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

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

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

"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."

How late it was!  He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over
his letters.  One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by
hand that morning.  He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside.
The others he opened listlessly.  They contained the usual collection
of cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes
of charity concerts, and the like that are showered on fashionable
young men every morning during the season.  There was a rather heavy
bill for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet
had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely
old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several
very courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street money-lenders
offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the
most reasonable rates of interest.

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

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

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

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

Dorian shook his head.  "I am not cold," he murmured.

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.

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

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

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

As he often remembered 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 sickened horror.

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

Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double
chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir.  He was trying to gather up the
scarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his
way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
wandering.  He did not know what to do, or what to think.  Finally, he
went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness.  He
covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of
pain.  There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we
feel that no one else has a right to blame us.  It is the confession,
not the priest, that gives us absolution.  When Dorian had finished the
letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

"By marrying Sibyl Vane."

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

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

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

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

"You know nothing then?"

"What do you mean?"

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

A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp.  "Dead!  Sibyl dead!
It is not true!  It is a horrible lie!  How dare you say it?"

"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely.  "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
round to her room?  That is an important point."

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

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

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

"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
up in it.  I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen.  I should have
thought she was almost younger than that.  She looked such a child, and
seemed to know so little about acting.  Dorian, you mustn't let this
thing get on your nerves.  You must come and dine with me, and
afterwards we will look in at the opera.  It is a Patti night, and
everybody will be there.  You can come to my sister's box.  She has got
some smart women with her."

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.
Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that.  The birds sing just as
happily in my garden.  And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go
on to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards.  How
extraordinarily dramatic life is!  If I had read all this in a book,
Harry, I think I would have wept over it.  Somehow, now that it has
happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.
Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my
life.  Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been
addressed to a dead girl.  Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent
people we call the dead?  Sibyl!  Can she feel, or know, or listen?
Oh, Harry, how I loved her once!  It seems years ago to me now.  She
was everything to me.  Then came that dreadful night--was it really
only last night?--when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.
She explained it all to me.  It was terribly pathetic.  But I was not
moved a bit.  I thought her shallow.  Suddenly something happened that
made me afraid.  I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible.  I
said I would go back to her.  I felt I had done wrong.  And now she is
dead.  My God!  My God!  Harry, what shall I do?  You don't know the
danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight.  She would
have done that for me.  She had no right to kill herself.  It was
selfish of her."

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case
and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever
reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible
interest in life.  If you had married this girl, you would have been
wretched.  Of course, you would have treated her kindly.  One can
always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.  But she would
have soon found out that you were absolutely 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 abject--which, of course, I would not have allowed--but
I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an
absolute failure."

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

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

"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to?  I
don't think I am heartless.  Do you?"

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

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

"It is an interesting question," 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
me--there have not been very many, but there have been some--have
always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them,
or they to care for me.  They have become stout and tedious, and when I
meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences.  That awful memory of
woman!  What a fearful thing it is!  And what an utter intellectual
stagnation it reveals!  One should absorb the colour of life, but one
should never remember its details.  Details are always vulgar."

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

"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion.  "Life has always
poppies in her hands.  Of course, now and then things linger.  I once
wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
mourning for a romance that would not die.  Ultimately, however, it did
die.  I forget what killed it.  I think it was her proposing to
sacrifice the whole world for me.  That is always a dreadful moment.
It fills one with the terror of eternity.  Well--would you believe
it?--a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner
next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole
thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future.  I had
buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.  She dragged it out again and
assured me that I had spoiled her life.  I am bound to state that she
ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety.  But what a lack
of taste she showed!  The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
But women never know when the curtain has fallen.  They always want a
sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over,
they propose to continue it.  If they were allowed their own way, every
comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in
a farce.  They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of
art.  You are more fortunate than I am.  I assure you, Dorian, that not
one of the women I have known would have done for 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 thirty-five 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 one."

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

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

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

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

"What was that, Harry?"

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

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

"No, she will never come to life.  She has played her last part.  But
you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply
as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful
scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.  The girl never really
lived, and so she has never really died.  To you at least she was
always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and
left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's
music sounded richer and more full of joy.  The moment she touched
actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she 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 in from the garden.  The
colours faded wearily out of things.

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

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

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

"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you
would have to fight for your 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 drive down to the
club.  We are rather late, as it is."

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

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

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

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

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

As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back.  No;
there was no further change in the picture.  It had received the news
of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself.  It was
conscious of the events of life as they occurred.  The vicious cruelty
that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the
very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was.  Or
was it 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
tremulous grace.  He brushed them away hastily and looked again at the
picture.

