For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with
an oily tremulous smile.  He escorted them to their box with a sort of
pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top
of his voice.  Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever.  He felt as if
he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.  Lord
Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him.  At least he declared he
did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he
was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone
bankrupt over a poet.  Hallward amused himself with watching the faces
in the pit.  The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight
flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.  The youths
in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them
over the side.  They talked to each other across the theatre and shared
their oranges with the tawdry girls who sat beside them.  Some women
were laughing in the pit.  Their voices were horribly shrill and
discordant.  The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.

"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.

"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray.  "It was here I found her, and she is
divine beyond all living things.  When she acts, you will forget
everything.  These common rough people, with their coarse faces and
brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage.  They
sit silently and watch her.  They weep and laugh as she wills them to
do.  She makes them as responsive as a violin.  She spiritualizes them,
and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."

"The same flesh and blood as one's self!  Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed
Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
opera-glass.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter.  "I
understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl.  Any one you love
must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must
be fine and noble.  To spiritualize one's age--that is something worth
doing.  If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without
one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have
been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and
lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of
all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.  This
marriage is quite right.  I did not think so at first, but I admit it
now.  The gods made Sibyl Vane for you.  Without her you would have
been incomplete."

"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand.  "I knew that
you would understand me.  Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me.  But
here is the orchestra.  It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for
about five minutes.  Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl
to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything
that is good in me."

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage.  Yes, she was certainly
lovely to look at--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
that he had ever seen.  There was something of the fawn in her shy
grace and startled eyes.  A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a
mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded
enthusiastic house.  She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed
to tremble.  Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her.
Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"

The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends.  The band, such
as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.  Through
the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
creature from a finer world.  Her body swayed, while she danced, as a
plant sways in the water.  The curves of her throat were the curves of
a white lily.  Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.

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

    Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
        Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
    For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
        And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--

with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly
artificial manner.  The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
of tone it was absolutely false.  It was wrong in colour.  It took away
all the life from the verse.  It made the passion unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.  He was puzzled and anxious.
Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him.  She seemed to
them to be absolutely incompetent.  They were horribly disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
the second act.  They waited for that.  If she failed there, there was
nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.  That could not
be denied.  But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew
worse as she went on.  Her gestures became absurdly artificial.  She
overemphasized everything that she had to say.  The beautiful passage--

    Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--

was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--

        Although I joy in thee,
    I have no joy of this contract to-night:
    It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
    Ere one can say, "It lightens."  Sweet, good-night!
    This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
    May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--

she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.

Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and
to whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
the girl herself.

When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord
Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat.  "She is quite
beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act.  Let us go."

"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard
bitter voice.  "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an
evening, Harry.  I apologize to you both."

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

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

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

"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry.  "But
do let us go.  Dorian, you must not stay here any longer.  It is not
good for one's morals to see bad acting.  Besides, I don't suppose you
will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet
like a wooden doll?  She is very lovely, and if she knows as little
about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful
experience.  There are only two kinds of people who are really
fascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know
absolutely nothing.  Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic!
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is
unbecoming.  Come to the club with Basil and myself.  We will smoke
cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane.  She is beautiful.
What more can you want?"

"Go away, Harry," cried the lad.  "I want to be alone.  Basil, you must
go.  Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?"  The hot tears came
to his eyes.  His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he
leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.

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

A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose
on the third act.  Dorian Gray went back to his seat.  He looked pale,
and proud, and indifferent.  The play dragged on, and seemed
interminable.  Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots
and laughing.  The whole thing was a _fiasco_.  The last act was played
to almost empty benches.  The curtain went down on a titter and some
groans.

As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
greenroom.  The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph
on her face.  Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.  There was a
radiance about her.  Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of
their own.

When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
came over her.  "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.

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

The girl smiled.  "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with
long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to
the red petals of her mouth.  "Dorian, you should have understood.  But
you understand now, don't you?"

