feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_6_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 9-10
feat_summary_id: chapters 9-10
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 9 & 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapters-9-and-10", "summary": "The next day, Basil visits Dorian and is shocked to learn that he has been to the opera, given the circumstances. He is also aghast at the fact that Dorian seems altogether unmoved by Sibyl's suicide. Dorian defends himself by telling Basil that \"She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her.\" He accuses Basil of being selfish, since his anger stems from the fact that he was not the one who consoled him, and tells the artist to \"teach me to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view.\" Dorian does, however, admit to being strongly influenced by Lord Henry. He also admits that he knows Basil to be a much better man than Henry. When the painter hears this, his old affection for Dorian wins him over. He inquires whether Dorian has been summoned by the police. Dorian is annoyed by this thought, but assures Basil that no one involved even knows his name. He asks Basil to make him a drawing of Sibyl, but Basil asks Dorian to instead come pose for him again - a request that is quickly denied. Basil then notices that his painting is covered. When he asks to see his work, Dorian threatens never to speak to him again if he tries to lift the covering screen. He is determined never to share the secret of the painting with anyone. Basil says that he wants to exhibit the work, since he considers it his masterpiece, but Dorian states that that is also out of the question. The painter asks if Dorian has seen anything strange in the picture to disturb him so much. Thinking that Basil may already know about the picture's enchantment, Dorian says that he has, but asks his friend to explain himself. Basil confesses his idolatry of Dorian, and says that he was struck by how much of it had come across in the painting. Dorian is disappointed and unmoved by the painter's affection. He again states that he will never again sit for another portrait. Basil cries out that Dorian's refusal will \"spoil my life as an artist\" and leaves. Dorian, growing ever more paranoid and determined to conceal his secret, decides to hide the painting more thoroughly. Dorian acquires the key to his attic from his housekeeper. Victor informs him that the men he has requested have arrived to help transport the painting, and Dorian sends his servant off to Lord Henry with a request for reading material. Mr Hubbard, a renowned frame-maker, and his assistants carry the portrait up to the attic without removing the cover, as per Dorian's instructions. Dorian wonders about the possibility of ever displaying the work, since it is Basil's masterpiece, but knows that even though \"It might escape the hideousness of sin, the hideousness of age was in store for it.\" It would have to be hidden from sight forever so that \"No eye but his would ever see his shame.\" Once Mr Hubbard leaves, Dorian returns to his library to find a note from Lord Henry, along with a newspaper clipping and an old, yellow book. A red mark on the newspaper brings Dorian's attention to a small article informing him that the inquest into Sibyl's death has ruled it a certain suicide. He is free of suspicion. He begins reading the novel sent by Henry, a book about a young Parisian \"who spent his life trying to realize...all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own.\" He is so engrossed with the novel and its \"metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in color\" that he is several hours late for his engagement with Lord Henry.", "analysis": "Dorian defends himself for failing to mourn Sibyl's death with a Lord Henry-ism: \"A man who is master of himself can end sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.\"  The irony of claiming to be master of one's self by voicing the views of another escapes the young man, but serves to portray him as a deeply misguided soul.  In Basil's confession to Dorian, he echoes several sentiments from the preface, saying that \"what art should be  unconscious, ideal, and remote...Art is always more abstract than we fancy.  Form and colour tell us of form and colour...art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.\"  These sentiments, although they are presented by Wilde as truths in the preface, are disheartening revelations for the painter.  Basil had been hoping that the picture would show Dorian the truth about his affections, but when Dorian hears Basil's confession, he practically scoffs at it, and states aloud that he wonders if he will ever know such feelings of adoration.  The answer  is, of course, that he already adores himself in a nearly identical fashion.  Later, when faced with further evidence of his own degradation, Dorian will blame himself for not accepting Basil's \"pure, Uranian\" love. This sentiment is one of the many homosexual references that remains in the novel after Wilde's revision of the Lippincott version. Wilde is said to have espoused the notion that love between two men was inherently purer and nobler than heterosexual love, and this sentiment appears briefly in Dorian's thoughts. Concealing the picture is a clear symbolic gesture for Dorian's denial of his own shame. Since the painting is destined to display \"the hideous corruption of his soul\" while his face will remain young and innocent, Dorian believes that he can effectively live without the hindrance of a conscience so long as no one sees the painting.  The downside of Dorian's obsession with his appearance, however, has already begun to show.  He becomes suspicious of his housekeeper and of Victor, his servant, feeling sure that they will try to look at the picture.  This paranoia can be seen as a principal stage in the protagonist's degrdation, an indication that the deterioration of Dorian's soul is well underway. The attic where Dorian hides the painting was \"a playroom when he was a child\" and \"a study when he grew somewhat older.\"  The room is already a vault hiding his past, and it will now hide the degradation of his conscience, as well.  This room becomes a symbol of the purity of youth and concern for morality that Dorian consciously rejects.  Instead of skeletons in his closet, Dorian has a painting in his attic. Some critics have interpreted the hidden painting as a metaphor for sexuality - Dorian keeps his shame and guilt about his homosexual tendencies \"in the closet\", as it were. While such a reading is compelling, it also over-simplifies Dorian's dilemma, while inadvertently assuming that Wilde would himself condemn homosexual tendencies. Dishonesty, betrayal, and murder all cause the portrait to wither, age, and grow more hideous. To assume that homosexual actions also deface the portrait is to present such actions as similarly offensive or reprehensible - a notion with which the author would have certainly disagreed."}
text: 
  As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
  into the room.
  
