feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_4_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 6-7
feat_summary_id: chapters 6-7
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 6 & 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapters-6-and-7", "summary": "Lord Henry and Basil Hallward discuss Dorian's engagement at the painter's house. They are planning to dine with Dorian before going to see Sibyl's performance that night. Basil can't believe that Dorian is really engaged, saying that Dorian \"is far too sensible\" to make such a rash decision. To this, Henry replies that \"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then.\" Basil is taken aback by Henry's detached, artistic fascination with Dorian's life. The artist disapproves of Dorian's actions, and is worried about the boy's emotional health; Henry, however, is delighted, knowing that whatever the outcome is, it will be greatly entertaining. Dorian arrives, insisting that he be congratulated. Basil says that was hurt to hear about the engagement from Henry, and not from Dorian himself. Henry quickly changes the subject. Dorian wants Basil to approve of his actions, saying \"I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays?\" Basil reluctantly agrees with Dorian. When Henry cynically remarks about the business-like nature of marriage, Basil objects, saying that Dorian \"is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon anyone. His nature is too fine for that.\" Henry continues to philosophize about the nature of women and how they act when in love. To him, \"Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them.\" Dorian is sure that Sibyl's acting will put an end to Henry's cynicism and reconcile all disagreements between the three men. When they see her perform, they will be too overwhelmed by her beauty to consider anything else. The three men leave to see the play, Romeo and Juliet. The theater is surprisingly crowded that night. Once seated in their box, Lord Henry observes the obnoxious, unrefined behavior of the lower-class theatergoers. Basil comforts Dorian against Henry's cynicism. The play begins, and they all note that the orchestra is terrible. Finally, Sibyl appears on stage. She looks beautiful, but acts terribly. Her voice is exquisite, but \"from the point of view of tone\" is \"absolutely false.\" Dorian is horrified and confused. The other two men are disappointed, but are too polite to make any remarks. Her performance, usually the one saving grace in the theater's otherwise dreadful productions, only gets worse as the play progresses. After the second act, the audience hisses, and Dorian's guests stand to leave. Basil tries to comfort the boy, saying that Sibyl must be ill, and that he shouldn't be upset, since \"Love is a more wonderful thing than art\" anyway, to which Henry replies that \"They are both simply forms of imitation\". Dorian is inconsolable. Henry tells him to cheer up, since \"the secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.\" The two men leave, and Dorian forces himself to suffer through the rest of the performance. Afterwards, he rushes backstage to confront Sibyl. She is delighted to see him and surprised at his anger, since she had assumed that he would know the reason for her terrible performance. When he demands to be told why she performed badly, she tells him that having met him, she can no longer believe in the theater. Before Dorian, she says, \"acting was the one reality of my life,\" and now he has \"freed my soul from prison\" and \"taught me what reality really is.\" Having experienced true love, she says, \"it would be profanation for me to play at being in love.\" Dorian is horrified, disgusted, and completely unable to love her anymore. She can't believe it, and when he pulls away from her touch, she falls to the floor, groveling at his feet. Dorian feels repulsion rather than empathy, and leaves her sobbing on the floor. Strangely numb and unable to come to terms with Sibyl's lost talent or his unexpected callousness towards her, Dorian aimlessly wanders the city until dawn. He returns home, where he happens to glance at Basil's portrait, and is puzzled to find that the facial expression is slightly different: there seems to be \"a touch of cruelty in the mouth.\" He rubs his eyes and changes the lighting, but is certain that the picture has changed. The cruelty in the expression reminds him of his cruelty to Sibyl, but he feels wronged for the misery that she has caused him with her bad acting, and consoles himself by thinking that \"women were better suited to bear sorrow than men...When they took lovers, it was merely to have someone with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.\" Unable to make any sense of the picture's transformation, he realizes, after much pondering, that \"It held the secret of his life, and told his story...changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.\" Exhausted, he covers the portrait with a screen, and goes to sleep.", "analysis": "Dorian's relationship with Sibyl is the first major casualty of the devotion to sensual pleasure inspired by Lord Henry.  Valuing artistic beauty above all else allows Dorian to confuse his love for Sibyl's acting with a love for Sibyl herself.  She seems to be the perfect wife, because Dorian believes that she can offer him all of Shakespeare's heroines in a single body.  Indeed, Dorian remarks to Basil that he has \"had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.\"  Dorian's love is a means of escaping reality; therefore, Sibyl's awareness of \"what reality really is\" is unacceptable. His resulting cruelty towards her is the first undeniable mark of the corruption of Dorian's character, and therefore causes the first visible change in his portrait.  He considers the aesthetic pain caused by her poor acting to be on par with Sibyl's emotional devastation at his rejection.  This belief is rooted in the sentiment expressed by Lord Henry before the trio leaves for the play, when he says \"I love acting.  It is so much more real than life.\"  This statement is a clear indication of Henry's continuing influence on Dorian. We are also reminded of the statement in the preface that \"Those who go beneath the surface  do so at their peril.\"  Dorian is not prepared to see the person beneath the surface of Sibyl's acting.  The preface also states that \"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.\"  Dorian saw himself reflected in Sibyl's acting, because it was artful, but once her acting is revealed as artless, he can no longer see himself in it, and his feelings for her disappear.  What he thought was love for Sibyl is really a form of vanity; the pain of enduring her poor performance is actually the pain of not seeing his own reflection. In Chapter 7, Dorian undergoes several dramatic changes of character: he transforms from a devoted lover, to a bitter art critic, to a cruel betrayer, and seemingly back to a devoted lover.  This final change is, however, superficial.  He decides to do the honorable thing and marry Sibyl, but only when faced with the possibility of watching the beautiful image in the portrait succumb to degradation.  The corruption of Dorian's soul has begun in earnest, as reflected by the first visible change in the portrait. Interestingly, this chapter marks a turning point in the narrative: the focus switches from Lord Henry to Dorian.  Now that Henry's influence has begun to show its effects, the narrative no longer appears as concerned with Lord Henry himself.  At this point, the story begins to focus solely on Dorian as a corrupt figure.  At the end of the chapter, as Dorian feebly resolves to spend less time with Lord Henry and to marry Sibyl, he is acting more out of vanity than out of love or a true sense of morality; a fact that will be revealed when the portrait fails to change for the better. This is not the last time Dorian will fail to recognize the vanity that lies behind his decisions."}
text: 
  "I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that
  evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
  where dinner had been laid for three.
  
