A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
in the dripping mist.  The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors.  From
some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter.  In others,
drunkards brawled and screamed.

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
senses, and the senses by means of the soul."  Yes, that was the
secret.  He had often tried it, and would try it again now.  There were
opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the
memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were
new.

The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull.  From time to time a
huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it.  The
gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.  Once the
man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile.  A steam rose from
the horse as it splashed up the puddles.  The sidewindows of the hansom
were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.

"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of
the soul!"  How the words rang in his ears!  His soul, certainly, was
sick to death.  Was it true that the senses could cure it?  Innocent
blood had been spilled.  What could atone for that?  Ah! for that there
was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness
was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing
out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.
Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done?  Who
had made him a judge over others?  He had said things that were
dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.

On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
step.  He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster.
The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him.  His throat burned
and his delicate hands twitched nervously together.  He struck at the
horse madly with his stick.  The driver laughed and whipped up.  He
laughed in answer, and the man was silent.

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
sprawling spider.  The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist
thickened, he felt afraid.

Then they passed by lonely brickfields.  The fog was lighter here, and
he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange,
fanlike tongues of fire.  A dog barked as they went by, and far away in
the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed.  The horse stumbled in a
rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.

After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over
rough-paven streets.  Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind.  He
watched them curiously.  They moved like monstrous marionettes and made
gestures like live things.  He hated them.  A dull rage was in his
heart.  As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from
an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred
yards.  The driver beat at them with his whip.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.  Certainly with
hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
still have dominated his temper.  From cell to cell of his brain crept
the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all
man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.
Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real,
became dear to him now for that very reason.  Ugliness was the one
reality.  The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of
disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more
vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious
shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song.  They were what he needed
for forgetfulness.  In three days he would be free.

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane.  Over
the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black
masts of ships.  Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the
yards.

"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
trap.

Dorian started and peered round.  "This will do," he answered, and
having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had
promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay.  Here and
there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman.  The
light shook and splintered in the puddles.  A red glare came from an
outward-bound steamer that was coaling.  The slimy pavement looked like
a wet mackintosh.

He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he
was being followed.  In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small
shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories.  In one of
the top-windows stood a lamp.  He stopped and gave a peculiar knock.

After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being
unhooked.  The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a
word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the
shadow as he passed.  At the end of the hall hung a tattered green
curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him
in from the street.  He dragged it aside and entered a long low room
which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill
flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that
faced them, were ranged round the walls.  Greasy reflectors of ribbed
tin backed them, making quivering disks of light.  The floor was
covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud,
and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor.  Some Malays were
crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and
showing their white teeth as they chattered.  In one corner, with his
head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the
tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two
haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his
coat with an expression of disgust.  "He thinks he's got red ants on
him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by.  The man looked at her
in terror and began to whimper.

At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
darkened chamber.  As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
heavy odour of opium met him.  He heaved a deep breath, and his
nostrils quivered with pleasure.  When he entered, a young man with
smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin
pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.

"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.

"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly.  "None of the chaps
will speak to me now."

"I thought you had left England."

"Darlington is not going to do anything.  My brother paid the bill at
last.  George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added
with a sigh.  "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends.
I think I have had too many friends."

Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses.  The twisted limbs, the
gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him.  He knew in
what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
teaching them the secret of some new joy.  They were better off than he
was.  He was prisoned in thought.  Memory, like a horrible malady, was
eating his soul away.  From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
Basil Hallward looking at him.  Yet he felt he could not stay.  The
presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him.  He wanted to be where no
one would know who he was.  He wanted to escape from himself.

"I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause.

"On the wharf?"

"Yes."

"That mad-cat is sure to be there.  They won't have her in this place
now."

Dorian shrugged his shoulders.  "I am sick of women who love one.
Women who hate one are much more interesting.  Besides, the stuff is
better."

"Much the same."

"I like it better.  Come and have something to drink.  I must have
something."

"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.

"Never mind."

Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar.  A
half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
them.  The women sidled up and began to chatter.  Dorian turned his
back on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.

A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
the women.  "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.

"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
the ground.  "What do you want?  Money?  Here it is.  Don't ever talk
to me again."

Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then
flickered out and left them dull and glazed.  She tossed her head and
raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers.  Her companion
watched her enviously.

"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton.  "I don't care to go back.
What does it matter?  I am quite happy here."

"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
after a pause.

"Perhaps."

"Good night, then."

"Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping
his parched mouth with a handkerchief.

Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face.  As he drew
the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
woman who had taken his money.  "There goes the devil's bargain!" she
hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.

"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."

She snapped her fingers.  "Prince Charming is what you like to be
called, ain't it?" she yelled after him.

The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
round.  The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear.  He
rushed out as if in pursuit.

Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain.  His
meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult.  He bit his
lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad.  Yet, after all, what did
it matter to him?  One's days were too brief to take the burden of
another's errors on one's shoulders.  Each man lived his own life and
paid his own price for living it.  The only pity was one had to pay so
often for a single fault.  One had to pay over and over again, indeed.
In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of
the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
impulses.  Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their
will.  They move to their terrible end as automatons move.  Choice is
taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at
all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its
charm.  For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are
sins of disobedience.  When that high spirit, that morning star of
evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.

Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself,
he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his
throat.

He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
tightening fingers away.  In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head,
and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.

"What do you want?" he gasped.

"Keep quiet," said the man.  "If you stir, I shoot you."

"You are mad.  What have I done to you?"

"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane
was my sister.  She killed herself.  I know it.  Her death is at your
door.  I swore I would kill you in return.  For years I have sought
you.  I had no clue, no trace.  The two people who could have described
you were dead.  I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call
you.  I heard it to-night by chance.  Make your peace with God, for
to-night you are going to die."

Dorian Gray grew sick with fear.  "I never knew her," he stammered.  "I
never heard of her.  You are mad."

"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
are going to die."  There was a horrible moment.  Dorian did not know
what to say or do.  "Down on your knees!" growled the man.  "I give you
one minute to make your peace--no more.  I go on board to-night for
India, and I must do my job first.  One minute.  That's all."

Dorian's arms fell to his side.  Paralysed with terror, he did not know
what to do.  Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain.  "Stop," he
cried.  "How long ago is it since your sister died?  Quick, tell me!"

"Eighteen years," said the man.  "Why do you ask me?  What do years
matter?"

"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
voice.  "Eighteen years!  Set me under the lamp and look at my face!"

James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.

Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
unstained purity of youth.  He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
when they had parted so many years ago.  It was obvious that this was
not the man who had destroyed her life.

He loosened his hold and reeled back.  "My God! my God!" he cried, "and
I would have murdered you!"

Dorian Gray drew a long breath.  "You have been on the brink of
committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
hands."

"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane.  "I was deceived.  A chance
word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."

"You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into
trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the
street.

James Vane stood on the pavement in horror.  He was trembling from head
to foot.  After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping
along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him
with stealthy footsteps.  He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked
round with a start.  It was one of the women who had been drinking at
the bar.

"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite
close to his.  "I knew you were following him when you rushed out from
Daly's. You fool!  You should have killed him.  He has lots of money,
and he's as bad as bad."

"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's
money.  I want a man's life.  The man whose life I want must be nearly
forty now.  This one is little more than a boy.  Thank God, I have not
got his blood upon my hands."

The woman gave a bitter laugh.  "Little more than a boy!" she sneered.
"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
what I am."

"You lie!" cried James Vane.

She raised her hand up to heaven.  "Before God I am telling the truth,"
she cried.

"Before God?"

"Strike me dumb if it ain't so.  He is the worst one that comes here.
They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.  It's nigh
on eighteen years since I met him.  He hasn't changed much since then.
I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer.

"You swear this?"

"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth.  "But don't give
me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him.  Let me have some
money for my night's lodging."

He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street,
but Dorian Gray had disappeared.  When he looked back, the woman had
vanished also.

Dorian's cab ride takes him to a sketchy part of town. Along the way, he can't help but mull over the words Henry told him when they first met--the only way to cure the soul is to give in to the senses. The best way he can think of to do that is to buy forgetfulness with opium. Dorian's conscience is really getting to him, and so is his opium craving. Finally, way out in the middle of nowhere, the cab deposits Dorian in a horrifying quarter of the city. He walks through the hideous, poverty-stricken streets for a while, then turns in at a shabby old house. Inside, he encounters some creepy characters, including his old friend, Adrian Singleton, one of the young men Basil accused him of ruining. Adrian is in a bad state--he doesn't care about anything but opium. Dorian is disgusted; he asks Adrian to accompany him to another opium den, but he refuses. The pair is accosted by two beggar women, one of whom seems to know Dorian. He's revolted, and throws some money at her to make her go away. Dorian gets ready to leave, but, before he goes, he tells Adrian to write to him if he needs anything --could he possibly feel bad about ruining the guy's life? As Dorian leaves, the beggar woman laughs and calls him "the devil's bargain" . He yells back at her, and she mockingly calls him "Prince Charming." A sailor in the background leaps up when he hears this nickname, and follows Dorian out. Dorian walks along the waterfront through the rain, and he ponders Adrian's downfall. Could it really be his fault? Was Basil actually right, or all his former friends responsible for their own failures? He decides that the latter is true, and he bears no responsibility. Dorian hurries on, but is suddenly seized by a mysterious figure. He finds himself pushed against a wall, a gun at his head. The assailant accuses Dorian of ruining Sibyl Vane's life--it turns out that he's James Vane, back from Australia after all these years. He is the sailor that overheard Dorian called "Prince Charming," which he remembers to be her nickname for him. Dorian panics and tries to deny it, but James is determined to kill him before he flees the country aboard a ship for India. Suddenly, a brain wave hits Dorian--he asks how long ago Sibyl died. It was eighteen years ago, and, when he tells James to look at his face in the light, the vengeful sailor realizes that the man he's looking at can't be more than twenty. James is horrified by what he thinks is a terrible mistake--he's convinced he almost killed an innocent boy. James lets Dorian go, and he walks away, unharmed. The beggar woman from the opium den creeps up to James, and asks why he didn't go through with the murder. He tells her that Dorian wasn't the man he was looking for--he's too young. She only laughs, and tells him that it's been eighteen years since "Prince Charming" ruined her life... rumor has it that he sold his soul to the devil for eternal youth. James curses and rushes to look for Dorian--but he's gone.