"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.

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

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

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

"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
reality of my life.  It was only in the theatre that I lived.  I
thought that it was all true.  I was Rosalind one night and Portia the
other.  The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia
were mine also.  I believed in everything.  The common people who acted
with me seemed to me to be godlike.  The painted scenes were my world.
I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real.  You came--oh, my
beautiful love!--and you freed my soul from prison.  You taught me what
reality really is.  To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw
through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in
which I had always played.  To-night, for the first time, I became
conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the
moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and
that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not
what I wanted to say.  You had brought me something higher, something
of which all art is but a reflection.  You had made me understand what
love really is.  My love!  My love!  Prince Charming!  Prince of life!
I have grown sick of shadows.  You are more to me than all art can ever
be.  What have I to do with the puppets of a play?  When I came on
to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone
from me.  I thought that I was going to be wonderful.  I found that I
could do nothing.  Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant.
The knowledge was exquisite to me.  I heard them hissing, and I smiled.
What could they know of love such as ours?  Take me away, Dorian--take
me away with you, where we can be quite alone.  I hate the stage.  I
might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that
burns me like fire.  Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it
signifies?  Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to
play at being in love.  You have made me see that."

He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face.  "You have
killed my love," he muttered.

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

Then he leaped up and went to the door.  "Yes," he cried, "you have
killed my love.  You used to stir my imagination.  Now you don't even
stir my curiosity.  You simply produce no effect.  I loved you because
you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you
realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
shadows of art.  You have thrown it all away.  You are shallow and
stupid.  My God! how mad I was to love you!  What a fool I have been!
You are nothing to me now.  I will never see you again.  I will never
think of you.  I will never mention your name.  You don't know what you
were to me, once.  Why, once ... Oh, I can't bear to think of it!  I
wish I had never laid eyes upon you!  You have spoiled the romance of
my life.  How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!
Without your art, you are nothing.  I would have made you famous,
splendid, magnificent.  The world would have worshipped you, and you
would have borne my name.  What are you now?  A third-rate actress with
a pretty face."

The girl grew white, and trembled.  She clenched her hands together,
and her voice seemed to catch in her throat.  "You are not serious,
Dorian?" she murmured.  "You are acting."

"Acting!  I leave that to you.  You do it so well," he answered
bitterly.

She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her
face, came across the room to him.  She put her hand upon his arm and
looked into his eyes.  He thrust her back.  "Don't touch me!" he cried.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay
there like a trampled flower.  "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
whispered.  "I am so sorry I didn't act well.  I was thinking of you
all the time.  But I will try--indeed, I will try.  It came so suddenly
across me, my love for you.  I think I should never have known it if
you had not kissed me--if we had not kissed each other.  Kiss me again,
my love.  Don't go away from me.  I couldn't bear it.  Oh! don't go
away from me.  My brother ... No; never mind.  He didn't mean it.  He
was in jest.... But you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will
work so hard and try to improve.  Don't be cruel to me, because I love
you better than anything in the world.  After all, it is only once that
I have not pleased you.  But you are quite right, Dorian.  I should
have shown myself more of an artist.  It was foolish of me, and yet I
couldn't help it.  Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." A fit of
passionate sobbing choked her.  She crouched on the floor like a
wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at
her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain.  There is
always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has
ceased to love.  Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.
Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

"I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice.  "I don't wish
to be unkind, but I can't see you again.  You have disappointed me."

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

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

As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden.
The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed
itself into a perfect pearl.  Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
rumbled slowly down the polished empty street.  The air was heavy with
the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an
anodyne for his pain.  He followed into the market and watched the men
unloading their waggons.  A white-smocked carter offered him some
cherries.  He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money
for them, and began to eat them listlessly.  They had been plucked at
midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them.  A long
line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red
roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge,
jade-green piles of vegetables.  Under the portico, with its grey,
sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
waiting for the auction to be over.  Others crowded round the swinging
doors of the coffee-house in the piazza.  The heavy cart-horses slipped
and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks.  Iris-necked
and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.