  "No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
  waiter.  "What is it?  Nothing about politics, I hope!  They don't
  interest me.  There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons
  worth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little
  whitewashing."
  
  "Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him
  as he spoke.
  
  Hallward started and then frowned.  "Dorian engaged to be married!" he
  cried.  "Impossible!"
  
  "It is perfectly true."
  
  "To whom?"
  
  "To some little actress or other."
  
  "I can't believe it.  Dorian is far too sensible."
  
  "Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
  Basil."
  
  "Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."
  
  "Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly.  "But I didn't say
  he was married.  I said he was engaged to be married.  There is a great
  difference.  I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
  no recollection at all of being engaged.  I am inclined to think that I
  never was engaged."
  
  "But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth.  It would be
  absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
  
  "If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil.  He is
  sure to do it, then.  Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
  is always from the noblest motives."
  
  "I hope the girl is good, Harry.  I don't want to see Dorian tied to
  some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his
  intellect."
  
  "Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry,
  sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is
  beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.  Your
  portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
  appearance of other people.  It has had that excellent effect, amongst
  others.  We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
  appointment."
  
  "Are you serious?"
  
  "Quite serious, Basil.  I should be miserable if I thought I should
  ever be more serious than I am at the present moment."
  
  "But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and
  down the room and biting his lip.  "You can't approve of it, possibly.
  It is some silly infatuation."
  