As Dorian rides toward his destination, he recalls Lord Henry's saying, the first day they met, "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Dorian intends to do just that. He is heading for an opium den, where old sins are forgotten and new ones found. Dorian craves opium. He feels afraid, and he is certain that there is no way to atone for his sins. The best he can hope for is to forget. In just three days, he thinks, he can find freedom by losing himself in the drug. The carriage arrives at the intended destination, and Dorian enters the shabby inn. At the end of the hall inside, he pulls aside a tattered curtain and enters a long, dark, low room. Dorian climbs a small staircase at the end of the room, leading to an even darker room. In the upper chamber, Dorian finds Adrian Singleton, one of the young men whom Basil accused Dorian of corrupting. However, Dorian decides not to stay. Adrian's presence bothers him; he prefers to be where no one knows him. At times, Dorian thinks he sees Basil's eyes following him. Dorian calls Adrian to the bar for a farewell shot of brandy. A woman approaches Dorian, but he gives her some money and tells her to leave. She is not so easily dissuaded. As Dorian is leaving, she shouts after him: "Prince Charming is what you like to be called, ain't it?" Her shouting startles a drowsy sailor who looks around rabidly and hurries out in pursuit of Dorian. Dorian hurries toward a different opium den. As he takes a short cut through a den archway, someone suddenly grabs him from behind and shoves him against a wall, his hand choking Dorian, who hears the click of a revolver. The man who chokes Dorian is James Vane, brother of Sibyl Vane, the actress who killed herself eighteen years before. He has sought Dorian, not even knowing the real name of "Prince Charming" all this time. Having heard his sister's pet name for the "gentleman" who did her wrong, James feels certain that he finally has found the cad. Dorian denies ever knowing the girl and asks how long ago this all took place. When James replies that it was eighteen years, Dorian laughs triumphantly and implores James merely to look at him under a nearby street lamp. James sees the face of a twenty-year-old lad. Clearly, he has erred. He apologizes and releases Dorian, who disappears into the night. As James stands trembling at his mistake, the woman from the bar appears and asks why James did not kill Dorian. The woman bitterly tells him that it has been eighteen years since "Prince Charming" made her what she is. She swears this before God and adds, "They say he sold himself to the devil for a pretty face." She asks James for money for her room that night, but he is interested only in pursuing Dorian. Dorian, however, is gone.

In some of the finest descriptive writing in the novel, Wilde finally allows the reader to see Dorian's secret world. The opening paragraphs of the chapter set the scene for taking the reader into the hell that is Dorian's chosen life. The opium den is a city of lost souls, a city that Dorian easily moves within. Appropriately, Dorian muses on his own salvation as he rides toward the den. True to the Faust legend, he is certain that he has no hope for atonement. He believes that forgiveness is not possible. The best he can hope for is the numb of opium. Most important in this chapter is that the reader sees Dorian suffering from a physical as well as a mental addiction. His hands tremble as he rides to the opium den, and the reader can only surmise that he is heading to the den to satisfy both a physical and a mental need. Although Dorian may not age, he has not escaped the personal prison created by his own desires. Even in the opium den, he can't escape the paranoid feeling that Basil's eyes are watching him. Dorian's physical and mental addiction to opium is significant because it is the first sign the reader sees that although Dorian cannot be destroyed by nature, he can destroy himself. Wilde's descriptive style in this chapter is Gothic in its grotesque, macabre, and fantastic imagery and chilling detail. He fashions a mood of desolation and despair. His similes, which appear seldom in other chapters, are very effective in relating the grimness of the world Dorian now occupies. He creates revealing similarities with the use of "like" and "as" -- for example, the "moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull," and the streets are "like the black web of some sprawling spider." Note that the moon resembles a "yellow skull," an allusion to death that so pervades the novel in these late chapters. In no small way, the dangers of excess even threaten Dorian's Aestheticism. Instead of admiring beauty, he craves ugliness. He once detested ugliness because it made things too real, but now he pursues it as his one reality: "The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense factuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song." Wilde reveals the dangers of Aestheticism gone so wrong that it is the opposite of itself. At the same time, Wilde is not teaching or preaching. As he says in the preface to the novel, there is no such thing as a "moral" or "immoral" book. Books are simply written well or badly. In this chapter, Wilde writes very, very well. Glossary quay a wharf where ships are loaded and unloaded. merchantman a commercial ship. coaling filling up with coal. mackintosh a waterproof raincoat. Malays native people of Malaysia, Indonesia, and surrounding areas. marionettes puppets manipulated by strings.