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

A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that
was in store for the fair face on the canvas.  Once, in boyish mockery
of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips
that now smiled so cruelly at him.  Morning after 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 everything.

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

Dorian is awoken by Victor, his servant, after having slept until 1:15 in the afternoon. He sees that he has received a letter from Lord Henry, but leaves it unopened. He feels refreshed and eats breakfast happily, the previous night feeling like nothing more than a dream. His pleasant afternoon is interrupted, however, when he sees the screen that he has thrown over the portrait. He thinks himself foolish for imagining that the painting might have changed, but decides to check it again just to make sure. Nervous that he might be acting strangely, he throws Victor out of the room, locks all of the doors, and draws the curtains. Sure enough, "It was perfectly true. The painting had altered." He wonders how this could possible, whether there is a scientific explanation, or a darker, metaphysical cause for the change. The cruel expression on the face in the portrait reminds him of his poor treatment of Sibyl. Stricken with guilt, Dorian writes her a passionate love letter, filling "page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain." Writing the letter is deeply cathartic. As soon as he finishes, Lord Henry arrives. Dorian tells him that although he saw Sibyl and was brutal towards her, he doesn't regret any of it, since "It has taught me how to know myself better." Henry is delighted to find Dorian in good spirits, but when the young man tells him that he plans to cleanse his soul by marrying the poor actress, it is clear that there has been a misunderstanding. Sibyl Vane, as Henry had written to Dorian in the unopened letter, has killed herself with poison. Henry says that there will be an inquest, but that Dorian has nothing to worry about since nobody saw him go backstage or leave the theater, and since Sibyl never even told anyone her fiancA's real name. Henry urges Dorian not to get involved with the situation, as such a scandal would destroy his reputation. He asks Dorian to come see the opera with him that night. After his initial shock passes, Dorian responds to the news of Sibyl's death with a strange detachment. "So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," he thinks, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that." Under Henry's direction, Dorian comes to appreciate Sibyl's death as "a wonderful ending to a wonderful play." Dorian is briefly disturbed by his emotional detachment, but Henry soon assuages his guilt, saying that life's tragedies often "hurt us by...their entire lack of style." Since Sibyl died so dramatically, and for such a pure purpose as love, the situation is actually one, Henry believes, that Dorian should take satisfaction and pleasure in. Henry goes so far as to state that since the girl was only ever alive on stage, and since Dorian's love for her was rooted in his admiration for the various heroines she portrayed, that "The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died...don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than are." Dorian thanks Henry for being such a good and true friend. Henry leaves, and Dorian again looks at the picture. The mean sneer has not shifted, making Dorian think that it had "received the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself." After further contemplation, Dorian consoles himself by thinking that since the picture displays his true character, it must "bear the burden of his shame," thus leaving him to enjoy a guilt-free life. He sees no reason to consider why the picture changes, and decides to allow himself to simply be entertained by its progress. The chapter ends with Dorian leaving to meet Lord Henry at the opera.

Once again, Dorian displays alarming capriciousness and a disturbing blindness to his own vanity. He writes to Sibyl in a passion, taking all of the blame for his actions, but the narrator comments that "there is a luxury in self-reproach."  He takes pleasure in his confession, privately praising his own "selflessness".  He falls into a brief spell of grief upon hearing the news of Sibyl's suicide, but proves to be far from inconsolable. Lord Henry, playing the devil to Dorian's Faust, shows him the means by which to transform his pain and guilt into a new, pleasurable experience, for which only the portrait will pay the price. In this chapter, the symbolic significance of the portrait is clearly spelled out for us: "here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin...an ever present sign of the ruin men bring upon their souls."  This realization prompts Dorian to exclaim that he "can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."  Dorian fears physical ugliness; in other words, it is vanity, not morality, that defines Dorian's relationship with his soul.  A similar type of selfishness appears when Dorian writes his love letter to Sibyl.  We are told that "There is a luxury in self-reproach...When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven."  Even in the throes of guilt, Dorian does not need Sibyl to grant the forgiveness that only she can rightly give, nor does it occur to him that Sibyl would do anything other than immediately accept his apology and agree to be his wife. Dorian's comment that Sibyl's death seems "to be like simply a wonderful ending to a wonderful play" continues the theme of life imitating art.  It also recalls Dorian's obsession with the characters that Sibyl portrayed.  He became disappointed in her when she tried to be her own person, and rejected the falseness of playing a role.  Now, her death has given Dorian the ability to once again view Sibyl as a character in a play.  When Lord Henry encourages this interpretation of the tragedy, he ensures that Dorian passes the point of no return on his descent into immorality. Dorian's statement that he has "murdered her...as if I had cut her little throat with a knife" not only displays a disturbing tendency to relish in unnecessarily morbid details, but also foreshadows Basil's murder in chapter 13, and recalls Basil's threat to destroy the painting with a knife in chapter 2.  The image of death by stabbing hovers in the air throughout the novel. This chapter also contains the closest thing Wilde offers as to an explanation of how the portrait has acquired such metaphysical properties.  However, it is not actually an explanation at all, but merely idle conjecture from Dorian: "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 the soul thought, they realized? - that what it dreamed, they made true? Or was there some other, darker reason?"  Dorian is briefly disturbed by the possibility that black magic is at work, but he soon shrugs off this fear, and the question of how and why the portrait changes is never again raised.

