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Chapter III: 22-32
[...22] One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a
luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in
Curzon Street. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its
high panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-colored
frieze and ceiling of raised plaster-work, and its brick-dust felt
carpet strewn with long-fringed silk Persian rugs. On a tiny
satinwood table stood a statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a
copy of "Les Cent Nouvelles," bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis
Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies that the queen had selected
for her device. Some large blue china jars, filled with parrot-
tulips, were ranged on the mantel-shelf, and through the small leaded
panes of the window streamed the apricot-colored light of a summer's
day in London.
Lord Henry had not come in yet. He was always late on principle, his
principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad
was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the
pages of an elaborately-illustrated edition of "Manon Lescaut" that
he had found in one of the bookcases. The formal monotonous ticking
of the Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of
going away.
At last he heard a light step outside, and the door opened. "How
late you are, Harry!" he murmured.
"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," said a woman's voice.
He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon.
I thought--"
"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let
me introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I
think my husband has got twenty-seven of them."
[23] "Not twenty-seven, Lady Henry?"
"Well, twenty-six, then. And I saw you with him the other night at
the Opera." She laughed nervously, as she spoke, and watched him
with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose
dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put
on in a tempest. She was always in love with somebody, and, as her
passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She
tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her
name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.
"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?"
"Yes; it was at dear 'Lohengrin.' I like Wagner's music better than
any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time,
without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage:
don't you think so, Mr. Gray?"
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
fingers began to play with a long paper-knife.
Dorian smiled, and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so,
Lady Henry. I never talk during music,--at least during good music.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by
conversation."
"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? But you must
not think I don't like good music. I adore it, but I am afraid of
it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped pianists,--
two at a time, sometimes. I don't know what it is about them.
Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are, aren't they?
Even those that are born in England become foreigners after a time,
don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art.
Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to any
of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford
orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
look so picturesque. But here is Harry!--Harry, I came in to look
for you, to ask you something,--I forget what it was,--and I found
Mr. Gray here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We
have quite the same views. No; I think our views are quite
different. But he has been most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen
him."
"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating
his dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an
amused smile.--"So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a
piece of old brocade in Wardour Street, and had to bargain for hours
for it. Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value
of nothing."
"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, after an awkward
silence, with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with
the duchess.--Good-by, Mr. Gray.--Good-by, Harry. You are dining
out, I suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady
Thornbury's."
"I dare say, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her,
as she flitted out of the room, looking like a bird-of-paradise that
had been out in the rain, and leaving a faint odor of patchouli
behind her. Then he shook hands with Dorian Gray, lit a cigarette,
and flung himself down on the sofa.
[24] "Never marry a woman with straw-colored hair, Dorian," he said,
after a few puffs.
"Why, Harry?"
"Because they are so sentimental."
"But I like sentimental people."
"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired;
women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."
"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love.
That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I
do everything you say."
"Whom are you in love with?" said Lord Henry, looking at him with a
curious smile.
"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather common-place
debut," he murmured.
"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."
"Who is she?"
"Her name is Sibyl Vane."
"Never heard of her."
"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."
"My dear boy, no woman is a genius: women are a decorative sex. They
never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. They
represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as we men represent
the triumph of mind over morals. There are only two kinds of women,
the plain and the colored. The plain women are very useful. If you
want to gain a reputation for respectability, you have merely to take
them down to supper. The other women are very charming. They commit
one mistake, however. They paint in order to try to look young. Our
grandmothers painted in order to try to talk brilliantly. Rouge and
esprit used to go together. That has all gone out now. As long as a
woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is
perfectly satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five women
in London worth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into
decent society. However, tell me about your genius. How long have
you known her?"
"About three weeks. Not so much. About two weeks and two days."
"How did you come across her?"
"I will tell you, Harry; but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.
After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You
filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days
after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged
in the Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one
who passed me, and wonder with a mad curiosity what sort of lives
they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror.
There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for
sensations.