As the coach heads toward the opium dens, Dorian recites to himself Lord Henry's credo: "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. He decides that if he cannot be forgiven for his sins, he can at least forget them; herein lies the appeal of the opium dens and the oblivion they promise. The coach stops, and Dorian exits. He enters a squalid den and finds a youth named Adrian Singleton, whom rumor says Dorian corrupted. As Dorian prepares to leave, a woman addresses him as "the devil's bargain" and "Prince Charming. At these words, a sailor leaps to his feet and follows Dorian to the street. As he walks along, Dorian wonders whether he should feel guilty for the impact he has had on Adrian Singleton's life. His meditation is cut short, however, when he is seized from behind and held at gunpoint. Facing him is James Vane, Sibyl's brother, who has been tracking Dorian for years in hopes of avenging Sibyl's death. James does not know Dorian's name, but the reference to "Prince Charming" makes him decide that it must be the man who wronged his sister. Dorian points out, however, that the man James seeks was in love with Sibyl eighteen years ago; since he, Dorian, has the face of a twenty-year-old man, he cannot possibly be the man who wronged Sibyl. James releases him and makes his way back to the opium den. The old woman tells James that Dorian has been coming there for eighteen years and that his face has never aged a day in all that time. Furious at having let his prey escape, James resolves to hunt him down again


A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby
Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband,
a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests.  It was tea-time,
and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the
table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at
which the duchess was presiding.  Her white hands were moving daintily
among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that
Dorian had whispered to her.  Lord Henry was lying back in a
silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them.  On a peach-coloured divan
sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's description of
the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection.  Three
young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of
the women.  The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were
more expected to arrive on the next day.

"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to
the table and putting his cup down.  "I hope Dorian has told you about
my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys.  It is a delightful idea."

"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess,
looking up at him with her wonderful eyes.  "I am quite satisfied with
my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."

"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world.  They are
both perfect.  I was thinking chiefly of flowers.  Yesterday I cut an
orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
effective as the seven deadly sins.  In a thoughtless moment I asked
one of the gardeners what it was called.  He told me it was a fine
specimen of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind.  It is a
sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to
things.  Names are everything.  I never quarrel with actions.  My one
quarrel is with words.  That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in
literature.  The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled
to use one.  It is the only thing he is fit for."

"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.

"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.

"I recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess.

"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair.  "From
a label there is no escape!  I refuse the title."

"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.

"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"

"Yes."

"I give the truths of to-morrow."

"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.

"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.

"Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear."

"I never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.

"That is your error, Harry, believe me.  You value beauty far too much."

"How can you say that?  I admit that I think that it is better to be
beautiful than to be good.  But on the other hand, no one is more ready
than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess.
"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys.  You, as a good
Tory, must not underrate them.  Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
virtues have made our England what she is."

"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.

"I live in it."

"That you may censure it the better."

"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.

"What do they say of us?"

"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."

"Is that yours, Harry?"

"I give it to you."

"I could not use it.  It is too true."

"You need not be afraid.  Our countrymen never recognize a description."

"They are practical."

"They are more cunning than practical.  When they make up their ledger,
they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."

"Still, we have done great things."

"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."

"We have carried their burden."

"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."

She shook her head.  "I believe in the race," she cried.

"It represents the survival of the pushing."

"It has development."

"Decay fascinates me more."

"What of art?" she asked.

"It is a malady."

"Love?"

"An illusion."

"Religion?"

"The fashionable substitute for belief."

"You are a sceptic."

"Never!  Scepticism is the beginning of faith."

"What are you?"

"To define is to limit."

"Give me a clue."

"Threads snap.  You would lose your way in the labyrinth."

"You bewilder me.  Let us talk of some one else."

"Our host is a delightful topic.  Years ago he was christened Prince
Charming."

"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.

"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess,
colouring.  "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
butterfly."

"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian.

"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me."

"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"

"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you.  Usually because
I come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by
half-past eight."

"How unreasonable of her!  You should give her warning."

"I daren't, Mr. Gray.  Why, she invents hats for me.  You remember the
one I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party?  You don't, but it is nice
of you to pretend that you do.  Well, she made it out of nothing.  All
good hats are made out of nothing."

"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry.  "Every
effect that one produces gives one an enemy.  To be popular one must be
a mediocrity."

"Not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule
the world.  I assure you we can't bear mediocrities.  We women, as some
one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if
you ever love at all."

"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.

"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the duchess with
mock sadness.

"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry.  "How can you say that?  Romance
lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.
Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.
Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion.  It merely
intensifies it.  We can have in life but one great experience at best,
and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as
possible."

"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the duchess after
a pause.

"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry.

The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression
in her eyes.  "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired.

Dorian hesitated for a moment.  Then he threw his head back and
laughed.  "I always agree with Harry, Duchess."

"Even when he is wrong?"

"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."

"And does his philosophy make you happy?"