After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.  For a few
moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent
square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.
The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
silver against it.  From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke
was rising.  It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that
hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance,
lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals
of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.  He turned them out and,
having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library
towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the
ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had
decorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries
that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal.  As
he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait
Basil Hallward had painted of him.  He started back as if in surprise.
Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled.  After he
had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate.
Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it.  In
the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk
blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed.  The
expression looked different.  One would have said that there was a
touch of cruelty in the mouth.  It was certainly strange.

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

He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory
Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly
into its polished depths.  No line like that warped his red lips.  What
did it mean?

He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
again.  There were no signs of any change when he looked into the
actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression
had altered.  It was not a mere fancy of his own.  The thing was
horribly apparent.

He threw himself into a chair and began to think.  Suddenly there
flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
day the picture had been finished.  Yes, he remembered it perfectly.
He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that
the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and
thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness
of his then just conscious boyhood.  Surely his wish had not been
fulfilled?  Such things were impossible.  It seemed monstrous even to
think of them.  And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the
touch of cruelty in the mouth.

Cruelty!  Had he been cruel?  It was the girl's fault, not his.  He had
dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
had thought her great.  Then she had disappointed him.  She had been
shallow and unworthy.  And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little
child.  He remembered with what callousness he had watched her.  Why
had he been made like that?  Why had such a soul been given to him?
But he had suffered also.  During the three terrible hours that the
play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of
torture.  His life was well worth hers.  She had marred him for a
moment, if he had wounded her for an age.  Besides, women were better
suited to bear sorrow than men.  They lived on their emotions.  They
only thought of their emotions.  When they took lovers, it was merely
to have some one with whom they could have scenes.  Lord Henry had told
him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.  Why should he trouble
about Sibyl Vane?  She was nothing to him now.

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

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

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
smile.  Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight.  Its blue eyes
met his own.  A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the
painted image of himself, came over him.  It had altered already, and
would alter more.  Its gold would wither into grey.  Its red and white
roses would die.  For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck
and wreck its fairness.  But he would not sin.  The picture, changed or
unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.  He would
resist temptation.  He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at
any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil
Hallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for
impossible things.  He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,
marry her, try to love her again.  Yes, it was his duty to do so.  She
must have suffered more than he had.  Poor child!  He had been selfish
and cruel to her.  The fascination that she had exercised over him
would return.  They would be happy together.  His life with her would
be beautiful and pure.

He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the
portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it.  "How horrible!" he murmured
to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it.  When he
stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath.  The fresh morning
air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions.  He thought only of
Sibyl.  A faint echo of his love came back to him.  He repeated her
name over and over again.  The birds that were singing in the
dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

