The floor was
covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud,
and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were
crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and
showing their white teeth as they chattered. In one corner, with his
head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the
tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two
haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his
coat with an expression of disgust. "He thinks he's got red ants on
him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her
in terror and began to whimper.

At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his
nostrils quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with
smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin
pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.

"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.

"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps
will speak to me now."

"I thought you had left England."

"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at
last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added
with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends.
I think I have had too many friends."

Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the
gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in
what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he
was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was
eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The
presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no
one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.

"I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause.

"On the wharf?"

"Yes."

"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
now."

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one.
Women who hate one are much more interesting.