"I have never searched for happiness.  Who wants happiness?  I have
searched for pleasure."

"And found it, Mr. Gray?"

"Often.  Too often."

The duchess sighed.  "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."

"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his
feet and walking down the conservatory.

"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
cousin.  "You had better take care.  He is very fascinating."

"If he were not, there would be no battle."

"Greek meets Greek, then?"

"I am on the side of the Trojans.  They fought for a woman."

"They were defeated."

"There are worse things than capture," she answered.

"You gallop with a loose rein."

"Pace gives life," was the _riposte_.

"I shall write it in my diary to-night."

"What?"

"That a burnt child loves the fire."

"I am not even singed.  My wings are untouched."

"You use them for everything, except flight."

"Courage has passed from men to women.  It is a new experience for us."

"You have a rival."

"Who?"

He laughed.  "Lady Narborough," he whispered.  "She perfectly adores
him."

"You fill me with apprehension.  The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us
who are romanticists."

"Romanticists!  You have all the methods of science."

"Men have educated us."

"But not explained you."

"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.

"Sphinxes without secrets."

She looked at him, smiling.  "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said.  "Let us
go and help him.  I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."

"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."

"That would be a premature surrender."

"Romantic art begins with its climax."

"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."

"In the Parthian manner?"

"They found safety in the desert.  I could not do that."

"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he
finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came
a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall.  Everybody
started up.  The duchess stood motionless in horror.  And with fear in
his eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian
Gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.

He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of
the sofas.  After a short time, he came to himself and looked round
with a dazed expression.

"What has happened?" he asked.  "Oh!  I remember.  Am I safe here,
Harry?" He began to tremble.

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted.  That was
all.  You must have overtired yourself.  You had better not come down
to dinner.  I will take your place."

"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet.  "I would
rather come down.  I must not be alone."

He went to his room and dressed.  There was a wild recklessness of
gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of
terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the
window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the
face of James Vane watching him.

Dorian and his aristocratic friends are at his country house at Selby. Among his guests are the Duchess of Monmouth, her husband, Lord Henry, and Lady Narborough. They're all having tea and lounging around, generally being fabulous. Lord Henry comes over to chat with the Duchess and Dorian. They banter about aesthetics--you know, the usual. Dorian goes off to fetch some orchids for the Duchess, and she and Henry keep chatting. He accuses her facetiously of flirting too much with Dorian. For the first time, we seem to have met a woman who can keep up with Dorian and Henry. The two of them hear a groan and a thud from the other end of the conservatory. Everyone is startled, and Lord Henry rushes over to see what happened: he finds Dorian, collapsed face downwards. The guests carry Dorian to a couch, and he comes to after a little while. He's obviously shaken up, and is still distraught. Henry, worried, tells him he should rest and not come down to dinner, but Dorian would rather be with the rest of the party than stay alone. The reason for Dorian's collapse, we learn, was that he saw a terrifying sight through the conservatory window--James Vane.

A week later, Dorian entertains guests at his estate at Selby. He talks with Lord Henry, the Duchess of Monmouth, and her husband; they discuss the nature and importance of beauty. The duchess criticizes Lord Henry for placing too great a value on beauty. The conversation turns to love; Lord Henry maintains that love, like life, depends upon repeating a great experience over and over again. Dorian agrees and excuses himself from his company. Lord Henry chastises the duchess for her flirtations. Soon, they hear a groan from the other end of the conservatory. They rush to find that Dorian has fallen in a swoon. At dinner, Dorian feels occasional chills of terror as he recalls that, before fainting, he saw the face of James Vane pressed against the conservatory window

Lord Henry's belief, uttered after the fatal hunting accident, that "estiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that," contrasts with Dorian's experience. In many ways, Basil's portrait of Dorian illustrates how destiny shapes Dorian's life, for while Dorian himself remains immune to the effects of time, his ever-deteriorating likeness in the portrait is indeed an undeniable herald of his ultimate downfall. The picture interrupts the pleasant reality of Dorian's life to remind him of his soul's dissipation. Although the aestheticists believed that art existed for its own sake, Dorian's experience demonstrates the limitations of that view. The painting becomes almost immediately a physical manifestation of conscience; it shows Dorian what is right and what is wrong in a very literal sense, and he frequently inspects the painting after committing an immoral or unethical act to see exactly how his conscience interprets that act. Ultimately, then, and in contrast to Lord Henry's philosophies, The Picture of Dorian Gray emphasizes the relationship between art and morality. In addition to complicating the reader's understanding of art, which, as the novel draws to its close, becomes complex and somewhat paradoxical, Wilde demonstrates his characteristic flair for comedy and biting social satire. In Chapter Seventeen, Dorian's conversation with the Duchess of Monmouth and Lord Henry testifies to one of the skills that made Wilde the most celebrated playwright of his day. His brilliantly witty dialogue is responsible for his status as one of the most effective practitioners of the comedy of manners. A comedy of manners revolves around the complex and sophisticated behavior of the social elite, among whom one's character is determined more by appearance than by moral behavior. Certainly, by this definition, Lord Henry becomes something of a hero in the novel, as, even by his own admission, he cares much more for the beautiful than for the good. Given the increasing seriousness of Dorian's plight and the ever-darkening state of his mind, the bulk of Chapter Seventeen serves as comic relief, as the dialogue between the duchess and Lord Henry is light and full of witticisms. Their exchange points to the relatively shallow nature of their society, in which love and morality amount to an appreciation of surfaces: as another lady of society reminds Dorian in Chapter Fifteen, "you are made to be good--you look so good." Here, morality is a function not of action or belief but of mere appearances. Lord Henry's dismissive conception of England as a land founded on beer, the Bible, and repressive, unimaginative virtues serves as biting commentary of traditional, middle-class English morality. According to Lord Henry, a population whose tastes run to malt liquor and whose morality is determined by Christian dogma is doomed to produce little of artistic value. His sentiments align with the aesthetics' desire to free themselves  from the bonds of conventional morality and sensibilities. Sympathetic as Wilde himself was to Lord Henry's opinions, he provides here a vital counterpoint to these opinions: the duchess's criticism that Lord Henry values beauty too highly begs us to ask the same question of Dorian and the aesthetic philosophy that dominates his life.


