Hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian, with a
wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. "My God! if it
is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,
why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to
be!" He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The
surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was
from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through
some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly
eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not
so fearful.

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and
lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he
flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
buried his face in his hands.

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" There was no
answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. "Pray,
Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was taught to say in
one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash
away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride
has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.
I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself
too much. We are both punished."

Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed
eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.

"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
as scarlet; yet I will make them as white as snow'?"

"Those words mean nothing to me now."

"Hush! don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God!
don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable
feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear
by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred
within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more
than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced
him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he