windows.

"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.

"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray, drowsily.

"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."

How late it was! He sat up, and, having sipped some tea, turned over his
letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand
that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The
others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of
cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of
charity concerts, and the like, that are showered on fashionable young
men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill, for
a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had not yet had the
courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-fashioned
people and did not realise that we live in an age when unnecessary
things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously
worded communiations from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to
advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable
rates of interest.

After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate
dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep.
He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of
having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but
there was the unreality of a dream about it.

As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a
light French breakfast, that had been laid out for him on a small round
table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in, and buzzed round the
blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before
him. He felt perfectly happy.

Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
portrait, and he started.

"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
table. "I shut the window?"

Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.

Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply
his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had
been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing
was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would
make him smile.

And, yet, how vivid was his r