When Dorian wakes later that day, he goes about his usual business--he peruses his mail , gets dressed, and has a pleasant breakfast. During his meal, Dorian's eye falls upon the screen that hides the portrait. He worries that the frightening change he saw in it last night might still be there in the clear morning light. As soon as his valet leaves the room, Dorian locks the doors and takes another look at his picture. His impression the night before was right--the portrait has changed. He can't understand or explain it: does the painting have some kind of link to his own soul? He's horrified. Regarding his altered image, Dorian feels terrible about what he's done to Sibyl. He decides to go back to her and devote his life to loving her--the portrait's embodiment of his sins serves as a kind of conscience. He immediately sits down to write her a long, melodramatically passionate letter; when he's done, he already feels forgiven. At that moment, Lord Henry shows up. He wants to make sure Dorian's not too worried about the whole Sibyl thing; Dorian tells him that he's not sorry for any of it, and that it's taught him more about himself. He announces that he wants to be good from now on to keep his soul from growing hideous, and says he'll start by marrying Sibyl Vane. Henry is taken aback--it turns out that the letter he wrote to Dorian contains some terrible, terrible news: Sibyl Vane is dead. Dorian is understandably distraught, but Henry mostly wants to make sure that Dorian's in the clear, and that he won't be scandalously involved in the death. It turns out that Sybil almost certainly committed suicide by poison . Dorian is incredibly upset, but Henry callously starts talking about the opera--he wants Dorian to come out with him and his sister. Dorian can't get over the shock, and hashes out all of his feelings--he's guilty and sad and angry all at the same time. Henry convinces him that the whole Sibyl thing was a mistake to begin with, and that they would never have been happy had they gotten married. Dorian is alarmed by the fact that he doesn't exactly feel this event as much as he should--rather, he's starting to look at it like the completion of a beautifully tragic work of art. Henry seizes upon this moment of weakness to convince Dorian even more fully that this was how things had to play out; he even claims that Sibyl proved just how special she was by killing herself over Dorian. Wow, if that's not warped, we don't know what is. Henry ends by claiming grandiosely that since Sybil never "really" lived, she didn't really die, either. This logic seems a little flawed to us, but Dorian buys it. He gives in to Henry's torrent of words, and agrees to go to the opera. Once his friend leaves, Dorian takes another look at the portrait. The cruelty in the painted figure's face has a new meaning now--it's associated with Sibyl's death. He gets all emotional about the idea of Sibyl's tragic sacrifice . Regarding the portrait, Dorian thinks for a moment that maybe he should pray to try and stop the weird, symbiotic relationship between his soul and the picture. He decides, however, that he should leave the portrait as it is, so he can watch what happens to his soul. All that matters to him is that his own physical beauty remains unmarred.