"One evening about seven o'clock I determined to go out in search of
some adventure. I felt that this gray, monstrous London of ours,
with its myriads of people, its splendid sinners, and its sordid
sins, as [25] you once said, must have something in store for me. I
fancied a thousand things.
"The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I remembered what you
had said to me on that wonderful night when we first dined together,
about the search for beauty being the poisonous secret of life. I
don't know what I expected, but I went out, and wandered eastward,
soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black,
grassless squares. About half-past eight I passed by a little third-
rate theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A
hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life,
was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy
ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled
shirt. ''Ave a box, my lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took
off his hat with an act of gorgeous servility. There was something
about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will
laugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for
the stage-box. To the present day I can't make out why I did so; and
yet if I hadn't!--my dear Harry, if I hadn't, I would have missed the
greatest romance of my life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid
of you!"
"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But
you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say
the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you
will always be in love with love. There are exquisite things in
store for you. This is merely the beginning."
"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.
"No; I think your nature so deep."
"How do you mean?"
"My dear boy, people who only love once in their lives are really
shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I
call either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination.
Faithlessness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the
intellectual life,--simply a confession of failure. But I don't want
to interrupt you. Go on with your story."
"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a
vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out behind the
curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids
and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit
were fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty,
and there was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the
dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and
there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on."
"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."
"Just like, I should fancy, and very horrid. I began to wonder what
on earth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do
you think the play was, Harry?"
"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.' Our fathers
used to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live,
Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our
fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grand
peres ont toujours tort."
[26] "This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and
Juliet.' I must admit I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing
Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt
interested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for
the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a
young Jew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but
at last the drop-scene was drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a
stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice,
and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was
played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and
was on most familiar terms with the pit. They were as grotesque as
the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a pantomime of
fifty years ago. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek
head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet
wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was
the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once
that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could
fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see
this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice,-
-I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep
mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it
became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant
hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that
one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were
moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know
how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are
two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear
them, and each of them says something different. I don't know which
to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is
everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play.
One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I
have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison
from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the
forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and
dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a
guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of.
She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed
her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every
costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are
limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One
knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can
always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. They ride in
the Park in the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon.
They have their stereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner.
They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress
is! Why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an
actress?"
"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."
"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an
extraordinary charm in them, sometimes."
[27] "I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."
"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life
you will tell me everything you do."
"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you
things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a
crime, I would come and confide it to you. You would understand me."
"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes,
Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And
now tell me,--reach me the matches, like a good boy: thanks,--tell
me, what are your relations with Sibyl Vane?"
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
"Harry, Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why
should you be annoyed? I suppose she will be yours some day. When
one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one
always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls
romance. You know her, at any rate, I suppose?"
"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over,
and offered to bring me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I
was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for
hundreds of years, and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in
Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he thought I
had taken too much champagne, or something."
"I am not surprised."
"I was not surprised either. Then he asked me if I wrote for any of
the newspapers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed
terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the
dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were
all to be bought."
"I believe he was quite right there. But, on the other hand, most of
them are not at all expensive."
"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means. By this time
the lights were being put out in the theatre, and I had to go. He
wanted me to try some cigars which he strongly recommended. I
declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the theatre again.
When he saw me he made me a low bow, and assured me that I was a
patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he had an
extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air
of pride, that his three bankruptcies were entirely due to the poet,
whom he insisted on calling 'The Bard.' He seemed to think it a
distinction."
"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian,--a great distinction. But
when did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"
"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help
going round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at
me; at least I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He
seemed determined to bring me behind, so I consented. It was curious
my not wanting to know her, wasn't it?"
[28] "No; I don't think so."
"My dear Harry, why?"
"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the
girl."
"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy, and so gentle. There is something of a
child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I
told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite
unconscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous. The
old Jew stood grinning at the door-way of the dusty greenroom, making
elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each
other like children. He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I
had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She said
quite simply to me, 'You look more like a prince.'"
"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."