  "I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now.  It is an absurd
  attitude to take towards life.  We are not sent into the world to air
  our moral prejudices.  I never take any notice of what common people
  say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.  If a
  personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality
  selects is absolutely delightful to me.  Dorian Gray falls in love with
  a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her.  Why not?
  If he wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interesting.  You
  know I am not a champion of marriage.  The real drawback to marriage is
  that it makes one unselfish.  And unselfish people are colourless.
  They lack individuality.  Still, there are certain temperaments that
  marriage makes more complex.  They retain their egotism, and add to it
  many other egos.  They are forced to have more than one life.  They
  become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should
  fancy, the object of man's existence.  Besides, every experience is of
  value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an
  experience.  I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife,
  passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become
  fascinated by some one else.  He would be a wonderful study."
  
  "You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't.
  If Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than
  yourself.  You are much better than you pretend to be."
  
  Lord Henry laughed.  "The reason we all like to think so well of others
  is that we are all afraid for ourselves.  The basis of optimism is
  sheer terror.  We think that we are generous because we credit our
  neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a
  benefit to us.  We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account,
  and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare
  our pockets.  I mean everything that I have said.  I have the greatest
  contempt for optimism.  As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but
  one whose growth is arrested.  If you want to mar a nature, you have
  merely to reform it.  As for marriage, of course that would be silly,
  but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women.
  I will certainly encourage them.  They have the charm of being
  fashionable.  But here is Dorian himself.  He will tell you more than I
  can."
  
  "My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the
  lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and
  shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn.  "I have never been so
  happy.  Of course, it is sudden--all really delightful things are.  And
  yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my
  life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
  extraordinarily handsome.
  
  "I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I
  don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.
  You let Harry know."
  
  "And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord
  Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke.
  "Come, let us sit down and try what the new _chef_ here is like, and then
  you will tell us how it all came about."
  
  "There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their
  seats at the small round table.  "What happened was simply this.  After
  I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
  little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and
  went down at eight o'clock to the theatre.  Sibyl was playing Rosalind.
  Of course, the scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd.  But Sibyl!
  You should have seen her!  When she came on in her boy's clothes, she
  was perfectly wonderful.  She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
  cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little
  green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak
  lined with dull red.  She had never seemed to me more exquisite.  She
  had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in
  your studio, Basil.  Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves
  round a pale rose.  As for her acting--well, you shall see her
  to-night. She is simply a born artist.  I sat in the dingy box
  absolutely enthralled.  I forgot that I was in London and in the
  nineteenth century.  I was away with my love in a forest that no man
  had ever seen.  After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke
  to her.  As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes
  a look that I had never seen there before.  My lips moved towards hers.
  We kissed each other.  I can't describe to you what I felt at that
  moment.  It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one
  perfect point of rose-coloured joy.  She trembled all over and shook
  like a white narcissus.  Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed
  my hands.  I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help
  it.  Of course, our engagement is a dead secret.  She has not even told
  her own mother.  I don't know what my guardians will say.  Lord Radley
  is sure to be furious.  I don't care.  I shall be of age in less than a
  year, and then I can do what I like.  I have been right, Basil, haven't
  I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's
  plays?  Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their
  secret in my ear.  I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and
  kissed Juliet on the mouth."
  
  "Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward slowly.
  
  "Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.
  
  Dorian Gray shook his head.  "I left her in the forest of Arden; I
  shall find her in an orchard in Verona."
  
  Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner.  "At what
  particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian?  And what
  did she say in answer?  Perhaps you forgot all about it."
  
  "My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
  not make any formal proposal.  I told her that I loved her, and she
  said she was not worthy to be my wife.  Not worthy!  Why, the whole
  world is nothing to me compared with her."
  
  "Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry, "much more
  practical than we are.  In situations of that kind we often forget to
  say anything about marriage, and they always remind us."
  
  Hallward laid his hand upon his arm.  "Don't, Harry.  You have annoyed
  Dorian.  He is not like other men.  He would never bring misery upon
  any one.  His nature is too fine for that."
  
  Lord Henry looked across the table.  "Dorian is never annoyed with me,"
  he answered.  "I asked the question for the best reason possible, for
  the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any
  question--simple curiosity.  I have a theory that it is always the
  women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women.  Except,
  of course, in middle-class life.  But then the middle classes are not
  modern."
  
  Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head.  "You are quite incorrigible,
  Harry; but I don't mind.  It is impossible to be angry with you.  When
  you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man who could wrong her
  would be a beast, a beast without a heart.  I cannot understand how any
  one can wish to shame the thing he loves.  I love Sibyl Vane.  I want
  to place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the
  woman who is mine.  What is marriage?  An irrevocable vow.  You mock at
  it for that.  Ah! don't mock.  It is an irrevocable vow that I want to
  take.  Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.  When I
  am with her, I regret all that you have taught me.  I become different
  from what you have known me to be.  I am changed, and the mere touch of
  Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating,
  poisonous, delightful theories."
  
  "And those are ...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.
  
  "Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
  about pleasure.  All your theories, in fact, Harry."
  
  "Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered
  in his slow melodious voice.  "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory
  as my own.  It belongs to Nature, not to me.  Pleasure is Nature's
  test, her sign of approval.  When we are happy, we are always good, but
  when we are good, we are not always happy."
  
  "Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.
  
  "Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord
  Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the
  centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
  
  "To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching
  the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
  "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.  One's own
  life--that is the important thing.  As for the lives of one's
  neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt
  one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern.  Besides,
  individualism has really the higher aim.  Modern morality consists in
  accepting the standard of one's age.  I consider that for any man of
  culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest
  immorality."
  
  "But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
  terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
  
  "Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays.  I should fancy that
  the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but
  self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege
  of the rich."
  
  "One has to pay in other ways but money."
  
  "What sort of ways, Basil?"
  
  "Oh!  I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the
  consciousness of degradation."
  
  Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  "My dear fellow, mediaeval art is
  charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date.  One can use them in
  fiction, of course.  But then the only things that one can use in
  fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.  Believe me,
  no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever
  knows what a pleasure is."
  
  "I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray.  "It is to adore some
  one."
  
  "That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with
  some fruits.  "Being adored is a nuisance.  Women treat us just as
  humanity treats its gods.  They worship us, and are always bothering us
  to do something for them."
  
  "I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
  us," murmured the lad gravely.  "They create love in our natures.  They
  have a right to demand it back."
  
  "That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.
  
  "Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.
  
  "This is," interrupted Dorian.  "You must admit, Harry, that women give
  to men the very gold of their lives."
  
  "Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very
  small change.  That is the worry.  Women, as some witty Frenchman once
  put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always
  prevent us from carrying them out."
  
  "Harry, you are dreadful!  I don't know why I like you so much."
  
  "You will always like me, Dorian," he replied.  "Will you have some
  coffee, you fellows?  Waiter, bring coffee, and _fine-champagne_, and
  some cigarettes.  No, don't mind the cigarettes--I have some.  Basil, I
  can't allow you to smoke cigars.  You must have a cigarette.  A
  cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure.  It is exquisite,
  and it leaves one unsatisfied.  What more can one want?  Yes, Dorian,
  you will always be fond of me.  I represent to you all the sins you
  have never had the courage to commit."
  
  "What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a
  fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
  "Let us go down to the theatre.  When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
  have a new ideal of life.  She will represent something to you that you
  have never known."
  
  "I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
  eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion.  I am afraid, however,
  that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing.  Still, your
  wonderful girl may thrill me.  I love acting.  It is so much more real
  than life.  Let us go.  Dorian, you will come with me.  I am so sorry,
  Basil, but there is only room for two in the brougham.  You must follow
  us in a hansom."
  
  They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing.  The
  painter was silent and preoccupied.  There was a gloom over him.  He
  could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better
  than many other things that might have happened.  After a few minutes,
  they all passed downstairs.  He drove off by himself, as had been
  arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in
  front of him.  A strange sense of loss came over him.  He felt that
  Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the
  past.  Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the
  crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes.  When the cab drew
  up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.
  