  "I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said gravely.  "I called
  last night, and they told me you were at the opera.  Of course, I knew
  that was impossible.  But I wish you had left word where you had really
  gone to.  I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy
  might be followed by another.  I think you might have telegraphed for
  me when you heard of it first.  I read of it quite by chance in a late
  edition of _The Globe_ that I picked up at the club.  I came here at once
  and was miserable at not finding you.  I can't tell you how
  heart-broken I am about the whole thing.  I know what you must suffer.
  But where were you?  Did you go down and see the girl's mother?  For a
  moment I thought of following you there.  They gave the address in the
  paper.  Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it?  But I was afraid of
  intruding upon a sorrow that I could not lighten.  Poor woman!  What a
  state she must be in!  And her only child, too!  What did she say about
  it all?"
  
  "My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
  pale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass
  and looking dreadfully bored.  "I was at the opera.  You should have
  come on there.  I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, for the first
  time.  We were in her box.  She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang
  divinely.  Don't talk about horrid subjects.  If one doesn't talk about
  a thing, it has never happened.  It is simply expression, as Harry
  says, that gives reality to things.  I may mention that she was not the
  woman's only child.  There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe.  But
  he is not on the stage.  He is a sailor, or something.  And now, tell
  me about yourself and what you are painting."
  
  "You went to the opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly and with a
  strained touch of pain in his voice.  "You went to the opera while
  Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?  You can talk to me
  of other women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before
  the girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in?  Why,
  man, there are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!"
  
  "Stop, Basil!  I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet.
  "You must not tell me about things.  What is done is done.  What is
  past is past."
  
  "You call yesterday the past?"
  
  "What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it?  It is only
  shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion.  A man who
  is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a
  pleasure.  I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.  I want to
  use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
  
  "Dorian, this is horrible!  Something has changed you completely.  You
  look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come
  down to my studio to sit for his picture.  But you were simple,
  natural, and affectionate then.  You were the most unspoiled creature
  in the whole world.  Now, I don't know what has come over you.  You
  talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you.  It is all Harry's
  influence.  I see that."
  
  The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few
  moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden.  "I owe a great
  deal to Harry, Basil," he said at last, "more than I owe to you.  You
  only taught me to be vain."
  
  "Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day."
  
  "I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round.  "I
  don't know what you want.  What do you want?"
  
  "I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist sadly.
  
  "Basil," said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand on his
  shoulder, "you have come too late.  Yesterday, when I heard that Sibyl
  Vane had killed herself--"
  
  "Killed herself!  Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried
  Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
  
  "My dear Basil!  Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident?  Of
  course she killed herself."
  
  The elder man buried his face in his hands.  "How fearful," he
  muttered, and a shudder ran through him.
  
