Chapter 4Oernoon, a month ter, Dorian Gray was reing in a luxurious arm-chair, itle library of Lord Henrys house in Mayfair. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainsg of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling of raised psterwork, 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 y a copy of Les t Nouvelles, bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered with the gilt daisies that Queen had selected for her device. Se blue a 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.Lord Henry had not yet e in. He was always te on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the d was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of an eborately illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut that he had found in one of the book-cases. The formal monotonous tig of the Louis Quatorze clonoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going away.At st he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How te you are, Harry!" he murmured."I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.He gnced quickly round and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I thought--""You 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.""Not seventeen, Lady Henry?""Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the ht at the opera." She ughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague fet-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 foing to church."That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?""Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagners music better than anybodys. It is so loud that one talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, dont you think sray?"The same nervous staccato ugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to py with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.Dorian smiled and shook his head: "I am afraid I dont think so, Lady Henry. I alk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is ones duty to drown it in versation.""Ah! that is one of Harrys views, isnt it, Mr. Gray? I always hear Harrys views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of them. But you must not think I dont like good music. I adore it, but I am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped pianists-- two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I dont know what it is about them. Perhaps it is that they are fners. They all are, aint they? Even those that are born in Engnd bee fners after a time, dont they? It is so clever of them, and such a pliment to art. Makes it quite opolitan, doesnt it? You have never been to any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must e. I t afford orchids, but I share no expense in fners. They make ones rooms look so picturesque. But here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask you something-- I fet what it was--and 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 gd Ive seen him.""I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his dark, crest-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused smile. "So sorry I am te, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old brocade in Wardour Street and had tain for hours for it. Noeople know the price of everything and the value of nothing.""I am afraid I must be going," excimed Lady Henry, breaking an awkward sileh her silly sudden ugh. "I 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 Thornburys.""I dare say, my dear," 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 ipanni. The a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa."Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said after a few puffs."Why, Harry?""Because they are so seal.""But I like seal people.""Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.""I dont think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too mu love. That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do everything that you say.""Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry after a pause."With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather onpce début.""You would not say so if you saw her, Harry.""Who is she?""Her name is Sibyl Vane.""Never heard of her.""No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius.""My 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.""Harry, how you?""My 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 pin and the coloured. The pin 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 it one mistake, however. They paint in order to try and look young. randmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman look ten years youhan her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. As for versation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these t be admitted into det society. However, tell me about yenius. How long have you known her?""Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."Never mind that. How long have you known her?""About three weeks.""And where did you e across her?""I will tell you, Harry, but you mustnt 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 fasated 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 oclock, I determio 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 diogether, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. I dont know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a byrinth of grimy streets and bck grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great fring gas-jets and gaudy py-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 ris, and an enormous diamond bzed in the tre of a soiled shirt.Have a box, my Lord? he said, when he saw me, aook off his hat with an air of geous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will ugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the present day I t make out why I did so; a if I hadnt-- my dear Harry, if I hadnt--I should have missed the greatest romany life. I see yhing. It is horrid of you!""I am not ughing, Dorian; at least I am not ughing 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 is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle csses of a try. Dont be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.""Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray angrily."No; I think your nature so deep.""How do you mean?""My dear boy, the people who love only on their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of or their agination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what sistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a fession 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 dont want to interrupt you. Go on with your story.""Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a vulgar drop-se staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the curtain and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and ucopias, 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. Wome about with es and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible ption of nuts going on.""It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama.""Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what oh I should do when I caught sight of the py-bill. What do you think the py was, Harry?""I should think The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but I. 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 grandpères ont toujours tort.""This py was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. I must admit that I was rather a the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a pce. Still, I felt ied, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determio 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 st the drop-se was drawn up and the py 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 yed by the low-edian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as grotesque as the sery, and that looked as if it had e out of a try-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with pited 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 ohat 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 ae. And her voice--I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow hat seemed to fall singly upon ones ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautboy. In the garden-se it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, ter on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice stir one. Your void the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never fet. When I y eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I dont 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 py. One evening she is Rosalind, and the evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sug the poison from her lovers 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 e into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been i, and the bck hands of jealousy have crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in every e. Ordinary women never appeal to ones imagination. They are limited to their tury. No gmour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bos. One always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the m and chatter at tea-parties iernoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable mahey are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why didnt you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?""Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.""Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.""Dont run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is araordinary charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry."I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.""You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you will tell me everything you do.""Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I ot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would e and fess it to you. You would uand me.""People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--dont it crimes, Dorian. But I am much obliged for the pliment, all the same. And now tell me-- reach me the matches, like a good boy--thanks--what are your actual retions with Sibyl Vane?"Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes. "Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!""It is only the sacred things that are worth toug, Dorian," said Lord Henry, with a straouch of pathos in his voice. "But why should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving ones self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know her, at any rate, I suppose?""Of 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 ses 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 bnk look of amazement, that he was uhe impression that I had taken too much champagne, or something.""I am not surprised.""Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the neers. I told him I never evehem. He seemed terribly disappoi that, and fided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a spiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought.""I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, oher hand, judging from their appearance, most of them ot be at all expensive.""Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," ughed Dorian. "By this time, however, the lights were being put out iheatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly reended. I deed. The night, of course, I arrived at the pce again. When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that I was a munifit patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he had araordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to The Bard, as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distin.""It was a distiny dear Dorian--a great distinost people bee bankrupt through having ied too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined ones self over poetry is an honour. But when did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?""The third night. She had been pying Rosalind. I could not help going round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me--at least I fahat she had. The old Jeersistent. He seemed determio take me behind, so I sented. It was y not wanting to know her, wasnt it?""No; I dont think so.""My dear Harry, why?""I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl.""Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gehere 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 unscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making eborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. He would insist on calling me My Lord, so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She said quite simply to me, You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince Charming.""Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay pliments.""You dont uand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person in a py. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded tired woman who pyed Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-er on the first night, and looks as if she had seeer days.""I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, examining his rings."The Jew wao tell me her history, but I said it did not i me.""You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about other peoples tragedies.""Sibyl 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 airely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous.""That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dih me now. I thought you must have some curious roman hand. You have; but it is not quite what I expected.""My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have been to the opera with you several times," said Dorian, opening his blue eyes in wonder."You always e dreadfully te.""Well, I t help going to see Sibyl py," he cried, "even if it is only for a si. 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.""You dih me to-night, Dorian, t you?"He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow night she will be Juliet.""When is she Sibyl Vane?""Never.""I gratute you.""How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. You ugh, 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 Vao love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear hter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into sciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.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 Hallwards studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet fme. Out of its secret hiding-pce had crept his soul, and desire had e to meet it on the way."And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry at st."I want you and Basil to e with me some night and see her act. I have not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to aowledge her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jews hands. She is bound to him for three years--at least for two years a months-- from 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.""That would be impossible, my dear boy.""Yes, she will. She has not merely art, mate 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.""Well, what night shall we go?""Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She pys Juliet to-morrow.""All right. The Bristol at eight oclock; and I will get Basil."", 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.""Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or reading an English novel. It must be seven. leman dines before seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?""Dear Basil! I have not id 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 youhan I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I dont want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.""Oh, 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.""Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The sequence is that he has nothi for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his on sehe only artists I have ever known ersonally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and sequently are perfectly uing in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most uical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fasating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of sed-rate sos makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he ot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.""I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a rge, gold-topped bottle that stood oable. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is waiting for me. Dont fet about to-morrow. Good-bye."As he left the room, Lord Henrys heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to think. Certainly few people had ever ied him so much as Dorian Gray, ahe ds mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He leased by it. It made him a more iing study. He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural sce, but the ordinary subject-matter of that sce had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by viviseg himself, as he had ended by viviseg others. Human life--that appeared to him the ohing worth iigating. pared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as oched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over ones face a mask of gss, 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 si of them. There were madies se that one had to pass through them if one sought to uand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to oo he curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect--to observe where they met, and where they separated, at oint they were in unison, and at oint they were at discord--there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for aion.He was scious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterahat Dorian Grays soul had turo this white girl and bowed in worship before her. Te extent the d was his owion. 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 plex personality took the pd assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its eborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or paintihe d remature. He was gathering his harvest while it was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was being self-scious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wo. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destio end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a py, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir ones sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.Soul and body, body and soul--how 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! A how difficult to decide between the cims 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.He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a sce that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misuood ourselves and rarely uood others. Experience was of hical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had cimed for it a certaihical effica 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 experie was as little of an active cause as sce 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.It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by whie could arrive at any stifialysis of the passions; aainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rid fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane sychological phenomenon of no small i. 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 plex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the ws of the imagination, ged into something that seemed to the d himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose in we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were scious. It often happehat whehought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.While Lord Henry sat dreaming ohings, 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 su had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed like ptes of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He thought of his friends young fiery-coloured life and wondered how it was all going to end.When he arrived home, about half-past twelve oclock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table. He ope and found it was from Dorian Gray. It was to tell him that he was eo be married to Sibyl Vane.