  
  
  For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat
  Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with
  an oily tremulous smile.  He escorted them to their box with a sort of
  pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top
  of his voice.  Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever.  He felt as if
  he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.  Lord
  Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him.  At least he declared he
  did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he
  was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone
  bankrupt over a poet.  Hallward amused himself with watching the faces
  in the pit.  The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight
  flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.  The youths
  in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them
  over the side.  They talked to each other across the theatre and shared
  their oranges with the tawdry girls who sat beside them.  Some women
  were laughing in the pit.  Their voices were horribly shrill and
  discordant.  The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.
  
  "What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
  
  "Yes!" answered Dorian Gray.  "It was here I found her, and she is
  divine beyond all living things.  When she acts, you will forget
  everything.  These common rough people, with their coarse faces and
  brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage.  They
  sit silently and watch her.  They weep and laugh as she wills them to
  do.  She makes them as responsive as a violin.  She spiritualizes them,
  and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
  
  "The same flesh and blood as one's self!  Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed
  Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
  opera-glass.
  
  "Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter.  "I
  understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl.  Any one you love
  must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must
  be fine and noble.  To spiritualize one's age--that is something worth
  doing.  If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without
  one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have
  been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and
  lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of
  all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.  This
  marriage is quite right.  I did not think so at first, but I admit it
  now.  The gods made Sibyl Vane for you.  Without her you would have
  been incomplete."
  
  "Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand.  "I knew that
  you would understand me.  Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me.  But
  here is the orchestra.  It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for
  about five minutes.  Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl
  to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything
  that is good in me."
  
  A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of
  applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage.  Yes, she was certainly
  lovely to look at--one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
  that he had ever seen.  There was something of the fawn in her shy
  grace and startled eyes.  A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a
  mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded
  enthusiastic house.  She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed
  to tremble.  Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
  Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her.
  Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming! charming!"
  
  The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
  dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends.  The band, such
  as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.  Through
  the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
  creature from a finer world.  Her body swayed, while she danced, as a
  plant sways in the water.  The curves of her throat were the curves of
  a white lily.  Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.
  
  Yet she was curiously listless.  She showed no sign of joy when her
  eyes rested on Romeo.  The few words she had to speak--
  
      Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
          Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
      For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
          And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--
  
  with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly
  artificial manner.  The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
  of tone it was absolutely false.  It was wrong in colour.  It took away
  all the life from the verse.  It made the passion unreal.
  
  Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her.  He was puzzled and anxious.
  Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him.  She seemed to
  them to be absolutely incompetent.  They were horribly disappointed.
  
  Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
  the second act.  They waited for that.  If she failed there, there was
  nothing in her.
  
  She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.  That could not
  be denied.  But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew
  worse as she went on.  Her gestures became absurdly artificial.  She
  overemphasized everything that she had to say.  The beautiful passage--
  
      Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
      Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
      For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
  
  was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
  taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
  leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--
  
          Although I joy in thee,
      I have no joy of this contract to-night:
      It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
      Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
      Ere one can say, "It lightens."  Sweet, good-night!
      This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
      May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--
  
  she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
  not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
  self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
  
  Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
  interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and
  to whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
  dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
  the girl herself.
  
  When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord
  Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat.  "She is quite
  beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act.  Let us go."
  
  "I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard
  bitter voice.  "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an
  evening, Harry.  I apologize to you both."
  
  "My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
  Hallward.  "We will come some other night."
  
  "I wish she were ill," he rejoined.  "But she seems to me to be simply
  callous and cold.  She has entirely altered.  Last night she was a
  great artist.  This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre
  actress."
  
  "Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian.  Love is a more
  wonderful thing than art."
  
  "They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry.  "But
  do let us go.  Dorian, you must not stay here any longer.  It is not
  good for one's morals to see bad acting.  Besides, I don't suppose you
  will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet
  like a wooden doll?  She is very lovely, and if she knows as little
  about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful
  experience.  There are only two kinds of people who are really
  fascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know
  absolutely nothing.  Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic!
  The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is
  unbecoming.  Come to the club with Basil and myself.  We will smoke
  cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane.  She is beautiful.
  What more can you want?"
  