  "No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it.  It is one
  of the great romantic tragedies of the age.  As a rule, people who act
  lead the most commonplace lives.  They are good husbands, or faithful
  wives, or something tedious.  You know what I mean--middle-class virtue
  and all that kind of thing.  How different Sibyl was!  She lived her
  finest tragedy.  She was always a heroine.  The last night she
  played--the night you saw her--she acted badly because she had known
  the reality of love.  When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet
  might have died.  She passed again into the sphere of art.  There is
  something of the martyr about her.  Her death has all the pathetic
  uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.  But, as I was saying,
  you must not think I have not suffered.  If you had come in yesterday
  at a particular moment--about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to
  six--you would have found me in tears.  Even Harry, who was here, who
  brought me the news, in fact, had no idea what I was going through.  I
  suffered immensely.  Then it passed away.  I cannot repeat an emotion.
  No one can, except sentimentalists.  And you are awfully unjust, Basil.
  You come down here to console me.  That is charming of you.  You find
  me consoled, and you are furious.  How like a sympathetic person!  You
  remind me of a story Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who
  spent twenty years of his life in trying to get some grievance
  redressed, or some unjust law altered--I forget exactly what it was.
  Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.  He
  had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of _ennui_, and became a
  confirmed misanthrope.  And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really
  want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to
  see it from a proper artistic point of view.  Was it not Gautier who
  used to write about _la consolation des arts_?  I remember picking up a
  little vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that
  delightful phrase.  Well, I am not like that young man you told me of
  when we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say
  that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life.  I
  love beautiful things that one can touch and handle.  Old brocades,
  green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,
  luxury, pomp--there is much to be got from all these.  But the artistic
  temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to
  me.  To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to
  escape the suffering of life.  I know you are surprised at my talking
  to you like this.  You have not realized how I have developed.  I was a
  schoolboy when you knew me.  I am a man now.  I have new passions, new
  thoughts, new ideas.  I am different, but you must not like me less.  I
  am changed, but you must always be my friend.  Of course, I am very
  fond of Harry.  But I know that you are better than he is.  You are not
  stronger--you are too much afraid of life--but you are better.  And how
  happy we used to be together!  Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel
  with me.  I am what I am.  There is nothing more to be said."
  
  The painter felt strangely moved.  The lad was infinitely dear to him,
  and his personality had been the great turning point in his art.  He
  could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more.  After all, his
  indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away.  There
  was so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.
  
  "Well, Dorian," he said at length, with a sad smile, "I won't speak to
  you again about this horrible thing, after to-day.  I only trust your
  name won't be mentioned in connection with it.  The inquest is to take
  place this afternoon.  Have they summoned you?"
  
  Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at
  the mention of the word "inquest."  There was something so crude and
  vulgar about everything of the kind.  "They don't know my name," he
  answered.
  
  "But surely she did?"
  
  "Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned
  to any one.  She told me once that they were all rather curious to
  learn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince
  Charming.  It was pretty of her.  You must do me a drawing of Sibyl,
  Basil.  I should like to have something more of her than the memory of
  a few kisses and some broken pathetic words."
  
  "I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you.  But you
  must come and sit to me yourself again.  I can't get on without you."
  
  "I can never sit to you again, Basil.  It is impossible!" he exclaimed,
  starting back.
  
  The painter stared at him.  "My dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried.
  "Do you mean to say you don't like what I did of you?  Where is it?
  Why have you pulled the screen in front of it?  Let me look at it.  It
  is the best thing I have ever done.  Do take the screen away, Dorian.
  It is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that.  I
  felt the room looked different as I came in."
  
  "My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil.  You don't imagine I let
  him arrange my room for me?  He settles my flowers for me
  sometimes--that is all.  No; I did it myself.  The light was too strong
  on the portrait."
  
  "Too strong!  Surely not, my dear fellow?  It is an admirable place for
  it.  Let me see it."  And Hallward walked towards the corner of the
  room.
  
  A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed between
  the painter and the screen.  "Basil," he said, looking very pale, "you
  must not look at it.  I don't wish you to."
  