That afternoon, Dorian receives a letter from Lord Henry, but he sets it aside without opening it. Later, Dorian wonders if his portrait has really changed like he thought. Surely not, he thinks of the portrait, hidden behind a screen. Finally, when he builds up his courage and looks at the portrait, he sees that the portrait has changed, just as he remembered. He speculates on the cause, fearing a "terrible reason." The altered portrait forces Dorian to acknowledge his cruelty to Sibyl Vane. It is a "symbol of the degradation of sin" and will serve as his guide, his conscience. He composes a long letter to Sibyl in which he accuses himself of madness and begs her forgiveness. As he finishes writing the letter, Dorian feels absolved of his cruelty to Sibyl. Lord Henry knocks on the library door and insists on speaking to Dorian. Lord Henry seems unusually consoling but advises Dorian not to dwell on the situation concerning Sibyl, which he explains is "dreadful" but not Dorian's fault. He asks Dorian questions about the previous night: Did Dorian meet Sibyl backstage? Was there a scene? He is pleased when Dorian says that he is not sorry for what happened. Dorian, however, continues. He is not sorry because the matter has taught him a lesson. He tells Lord Henry of his plans to make amends and marry Sibyl. Lord Henry, quite agitated, interrupts and asks if Dorian received his letter. Dorian admits that the letter did arrive but that he has not opened it. Lord Henry then tells Dorian the contents of his letter: Sibyl Vane is dead. Dorian is in shock but asks to hear the whole story. Lord Henry reports that the death was clearly not an accident. About half-past midnight, Sibyl and her mother were leaving the theatre. Sibyl excused herself, saying she had left something upstairs. When she did not return, the people at the theatre checked and found her on the floor of her dressing room, dead from ingesting poison. Lord Henry is concerned with keeping Dorian out of the scandal. He asks Dorian to spend the evening with him at the opera so that the unpleasantness of the suicide does not get on Dorian's nerves. Lord Henry need not be concerned for Dorian's nerves. Dorian admits that he murdered Sibyl, "murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat," but he continues to say, in a detached manner, that the whole affair seems too "wonderful for tears." Instead of feeling remorse over Sibyl's death, Dorian muses that his first love letter was written to a dead girl. Within only a few seconds, he concludes that Sibyl's suicide was very selfish of her; it leaves him without the guidance that marriage to her might have provided. Lord Henry offers several glib comments on marriage and specifically on what a disaster this marriage would have been. Dorian wonders why he "cannot feel this tragedy" as much as he thinks he should and wonders if he is heartless. The death of Sibyl seems like "a wonderful ending to a wonderful play" to Dorian. Lord Henry, "who found an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism," is pleased to extend the simile. He assures Dorian that he is not heartless; the experience has been like a brilliant play, and Dorian should regard the whole matter as if he were a spectator at the theater. Lord Henry approves that he is living in a century when "such wonders" as Sibyl's death could happen. When Dorian interrupts that he was "terribly cruel" to Sibyl, Lord Henry assures him that women "appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else." Dorian confesses that he has felt everything that Lord Henry has said but was afraid to admit it, even to himself. Assured by his mentor that his "extraordinary good looks" will present him with a rich life, Dorian thanks the older man and calls him his "best friend." After Lord Henry leaves, Dorian checks the portrait, which has not changed since earlier in the day. Apparently the portrait registers events as they happen. Dorian wishes that he could actually observe it changing. For a moment, he feels remorse toward Sibyl, but he brushes the feeling away. Vowing to go on, seeking "eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins," he briefly considers praying that the spell of the portrait be broken. However, he rationalizes that the spell is not his to control. Besides, who would not want eternal youth? He decides to enjoy the situation: "Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade." He again covers the painting with the screen. Within an hour, he has joined Lord Henry at the opera.

In Chapter 8, Dorian struggles briefly with his conscience. Under Lord Henry's influence, it is no contest: By the end of the chapter, Dorian has dedicated himself entirely to the pursuit of pleasure and sin. He throws away the last scraps of his conscience and becomes a completely selfish being. By the time he goes to the opera with Lord Henry, he doesn't even feel protective about the portrait, which up to this point was the one thing that he still cared about. Lord Henry's sole concern is to protect Dorian's reputation and to urge him to get on with his life. He cares not a whit for the young Sybil and instead speaks superficially about fashion, women, and the convenience of Sibyl's death. He views the whole affair as a splendid artistic experience. His reaction is in line with the cynicism that the reader has observed in his character all along; Lord Henry's ability to make Sibyl's death a trivial matter in Dorian's mind demonstrates that his cynicism and his power to influence Dorian have reached new heights. The flippant, carefree attitudes that Dorian and Lord Henry display in this chapter caused many people to accuse Oscar Wilde of writing an immoral book when The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published. However, the reader needs to distinguish between an author and his characters. Certainly Lord Henry and Dorian often behave like scoundrels, but continuing the Faust theme, Lord Henry is demonic and Dorian blindly does his bidding. He knows exactly how to appeal to Dorian's weaknesses, of which there are plenty. Still, these two are both despicable fellows. The reader might admire or envy parts of their lives, but at this point it is very difficult to like them. Glossary Sevres an exquisite porcelain made in Sevres, France. Louis-Quinze Louis the Fifteenth , king of France 1715-74; a fashion style named after him. sanguine healthy looking; optimistic. absolution formal remission of sin after confession; in the Roman Catholic church, it is a part of the sacrament of penance. prussic acid hydrocyanic acid; a colorless, extremely poisonous solution of hydrogen cyanide . Patti Adelina Patti , world-renowned Italian coloratura soprano. dowdy shabby; lacking style or neatness. nil a contraction of the Latin nihil, "nothing." asphodel a Mediterranean plant that in Greek mythology is linked with death. conjugal having to do with marriage. felicity blissful happiness. Desdemona a leading character in William Shakespeare's Othello. Ophelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Jacobean relating to drama or literature during the reign of James I of England . Webster John Webster , English dramatist and tragedian whom many rate second only to Shakespeare in the early seventeenth century. Ford John Ford , major English dramatist. Cyril Tourneur , British dramatist and tragedian.