The three friends meet up at the dingy theatre, where they're met by the manager. Dorian hates the guy more than ever, but Lord Henry claims to like him--then again, we're never sure how serious he is. The theatre sounds hellish--it's hot, noisy, and grotesque. Dorian promises that Sibyl will make this outing worth it, and Basil believes him. Finally, Sibyl comes on stage as Juliet, and Henry and Basil are both enraptured by her; Basil even jumps up and applauds. Her beauty is more remarkable than ever. Sibyl's acting, however, is worse than ever before. Every spark of her amazing talent is gone, and she's absolutely terrible. Dorian feels betrayed, and his friends are terribly disappointed. They wait for the famous balcony scene to pass judgment--and she fails miserably. Everyone in the theatre is bored and disappointed. Henry and Basil leave the theatre at intermission; Basil is willing to seek an explanation, saying that Sibyl must be ill. Dorian, however, can't believe it--he doesn't know what happened to the Sibyl he loves. Dorian, weeping, tells Henry and Basil to leave him alone with his heartbreak. The rest of the play is a disaster. Dorian sits through it, miserable, then rushes backstage to confront Sibyl. The girl is overjoyed to see her fiance. She happily tells him that she will never act well again--and, to make matters worse, it's Dorian's fault. Before she met Dorian, acting was the only real world to her, but now that she's in love with him, he's everything to her. She says that it would be profane for her to act at being in love on stage, since she's found real love with Dorian. This explanation isn't enough for Dorian, and he tells Sibyl that he doesn't love her anymore. He goes on in a fit of passion to tell her that she's basically worthless--he can't believe he ever loved her, and he wishes he hadn't. To add insult to injury, he calls her a "third-rate" actress. Sibyl is stunned and horrified--she can't believe Dorian's saying this . She begs him to reconsider, but, instead, he coldly leaves her in tears. Dorian flees the theatre, not paying attention to where he's going. He ends up in the flower market in Covent Garden, and eventually makes his way home in a cab around dawn. When he gets back to his opulently decorated house, Basil's portrait catches his eye. For some reason, Dorian thinks it looks different this morning, as though there's a new cruelty in his painted twin's expression. He quickly checks to make sure he doesn't look like that; his actual face bears no such change. Dorian remembers the rash wish he made in Basil's studio--he wished that the portrait could change and grow old, while he stayed the same. Could it be that his wish was granted?... Looking at the portrait's new expression, Dorian starts to feel bad for poor Sibyl. He can't stop looking at the picture, and realizes that it will keep changing for the worse if he himself does. He draws a screen in front of the portrait, and tries to put it out of his mind, vowing to go back to Sibyl and marry her. Dorian, certain that his love for her will return, feels like everything will be all right.

The theatre is crowded when Dorian, Basil, and Lord Henry arrive. When Sibyl appears onstage as Juliet, Lord Henry thinks she is one of the "loveliest creatures" he has seen, fawn-like in her grace and innocence. Her performance, however, is worse than disappointing. She seems listless and artificial; in fact, she is absolutely awful. Dorian is more disgusted than embarrassed by Sybil's acting. Lord Henry and Basil leave, as does half the audience, but Dorian sits through the entire play. In the greenroom after the play is finished, Sibyl seems overjoyed at her dismal performance and expects Dorian to understand that she can no longer act because she has found true love in real life. She intended to be outstanding, she says, but because Dorian has taught her "what reality really is," she no longer can believe in the fake world of plays. She asks Dorian to take her away so that they might begin their life together. Dorian's response is cold and filled with disgust: "You have killed my love," he mutters. He loved her because she was a great performer, he says. Now he finds her "shallow and stupid" and can barely stand her. Sibyl is distraught. Apologizing for her bad performance, she pleads with Dorian to give her another chance. Sobbing, she falls to the floor and begs him not to leave her. As she cries hysterically, she begins to recount her brother's threat to kill anyone who harms her, but she shakes off the thought, reminding herself out loud that the threat was just a joke. Dorian is annoyed with Sybil and tells her that he cannot see her anymore. Abruptly, he leaves. Dorian wanders the streets until near dawn and then returns home. Passing through his library toward his bedroom, he notices the portrait that Basil painted of him. He is startled and puzzled, but he goes on into his bedroom. He begins to undress but pauses and returns to the library to look at the portrait. To Dorian, the face in the portrait has slightly changed, taking on a look of cruelty around the mouth. Going to the window, he sees a bright dawn. He looks again at the painting. The "lines of cruelty round the mouth" are still there, even more clearly than before. Looking at his reflection in a mirror, Dorian looks fresh and youthful. Suddenly he recalls the wish he earlier made at Basil's studio, that he might remain the same while the picture took on the "lines of suffering and thought," the various signs of corruption and age that Dorian's life might bring him. He thinks that such a wish could never be fulfilled. Surely it is impossible. Still, there are the cruel lines about the mouth in the portrait. Dorian begins to wonder if he really has been cruel to Sibyl. However, he convinces himself that he is not to blame for the situation. Sibyl is to blame because she disappointed him and made him endure the three painful hours of her terrible performance. Eventually, he convinces himself that Sibyl hadn't really loved him, and he concludes that he needn't be concerned about her at all. Dorian is more concerned about the changed portrait than with Sibyl. It occurs to Dorian that every sin he commits will be reflected in the face on the canvas. He vows never to sin again so that the painting, like himself, will never change. He vows to use the portrait as his conscience; the danger of hurting the portrait will keep him from committing sins. He will refuse to see Lord Henry or at least will ignore Lord Henry's "subtle poisonous theories." He will return to Sibyl, apologize, and marry her. He pulls a screen in front of the painting and walks outside. The chapter ends as Dorian repeats Sibyl's name into the dawn.

