They would be happy together. His life with her would
be beautiful and pure.

He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the
portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!" he murmured
to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he
stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning
air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of
Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her
name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the
dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

CHAPTER 8

It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times
on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered
what made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded,
and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on
a small tray of old Sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin
curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the
three tall 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 realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several
very courteously worded communications 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 t