appeared to him the one thing
worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any
value. 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,
nor 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 coloured life
of the intellect--to observe where they met, and where they separated,
at what point they were in unison, 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 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! T