<h2><SPAN name="chap02"></SPAN>CHAPTER II.</h2>
<p>As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with his back
to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann’s “Forest
Scenes.” “You must lend me these, Basil,” he cried. “I
want to learn them. They are perfectly charming.”</p>
<p>“That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don’t want a life-sized portrait
of myself,” answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a
wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush
coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. “I beg your pardon,
Basil, but I didn’t know you had any one with you.”</p>
<p>“This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have
just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled
everything.”</p>
<p>“You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray,” said
Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. “My aunt has often
spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of
her victims also.”</p>
<p>“I am in Lady Agatha’s black books at present,” answered
Dorian with a funny look of penitence. “I promised to go to a club in
Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to
have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I don’t know
what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you.
And I don’t think it really matters about your not being there. The
audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the
piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people.”</p>
<p>“That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me,” answered
Dorian, laughing.</p>
<p>Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his
finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was
something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth
was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had
kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.</p>
<p>“You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray—far too
charming.” And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his
cigarette-case.</p>
<p>The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. He
was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry’s last remark, he
glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Harry, I want to
finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked
you to go away?”</p>
<p>Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. “Am I to go, Mr.
Gray?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Oh, please don’t, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his
sulky moods, and I can’t bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to
tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so
tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I
certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You
don’t really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked
your sitters to have some one to chat to.”</p>
<p>Hallward bit his lip. “If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
Dorian’s whims are laws to everybody, except himself.”</p>
<p>Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. “You are very pressing, Basil, but
I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye,
Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always
at home at five o’clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be
sorry to miss you.”</p>
<p>“Basil,” cried Dorian Gray, “if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I
shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is
horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to
stay. I insist upon it.”</p>
<p>“Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,” said Hallward,
gazing intently at his picture. “It is quite true, I never talk when I am
working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my
unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay.”</p>
<p>“But what about my man at the Orleans?”</p>
<p>The painter laughed. “I don’t think there will be any difficulty
about that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and
don’t move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says.
He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of
myself.”</p>
<p>Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and
made a little <i>moue</i> of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather
taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he
had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, “Have you
really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?”</p>
<p>“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He
does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His
virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are
borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part
that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To
realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of
all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are
charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls
starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never
really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror
of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that
govern us. And yet—”</p>
<p>“Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
boy,” said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look
had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there before.</p>
<p>“And yet,” continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and
with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him,
and that he had even in his Eton days, “I believe that if one man were to
live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling,
expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the
world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the
maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something
finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst
us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival
in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every
impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body
sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.
Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a
regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it,
and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and
unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the
brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world
take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your
rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts
that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere
memory might stain your cheek with shame—”</p>
<p>“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder me. I
don’t know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find
it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to
think.”</p>
<p>For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes
strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at
work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. The
few words that Basil’s friend had said to him—words spoken by
chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them—had touched some secret
chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating
and throbbing to curious pulses.</p>
<p>Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music
was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it
created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid,
and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there
was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things,
and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere
words! Was there anything so real as words?</p>
<p>Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He
understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to
him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?</p>
<p>With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was
amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a
book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him
much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing
through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it
hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!</p>
<p>Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true
refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from
strength. He was unconscious of the silence.</p>
<p>“Basil, I am tired of standing,” cried Dorian Gray suddenly.
“I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here.”</p>
<p>“My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can’t think
of anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright look
in the eyes. I don’t know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has
certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been
paying you compliments. You mustn’t believe a word that he says.”</p>
<p>“He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
reason that I don’t believe anything he has told me.”</p>
<p>“You know you believe it all,” said Lord Henry, looking at him with
his dreamy languorous eyes. “I will go out to the garden with you. It is
horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
something with strawberries in it.”</p>
<p>“Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell
him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you
later on. Don’t keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better form
for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my
masterpiece as it stands.”</p>
<p>Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the
great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had
been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. “You
are quite right to do that,” he murmured. “Nothing can cure the
soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”</p>
<p>The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his
rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear
in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely
chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his
lips and left them trembling.</p>
<p>“Yes,” continued Lord Henry, “that is one of the great
secrets of life—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses
by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you
think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”</p>
<p>Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the
tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured
face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid
voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even,
had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a
language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.
Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known
Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered
him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have
disclosed to him life’s mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid
of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.</p>
<p>“Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry. “Parker
has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will
be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming.”</p>
<p>“What can it matter?” cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down
on the seat at the end of the garden.</p>
<p>“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
worth having.”</p>
<p>“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”</p>
<p>“No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled
and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it
terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? ...
You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have.
And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it
needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or
spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the
moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes
princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you
won’t smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial.
That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me,
beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by
appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods
give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really,
perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and
then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or
have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past
will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer
to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and
your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will
suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t
squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the
hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the
wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always
searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.
With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to
you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious
of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you
that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought
how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that
your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither,
but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.
In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the
green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our
youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs
fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory
of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations
that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely
nothing in the world but youth!”</p>
<p>Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his
hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then
it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He
watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop
when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new
emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that
terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a
time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian
convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.</p>
<p>Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs
for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled.</p>
<p>“I am waiting,” he cried. “Do come in. The light is quite
perfect, and you can bring your drinks.”</p>
<p>They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the
garden a thrush began to sing.</p>
<p>“You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, looking
at him.</p>
<p>“Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?”</p>
<p>“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.
Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it
last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a
caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little
longer.”</p>
<p>As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry’s
arm. “In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,” he murmured,
flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his
pose.</p>
<p>Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The
sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the
stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work
from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway
the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood
over everything.</p>
<p>After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long
time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of
one of his huge brushes and frowning. “It is quite finished,” he
cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on
the left-hand corner of the canvas.</p>
<p>Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful
work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.</p>
<p>“My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,” he said.