  "Not look at my own work!  You are not serious.  Why shouldn't I look
  at it?" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
  
  "If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never
  speak to you again as long as I live.  I am quite serious.  I don't
  offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any.  But, remember,
  if you touch this screen, everything is over between us."
  
  Hallward was thunderstruck.  He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute
  amazement.  He had never seen him like this before.  The lad was
  actually pallid with rage.  His hands were clenched, and the pupils of
  his eyes were like disks of blue fire.  He was trembling all over.
  
  "Dorian!"
  
  "Don't speak!"
  
  "But what is the matter?  Of course I won't look at it if you don't
  want me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel and going over
  towards the window.  "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I
  shouldn't see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in
  Paris in the autumn.  I shall probably have to give it another coat of
  varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?"
  
  "To exhibit it!  You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, a
  strange sense of terror creeping over him.  Was the world going to be
  shown his secret?  Were people to gape at the mystery of his life?
  That was impossible.  Something--he did not know what--had to be done
  at once.
  
  "Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that.  Georges Petit is going
  to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
  Seze, which will open the first week in October.  The portrait will
  only be away a month.  I should think you could easily spare it for
  that time.  In fact, you are sure to be out of town.  And if you keep
  it always behind a screen, you can't care much about it."
  
  Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead.  There were beads of
  perspiration there.  He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible
  danger.  "You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he
  cried.  "Why have you changed your mind?  You people who go in for
  being consistent have just as many moods as others have.  The only
  difference is that your moods are rather meaningless.  You can't have
  forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world
  would induce you to send it to any exhibition.  You told Harry exactly
  the same thing." He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into
  his eyes.  He remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once, half
  seriously and half in jest, "If you want to have a strange quarter of
  an hour, get Basil to tell you why he won't exhibit your picture.  He
  told me why he wouldn't, and it was a revelation to me."  Yes, perhaps
  Basil, too, had his secret.  He would ask him and try.
  
  "Basil," he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight in
  the face, "we have each of us a secret.  Let me know yours, and I shall
  tell you mine.  What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my
  picture?"
  
  The painter shuddered in spite of himself.  "Dorian, if I told you, you
  might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me.  I
  could not bear your doing either of those two things.  If you wish me
  never to look at your picture again, I am content.  I have always you
  to look at.  If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden
  from the world, I am satisfied.  Your friendship is dearer to me than
  any fame or reputation."
  
  "No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray.  "I think I have a
  right to know."  His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity
  had taken its place.  He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's
  mystery.
  
  "Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled.  "Let us
  sit down.  And just answer me one question.  Have you noticed in the
  picture something curious?--something that probably at first did not
  strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?"
  
  "Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
  hands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes.
  
  "I see you did.  Don't speak.  Wait till you hear what I have to say.
  Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
  extraordinary influence over me.  I was dominated, soul, brain, and
  power, by you.  You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen
  ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.  I
  worshipped you.  I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke.  I
  wanted to have you all to myself.  I was only happy when I was with
  you.  When you were away from me, you were still present in my art....
  Of course, I never let you know anything about this.  It would have
  been impossible.  You would not have understood it.  I hardly
  understood it myself.  I only knew that I had seen perfection face to
  face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes--too
  wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril
  of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them....  Weeks and
  weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you.  Then came a
  new development.  I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and as
  Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with
  heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian's barge, gazing
  across the green turbid Nile.  You had leaned over the still pool of
  some Greek woodland and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of
  your own face.  And it had all been what art should be--unconscious,
  ideal, and remote.  One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I
  determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are,
  not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own
  time.  Whether it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder of
  your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or
  veil, I cannot tell.  But I know that as I worked at it, every flake
  and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret.  I grew afraid
  that others would know of my idolatry.  I felt, Dorian, that I had told
  too much, that I had put too much of myself into it.  Then it was that
  I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited.  You were a
  little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it meant to me.
  Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me.  But I did not mind
  that.  When the picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt
  that I was right.... Well, after a few days the thing left my studio,
  and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its
  presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I
  had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking
  and that I could paint.  Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a
  mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really
  shown in the work one creates.  Art is always more abstract than we
  fancy.  Form and colour tell us of form and colour--that is all.  It
  often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than
  it ever reveals him.  And so when I got this offer from Paris, I
  determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition.
  It never occurred to me that you would refuse.  I see now that you were
  right.  The picture cannot be shown.  You must not be angry with me,
  Dorian, for what I have told you.  As I said to Harry, once, you are
  made to be worshipped."
  
