One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry\u2019s house in Mayfair. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk, long-fringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of Les Cent Nouvelles, bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered with the gilt daisies that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars and parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a summer day in London.<\/p>\n
Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of an elaborately illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut that he had found in one of the book-cases. The formal monotonous ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going away.<\/p>\n
At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. \u201cHow late you are, Harry!\u201d he murmured.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray,\u201d answered a shrill voice.<\/p>\n
He glanced quickly round and rose to his feet. \u201cI beg your pardon. I thought\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my husband has got seventeen of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot seventeen, Lady Henry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the opera.\u201d She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner\u2019s music better than anybody\u2019s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don\u2019t you think so, Mr. Gray?\u201d<\/p>\n
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.<\/p>\n
Dorian smiled and shook his head: \u201cI am afraid I don\u2019t think so, Lady Henry. I never talk during music\u2014at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one\u2019s duty to drown it in conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh! that is one of Harry\u2019s views, isn\u2019t it, Mr. Gray? I always hear Harry\u2019s views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of them. But you must not think I don\u2019t like good music. I adore it, but I am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped pianists\u2014two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don\u2019t know what it is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are, ain\u2019t they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after a time, don\u2019t they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn\u2019t it? You have never been to any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can\u2019t afford orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one\u2019s rooms look so picturesque. But here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask you something\u2014I forget what it was\u2014and I found Mr. Gray here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant. I am so glad I\u2019ve seen him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am charmed, my love, quite charmed,\u201d said Lord Henry, elevating his dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused smile. \u201cSo sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am afraid I must be going,\u201d exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. \u201cI have promised to drive with the duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are dining out, I suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI dare say, my dear,\u201d said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian,\u201d he said after a few puffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy, Harry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they are so sentimental.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I like sentimental people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love. That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do everything that you say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are you in love with?\u201d asked Lord Henry after a pause.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith an actress,\u201d said Dorian Gray, blushing.<\/p>\n
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. \u201cThat is a rather commonplace d\u00e9but<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would not say so if you saw her, Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is she?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer name is Sibyl Vane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever heard of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarry, how can you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at present, so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was. I find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try and look young. Our grandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. Rouge<\/i> and esprit<\/i> used to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these can\u2019t be admitted into decent society. However, tell me about your genius. How long have you known her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh! Harry, your views terrify me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever mind that. How long have you known her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd where did you come across her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell you, Harry, but you mustn\u2019t be unsympathetic about it. After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for sensations…. Well, one evening about seven o\u2019clock, I determined to go out in search of some adventure. I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. I don\u2019t know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. \u2018Have a box, my Lord?\u2019 he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the present day I can\u2019t make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn\u2019t\u2014my dear Harry, if I hadn\u2019t\u2014I should have missed the greatest romance of my life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion<\/i> is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don\u2019t be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think my nature so shallow?\u201d cried Dorian Gray angrily.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo; I think your nature so deep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect\u2014simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don\u2019t want to interrupt you. Go on with your story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the curtain and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what on earth I should do when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you think the play was, Harry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should think \u2018The Idiot Boy\u2019, or \u2018Dumb but Innocent\u2019. Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grandp\u00e8res ont toujours tort<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was drawn up and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice\u2014I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one\u2019s ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautboy. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don\u2019t know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover\u2019s lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one\u2019s imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why didn\u2019t you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I have loved so many of them, Dorian.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes,\u201d said Lord Henry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you will tell me everything you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople like you\u2014the wilful sunbeams of life\u2014don\u2019t commit crimes, Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now tell me\u2014reach me the matches, like a good boy\u2014thanks\u2014what are your actual relations with Sibyl Vane?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes. \u201cHarry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,\u201d said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. \u201cBut why should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one\u2019s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know her, at any rate, I suppose?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that I had taken too much champagne, or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, he seemed to think they were beyond his means,\u201d laughed Dorian. \u201cBy this time, however, the lights were being put out in the theatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the place again. When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that I was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to \u2018The Bard,\u2019 as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a distinction, my dear Dorian\u2014a great distinction. Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one\u2019s self over poetry is an honour. But when did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me\u2014at least I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo; I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dear Harry, why?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is something of a child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. He would insist on calling me \u2018My Lord,\u2019 so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She said quite simply to me, \u2018You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince Charming.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that look. It depresses me,\u201d murmured Lord Henry, examining his rings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about other people\u2019s tragedies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but it is not quite what I expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have been to the opera with you several times,\u201d said Dorian, opening his blue eyes in wonder.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always come dreadfully late.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I can\u2019t help going to see Sibyl play,\u201d he cried, \u201ceven if it is only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head. \u201cTo-night she is Imogen,\u201d he answered, \u201cand to-morrow night she will be Juliet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen is she Sibyl Vane?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI congratulate you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!\u201d He was walking up and down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.<\/p>\n
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he was now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward\u2019s studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet it on the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what do you propose to do?\u201d said Lord Henry at last.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I have not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew\u2019s hands. She is bound to him for three years\u2014at least for two years and eight months\u2014from the present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When all that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be impossible, my dear boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what night shall we go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet to-morrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right. The Bristol at eight o\u2019clock; and I will get Basil.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets Romeo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHalf-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don\u2019t want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lord Henry smiled. \u201cPeople are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBasil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder is that really so, Harry?\u201d said Dorian Gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large, gold-topped bottle that stood on the table. \u201cIt must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is waiting for me. Don\u2019t forget about to-morrow. Good-bye.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he left the room, Lord Henry\u2019s heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad\u2019s mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life\u2014that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one\u2019s face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect\u2014to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at discord\u2014there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.<\/p>\n
He was conscious\u2014and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes\u2014that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray\u2019s soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.<\/p>\n
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one\u2019s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.<\/p>\n
Soul and body, body and soul\u2014how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.<\/p>\n
He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.<\/p>\n
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences, yet it was not a simple, but rather a very complex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.<\/p>\n
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He thought of his friend\u2019s young fiery-coloured life and wondered how it was all going to end.<\/p>\n
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o\u2019clock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table. He opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":5,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-26","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/revisions\/169"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/26\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thepictureofdoriangray\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}