Dorian does not awake until well after noon the next day. When he gets up, he goes to check the painting. In the light, the change is unmistakable; the face in the portrait has become crueler. While the stunned Dorian tries to come up with some rational explanation for the change, Lord Henry arrives with terrible news: Sibyl committed suicide the previous night. Dorian is stunned, but Lord Henry manages to convince him that he should not go to the police and explain his part in the girl's death. Lord Henry urges Dorian not to wallow in guilt but, rather, to regard Sibyl's suicide as a perfect artistic representation of undying love and appreciate it as such. Dorian, who feels numb rather than anguished, is convinced by his friend's seductive words and agrees to go to the opera with him that very night. When Lord Henry is gone, Dorian reflects that this incident is a turning point in his existence, and he resolves to accept a life of "ternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joy and wilder sins," in which his portrait, rather than his own body, will bear the marks of age and experience. Having made this resolution, he joins Lord Henry at the opera

Dorian's romance with Sibyl represents the possibility that he will not accept Lord Henry's philosophy and will instead learn to prize human beings and emotions over art. His love for her allows him to resist Lord Henry's seductive words, noting to Lord Henry, "When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. . . . he mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories." But just as Lord Henry appreciates Dorian as a work of art rather than as a human being, what Dorian values most about Sibyl is her talent as an actress--her ability to portray an ideal, not her true self. The extent of Lord Henry's influence is painfully clear as Dorian heartlessly snubs Sibyl, who claims that her real love for him prohibits her from acting out such emotions onstage. Surely, to modern readers, Sibyl's devotion to Dorian--not to mention her grief over losing him--seems a bit melodramatic. She is a rather thinly drawn character, but she serves two important functions. First, she forces us to question what precisely art is and when its effects are good. Second, she shows the pernicious consequences of a philosophy that places beauty and self-pleasure above consideration for others. Sibyl's tragic fate enables us to be as critical of Wilde's philosophies as he himself was at the end of his life. Sibyl's claim that Dorian gives her "something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection" stands in undeniable contrast to Lord Henry's philosophy, in which art is the highest experience and life imitates art rather than vice versa. Indeed, time and again, Lord Henry delights in ignoring the significance of human emotions. Even though Sibyl's conception of art as a reflection of grand emotions counters Lord Henry's  philosophy of art, it resonates throughout the remainder of the novel. Indeed, Sibyl's philosophy is echoed in the very portrait of Dorian, since it is a reflection of Dorian's true self. The answer to the narrator's question as to whether the changing portrait "ould ... teach  to loathe his own soul" is yes, as Dorian grows increasingly uncomfortable over the course of the novel with what the disfigured portrait signifies about himself. As the novel progresses and the painting continues to register the effects of time and dissipation, we see the degree to which Dorian is undone by the sins that his portrait reflects and the degree to which he suffers for allowing the painting to act as a "visible emblem of conscience." The aging of Dorian's likeness in the portrait ultimately contradicts some of Lord Henry's--and Wilde's--beliefs about art: the painting does not exist in a moral vacuum. Instead, the painting both shows the deleterious effects of sin and gives Dorian a sense of freedom from morality; it thus influences and is influenced by morality.


As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
into the room.

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

"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
pale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass
and looking dreadfully bored.  "I was at the opera.  You should have
come on there.  I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first
time.  We were in her box.  She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang
divinely.  Don't talk about horrid subjects.  If one doesn't talk about
a thing, it has never happened.  It is simply expression, as Harry
says, that gives reality to things.  I may mention that she was not the
woman's only child.  There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe.  But
he is not on the stage.  He is a sailor, or something.  And now, tell
me about yourself and what you are painting."

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

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

"You call yesterday the past?"

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

"Dorian, this is horrible!  Something has changed you completely.  You
look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come
down to my studio to sit for his picture.  But you were simple,
natural, and affectionate then.  You were the most unspoiled creature
in the whole world.  Now, I don't know what has come over you.  You
talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you.  It is all Harry's
influence.  I see that."