  Dorian Gray drew a long breath.  The colour came back to his cheeks,
  and a smile played about his lips.  The peril was over.  He was safe
  for the time.  Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the
  painter who had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered
  if he himself would ever be so dominated by the personality of a
  friend.  Lord Henry had the charm of being very dangerous.  But that
  was all.  He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of.
  Would there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange
  idolatry?  Was that one of the things that life had in store?
  
  "It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
  have seen this in the portrait.  Did you really see it?"
  
  "I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very
  curious."
  
  "Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"
  
  Dorian shook his head.  "You must not ask me that, Basil.  I could not
  possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
  
  "You will some day, surely?"
  
  "Never."
  
  "Well, perhaps you are right.  And now good-bye, Dorian.  You have been
  the one person in my life who has really influenced my art.  Whatever I
  have done that is good, I owe to you.  Ah! you don't know what it cost
  me to tell you all that I have told you."
  
  "My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me?  Simply that you
  felt that you admired me too much.  That is not even a compliment."
  
  "It was not intended as a compliment.  It was a confession.  Now that I
  have made it, something seems to have gone out of me.  Perhaps one
  should never put one's worship into words."
  
  "It was a very disappointing confession."
  
  "Why, what did you expect, Dorian?  You didn't see anything else in the
  picture, did you?  There was nothing else to see?"
  
  "No; there was nothing else to see.  Why do you ask?  But you mustn't
  talk about worship.  It is foolish.  You and I are friends, Basil, and
  we must always remain so."
  
  "You have got Harry," said the painter sadly.
  
  "Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter.  "Harry spends
  his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is
  improbable.  Just the sort of life I would like to lead.  But still I
  don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble.  I would sooner
  go to you, Basil."
  
  "You will sit to me again?"
  
  "Impossible!"
  
  "You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian.  No man comes
  across two ideal things.  Few come across one."
  
  "I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
  There is something fatal about a portrait.  It has a life of its own.
  I will come and have tea with you.  That will be just as pleasant."
  
  "Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward regretfully.  "And
  now good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once
  again.  But that can't be helped.  I quite understand what you feel
  about it."
  
  As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.  Poor Basil!  How
  little he knew of the true reason!  And how strange it was that,
  instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had
  succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend!  How
  much that strange confession explained to him!  The painter's absurd
  fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his
  curious reticences--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry.
  There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured
  by romance.
  
  He sighed and touched the bell.  The portrait must be hidden away at
  all costs.  He could not run such a risk of discovery again.  It had
  been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour,
  in a room to which any of his friends had access.
  
  
  
  When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if
  he had thought of peering behind the screen.  The man was quite
  impassive and waited for his orders.  Dorian lit a cigarette and walked
  over to the glass and glanced into it.  He could see the reflection of
  Victor's face perfectly.  It was like a placid mask of servility.
  There was nothing to be afraid of, there.  Yet he thought it best to be
  on his guard.
  
  Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he
  wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to
  send two of his men round at once.  It seemed to him that as the man
  left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen.  Or was
  that merely his own fancy?
  
  After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
  mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library.  He
  asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
  
  "The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed.  "Why, it is full of
  dust.  I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it.
  It is not fit for you to see, sir.  It is not, indeed."
  
  "I don't want it put straight, Leaf.  I only want the key."
  
  "Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it.  Why, it
  hasn't been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."
  
  He winced at the mention of his grandfather.  He had hateful memories
  of him.  "That does not matter," he answered.  "I simply want to see
  the place--that is all.  Give me the key."
  
  "And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
  of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands.  "Here is the key.  I'll
  have it off the bunch in a moment.  But you don't think of living up
  there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"
  
  "No, no," he cried petulantly.  "Thank you, Leaf.  That will do."
  
