dorian has become dominated by the evil of his secrets, and he in turn seeks to dominate and control those around him. At this point in the story, Dorian shows that he has surpassed his mentor -- Lord Henry -- in his power to manipulate. The interlude concerning Gautier's poetry works within the context of this novel. The poem is translated: On a colorful scale, andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;Her breast dripping with pearls, The Venus of the Adriatic Draws her pink and white body out of the water. andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;The domes, on the azure of the waves Following the pure contour of the phrase, Swell like rounded breasts Lifted by a sigh of love.  andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp;The skiff lands and drops me off, Casting its rope to the pillar, In front of a pink facade On the marble of a staircase. The beautiful poem about Venice contrasts with the horror of Dorian's situation and briefly carries him away to a happier, more beautiful time and place. The recollection that Basil had been with him, however, startles Dorian back to reality. The idle pleasures that Dorian uses to amuse himself can't erase, or even distract him from, the evil that he has committed. Strangely, the passions that drove him to the mad act of murder no longer hold any pleasure for him. Note that Dorian defends Lord Henry but is quite willing to blame Basil for the loss of his soul. While Basil created the portrait, he was never part of the pact and never tried to manipulate Dorian toward a life of self-serving debauchery and vanity. Dorian, of course, is not about to put the responsibility where it belongs -- on himself. In fact, by the end of the chapter, Dorian has emotionally and psychologically divorced himself from Basil entirely, referring to him as "the thing that had been sitting at the table." It appears that Dorian has begun to lose touch with even his self-centered version of reality. Glossary drugged with poppies a reference to opium, which is prepared from dried juice of unripe pods of the opium poppy. gilt covered with gold or something resembling gold. trellis a support frame. du supplice encore mal lavee French, "not  cleansed from torment." doigts de faune French, "fingers of the faun." faun in Roman mythology, a royal deity having the body of a man but the horns, ears, tail, and sometimes the legs of a goat. Lido an island off Venice. Tintoret Tintoretto; original name, Jacopo Robusti , Italian painter. Nile the longest river in Africa, running from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean. sphinx a figure with the body of a lion and the head of a man, ram, or hawk. monstre charmant French, "charming monster." Rubinstein Anton Rubinstein , Russian concert pianist, composer, and educator. ague chills, or shivering. nitric acid a fuming, corrosive liquid.

The next morning, Dorian wakes from a restful sleep. Once the events of the previous night sink in, he feels the return of his hatred for Basil. He decides not to brood on these things for fear of making himself ill or mad. After breakfast, he sends for Alan Campbell, a young scientist and former friend from whom he has grown distant. While waiting for Campbell to arrive, Dorian passes the time with a book of poems and reflects on his once intimate relationship with the scientist: the two were, at one point, inseparable. He also draws pictures and reflects on his drawings' similarity to Basil's likeness. Dorian then wonders if Campbell will come and is relieved when the servant announces his arrival. Campbell has come reluctantly, having been summoned on a matter of life and death. Dorian confesses that there is a dead man locked in the uppermost room of his house, though he refrains from discussing the circumstances of the man's death. He asks Campbell to use his knowledge of chemistry to destroy the body. Campbell refuses. Dorian admits that he murdered the man, and Campbell reiterates that he has no interest in becoming involved. Dorian blackmails Campbell, threatening to reveal a secret that would bring great disgrace on him. With no alternative, Campbell agrees to dispose of the body and sends a servant to his home for the necessary equipment. Dorian goes upstairs to cover the portrait and notices that one of the hands on the painting is dripping with red, "as though the canvas had sweated blood. Campbell works until evening, then leaves. When Dorian returns to the room, the body is gone, and the odor of nitric acid fills the room

Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen take a decided turn for the macabre: the murder of Basil and the gruesome way it is reflected in the portrait--"as though the canvas had sweated blood"--root the novel firmly in the Gothic tradition, where darkness and supernatural horrors reign. In this setting, it becomes a challenge for Wilde to keep his hero from becoming a flat archetype of menacing evil. Much to his credit, he manages to keep Dorian a somewhat sympathetic character, even as he commits an unspeakable crime and blackmails a once dear friend to help him cover it up. Dorian remains worthy of sympathy because we see clearly the failure of his struggle to rise above a troubled conscience. With a murder added to his growing list of sins, Dorian wants nothing more than to be able to shrug off his guilt: he perceives Basil's corpse as a "thing" sitting in a chair and tries to lose himself in the lines of a French poet. The most telling evidence of Dorian's guilt can be seen as he sits waiting for the arrival of Alan Campbell; Dorian draws and soon remarks that "every face that he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward." This scene resonates with the Chapter Nine scene in which Dorian asks the artist to draw a picture of Sibyl Vane so that he may better remember her: in both instances, the hedonistic Dorian betrays his gnawing conscience. Throughout the novel, Basil acts as a sort of moral ballast, reminding Lord Henry and Dorian of the price that must be paid for their pleasure seeking. In these chapters, he provides a fascinating counterpoint to the philosophy by which Dorian lives. Refusing to believe that the dissipation of a soul can occur without notice, he claims that "f 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." The introduction of such an opposing view discloses Wilde's love of contradiction. In his essay "The Truth of Masks," Wilde wrote that " Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true." Indeed, the truth of The Picture of Dorian Gray, if one is to be found, emerges from oppositions. After all, as Dorian reflects while gazing upon his ruined portrait, art depends as much upon horror as it does upon "marvellous beauty," just as one's being is always the synthesis of a "Heaven and Hell." Like the other secondary characters in the novel, Alan Campbell is introduced and rather quickly ignored. His appearance, however, plays a vital role in establishing the darkening mood of the novel. The macabre experiments that he is accustomed to conducting as a chemist provide him with the knowledge that Dorian finds so necessary. Furthermore, the secrets that surround his personal life contribute to the air of mystery that surrounds Dorian. It is significant that the reader never learns the details of the circumstances by which Dorian blackmails Campbell. Given Wilde's increasingly indiscreet lifestyle and the increasingly hostile social attitudes toward homosexuality that flourished at the end of the nineteenth century, the reader can assume that Campbell's transgression is of a sexual nature. In 1885, the British Parliament passed the Labouchere Amendment, which widened prohibitions against male homosexual acts to include not only sodomy  but also "gross indecency" , an offense that carried a two-year prison term. Oscar Wilde himself was eventually found guilty of the latter offense. This new law was commonly known as the Blackmailer's Charter. Thus, Alan Campbell, a seemingly inconsequential character, serves as an important indicator of the social prejudices and punishments in Wilde's time.