d, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
strangle one itself.

When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and
then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual
care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and
scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time
also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of
the letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several
times over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his
face. "That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once
said.

After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
table, sat down and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
other he handed to the valet.

"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
is out of town, get his address."

As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon a
piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and
then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and
getting up, went over to the book-case and took out a volume at hazard.
He was determined that he would not think about what had happened until
it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.

When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
of the book. It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees, Charpentier's
Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was
of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he
turned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of
Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with
its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced at his own
white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and
passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:

Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de peries ruisselant,
La Venus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les domes, sur l