gination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet
of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor
the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust
upon the weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling
round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers. Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the
gardeners would have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy.
Sibyl Vane's brother had not come back to kill him. He had sailed away
in his ship to founder in some winter sea. From him, at any rate, he
was safe. Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he
was. The mask of youth had saved him.

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them
visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would
his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from
silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear
as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!
As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and
the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a
wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere
memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came
back to him with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible
and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry
came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
break.

It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was
something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But
it was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had
caused the change. His own nature had revolted against the excess of
anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm.
With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their
strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man,
or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The
loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
Besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of