  She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
  the household.  He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought
  best.  She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
  
  As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round
  the room.  His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
  embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
  Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
  Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had perhaps
  served often as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that
  had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
  itself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.
  What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image
  on the canvas.  They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace.  They
  would defile it and make it shameful.  And yet the thing would still
  live on.  It would be always alive.
  
  He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
  the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away.  Basil
  would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still
  more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.  The love
  that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was
  not noble and intellectual.  It was not that mere physical admiration
  of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses
  tire.  It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and
  Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Yes, Basil could have saved him.
  But it was too late now.  The past could always be annihilated.
  Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that.  But the future was
  inevitable.  There were passions in him that would find their terrible
  outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
  
  He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that
  covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.
  Was the face on the canvas viler than before?  It seemed to him that it
  was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.  Gold hair,
  blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.  It was simply the
  expression that had altered.  That was horrible in its cruelty.
  Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's
  reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little
  account!  His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and
  calling him to judgement.  A look of pain came across him, and he flung
  the rich pall over the picture.  As he did so, a knock came to the
  door.  He passed out as his servant entered.
  
  "The persons are here, Monsieur."
  
  He felt that the man must be got rid of at once.  He must not be
  allowed to know where the picture was being taken to.  There was
  something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes.
  Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,
  asking him to send him round something to read and reminding him that
  they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.
  
  "Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
  here."
  
  In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
  himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
  with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant.  Mr. Hubbard was a
  florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was
  considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the
  artists who dealt with him.  As a rule, he never left his shop.  He
  waited for people to come to him.  But he always made an exception in
  favour of Dorian Gray.  There was something about Dorian that charmed
  everybody.  It was a pleasure even to see him.
  
  "What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
  hands.  "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
  person.  I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir.  Picked it up at a
  sale.  Old Florentine.  Came from Fonthill, I believe.  Admirably
  suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."
  
  "I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
  Hubbard.  I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I
  don't go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a
  picture carried to the top of the house for me.  It is rather heavy, so
  I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
  
  "No trouble at all, Mr. Gray.  I am delighted to be of any service to
  you.  Which is the work of art, sir?"
  
  "This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back.  "Can you move it,
  covering and all, just as it is?  I don't want it to get scratched
  going upstairs."
  
  "There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
  beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from
  the long brass chains by which it was suspended.  "And, now, where
  shall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
  
  "I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me.
  Or perhaps you had better go in front.  I am afraid it is right at the
  top of the house.  We will go up by the front staircase, as it is
  wider."
  
  He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
  began the ascent.  The elaborate character of the frame had made the
  picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
  protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
  of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
  so as to help them.
  
  "Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
  reached the top landing.  And he wiped his shiny forehead.
  
  "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the
  door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
  secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
  
  He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
  since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
  as a study when he grew somewhat older.  It was a large,
  well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
  Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
  to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
  desired to keep at a distance.  It appeared to Dorian to have but
  little changed.  There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its
  fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
  he had so often hidden himself as a boy.  There the satinwood book-case
  filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.  On the wall behind it was
  hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen
  were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by,
  carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists.  How well he
  remembered it all!  Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to
  him as he looked round.  He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish
  life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait
  was to be hidden away.  How little he had thought, in those dead days,
  of all that was in store for him!
  
  But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
  this.  He had the key, and no one else could enter it.  Beneath its
  purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden,
  and unclean.  What did it matter?  No one could see it.  He himself
  would not see it.  Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his
  soul?  He kept his youth--that was enough.  And, besides, might not
  his nature grow finer, after all?  There was no reason that the future
  should be so full of shame.  Some love might come across his life, and
  purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already
  stirring in spirit and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose
  very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.  Perhaps, some
  day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive
  mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
  
  No; that was impossible.  Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing
  upon the canvas was growing old.  It might escape the hideousness of
  sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it.  The cheeks would
  become hollow or flaccid.  Yellow crow's feet would creep round the
  fading eyes and make them horrible.  The hair would lose its
  brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross,
  as the mouths of old men are.  There would be the wrinkled throat, the
  cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the
  grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.  The picture
  had to be concealed.  There was no help for it.
  
