The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.

"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if
you drive fast."

"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and
after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly
towards the river.

CHAPTER 16

A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some
of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards
brawled and screamed.

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret.
He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There were opium dens
where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old
sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a
huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The
gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the
man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from
the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The sidewindows of the hansom
were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.

"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the
soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to
death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had
been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no
atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was
possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out,
to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed,
what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made
him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful,
horrible, not to be endured.

On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
step. He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster. The
hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned and his
delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse madly
with his stick. The driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in answer,
and the man was silent.

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist
thickened, he felt afraid.

Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he
could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike
tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the
darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut,
then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.

After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over
rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He
watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and made
gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart.
As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open
door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. The
driver beat at them with his whip.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with
hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept
the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's
appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness
that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became
dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The
coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life,
the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their
intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art,
the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness.
In three days he would be free.

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the
low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts
of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.

"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the trap.

Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and having
got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him,
he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a lantern
gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light shook and
splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an outward-bound
steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh.



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