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

"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it.  It is one
of the great romantic tragedies of the age.  As a rule, people who act
lead the most commonplace lives.  They are good husbands, or faithful
wives, or something tedious.  You know what I mean--middle-class virtue
and all that kind of thing.  How different Sibyl was!  She lived her
finest tragedy.  She was always a heroine.  The last night she
played--the night you saw her--she acted badly because she had known
the reality of love.  When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet
might have died.  She passed again into the sphere of art.  There is
something of the martyr about her.  Her death has all the pathetic
uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.  But, as I was saying,
you must not think I have not suffered.  If you had come in yesterday
at a particular moment--about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to
six--you would have found me in tears.  Even Harry, who was here, who
brought me the news, in fact, had no idea 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 altered--I forget exactly what it was.
Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.  He
had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of _ennui_, and became a
confirmed 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 vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that
delightful phrase.  Well, I am not like that young man you told me of
when we were down at Marlow 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, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,
luxury, pomp--there is much to be got from all these.  But the artistic
temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to
me.  To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to
escape the suffering of life.  I know you are surprised at my talking
to you like this.  You have not realized how I have developed.  I was a
schoolboy when you knew me.  I am a man now.  I have new passions, new
thoughts, new ideas.  I am different, but you must not like me less.  I
am changed, but you must always be my friend.  Of course, I am very
fond of Harry.  But I know that you are better than he is.  You are not
stronger--you are too much afraid of life--but you are better.  And how
happy we used to be together!  Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel
with me.  I am what I am.  There is nothing more to be said."

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

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

Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at
the mention of the word "inquest."  There was something so crude and
vulgar about everything of the kind.  "They don't know my name," he
answered.

"But surely she did?"

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

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

"I can never sit to you again, Basil.  It is 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 that.  I
felt the room looked different as I came in."

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

"Too strong!  Surely not, my dear fellow?  It is an admirable place for
it.  Let me see it."  And Hallward walked towards the corner of the
room.

A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between
the painter and the screen.  "Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you
must not look at it.  I don't wish you to."

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

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

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

"Dorian!"

"Don't speak!"

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

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

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

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

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

The painter shuddered in spite of himself.  "Dorian, if I told you, you
might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me.  I
could not bear your doing either of those two things.  If you wish me
never to look at your picture again, I am content.  I have always you
to look at.  If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden
from the world, I am satisfied.  Your friendship is dearer to me than
any fame or reputation."

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

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

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

"I see you did.  Don't speak.  Wait till you hear what I have to say.
Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
extraordinary influence over me.  I was dominated, soul, brain, and
power, by you.  You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen
ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.  I
worshipped you.  I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke.  I
wanted to have you all to myself.  I was only happy when I was with
you.  When you were away from me, you were still present in my art....
Of course, I never let you know anything about this.  It would have
been impossible.  You would not have understood it.  I hardly
understood it myself.  I only knew that I had seen perfection face to
face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes--too
wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril
of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them....  Weeks and
weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you.  Then came a
new development.  I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and as
Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with
heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian's barge, gazing
across the green turbid Nile.  You had leaned over the still pool of
some Greek woodland and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of
your own face.  And it had all been what art should be--unconscious,
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 good-looking
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 colour--that is all.  It
often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than
it ever reveals him.  And so when I got this offer from Paris, I
determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition.
It never occurred to me that you would refuse.  I see now that you were
right.  The picture cannot be shown.  You must not be angry with me,
Dorian, for what I have told you.  As I said to Harry, once, you are
made to be worshipped."

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

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

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

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

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

"You will some day, surely?"

"Never."

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

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

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

"It was a very disappointing confession."

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

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

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

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

"You will sit to me again?"

"Impossible!"

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

"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
There is something fatal about a portrait.  It has a life of its own.
I will come and have tea with you.  That will be just as pleasant."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't want it put straight, Leaf.  I only want the key."

"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it.  Why, it
hasn't been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."

He winced at the mention of his grandfather.  He had hateful memories
of him.  "That does not matter," he answered.  "I simply want to see
the place--that is all.  Give me the key."

"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
of her bunch with tremulously 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 you so comfortable here?"

"No, no," he cried petulantly.  "Thank you, Leaf.  That will do."

She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
the household.  He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought
best.  She left the room, wreathed in smiles.

As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round
the room.  His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had perhaps
served often as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that
had a 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 would still
live on.  It would be always alive.

He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away.  Basil
would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still
more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.  The love
that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was
not noble and intellectual.  It was not that mere physical 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 make the shadow of their evil real.

He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that
covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.
Was the face on the canvas viler than before?  It seemed to him that it
was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.  Gold hair,
blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.  It was simply the
expression that had altered.  That was horrible in its cruelty.
Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's
reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little
account!  His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and
calling him to 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
door.  He passed out as his servant entered.