  "Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round.
  "I am sorry I kept you so long.  I was thinking of something else."
  
  "Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
  was still gasping for breath.  "Where shall we put it, sir?"
  
  "Oh, anywhere.  Here:  this will do.  I don't want to have it hung up.
  Just lean it against the wall.  Thanks."
  
  "Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
  
  Dorian started.  "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
  keeping his eye on the man.  He felt ready to leap upon him and fling
  him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that
  concealed the secret of his life.  "I shan't trouble you any more now.
  I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round."
  
  "Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray.  Ever ready to do anything for you,
  sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant,
  who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough
  uncomely face.  He had never seen any one so marvellous.
  
  When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door
  and put the key in his pocket.  He felt safe now.  No one would ever
  look upon the horrible thing.  No eye but his would ever see his shame.
  
  On reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o'clock
  and that the tea had been already brought up.  On a little table of
  dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady
  Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid who had
  spent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry,
  and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn
  and the edges soiled.  A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's
  Gazette_ had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
  returned.  He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
  leaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
  He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,
  while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
  back, and a blank space was visible on the wall.  Perhaps some night he
  might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
  room.  It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house.  He had
  heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some
  servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked
  up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
  or a shred of crumpled lace.
  
  He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
  note.  It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper,
  and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
  eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through
  it.  A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye.  It drew
  attention to the following paragraph:
  
  
  INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell
  Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of
  Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre,
  Holborn.  A verdict of death by misadventure was returned.
  Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who
  was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of
  Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.
  
  
  He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
  flung the pieces away.  How ugly it all was!  And how horribly real
  ugliness made things!  He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
  having sent him the report.  And it was certainly stupid of him to have
  marked it with red pencil.  Victor might have read it.  The man knew
  more than enough English for that.
  
  Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.  And, yet,
  what did it matter?  What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's
  death?  There was nothing to fear.  Dorian Gray had not killed her.
  
  His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.  What was
  it, he wondered.  He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal
  stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
  Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
  himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves.  After a
  few minutes he became absorbed.  It was the strangest book that he had
  ever read.  It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
  delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
  show before him.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly
  made real to him.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
  revealed.
  
  It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being,
  indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who
  spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the
  passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
  own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
  which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
  artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
  as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.  The
  style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid
  and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
  expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work
  of some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_.
  There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in
  colour.  The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
  philosophy.  One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
  spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions
  of a modern sinner.  It was a poisonous book.  The heavy odour of
  incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.  The
  mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so
  full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated,
  produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter,
  a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of
  the falling day and creeping shadows.
  
  Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
  through the windows.  He read on by its wan light till he could read no
  more.  Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
  lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed
  the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
  bedside and began to dress for dinner.
  
  It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
  Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
  
  "I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your
  fault.  That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the
  time was going."
  
  "Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
  chair.
  
  "I didn't say I liked it, Harry.  I said it fascinated me.  There is a
  great difference."
  