The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
indifferent to life itself.  The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
tracked down, had begun to dominate him.  If the tapestry did but
tremble in the wind, he shook.  The dead leaves that were blown against
the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
regrets.  When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face
peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to
lay its hand upon his heart.

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him.  Actual
life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
imagination.  It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet
of sin.  It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
brood.  In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor
the good rewarded.  Success was given to the strong, failure thrust
upon the weak.  That was all.  Besides, had any stranger been prowling
round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers.  Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the
gardeners would have reported it.  Yes, it had been merely fancy.
Sibyl Vane's brother had not come back to kill him.  He had sailed away
in his ship to founder in some winter sea.  From him, at any rate, he
was safe.  Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he
was.  The mask of youth had saved him.

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them
visible form, and make them move before one!  What sort of life would
his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from
silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear
as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!
As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and
the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder.  Oh! in what a
wild hour of madness he had killed his friend!  How ghastly the mere
memory of the scene!  He saw it all again.  Each hideous detail came
back to him with added horror.  Out of the black cave of time, terrible
and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin.  When Lord Henry
came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
break.

It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out.  There was
something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.  But
it was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had
caused the change.  His own nature had revolted against the excess of
anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm.
With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so.  Their
strong passions must either bruise or bend.  They either slay the man,
or themselves die.  Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on.  The
loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
Besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a
terror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with
something of pity and not a little of contempt.

After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden
and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp
frost lay like salt upon the grass.  The sky was an inverted cup of
blue metal.  A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.

At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey
Clouston, the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of
his gun.  He jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take
the mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered
bracken and rough undergrowth.

"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.

"Not very good, Dorian.  I think most of the birds have gone to the
open.  I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new
ground."

Dorian strolled along by his side.  The keen aromatic air, the brown
and red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the
beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns
that followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful
freedom.  He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the
high indifference of joy.

Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front
of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it
forward, started a hare.  It bolted for a thicket of alders.  Sir
Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the
animal's grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he
cried out at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey.  Let it live."

"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
into the thicket, he fired.  There were two cries heard, the cry of a
hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is
worse.

"Good heavens!  I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey.  "What an
ass the man was to get in front of the guns!  Stop shooting there!" he
called out at the top of his voice.  "A man is hurt."

The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.

"Where, sir?  Where is he?" he shouted.  At the same time, the firing
ceased along the line.

"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
"Why on earth don't you keep your men back?  Spoiled my shooting for
the day."

Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
lithe swinging branches aside.  In a few moments they emerged, dragging
a body after them into the sunlight.  He turned away in horror.  It
seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went.  He heard Sir
Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of
the keeper.  The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with
faces.  There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of
voices.  A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the
boughs overhead.

After a few moments--that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
endless hours of pain--he felt a hand laid on his shoulder.  He started
and looked round.

"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is
stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."

"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered bitterly.  "The
whole thing is hideous and cruel.  Is the man ...?"

He could not finish the sentence.

"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry.  "He got the whole charge of
shot in his chest.  He must have died almost instantaneously.  Come;
let us go home."

They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly
fifty yards without speaking.  Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and
said, with a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."

"What is?" asked Lord Henry.  "Oh! this accident, I suppose.  My dear
fellow, it can't be helped.  It was the man's own fault.  Why did he
get in front of the guns?  Besides, it is nothing to us.  It is rather
awkward for Geoffrey, of course.  It does not do to pepper beaters.  It
makes people think that one is a wild shot.  And Geoffrey is not; he
shoots very straight.  But there is no use talking about the matter."

Dorian shook his head.  "It is a bad omen, Harry.  I feel as if
something horrible were going to happen to some of us.  To myself,
perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of
pain.