“It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look
at yourself.”</p>
<p>The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.</p>
<p>“Is it really finished?” he murmured, stepping down from the
platform.</p>
<p>“Quite finished,” said the painter. “And you have sat
splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you.”</p>
<p>“That is entirely due to me,” broke in Lord Henry.
“Isn’t it, Mr. Gray?”</p>
<p>Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned
towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment
with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized
himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly
conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of
his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had
never felt it before. Basil Hallward’s compliments had seemed to him to
be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them,
laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had
come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible
warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description
flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled
and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and
deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his
hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become
dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.</p>
<p>As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and
made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst,
and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid
upon his heart.</p>
<p>“Don’t you like it?” cried Hallward at last, stung a little
by the lad’s silence, not understanding what it meant.</p>
<p>“Of course he likes it,” said Lord Henry. “Who wouldn’t
like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you
anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.”</p>
<p>“It is not my property, Harry.”</p>
<p>“Whose property is it?”</p>
<p>“Dorian’s, of course,” answered the painter.</p>
<p>“He is a very lucky fellow.”</p>
<p>“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed
upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible,
and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older
than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were
I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For
that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the
whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”</p>
<p>“You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil,” cried Lord
Henry, laughing. “It would be rather hard lines on your work.”</p>
<p>“I should object very strongly, Harry,” said Hallward.</p>
<p>Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. “I believe you would, Basil. You
like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze
figure. Hardly as much, I dare say.”</p>
<p>The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that.
What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks
burning.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he continued, “I am less to you than your ivory Hermes
or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till
I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses
one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your
picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the
only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill
myself.”</p>
<p>Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. “Dorian! Dorian!” he
cried, “don’t talk like that. I have never had such a friend as
you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material
things, are you?—you who are finer than any of them!”</p>
<p>“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of
the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every
moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it
were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always
what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me
horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and,
flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he
was praying.</p>
<p>“This is your doing, Harry,” said the painter bitterly.</p>
<p>Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It is the real Dorian Gray—that
is all.”</p>
<p>“It is not.”</p>
<p>“If it is not, what have I to do with it?”</p>
<p>“You should have gone away when I asked you,” he muttered.</p>
<p>“I stayed when you asked me,” was Lord Henry’s answer.</p>
<p>“Harry, I can’t quarrel with my two best friends at once, but
between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not let
it come across our three lives and mar them.”</p>
<p>Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and
tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table
that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His
fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes,
seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin
blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the
canvas.</p>
<p>With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the
studio. “Don’t, Basil, don’t!” he cried. “It
would be murder!”</p>
<p>“I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said the
painter coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. “I never thought
you would.”</p>
<p>“Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel
that.”</p>
<p>“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself.” And he walked
across the room and rang the bell for tea. “You will have tea, of course,
Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
pleasures?”</p>
<p>“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They are the
last refuge of the complex. But I don’t like scenes, except on the stage.
What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a
rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many
things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all—though I
wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me
have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t really want it, and I really
do.”</p>
<p>“If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive
you!” cried Dorian Gray; “and I don’t allow people to call me
a silly boy.”</p>
<p>“You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
existed.”</p>
<p>“And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you
don’t really object to being reminded that you are extremely
young.”</p>
<p>“I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.”</p>
<p>“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”</p>
<p>There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray
and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and
saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes
were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The
two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the
covers.</p>
<p>“Let us go to the theatre to-night,” said Lord Henry. “There
is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at
White’s, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to
say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a
subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would
have all the surprise of candour.”</p>
<p>“It is such a bore putting on one’s dress-clothes,” muttered
Hallward. “And, when one has them on, they are so horrid.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” answered Lord Henry dreamily, “the costume of the
nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the
only real colour-element left in modern life.”</p>
<p>“You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.”</p>
<p>“Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
in the picture?”</p>
<p>“Before either.”</p>
<p>“I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,” said
the lad.</p>
<p>“Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won’t
you?”</p>
<p>“I can’t, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to
do.”</p>
<p>“Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.”</p>
<p>“I should like that awfully.”</p>
<p>The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. “I
shall stay with the real Dorian,” he said, sadly.</p>
<p>“Is it the real Dorian?” cried the original of the portrait,
strolling across to him. “Am I really like that?”</p>
<p>“Yes; you are just like that.”</p>
<p>“How wonderful, Basil!”</p>
<p>“At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,”
sighed Hallward. “That is something.”</p>
<p>“What a fuss people make about fidelity!” exclaimed Lord Henry.
“Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing
to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men
want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”</p>
<p>“Don’t go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,” said Hallward.
“Stop and dine with me.”</p>
<p>“I can’t, Basil.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him.”</p>
<p>“He won’t like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
breaks his own. I beg you not to go.”</p>
<p>Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.</p>
<p>“I entreat you.”</p>
<p>The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from
the tea-table with an amused smile.</p>
<p>“I must go, Basil,” he answered.</p>
<p>“Very well,” said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup
on the tray. “It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had
better lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
Come to-morrow.”</p>
<p>“Certainly.”</p>
<p>“You won’t forget?”</p>
<p>“No, of course not,” cried Dorian.</p>
<p>“And ... Harry!”</p>
<p>“Yes, Basil?”</p>
<p>“Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this
morning.”</p>
<p>“I have forgotten it.”</p>
<p>“I trust you.”</p>
<p>“I wish I could trust myself,” said Lord Henry, laughing.
“Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own
place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon.”</p>
<p>As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a
look of pain came into his face.</p>
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