"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person
in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a
faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
dressing-wrapper on the first night, and who looks as if she had seen
better days."
"I know that look. It always depresses me."
"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not
interest me."
"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean
about other people's tragedies."
"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she
came from? From her little head to her little feet, she is
absolutely and entirely divine. I go to see her act every night of
my life, and every night she is more marvellous."
"That is the reason, I suppose, that you will never dine with me now.
I thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but
it is not quite what I expected."
"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have
been to the Opera with you several times."
"You always come dreadfully late."
"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for
an act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the
wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am
filled with awe."
"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
He shook his head. "To night she is Imogen," he answered, "and
tomorrow night she will be Juliet."
"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
"Never."
"I congratulate you."
"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in
one. She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she
has genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know
all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me!
I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the [29]
world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our
passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes
into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He was walking up and
down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks.
He was terribly excited.
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How
different he was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil
Hallward's studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne
blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept
his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way.
"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.
"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I
have not the slightest fear of the result. You won't be able to
refuse to recognize her genius. Then we must get her out of the
Jew's hands. She is bound to him for three years--at least for two
years and eight months--from the present time. I will have to pay
him something, of course. When all that is settled, I will take a
West-End theatre and bring her out properly. She will make the world
as mad as she has made me."
"Impossible, my dear boy!"
"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in
her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it
is personalities, not principles, that move the age."
"Well, what night shall we go?"
"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays
Juliet to-morrow."
"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."
"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before
the curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she
meets Romeo."
"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea.
However, just as you wish. Shall you see Basil between this and
then? Or shall I write to him?"
"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather
horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful
frame, designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of it
for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I
delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to
see him alone. He says things that annoy me."
Lord Henry smiled. "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are
very fond of giving away what they need most themselves."
"You don't mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romance
in him?"
"I don't know whether he has any passion, but he certainly has
romance," said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes. "Has he
never let you know that?"
"Never. I must ask him about it. I am rather surprised to hear it.
He is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a
Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."
"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into
[30] his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life
but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only
artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad
artists. Good artists give everything to their art, and consequently
are perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really
great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior
poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the
more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book
of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the
poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they
dare not realize."
"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some
perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that
stood on the table. "It must be, if you say so. And now I must be
off. Imogen is waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-
by."
As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began
to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as
Dorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused
him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased
by it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been always
enthralled by the methods of science, but the ordinary subject-matter
of science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had
begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others.
Human life,--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating.
There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. It was true
that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and
pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, or keep
the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the
imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to
sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass
through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet,
what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world
became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the
emotional colored life of the intellect,--to observe where they met,
and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at what
point they were at discord,--there was a delight in that! What
matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for
any sensation.
He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into
his brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his,
musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul
had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a
large extent, the lad was his own creation. He had made him
premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life
disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the
mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of
literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the
intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and
assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its [31] way, a real work
of art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has,
or sculpture, or painting.
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it
was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he
was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With
his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder
at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He
was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose
joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense
of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.
Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was
animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could
say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?
How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!
And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various
schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was
the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The
separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of
spirit with matter was a mystery also.
He began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolute
a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us.
As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood
others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name
we gave to our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode
of warning, had claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in the
formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us
what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive
power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as
conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our
future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done
once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method
by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions;
and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed
to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl
Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was
no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the
desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very
complex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous
instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the
imagination, changed into something that seemed to the boy himself to
be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more
dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived
ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives
were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that
when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really
experimenting on ourselves.
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the
door, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress
[32] for dinner. He got up and looked out into the street. The
sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses
opposite. The panes glowed like plates of heated metal. The sky
above was like a faded rose. He thought of Dorian Gray's young
fiery-colored life, and wondered how it was all going to end.
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a
telegram lying on the hall-table. He opened it and found it was from
Dorian. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to
Sibyl Vane.
Content of Chapter III: 22-32 [Oscar Wilde's novel: Picture of Dorian Gray]
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