und to her room?
That is an important point."

Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
Finally he stammered in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl----? Oh, Harry, I can't
bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."

"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put
in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the theatre
with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did
not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor
of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake, some
dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was, but it
had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it was
prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."

"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.

"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
up in it. I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen. I should have
thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this
thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards
we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be
there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women
with her."

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to
himself--"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with
a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing
just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and
then go on to the Opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here
is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.
Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed
to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we
call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I
loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
Then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?--when she
play