After a few moments he opened the front door, and slipped out, shutting it very gently behind him.  Then he began ringing the bell.  In about ten minutes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very drowsy.

“I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,” he said, stepping in; “but I had forgotten my latch-key.  What time is it?”

“Five minutes past two, sir,” answered the man, looking at the clock and yawning.

“Five minutes past two?  How horribly late!  You must wake me at nine to-morrow.  I have some work to do.”

“All right, sir.”

“Did any one call this evening?”

“Mr. Hallward, sir.  He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train.”

“Oh!  I am sorry I didn’t see him.  Did he leave any message?”

“No, sir, except that he would write to you.”

[86] “That will do, Francis.  Don’t forget to call me at nine tomorrow.”

“No, sir.”

The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.

Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the yellow marble table, and passed into the library.  He walked up and down the room for a quarter of an hour, biting his lip, and thinking.  Then he took the Blue Book down from one of the shelves, and began to turn over the leaves.  “Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.”  Yes; that was the man he wanted.

CHAPTER XII

[...86] At nine o’clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters.  Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.  He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.

The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had been having some delightful dream.  Yet he had not dreamed at all.  His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain.  But youth smiles without any reason.  It is one of its chiefest charms.

He turned round, and, leaning on his elbow, began to drink his chocolate.  The mellow November sun was streaming into the room.  The sky was bright blue, and there was a genial warmth in the air.  It was almost like a morning in May.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness.  He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward, that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came back to him, and he grew cold with passion.  The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now.  How horrible that was!  Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.