  "Go away, Harry," cried the lad.  "I want to be alone.  Basil, you must
  go.  Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?"  The hot tears came
  to his eyes.  His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he
  leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
  
  "Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his
  voice, and the two young men passed out together.
  
  A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose
  on the third act.  Dorian Gray went back to his seat.  He looked pale,
  and proud, and indifferent.  The play dragged on, and seemed
  interminable.  Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots
  and laughing.  The whole thing was a _fiasco_.  The last act was played
  to almost empty benches.  The curtain went down on a titter and some
  groans.
  
  As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
  greenroom.  The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph
  on her face.  Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.  There was a
  radiance about her.  Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of
  their own.
  
  When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
  came over her.  "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.
  
  "Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement.  "Horribly!  It
  was dreadful.  Are you ill?  You have no idea what it was.  You have no
  idea what I suffered."
  
  The girl smiled.  "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with
  long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to
  the red petals of her mouth.  "Dorian, you should have understood.  But
  you understand now, don't you?"
  
  "Understand what?" he asked, angrily.
  
  "Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad.  Why I shall
  never act well again."
  
  He shrugged his shoulders.  "You are ill, I suppose.  When you are ill
  you shouldn't act.  You make yourself ridiculous.  My friends were
  bored.  I was bored."
  
  She seemed not to listen to him.  She was transfigured with joy.  An
  ecstasy of happiness dominated her.
  
  "Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
  reality of my life.  It was only in the theatre that I lived.  I
  thought that it was all true.  I was Rosalind one night and Portia the
  other.  The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia
  were mine also.  I believed in everything.  The common people who acted
  with me seemed to me to be godlike.  The painted scenes were my world.
  I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real.  You came--oh, my
  beautiful love!--and you freed my soul from prison.  You taught me what
  reality really is.  To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw
  through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in
  which I had always played.  To-night, for the first time, I became
  conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the
  moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and
  that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not
  what I wanted to say.  You had brought me something higher, something
  of which all art is but a reflection.  You had made me understand what
  love really is.  My love!  My love!  Prince Charming!  Prince of life!
  I have grown sick of shadows.  You are more to me than all art can ever
  be.  What have I to do with the puppets of a play?  When I came on
  to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone
  from me.  I thought that I was going to be wonderful.  I found that I
  could do nothing.  Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant.
  The knowledge was exquisite to me.  I heard them hissing, and I smiled.
  What could they know of love such as ours?  Take me away, Dorian--take
  me away with you, where we can be quite alone.  I hate the stage.  I
  might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that
  burns me like fire.  Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it
  signifies?  Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to
  play at being in love.  You have made me see that."
  
  He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face.  "You have
  killed my love," he muttered.
  
  She looked at him in wonder and laughed.  He made no answer.  She came
  across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair.  She knelt
  down and pressed his hands to her lips.  He drew them away, and a
  shudder ran through him.
  
  Then he leaped up and went to the door.  "Yes," he cried, "you have
  killed my love.  You used to stir my imagination.  Now you don't even
  stir my curiosity.  You simply produce no effect.  I loved you because
  you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you
  realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
  shadows of art.  You have thrown it all away.  You are shallow and
  stupid.  My God! how mad I was to love you!  What a fool I have been!
  You are nothing to me now.  I will never see you again.  I will never
  think of you.  I will never mention your name.  You don't know what you
  were to me, once.  Why, once ... Oh, I can't bear to think of it!  I
  wish I had never laid eyes upon you!  You have spoiled the romance of
  my life.  How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!
  Without your art, you are nothing.  I would have made you famous,
  splendid, magnificent.  The world would have worshipped you, and you
  would have borne my name.  What are you now?  A third-rate actress with
  a pretty face."
  
  The girl grew white, and trembled.  She clenched her hands together,
  and her voice seemed to catch in her throat.  "You are not serious,
  Dorian?" she murmured.  "You are acting."
  
  "Acting!  I leave that to you.  You do it so well," he answered
  bitterly.
  
  She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her
  face, came across the room to him.  She put her hand upon his arm and
  looked into his eyes.  He thrust her back.  "Don't touch me!" he cried.
  
