Hallward was thunderstruck.  He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute amazement.  He had never seen him like this before.  The lad was absolutely pallid with rage.  His hands were clinched, and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire.  He was trembling all over.

“Dorian!”

“Don’t speak!”

“But what is the matter?  Of course I won’t look at it if you don’t want me to,” he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over towards the window.  “But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn’t see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn.  I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?”

“To exhibit it!  You want to exhibit it?” exclaimed Dorian Gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over him.  Was the world going [56] to be shown his secret?  Were people to gape at the mystery of his life?  That was impossible.  Something—­he did not know what—­had to be done at once.

“Yes:  I don’t suppose you will object to that.  Georges Petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de Seze, which will open the first week in October.  The portrait will only be away a month.  I should think you could easily spare it for that time.  In fact, you are sure to be out of town.  And if you hide it always behind a screen, you can’t care much about it.”

Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.  There were beads of perspiration there.  He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger.  “You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it,” he said.  “Why have you changed your mind?  You people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others.  The only difference is that your moods are rather meaningless.  You can’t have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition.  You told Harry exactly the same thing.”  He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes.  He remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest, “If you want to have an interesting quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you why he won’t exhibit your picture.  He told me why he wouldn’t, and it was a revelation to me.”  Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret.  He would ask him and try.

“Basil,” he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in the face, “we have each of us a secret.  Let me know yours, and I will tell you mine.  What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?”

Hallward shuddered in spite of himself.  “Dorian, if I told you, you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me.  I could not bear your doing either of those two things.  If you wish me never to look at your picture again, I am content.  I have always you to look at.  If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied.  Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation.”