  "Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry.  And they passed
  into the dining-room.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 9 & 10
target: The next day, Basil visits Dorian and is shocked to learn that he has been to the opera, given the circumstances. He is also aghast at the fact that Dorian seems altogether unmoved by Sibyl's suicide. Dorian defends himself by telling Basil that "She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her." He accuses Basil of being selfish, since his anger stems from the fact that he was not the one who consoled him, and tells the artist to "teach me to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view." Dorian does, however, admit to being strongly influenced by Lord Henry. He also admits that he knows Basil to be a much better man than Henry. When the painter hears this, his old affection for Dorian wins him over. He inquires whether Dorian has been summoned by the police. Dorian is annoyed by this thought, but assures Basil that no one involved even knows his name. He asks Basil to make him a drawing of Sibyl, but Basil asks Dorian to instead come pose for him again - a request that is quickly denied. Basil then notices that his painting is covered. When he asks to see his work, Dorian threatens never to speak to him again if he tries to lift the covering screen. He is determined never to share the secret of the painting with anyone. Basil says that he wants to exhibit the work, since he considers it his masterpiece, but Dorian states that that is also out of the question. The painter asks if Dorian has seen anything strange in the picture to disturb him so much. Thinking that Basil may already know about the picture's enchantment, Dorian says that he has, but asks his friend to explain himself. Basil confesses his idolatry of Dorian, and says that he was struck by how much of it had come across in the painting. Dorian is disappointed and unmoved by the painter's affection. He again states that he will never again sit for another portrait. Basil cries out that Dorian's refusal will "spoil my life as an artist" and leaves. Dorian, growing ever more paranoid and determined to conceal his secret, decides to hide the painting more thoroughly. Dorian acquires the key to his attic from his housekeeper. Victor informs him that the men he has requested have arrived to help transport the painting, and Dorian sends his servant off to Lord Henry with a request for reading material. Mr Hubbard, a renowned frame-maker, and his assistants carry the portrait up to the attic without removing the cover, as per Dorian's instructions. Dorian wonders about the possibility of ever displaying the work, since it is Basil's masterpiece, but knows that even though "It might escape the hideousness of sin, the hideousness of age was in store for it." It would have to be hidden from sight forever so that "No eye but his would ever see his shame." Once Mr Hubbard leaves, Dorian returns to his library to find a note from Lord Henry, along with a newspaper clipping and an old, yellow book. A red mark on the newspaper brings Dorian's attention to a small article informing him that the inquest into Sibyl's death has ruled it a certain suicide. He is free of suspicion. He begins reading the novel sent by Henry, a book about a young Parisian "who spent his life trying to realize...all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own." He is so engrossed with the novel and its "metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in color" that he is several hours late for his engagement with Lord Henry.
feat_summary_analysis: Dorian defends himself for failing to mourn Sibyl's death with a Lord Henry-ism: "A man who is master of himself can end sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure."  The irony of claiming to be master of one's self by voicing the views of another escapes the young man, but serves to portray him as a deeply misguided soul.  In Basil's confession to Dorian, he echoes several sentiments from the preface, saying that "what art should be  unconscious, ideal, and remote...Art is always more abstract than we fancy.  Form and colour tell us of form and colour...art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him."  These sentiments, although they are presented by Wilde as truths in the preface, are disheartening revelations for the painter.  Basil had been hoping that the picture would show Dorian the truth about his affections, but when Dorian hears Basil's confession, he practically scoffs at it, and states aloud that he wonders if he will ever know such feelings of adoration.  The answer  is, of course, that he already adores himself in a nearly identical fashion.  Later, when faced with further evidence of his own degradation, Dorian will blame himself for not accepting Basil's "pure, Uranian" love. This sentiment is one of the many homosexual references that remains in the novel after Wilde's revision of the Lippincott version. Wilde is said to have espoused the notion that love between two men was inherently purer and nobler than heterosexual love, and this sentiment appears briefly in Dorian's thoughts. Concealing the picture is a clear symbolic gesture for Dorian's denial of his own shame. Since the painting is destined to display "the hideous corruption of his soul" while his face will remain young and innocent, Dorian believes that he can effectively live without the hindrance of a conscience so long as no one sees the painting.  The downside of Dorian's obsession with his appearance, however, has already begun to show.  He becomes suspicious of his housekeeper and of Victor, his servant, feeling sure that they will try to look at the picture.  This paranoia can be seen as a principal stage in the protagonist's degrdation, an indication that the deterioration of Dorian's soul is well underway. The attic where Dorian hides the painting was "a playroom when he was a child" and "a study when he grew somewhat older."  The room is already a vault hiding his past, and it will now hide the degradation of his conscience, as well.  This room becomes a symbol of the purity of youth and concern for morality that Dorian consciously rejects.  Instead of skeletons in his closet, Dorian has a painting in his attic. Some critics have interpreted the hidden painting as a metaphor for sexuality - Dorian keeps his shame and guilt about his homosexual tendencies "in the closet", as it were. While such a reading is compelling, it also over-simplifies Dorian's dilemma, while inadvertently assuming that Wilde would himself condemn homosexual tendencies. Dishonesty, betrayal, and murder all cause the portrait to wither, age, and grow more hideous. To assume that homosexual actions also deface the portrait is to present such actions as similarly offensive or reprehensible - a notion with which the author would have certainly disagreed.