The elder man laughed.  "The only horrible thing in the world is _ennui_,
Dorian.  That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.  But we
are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering
about this thing at dinner.  I must tell them that the subject is to be
tabooed.  As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.  Destiny
does not send us heralds.  She is too wise or too cruel for that.
Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian?  You have
everything in the world that a man can want.  There is no one who would
not be delighted to change places with you."

"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry.  Don't
laugh like that.  I am telling you the truth.  The wretched peasant who
has just died is better off than I am.  I have no terror of death.  It
is the coming of death that terrifies me.  Its monstrous wings seem to
wheel in the leaden air around me.  Good heavens! don't you see a man
moving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"

Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
was pointing.  "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for
you.  I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on
the table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow!  You
must come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."

Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching.  The
man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master.
"Her Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.

Dorian put the letter into his pocket.  "Tell her Grace that I am
coming in," he said, coldly.  The man turned round and went rapidly in
the direction of the house.

"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry.
"It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most.  A woman will
flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."

"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry!  In the present
instance, you are quite astray.  I like the duchess very much, but I
don't love her."

"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you
are excellently matched."

"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
scandal."

"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
lighting a cigarette.

"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."

"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.

"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in
his voice.  "But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the
desire.  I am too much concentrated on myself.  My own personality has
become a burden to me.  I want to escape, to go away, to forget.  It
was silly of me to come down here at all.  I think I shall send a wire
to Harvey to have the yacht got ready.  On a yacht one is safe."

"Safe from what, Dorian?  You are in some trouble.  Why not tell me
what it is?  You know I would help you."

"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered sadly.  "And I dare say it is
only a fancy of mine.  This unfortunate accident has upset me.  I have
a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."

"What nonsense!"

"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it.  Ah! here is the duchess,
looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown.  You see we have come back,
Duchess."

"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered.  "Poor Geoffrey is
terribly upset.  And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
How curious!"

"Yes, it was very curious.  I don't know what made me say it.  Some
whim, I suppose.  It looked the loveliest of little live things.  But I
am sorry they told you about the man.  It is a hideous subject."

"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry.  "It has no
psychological value at all.  Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
purpose, how interesting he would be!  I should like to know some one
who had committed a real murder."

"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the duchess.  "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again.  He is going to faint."

Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled.  "It is nothing,
Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order.  That is
all.  I am afraid I walked too far this morning.  I didn't hear what
Harry said.  Was it very bad?  You must tell me some other time.  I
think I must go and lie down.  You will excuse me, won't you?"

They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
conservatory on to the terrace.  As the glass door closed behind
Dorian, Lord Henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous
eyes.  "Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.

She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape.
"I wish I knew," she said at last.

He shook his head.  "Knowledge would be fatal.  It is the uncertainty
that charms one.  A mist makes things wonderful."

"One may lose one's way."

"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."

"What is that?"

"Disillusion."

"It was my _debut_ in life," she sighed.

"It came to you crowned."

"I am tired of strawberry leaves."

"They become you."

"Only in public."

"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.

"I will not part with a petal."

"Monmouth has ears."

"Old age is dull of hearing."

"Has he never been jealous?"

"I wish he had been."

He glanced about as if in search of something.  "What are you looking
for?" she inquired.

"The button from your foil," he answered.  "You have dropped it."

She laughed.  "I have still the mask."

"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.

She laughed again.  Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet
fruit.

Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
in every tingling fibre of his body.  Life had suddenly become too
hideous a burden for him to bear.  The dreadful death of the unlucky
beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
pre-figure death for himself also.  He had nearly swooned at what Lord
Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.

At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
night at Selby Royal.  It was an ill-omened place.  Death walked there
in the sunlight.  The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.

Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
town to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in
his absence.  As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to
the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see
him.  He frowned and bit his lip.  "Send him in," he muttered, after
some moments' hesitation.

As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a
drawer and spread it out before him.

"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this
morning, Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.

"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.

"Was the poor fellow married?  Had he any people dependent on him?"
asked Dorian, looking bored.  "If so, I should not like them to be left
in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."

"We don't know who he is, sir.  That is what I took the liberty of
coming to you about."

"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly.  "What do you mean?
Wasn't he one of your men?"

"No, sir.  Never saw him before.  Seems like a sailor, sir."

The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart
had suddenly stopped beating.  "A sailor?" he cried out.  "Did you say
a sailor?"

"Yes, sir.  He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on
both arms, and that kind of thing."

"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
looking at the man with startled eyes.  "Anything that would tell his
name?"

"Some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
kind.  A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we
think."

Dorian started to his feet.  A terrible hope fluttered past him.  He
clutched at it madly.  "Where is the body?" he exclaimed.  "Quick!  I
must see it at once."

"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir.  The folk don't like
to have that sort of thing in their houses.  They say a corpse brings
bad luck."

"The Home Farm!  Go there at once and meet me.  Tell one of the grooms
to bring my horse round.  No. Never mind.  I'll go to the stables
myself.  It will save time."