In Chapter 7, Dorian's narrative supercedes all others in the novel. From now on, it will be his story, not Lord Henry's. The novel becomes more dynamic because Dorian's character grows -- changes -- while Lord Henry's remains unchanged. The change in Dorian's character in this chapter is dramatic. Dorian begins the chapter as a dedicated lover. Then, in a few short pages, he becomes a disgusted critic, a heartless deserter, briefly a contrite sinner, and then finally a lover rededicated to Sibyl -- not because he loves the woman, but because he fears hurting himself and the portrait. Even though the chapter ends with Dorian intending to do "his duty" by being honorable and marrying Sibyl, his honor is false because it is based on selfishness. His "honorable intentions" are simply a continuation of his soul's degradation. The number and degree of changes that Dorian goes through in this chapter, most of them negative changes, hint at the turn his nature will take in the rest of the book. Chapter 7 also introduces an element that will reoccur throughout the story: the changing of the portrait. By the end of the chapter, the reader understands that the portrait will symbolize the state of Dorian's soul and spirit. Wilde will use the portrait to help develop his characterization of Dorian for the rest of the book. Dorian's special relationship with his portrait continues the Faust theme. His wish about the portrait suggests a pact with the devil. Dorian's desire to escape the "poisonous theories" of Lord Henry indicates that he sees his mentor as an evil, devil-like influence, but, like Faust, Dorian seems eager to benefit from the fruits of his pact, namely the eternal youth that the portrait offers him. Glossary Miranda a leading character in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Caliban a savage who is half-man, half-beast in The Tempest. tawdry gaudy; cheap; vulgarly ornamental. listless lacking energy or effort. Good pilgrim . . . holy palmer's kiss a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5, 99-102. Thou knowest . . . speak tonight a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2, 85-87. elocution the art of public speaking. Although I joy . . . when next we meet a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2, 116-22. Portia a leading character in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Beatrice a leading character in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Cordelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's King Lear. nacre mother-of-pearl.

The theater is crowded when the men arrive. Dorian continues to wax eloquent about Sibyl's beauty, and Basil assures Dorian that he will support the marriage wholeheartedly since Dorian is so obviously in love. When the play begins, however, Sibyl is terrible, and her acting only worsens as the evening wears on. Unable to understand the change that has come over his beloved, Dorian is heartbroken. Basil and Lord Henry leave him, and he makes his way backstage to find Sibyl, who is quite happy despite her dreadful performance. She explains that before she met Dorian and experienced true love, she was able to inhabit other characters and feel their emotions easily, which made possible her success as an actress. Now, however, these pretend emotions no longer interest her, since they pale in relation to her real feelings for Dorian. She realizes that "the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. As a result, she declares that her career on the stage is over. Dorian, horrified by this decision, realizes that he was in love not with her but with her acting. He spurns her cruelly and tells her that he wishes never to see her again. After a night spent wandering the streets of London, Dorian returns to his home. There, he looks at Basil's portrait of him and notices the painting has changed--a faint sneer has appeared at the corner of his likeness's mouth. He is astonished. Remembering his wish that the painting would bear the burden and marks of age and lifestyle for him, Dorian is suddenly overcome with shame about his behavior toward Sibyl. He pulls a screen in front of the portrait and goes to bed, resolving to make amends with Sibyl in the morning

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.

