aid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the
left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright
vermilion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never
done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if
his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own
picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at
Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his
parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across
his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, watching him with
that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither
real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the
spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken
the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded
shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in
his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good
looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to
me the wonder of youth, and you finished the portrait of me that
revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I
don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would
call it a prayer...."

"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible.
The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had
some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is
impossible."

"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.

"You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."

"I don't believe it is my picture."

"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.

"My ideal, as you call it...."

"As you called it."

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an
ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."

"It is the face of my soul."

"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
devil."

"Each of us has Heaven and