In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the
long avenue as hard as he could go.  The trees seemed to sweep past him
in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
path.  Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
He lashed her across the neck with his crop.  She cleft the dusky air
like an arrow.  The stones flew from her hoofs.

At last he reached the Home Farm.  Two men were loitering in the yard.
He leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them.  In the
farthest stable a light was glimmering.  Something seemed to tell him
that the body was there, and he hurried to the door and put his hand
upon the latch.

There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a
discovery that would either make or mar his life.  Then he thrust the
door open and entered.

On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man
dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers.  A spotted
handkerchief had been placed over the face.  A coarse candle, stuck in
a bottle, sputtered beside it.

Dorian Gray shuddered.  He felt that his could not be the hand to take
the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to
come to him.

"Take that thing off the face.  I wish to see it," he said, clutching
at the door-post for support.

When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward.  A cry of joy
broke from his lips.  The man who had been shot in the thicket was
James Vane.

He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body.  As he rode
home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.

The next day, Dorian doesn't leave the house; he's terrified that his assassin will find him. He wonders if this is all a product of his imagination--could he just have hallucinated his vision of his would-be killer? Surely he's safe. However, he can't get the vision out of his head; Henry comes in that evening and finds Dorian crying. After a couple of days of sulking, Dorian feels well enough to go outside. He feels infinitely better, and looks back on his former fear with contempt. Dorian goes on a walk in the garden with the Duchess, then joins some other friends to go hunting. Dorian and the Duchess's brother, Geoffrey, stroll through the woods, looking for animals to shoot. They come upon a beautiful hare. Dorian is charmed by the creature, and tells Geoffrey not to shoot it, but he scoffs and takes aim. Geoffrey hits the hare--but also hits something else. He accidentally shoots a man hidden behind the trees. Geoffrey angrily yells at the gamekeeper; he thinks it's one of the "beaters," men employed to flush birds out of the trees to be shot at. The body of the shot man is dragged out, and Dorian is distraught--he finds the whole thing to be dreadful. Henry gently walks him back to the house, and informs him on the way that the man has died. Dorian is profoundly disturbed. Henry, however, is not. He thinks it's the man's own fault for being in the line of fire, though he admits that this situation is rather awkward for Geoffrey. Dorian thinks this is a bad omen, and is certain that something bad is going to happen to someone--maybe him. Henry blows off this presentiment, and they change topics to Dorian's affair with the Duchess. However, Dorian's distress is still palpable, but he won't tell Henry what's the matter. The Duchess comes out to join them, and the three of them discuss the murdered man in the most alarming way--as though he's just an animal. Their snobbery is unbelievable. Dorian leaves his two friends and goes into the house. Henry and the Duchess continue their banter; they're pretty much equally matched in wit. Inside, Dorian is totally freaking out. He feels like death is coming for him. Thornton, the gamekeeper, comes in to see Dorian about the dead man. It turns out he wasn't a beater, after all. In fact, Thornton says, he looks more like a sailor. This really wakes Dorian up--he desperately wants to know the man's identity. He rushes out on horseback to see the body where it's being kept in a stable. The dead man is James Vane. Dorian rides back to the house, crying tears of joy--he's safe.

The following day, Dorian does not leave the house. The thought of falling prey to James Vane dominates him: every time he closes his eyes, the image of James's face in the window reappears. He begins to wonder, though, if this apparition is a figment of his imagination. The idea that his conscience could assert such fearful visions terrifies Dorian and makes him wonder if he will get any rest. On the third day after the incident, Dorian ventures out. He strolls along the grounds of his estate and feels reinvigorated. He reflects to himself that the anguish that recently kept him in bed is completely against his nature. He has breakfast with the duchess and then joins a shooting party in the park. While strolling along with the hunters, Dorian is captivated by the graceful movement of a hare and begs his companions not to shoot it. Dorian's companion laughs at Dorian's silliness and shoots at the hare. The gunshot is followed by the cry of a man in agony. Several men thrash their way into the bushes to discover that a man has been shot. Having taken "the whole charge of shot in his chest," the man has died instantly. As the hunters head back toward the house, Dorian shares his worry with Lord Henry that this episode is a "bad omen. Lord Henry dismisses such notions, assuring Dorian that destiny is "too wise or too cruel" to send us omens. Attempting to lighten the mood, Lord Henry teases Dorian about his relationship with the duchess. Dorian assures Henry that there is no scandal to be had and utters, quite pathetically, "I wish I could love. He bemoans the fact that he is so concentrated on himself, on his own personality, that he is thus unable to love another person. He entertains the idea of sailing away on a yacht, where he will be safe. When the gentlemen come upon the duchess, Dorian leaves Lord Henry to talk to her and retires to his room. There, the head keeper comes to speak to Dorian. Dorian inquires about the man who was shot, assuming him to have been a servant, and offers to make provisions for the man's family. The head keeper reports that the man's identity remains a mystery. As soon as he learns that the man is an anonymous sailor, Dorian demands to see him. He rides to a farm where the body is being kept and identifies it as that of James Vane. He rides home with tears in his eyes, feeling safe