allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the
perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one
unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be
fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the
courage to commit."

"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a
fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you
have never known."

"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but
there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom."

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The
painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could
not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many
other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all
passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A
strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would
never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come
between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets
became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it
seemed to him that he had grown years older.

CHAPTER 7

For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an
oily tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of
pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top
of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he
had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,
upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and
insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he was proud
to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a
poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The
heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a
monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery
had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side.
They talked to each other across the theatre and shared their oranges
with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in
the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of
the popping of corks came from the bar.

"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.

"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine
beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget everything.
These common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,
become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and
watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them
as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that
they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."

"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord
Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
opera-glass.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love
must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must be
fine and noble. To spiritualize one's age--that is something worth
doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend
them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your
adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made
Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."

"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew that
you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here
is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am
going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good
in me."

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly
lovely to look at-- one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace
and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror
of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic
house. She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble.
Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud. Motionless, and
as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry peered
through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"

The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as
it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through the
crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a


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