The next morning, a distraught Basil Hallward shows up at Dorian's pad. He feels awful about Sibyl--he read about her death in the newspaper, and has come to comfort his friend. He assumes that Dorian is heartbroken, and wants to know if he went to visit Sibyl's mother. Dorian's heart is in one piece. He basically brushes off Basil's concern, and starts talking about the grand time he had at the Opera with Henry last night. Basil is shocked and horrified--how can Dorian prattle on unsympathetically while Sibyl lies dead? Dorian orders Basil to stop bringing up the past . Saddened, Basil says that this change in Dorian is all Lord Henry's fault, and that he wants the old Dorian back. Dorian tries to explain his reasoning to Basil; he goes through the argument that Sibyl's suicide was a great romantic act, and, while he can appreciate it aesthetically, he's pretty much over it. He reminds Basil that he's developed a lot since they first met, and asks that they remain friends. Basil rather sadly promises never to bring Sibyl up again, as long as Dorian's name isn't tangled up in the investigation of her death. Dorian assures him that he's in the clear. Dorian asks Basil to do up a sketch of Sibyl so he can have something to remember her by. Thinking of his work, Basil asks Dorian to come sit for him again--he refuses. Miffed, Basil asks if Dorian didn't like the portrait. This is not the right question. Dorian kind of freaks out, and makes Basil promise that he'll never look at the painting again. Basil protests, saying that he changed his mind and wants to exhibit the portrait after all; it is his best work, and he'd like to show it off. Dorian freaks out again, and asks why Basil why he didn't want to show it in the first place. Basil claims that there's something mysterious about the portrait, and we wonder for a second if knows the link it has with Dorian's soul. He then admits that he didn't want to exhibit it because he totally worshipped Dorian, and felt like his idolatry showed through somehow in the picture. Dorian is off the hook--Basil doesn't know. Still, he refuses to show the artist his work ever again. Dorian refuses again to sit for another painting, and Basil leaves in a bit of a mood. Something has changed between the two friends--and it's not good. When Basil's gone, Dorian immediately rings for his servant to remove the portrait.

While Dorian breakfasts the next morning, Basil arrives, upset about Sibyl's death and concerned for Dorian. Basil had come by Dorian's home the night before but was told that Dorian was at the opera. Basil cannot believe that Dorian could have gone to the opera so soon after Sibyl's suicide, and he is concerned that "one tragedy might be followed by another." Dorian is bored and indifferent about Sybil. He tells Basil that Sibyl's mother has a son but that he has no idea how the woman is faring. Beyond that, he wants no more talk of "horrid subjects." Instead, he asks about Basil's paintings. Basil is astonished at Dorian's indifference. He asks Dorian how he could attend the opera while Sibyl Vane lay dead but not yet buried. Dorian tries to interrupt. Echoing his mentor, Lord Henry, he observes that a person who is "master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure." Basil continues, saying that Dorian's attitude is "horrible." He accuses Dorian of having no heart and blames the change in Dorian on Lord Henry's influence. Dorian retorts that he owes "a great deal" to Lord Henry, more than he owes to Basil, who "only taught me to be vain." Basil sadly responds, "Well, I am punished for that, Dorian -- or shall be some day," a major foreshadowing of events to come in the novel. Basil is even more distraught when he learns that Sibyl's death was a suicide. Dorian, however, again echoes Lord Henry by calling Sibyl's death "one of the great romantic tragedies of the age." Besides, Dorian points out, he did grieve; however, he recalls, it soon passed. He repeats a self-serving anecdote about his own life and concedes that he has indeed changed. He admits that Basil may be "better" than Lord Henry, but the latter is stronger. Basil, he concludes, is too afraid of life. The subject turns to art. Dorian asks Basil to make a drawing of Sibyl, and Basil agrees to try making the portrait. More importantly, he asks Dorian to sit for him again. That would be impossible, says Dorian. Basil then asks to see the portrait because he now plans to exhibit it in Paris. Dorian is horrified that Basil wants to exhibit the portrait; he fears that his secret would be revealed to the whole world. Dorian reminds Basil of his promise never to exhibit the portrait and asks why he has changed his mind. Basil explains that he didn't want to exhibit the portrait for fear that others might see his feelings for Dorian in it. Since that time, he has come to the conclusion that "art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him," and that he doesn't fear others seeing the portrait. Basil finally agrees not to exhibit the portrait and leaves. At the end of the chapter, Dorian marvels at how he was spared from telling his own secret and, instead, managed to manipulate his friend into telling his secret. He vows to keep the portrait hidden away forever.

