"You have a rival."

"Who?"

He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him."

"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us
who are romanticists."

"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."

"Men have educated us."

"But not explained you."

"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.

"Sphinxes without secrets."

She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go
and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."

"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."

"That would be a premature surrender."

"Romantic art begins with its climax."

"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."

"In the Parthian manner?"

"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."

"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he
finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came a
stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody
started up. The duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his
eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray
lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.

He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of
the sofas. After a short time, he came to himself and looked round with
a dazed expression.

"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?"
He began to tremble.

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was
all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to
dinner. I will take your place."

"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather
come down. I must not be alone."

He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety
in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror
ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of
the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of
James Vane watching him.

CHAPTER 18

The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
tracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble
in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the
leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering
through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its
hand upon his heart.

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual
life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of
sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the
good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the
weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the
house, he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any
foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have
reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane's brother had not
come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some
winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not
know who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved him.

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible
form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if,
day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent
corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat
at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the
thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air
seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of
madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the
scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with
added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in
scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six


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