"The persons are here, Monsieur."

He felt that the man must be got rid of at once.  He must not be
allowed to know where the picture was being taken to.  There was
something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes.
Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,
asking him to send him round something to read and reminding him that
they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.

"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
here."

In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant.  Mr. Hubbard was a
florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was
considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the
artists who dealt with him.  As a rule, he never left his shop.  He
waited for people to come to him.  But he always made an exception in
favour of Dorian Gray.  There was something about Dorian that charmed
everybody.  It was a pleasure even to see him.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
hands.  "I thought I would do myself the 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 art--but to-day I only want a
picture carried to the top of the house for me.  It is rather heavy, so
I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."

"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray.  I am delighted to be of any service to
you.  Which is the work of art, sir?"

"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back.  "Can you move it,
covering and all, just as it is?  I don't want it to get scratched
going upstairs."

"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from
the long brass chains by which it was suspended.  "And, now, where
shall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?"

"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me.
Or perhaps you had better go in front.  I am afraid it is right at the
top of the house.  We will go up by the front staircase, as it is
wider."

He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
began the ascent.  The elaborate character of the frame had made the
picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
so as to help them.

"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
reached the top landing.  And he wiped his shiny forehead.

"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the
door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.

He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
as a study when he grew somewhat older.  It was a large,
well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
desired to keep at a distance.  It appeared to Dorian to have but
little changed.  There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its
fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
he had so often hidden himself as a boy.  There the satinwood book-case
filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.  On the wall behind it was
hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen
were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by,
carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists.  How well he
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 Basil Hallward's masterpiece.

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, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the
grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.  The picture
had to be concealed.  There was no help for it.

"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round.
"I am sorry I kept you so long.  I was thinking of something else."

"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
was still gasping for breath.  "Where shall we put it, sir?"

"Oh, anywhere.  Here:  this will do.  I don't want to have it hung up.
Just lean it against the wall.  Thanks."

"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"

Dorian started.  "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
keeping his eye on the man.  He felt ready to leap upon him and fling
him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that
concealed the secret of his life.  "I shan't trouble you any more now.
I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round."

"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray.  Ever ready to do anything for you,
sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant,
who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough
uncomely face.  He had never seen any one so marvellous.

When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door
and put the key in his pocket.  He felt safe now.  No one would ever
look upon the horrible thing.  No eye but his would ever see his shame.

On reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o'clock
and that the tea had been already brought up.  On a little table of
dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady
Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid who had
spent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry,
and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn
and the edges soiled.  A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's
Gazette_ had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
returned.  He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
leaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,
while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
back, and a blank space was visible on the wall.  Perhaps some night he
might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
room.  It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house.  He had
heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some
servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked
up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
or a shred of crumpled lace.

He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
note.  It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper,
and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through
it.  A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye.  It drew
attention to the following paragraph:

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell
Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of
Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal 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
Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.

He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
flung the pieces away.  How ugly it all was!  And how horribly real
ugliness made things!  He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
having sent him the report.  And it was certainly stupid of him to have
marked it with red pencil.  Victor might have read it.  The man knew
more than enough English for that.

Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.  And, yet,
what did it matter?  What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's
death?  There was nothing to fear.  Dorian Gray had not killed her.

His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.  What was
it, he wondered.  He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal
stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves.  After a
few minutes he became absorbed.  It was the strangest book that he had
ever read.  It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
show before him.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly
made real to him.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
revealed.

It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being,
indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who
spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the
passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.  The
style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid
and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work
of some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_.
There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in
colour.  The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
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 creeping shadows.

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
through the windows.  He read on by its wan light till he could read no
more.  Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed
the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
bedside and began to dress for dinner.

It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.

"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your
fault.  That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the
time was going."

"Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
chair.

"I didn't say I liked it, Harry.  I said it fascinated me.  There is a
great difference."

"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry.  And they passed
into the dining-room.