Wilde uses this chapter to continue his character development of both Basil and Dorian. Basil shows himself to be a decent, caring human being who is as concerned for Sibyl and her mother as he is for Dorian. Unlike Lord Henry, he does not encourage Dorian to turn away from the girl's death or treat it like some entertaining fantasy. In a moment of heightened irony, Dorian accuses Basil of being "too much afraid of life." In fact, Dorian is afraid that Basil will see the portrait and thus learn of his secret pact. As for Dorian, he shows himself to be fully immersed in his new life of selfishness and manipulation. For example, when Dorian learns of Basil's strange admiration for him, an admiration that has obviously had a major impact on Basil, Dorian is simply pleased to be adored by Basil. As he wonders if he will ever feel that way toward someone, it becomes evident that he already does -- while he respects Lord Henry, Dorian only adores himself. When he gets Basil to admit his secret without having to reveal his own, he feels pleasure at having manipulated the situation so completely to his own advantage. His decision at the end of the chapter to hide the painting reveals his commitment to a life of vanity and self-gratification. Wilde also shows the reader the tension that Dorian feels about keeping his pact a secret. Dorian becomes gripped with raging fear when he hears that Basil wants to see the painting and to show it to others -- he is so afraid that he actually breaks into a sweat. Dorian's fear points to an important theme in the book: A life devoted solely to the pursuit of selfish pleasure will always be marred by self-con-scious fear. Dorian has what he wants -- eternal youth and a life filled with pleasure -- but he can't fully enjoy his life for fear that his secret will be discovered. Dorian's fear in this chapter is the first sign that Dorian's new life will be a study in disappointment. Readers should note that this chapter contains several ironic allusions that become important later in the story. For example, Dorian makes a fleeting and flippant reference about Sibyl's brother; when Dorian mentions James, the reader is reminded of the brother's promise to kill anyone who harms Sybil. The repeated references to the brother remind the reader of his presence and foreshadow his later reemergence in the book. As the novel progresses, the reader also will see the irony in Dorian's statement that he would turn to Basil in a time of trouble. Glossary martyr one who suffers death rather than compromise principles; one who sacrifices greatly. philanthropist one who attempts to benefit mankind through charitable aid. ennui French, "boredom." misanthrope a person who scorns or hates mankind. Gautier Theophile Gautier , French poet and critic. la consolation des arts French, "the consolation of the arts." pallid ashen, or pale. Paris in Greek mythology, the son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba; his choice of Helen as the winner of a beauty contest, and his refusal to return her, caused the Trojan War; later, he shot the arrow that caused the death of Achilles. Adonis in Greek mythology, a youth of astonishing beauty, favored by the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Adrian Publius Aelius Hadrianus , popularly known as Hadrian, or Adrian, Roman emperor ; had strong ties to Egypt and lost a close friend to drowning in the Nile. panegyrics praise.

