“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 was 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 if he was praying.

“This is your doing, Harry,” said Hallward, bitterly.

[20] “My doing?”

“Yes, yours, and you know it.”

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  “It is the real Dorian Gray,—­ that is all,” he answered.

“It is not.”

“If it is not, what have I to do with it?”

“You should have gone away when I asked you.”

“I stayed when you asked me.”

“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 color?  I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them.”

Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and looked at him with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the large 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 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.

With a stifled sob he 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!”

“I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said Hallward, coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise.  “I never thought you would.”

“Appreciate it?  I am in love with it, Basil.  It is part of myself, I feel that.”

“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?  Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us.”

“I don’t like simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry.  “And 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 do.”