The next day, Basil visits Dorian and is shocked to learn that he has been to the opera, given the circumstances. He is also aghast at the fact that Dorian seems altogether unmoved by Sibyl's suicide. Dorian defends himself by telling Basil that "She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her." He accuses Basil of being selfish, since his anger stems from the fact that he was not the one who consoled him, and tells the artist to "teach me to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view." Dorian does, however, admit to being strongly influenced by Lord Henry. He also admits that he knows Basil to be a much better man than Henry. When the painter hears this, his old affection for Dorian wins him over. He inquires whether Dorian has been summoned by the police. Dorian is annoyed by this thought, but assures Basil that no one involved even knows his name. He asks Basil to make him a drawing of Sibyl, but Basil asks Dorian to instead come pose for him again - a request that is quickly denied. Basil then notices that his painting is covered. When he asks to see his work, Dorian threatens never to speak to him again if he tries to lift the covering screen. He is determined never to share the secret of the painting with anyone. Basil says that he wants to exhibit the work, since he considers it his masterpiece, but Dorian states that that is also out of the question. The painter asks if Dorian has seen anything strange in the picture to disturb him so much. Thinking that Basil may already know about the picture's enchantment, Dorian says that he has, but asks his friend to explain himself. Basil confesses his idolatry of Dorian, and says that he was struck by how much of it had come across in the painting. Dorian is disappointed and unmoved by the painter's affection. He again states that he will never again sit for another portrait. Basil cries out that Dorian's refusal will "spoil my life as an artist" and leaves. Dorian, growing ever more paranoid and determined to conceal his secret, decides to hide the painting more thoroughly. Dorian acquires the key to his attic from his housekeeper. Victor informs him that the men he has requested have arrived to help transport the painting, and Dorian sends his servant off to Lord Henry with a request for reading material. Mr Hubbard, a renowned frame-maker, and his assistants carry the portrait up to the attic without removing the cover, as per Dorian's instructions. Dorian wonders about the possibility of ever displaying the work, since it is Basil's masterpiece, but knows that even though "It might escape the hideousness of sin, the hideousness of age was in store for it." It would have to be hidden from sight forever so that "No eye but his would ever see his shame." Once Mr Hubbard leaves, Dorian returns to his library to find a note from Lord Henry, along with a newspaper clipping and an old, yellow book. A red mark on the newspaper brings Dorian's attention to a small article informing him that the inquest into Sibyl's death has ruled it a certain suicide. He is free of suspicion. He begins reading the novel sent by Henry, a book about a young Parisian "who spent his life trying to realize...all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own." He is so engrossed with the novel and its "metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in color" that he is several hours late for his engagement with Lord Henry.

Dorian defends himself for failing to mourn Sibyl's death with a Lord Henry-ism: "A man who is master of himself can end sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure."  The irony of claiming to be master of one's self by voicing the views of another escapes the young man, but serves to portray him as a deeply misguided soul.  In Basil's confession to Dorian, he echoes several sentiments from the preface, saying that "what art should be  unconscious, ideal, and remote...Art is always more abstract than we fancy.  Form and colour tell us of form and colour...art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him."  These sentiments, although they are presented by Wilde as truths in the preface, are disheartening revelations for the painter.  Basil had been hoping that the picture would show Dorian the truth about his affections, but when Dorian hears Basil's confession, he practically scoffs at it, and states aloud that he wonders if he will ever know such feelings of adoration.  The answer  is, of course, that he already adores himself in a nearly identical fashion.  Later, when faced with further evidence of his own degradation, Dorian will blame himself for not accepting Basil's "pure, Uranian" love. This sentiment is one of the many homosexual references that remains in the novel after Wilde's revision of the Lippincott version. Wilde is said to have espoused the notion that love between two men was inherently purer and nobler than heterosexual love, and this sentiment appears briefly in Dorian's thoughts. Concealing the picture is a clear symbolic gesture for Dorian's denial of his own shame. Since the painting is destined to display "the hideous corruption of his soul" while his face will remain young and innocent, Dorian believes that he can effectively live without the hindrance of a conscience so long as no one sees the painting.  The downside of Dorian's obsession with his appearance, however, has already begun to show.  He becomes suspicious of his housekeeper and of Victor, his servant, feeling sure that they will try to look at the picture.  This paranoia can be seen as a principal stage in the protagonist's degrdation, an indication that the deterioration of Dorian's soul is well underway. The attic where Dorian hides the painting was "a playroom when he was a child" and "a study when he grew somewhat older."  The room is already a vault hiding his past, and it will now hide the degradation of his conscience, as well.  This room becomes a symbol of the purity of youth and concern for morality that Dorian consciously rejects.  Instead of skeletons in his closet, Dorian has a painting in his attic. Some critics have interpreted the hidden painting as a metaphor for sexuality - Dorian keeps his shame and guilt about his homosexual tendencies "in the closet", as it were. While such a reading is compelling, it also over-simplifies Dorian's dilemma, while inadvertently assuming that Wilde would himself condemn homosexual tendencies. Dishonesty, betrayal, and murder all cause the portrait to wither, age, and grow more hideous. To assume that homosexual actions also deface the portrait is to present such actions as similarly offensive or reprehensible - a notion with which the author would have certainly disagreed.