of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth. . .
. And yet, what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left
the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the
servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes.
It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he
had intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months
before any suspicions would be roused. Months! Everything could be
destroyed long before then.

A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat and went out
into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the
policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the bull's-eye
reflected in the window. He waited and held his breath.

After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the
door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about
five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy.

"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in;
"but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"

"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
blinking.

"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
to-morrow. I have some work to do."

"All right, sir."

"Did any one call this evening?"

"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
catch his train."

"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"

"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
find you at the club."

"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."

"No, sir."

The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.

Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the
library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room, biting
his lip and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the
shelves and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford
Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.

CHAPTER 14

At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
chocolate on a tray and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.

The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he
opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had
been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His
night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But
youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate.
The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was
bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a
morning in May.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent,
blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there
with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for
Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came
back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still
sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such
hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.

He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken
or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory
than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride
more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of
joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the
senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of
the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
strangle one itself.

When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual
care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time
also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of the
letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several times
over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face. "That
awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once said.

After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the


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