Chapter 7For 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 e to look for Miranda and had bee by Caliban. Lord Henry, upoher hand, rather liked him. At least he decred he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he roud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet. Hallward amused himself with watg the faces i. The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight fmed 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 es with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were ughing i. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar."What a pce to find ones divinity in!" said Lord Henry."Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine beyond all living things. Whes, you will fet everything. These h people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures, bee quite different when she is oage. They sit silently and watch her. They weep and ugh 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 ones self.""The same flesh and blood as ones self! Oh, I hope not!" excimed Lord Henry, who was sing the octs of the gallery through his ss."Dont pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I uand 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 o spiritualize ones age--that is something worth doing. If this girl give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she strip them of their selfishness ahem 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 inplete.""Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I khat you would uand me. Harry is so ical, he terrifies me. But here is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only sts for about five mihen the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have givehing that is good in me."A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst araordinary turmoil of appuse, Sibyl Vaepped 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 grad startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she g 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 appud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through his gsses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"The se was the hall of Capulets house, and Romeo in his pilgrims dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of musid 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 pnt sways ier. The curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak--Good pilgrim, you d your hand too much,Which mannerly devotion shows in this;For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do toud palm to palm is holy palmers kiss--with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thhly artificial mahe voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of to was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He uzzled and anxious. her of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them to be absolutely inpetent. They were horribly disappointed.Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the baly se of the sed act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was nothing in her.She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be denied. But the staginess of her ag was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She overemphasized everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage--Thou khe mask of night is on my face,Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheekFor that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--was decimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by some sed-rate professor of elocution. When she leaned over the baly and came to those wonderful lines--Although I joy in thee,I have no joy of this tract to-night:It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;Too like the lightning, which doth cease to beEre one say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!This bud of love by summers ripening breathMay prove a beauteous flower whe we meet--she spoke the words as though they veyed no meaning to her. It was not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely self-tained. It was simply bad art. She was a plete failure.Even the on uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their i in the py. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was the girl herself.When the sed act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "She is quite beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she t act. Let us go.""I am going to see the py through," answered the d, in a hard bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening, Harry. I apologize to you both.""My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted Hallward. "We will e some ht.""I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a onpce mediocre actress.""Dont talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more wonderful thing than art.""They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. "But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for ones morals to see bad ag. Besides, I dont suppose you will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she pys Juliet like a wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life as she does about ag, she will be a delightful experiehere are only two kinds of people who are really fasating-- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. Good heavens, my dear boy, dont look sic! The secret of remaining young is o have aion that is unbeing. e to the club with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more you want?""Go away, Harry," cried the d. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must go. Ah! t you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he leaned up against the wall, hiding his fa his hands."Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry with a straenderness in his voice, and the two young men passed out together.A few moments afterwards the footlights fred up and the curtain rose ohird act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. The py dragged on, and seemed interminable. Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots and ughing. The whole thing was a fiasco. The st act yed to almost empty behe curtai down on a titter and some groans.As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the ses into the greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.Wheered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried."Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "Horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea what I suffered."The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his h long-drawn musi her voice, as though it were sweeter than hoo the red petals of her mouth. "Dorian, you should have uood. But you uand now, dont you?""Uand what?" he asked, angrily."Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never act well again."He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you shouldnt act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I was bored."She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. Aasy of happiness dominated her."Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, ag was the oy of my life. It was only iheatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed ihing. The on people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted ses were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came--oh, my beautiful love!-- and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had alyed. To-night, for the first time, I became scious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and paihat the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the sery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wao say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a refle. You had made me uand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a py? When I came on to-night, I could not uand how it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? Take me away, Dorian--take me away with you, where we be quite alone. I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I imie that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you uand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to py at being in love. You have made me see that."He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. "You have killed my love," he muttered.She looked at him in wonder and ughed. He made no answer. She came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She k doressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a shudder ran through him.Then he leaped up ao the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you dont even stir my curiosity. You simply produo effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substao the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will hink of you. I will never mention your name. You dont know what you were to me, once. Why, once . . . Oh, I t bear to think of it! I wish I had never id eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romany life. How little you know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art, you are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnifit. The world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face."The girl grew white, and trembled. She ched her hands together, and her voice seemed to cat her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?" she murmured. "You are ag.""Ag! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm and looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Dont touch me!" he cried.A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and y there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, dont leave me!" she whispered. "I am so sorry I didnt act well. I was thinking of you all the time. But I will try--indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly ae, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me-- if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Dont go away from me. I couldnt bear it. Oh! dont go away from me. My brother . . . No; never mind. He didnt mean it. He was i. . . . But you, oh! t you five me for to-night? I will work so hard and try to improve. Dont be cruel to me, because I love you better than anything in the world. After all, it is only ohat I have not pleased you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, a I couldnt help it. Oh, dont leave me, dont leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wouhing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him."I am going," he said at st in his calm clear voice. "I dont wish to be unkind, but I t see you again. You have disappointed me."She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He turned on his heel ahe room. In a few moments he was out of the theatre.Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt, bck-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh ughter had called after him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to t Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed t him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market and watched the men unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the ess of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables. Uhe portico, with its grey, sun-bleached pilrs, loitered a troop led bareheaded girls, waiting for the au to be over. Others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about pig up seeds.After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. For a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent square, with its bnk, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds. The sky ure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it. From some ey opposite a thih of smoke was rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.In the huge gilt Veian ntern, spoil of some Doges barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickeris: thin blue petals of fme they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turhem out and, having thrown his hat and cape oable, passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a rge octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissaapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. Then he went on into his own room, looking someuzzled. After he had taketon-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and exami. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little ged. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky ers, where they y shuddering. But the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to lihere, to be more intensified even. The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.He winced and, taking up from the table an oval gss framed in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henrys many presents to him, gnced hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that ed his red lips. What did it mean?He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and exami again. There were no signs of any ge when he looked into the actual painting, ahere was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparehrew himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there fshed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallwards studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his owy might be untarnished, and the fa the vas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just scious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girls fault, not his. He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the py had sted, he had lived turies of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow thahey lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. Wheook lovers, it was merely to have some oh whom they could have ses. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now.But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his owy. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?No; it was merely an illusiht oroubled sehe horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men mad. The picture had not ged. It was folly to think so.Yet it was watg him, with its beautiful marred fad its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of infiy, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he itted, a stain would fled wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, ged or unged, would be to him the visible emblem of sce. He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallwards garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fasation that she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and pure.He got up from his chair and drew a rge s right in front of the portrait, shuddering as he g it. "How horrible!" he murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and ope. Wheepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh m air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came ba. He repeated her name over and ain. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.