Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did
not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.
He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray."
He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out,
or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now.
Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately
was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom
he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him.
He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him
and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.
What a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had
been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
everything that he had lost.

When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.
He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library,
and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said
to him.

Was it really true that one could never change? He felt
a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood--
his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it.
He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with
corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been
an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy
in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own,
it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that
he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable?
Was there no hope for him?

Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had
prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days,
and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth!
All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin
of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it.
There was purification in punishment. Not "Forgive us our sins"
but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a
most just God.

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given
to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table,
and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old.
He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror
when be had first noted the change in the fatal picture,
and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield.
Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written
to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words:
"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.
The curves of your lips