For there would be a real pleasure in watching it.
He would be able to follow his mind into its secret
places. This portrait would be to him the most
magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him
his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul.
And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing
where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
When the blood crept from its face, and left behind
a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would
keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one blossom
of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse
of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods
of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and
joyous. What did it matter what happened to
the coloured image on the canvas? He would be
safe. That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in front
of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed into
his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting for
him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord
Henry was leaning over his chair.
CHAPTER 9
As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil
Hallward was shown into the room.
“I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,”
he said gravely. “I called last night,
and they told me you were at the opera. Of course,
I knew that was impossible. But I wish you had
left word where you had really gone to. I passed
a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might
be followed by another. I think you might have
telegraphed for me when you heard of it first.
I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of The
Globe that I picked up at the club. I came here
at once and was miserable at not finding you.
I can’t tell you how heart-broken I am about
the whole thing. I know what you must suffer.
But where were you? Did you go down and see the
girl’s mother? For a moment I thought of
following you there. They gave the address in
the paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn’t
it? But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow
that I could not lighten. Poor woman!
What a state she must be in! And her only child,
too! What did she say about it all?”
“My dear Basil, how do I know?” murmured
Dorian Gray, sipping some pale-yellow wine from a
delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass and
looking dreadfully bored. “I was at the
opera. You should have come on there. I
met Lady Gwendolen, Harry’s sister, for the
first time. We were in her box. She is
perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely.
Don’t talk about horrid subjects. If one
doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.
It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives
reality to things. I may mention that she was
not the woman’s only child. There is a
son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is
not on the stage. He is a sailor, or something.
And now, tell me about yourself and what you are
painting.”
“You went to the opera?” said Hallward,
speaking very slowly and with a strained touch of
pain in his voice. “You went to the opera
while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?
You can talk to me of other women being charming, and
of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved
has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why,
man, there are horrors in store for that little white
body of hers!”
