have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you. Ordinary
women always console themselves. Some of them do it by going in for
sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her
age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
always means that they have a history. Others find a great consolation
in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They
flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most
fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the
charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can quite understand
it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a
sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end
to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not
mentioned the most important one."

"What is that, Harry?" said the lad listlessly.

"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else's admirer when one
loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They
make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as
romance, passion, and love."

"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."

"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than
anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have
emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all
the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have
never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how
delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day
before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,
but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to everything."

"What was that, Harry?"

"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
romance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that
if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."

"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
face in his hands.

"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you
must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a
strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene
from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived,
and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a
dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them
lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music
sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life,
she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for
Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was
strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio
died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than
they are."

There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and
with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours
faded wearily out of things.

After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me to myself,
Harry," he murmured with something of a sigh of relief. "I felt all that
you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not express
it to myself. How well you know me! But we will not talk again of what
has happened. It has been a marvellous experience. That is all. I wonder
if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous."

"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."

"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?"

"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you
would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to
you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot
spare you. And now you had better dress and drive down to the club. We
are rather late, as it is."

"I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"

"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name
on the door. But I am sorry you won't come and dine."

"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian listlessly. "But I am awfully
obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly my
best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have."

"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord
Henry, shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before
nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."

As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a
few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He
waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an interminable
time over everything.



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