Chapter 16A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-mps 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 ughter. In others, drunkards brawled and screamed.Lying ba 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 he 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-mps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Ohe man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it spshed up the puddles. The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-fnnel 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? I blood had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no ato; but though fiveness was impossible, fetfulness ossible still, and he was determiet, 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 ughed and whipped up. He ughed in answer, and the man was silent.The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the bck web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thied, 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 e, faongues 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 cy road and rattled again over rough-paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some mplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marioes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a er, 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 ohink in a circle. Certainly with hideous iteratioten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and seill he had found ihe 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 braihe ohought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all mans appetites, quied into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Uglihat had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the oy. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their inteuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for fetfulness. In three days he would be free.Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark ne. Over the low roofs and jagged ey-stacks of the houses rose the bck masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist g like ghostly sails to the yards."Somewhere about here, sir, aint 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 dire of the quay. Here and there a ntern gleamed at the stern of some huge mertman. The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red gre came from an outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet matosh.He hurried on towards the left, gng baow and then to see if he was being followed. In about seven ht minutes he reached a small shabby house that was wedged iween two gaunt factories. In one of the top-windows stood a mp. He stopped and gave a peculiar knock.After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that ftteself into the shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside aered a long low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dang-saloon. Shrill fring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Mays were croug by a little charcoal stove, pying with bone ters and showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one er, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painte９９liｂ?d bar that ran across one plete side stood two haggard women, mog an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. "He thinks hes got red ants on him," ughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in terror and began to whimper.At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. Wheered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a mp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner."You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian."Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps will speak to me now.""I thought you had left Engnd.""Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at st. Gee doesnt speak to me either. . . . I dont care," he added with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesnt want friends. I think I have had too many friends."Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that y in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fasated him. He knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teag them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he was. He risoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible mady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Sion troubled him. He wao be where no one would know who he was. He wao escape from himself."I am going on to the other pce," he said after a pause."On the wharf?""Yes.""That mad-cat is sure to be there. They wont have her in this pow."Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more iing. Besides, the stuff is better.""Much the same.""I like it better. e and have something to drink. I must have something.""I dont want anything," murmured the young man."Never mind."Adrian Sion rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. Dorian turned his ba them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Sion.A crooked smile, like a May crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered."Fods sake dont talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Dont ever talk to me again."Two red sparks fshed for a moment in the womans soddehen flickered out ahem dull and gzed. She tossed her head and raked the s off the ter with greedy fingers. Her panion watched her enviously."Its no use," sighed Adrian Sion. "I dont care to go back. What does it matter? I am quite happy here.""You will write to me if you want anything, wont you?" said Dorian, after a pause."Perhaps.""Good night, then.""Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief.Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew the curtain aside, a hideous ugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devils bargain!" she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice."Curse you!" he answered, "dont call me that."She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called, aint it?" she yelled after him.The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if in pursuit.Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Sion had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be id at his door, as Basil Hallward had said to him with sufamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? Ones days were too brief to take the burden of anothers errors on ones shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and ain, indeed. In her dealings with mainy never closed her ats.There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at suents lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and sce is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fasation and disobedies charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that m star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.Callous, trated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quiing his step as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to the ill-famed pce where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and before be had time to defend himself, he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrehe tightening fingers away. In a sed he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man fag him."What do you want?" he gasped."Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you.""You are mad. What have I doo you?""You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your door. I swore I would kill you iurn. For years I have sought you. I had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I heard it to-night by ce. Make your peace with God, for to-night yoing to die."Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I never heard of her. You are mad.""You had better fess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, yoing to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I give you one mio make your peao more. I go on board to-night for India, and I must do my job first. One mihats all."Dorians arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know what to do. Suddenly a wild hope fshed across his brain. "Stop," he cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!""Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years matter?""Eighteen years," ughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "Eighteen years! Set me uhe mp and look at my face!"James Vaated for a moment, not uanding what was meant. Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a d of twenty summers, hardly older, if older i all, than his sister had beehey had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life.He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I would have murdered you!"Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of itting a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. "Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeao your own hands.""Five me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A ce word I heard in that damned de me on the wrong track.""You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly dowreet.James Vaood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot. After a little while, a bck shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand id on his arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar."Why didnt you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed out from Dalys. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money, and hes as bad as bad.""He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no mans money. I want a mans life. The man whose life I want must be nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got his blood upon my hands."The woman gave a bitter ugh. "Little more than a boy!" she sneered. "Why, man, its nigh oeen years since Prince Charming made me what I am.""You lie!" cried James Vane.She raised her hand up to heaven. "Befod I am telling the truth," she cried."Befod?""Strike me dumb if it aint so. He is the worst ohat es here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. Its nigh oeen years since I met him. He hasnt ged much sihen. I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer."You swear this?""I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her ft mouth. "But dont give me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have some money for my nights lodging."He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the er of the street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had vanished also.