The next day, Basil comes to offer his condolences to Dorian, but Dorian dismisses the memory of Sibyl lightly and easily, remarking, "What is done is done. What is past is past. Horrified at the change in Dorian, Basil blames Lord Henry for Dorian's heartless attitude. Indeed, in discussing Sibyl's death, Dorian uses many of the same phrases and arguments that Lord Henry favors and evokes a similar air of unaffected composure. He claims that Sibyl's death elevates her "into the sphere of art. Dorian asks Basil to do a drawing of Sibyl so that he has something by which to remember her. Basil agrees and begs Dorian to return to his studio for a sitting. When Dorian refuses, Basil asks if he is displeased with his portrait, which Basil means to show at an exhibition. When Basil goes to remove the screen with which Dorian has covered the painting, Dorian's composure cracks. Dorian insists that the work never appear in public and pledges never to speak to Basil again should he touch the screen. Remembering Basil's original refusal to show the painting, Dorian asks why he has changed his mind. Basil confesses that he was worried that the painting would reveal his obsession with Dorian. Now, however, Basil believes that the painting, like all art, "conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him. Basil again asks Dorian to sit for him, and Dorian again refuses. When Basil leaves, Dorian decides to hide his portrait

Sibyl's death compels Dorian to make the conscious decision to embrace Lord Henry's philosophy of selfishness and hedonism wholeheartedly. The contrast between Dorian's and Basil's reactions to Sibyl's death demonstrates the degree to which Lord Henry has changed Dorian. Dorian dismisses the need for grief in words that echo Lord Henry's: Sibyl need not be mourned, he proclaims, for she has "passed . . . into the sphere of art." In other words, Dorian thinks of Sibyl's death as he would the death of a character in a novel or painting, and chooses not to be affected emotionally by her passing. This attitude reveals one way in which the novel blurs the distinction between life and art. Dorian himself passes "into the sphere of art" when his portrait reflects the physical manifestations of age and sin. While it is usually paintings that never age and people who do, it is the other way around with Dorian, as he has become more like a work of art than a human. Basil's declaration of his obsession with Dorian is in many ways a defense and justification of homosexual love. In 1895, five years after Dorian Gray was published, Wilde was famously convicted of sodomy for his romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde defended homosexual love as an emotion experienced by some of the world's greatest men. He insisted that it had its roots in ancient Greece and was, therefore, fundamental to the development of Western thought and culture. In his trial, when asked to describe the "love that dare not speak its name," Wilde explained it as  such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. . . . It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.  This testimony is strikingly similar to Dorian's reflection upon the kind of affection that Basil shows him:  t 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 Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Basil translates these highly emotional and physical feelings into his art; his act of painting is an expression of his love for Dorian. This romantic devotion to Dorian becomes clear when he admits his reason for not wanting to exhibit the painting: he fears that people will see his "idolatry." Dorian reflects, for a moment, that with this love Basil might have saved him from Lord Henry's influence, but he soon resigns himself to living a life dictated by the pursuit of passion. He devours the mysterious "yellow book" that Lord Henry gives him, which acts almost as a guide for the journey on which he is to travel. Like the protagonist of that novel, Dorian spirals into a world of self-gratification and exotic sensations. Although Wilde, in letters, identified the novel as imaginary, it is based in part on the nineteenth-century French novel A Rebours , by Joris-Karl Huysmans, in which a decadent and wealthy Frenchman indulges himself in a host of bizarre sensory experiences. The yellow book has profound influence on Dorian; one might argue that it leads to his downfall. This downfall occurs not because the book itself is immoral here is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book") but because Dorian allows the book to dominate and determine his actions so completely. It becomes, for Dorian, a doctrine as limiting and stultifying as the common Victorian morals from which he seeks escape. After all, Lord Henry is a great fan of the yellow book, but, to his mind, it is no greater or more important than any other work of notable art. He does not let it dominate his life or determine his actions, which, in turn, allows him to retain the respectability that Dorian soon loses.