  A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay
  there like a trampled flower.  "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
  whispered.  "I am so sorry I didn't act well.  I was thinking of you
  all the time.  But I will try--indeed, I will try.  It came so suddenly
  across me, my love for you.  I think I should never have known it if
  you had not kissed me--if we had not kissed each other.  Kiss me again,
  my love.  Don't go away from me.  I couldn't bear it.  Oh! don't go
  away from me.  My brother ... No; never mind.  He didn't mean it.  He
  was in jest.... But you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will
  work so hard and try to improve.  Don't be cruel to me, because I love
  you better than anything in the world.  After all, it is only once that
  I have not pleased you.  But you are quite right, Dorian.  I should
  have shown myself more of an artist.  It was foolish of me, and yet I
  couldn't help it.  Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." A fit of
  passionate sobbing choked her.  She crouched on the floor like a
  wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at
  her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain.  There is
  always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has
  ceased to love.  Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.
  Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
  
  "I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice.  "I don't wish
  to be unkind, but I can't see you again.  You have disappointed me."
  
  She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer.  Her little
  hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him.  He
  turned on his heel and left the room.  In a few moments he was out of
  the theatre.
  
  Where he went to he hardly knew.  He remembered wandering through dimly
  lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
  houses.  Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after
  him.  Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves
  like monstrous apes.  He had seen grotesque children huddled upon
  door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
  
  As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden.
  The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed
  itself into a perfect pearl.  Huge carts filled with nodding lilies
  rumbled slowly down the polished empty street.  The air was heavy with
  the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an
  anodyne for his pain.  He followed into the market and watched the men
  unloading their waggons.  A white-smocked carter offered him some
  cherries.  He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money
  for them, and began to eat them listlessly.  They had been plucked at
  midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them.  A long
  line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red
  roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge,
  jade-green piles of vegetables.  Under the portico, with its grey,
  sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,
  waiting for the auction to be over.  Others crowded round the swinging
  doors of the coffee-house in the piazza.  The heavy cart-horses slipped
  and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.
  Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks.  Iris-necked
  and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
  
  After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.  For a few
  moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent
  square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.
  The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
  silver against it.  From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke
  was rising.  It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
  
  In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that
  hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance,
  lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals
  of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.  He turned them out and,
  having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library
  towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the
  ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had
  decorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries
  that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal.  As
  he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait
  Basil Hallward had painted of him.  He started back as if in surprise.
  Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled.  After he
  had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate.
  Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it.  In
  the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk
  blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed.  The
  expression looked different.  One would have said that there was a
  touch of cruelty in the mouth.  It was certainly strange.
  
  He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind.  The
  bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky
  corners, where they lay shuddering.  But the strange expression that he
  had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be
  more intensified even.  The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the
  lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking
  into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
  
  He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory
  Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced hurriedly
  into its polished depths.  No line like that warped his red lips.  What
  did it mean?
  
  He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
  again.  There were no signs of any change when he looked into the
  actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression
  had altered.  It was not a mere fancy of his own.  The thing was
  horribly apparent.
  
  He threw himself into a chair and began to think.  Suddenly there
  flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
  day the picture had been finished.  Yes, he remembered it perfectly.
  He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
  portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
  face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that
  the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and
  thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness
  of his then just conscious boyhood.  Surely his wish had not been
  fulfilled?  Such things were impossible.  It seemed monstrous even to
  think of them.  And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the
  touch of cruelty in the mouth.
  
  Cruelty!  Had he been cruel?  It was the girl's fault, not his.  He had
  dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
  had thought her great.  Then she had disappointed him.  She had been
  shallow and unworthy.  And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
  him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little
  child.  He remembered with what callousness he had watched her.  Why
  had he been made like that?  Why had such a soul been given to him?
  But he had suffered also.  During the three terrible hours that the
  play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of
  torture.  His life was well worth hers.  She had marred him for a
  moment, if he had wounded her for an age.  Besides, women were better
  suited to bear sorrow than men.  They lived on their emotions.  They
  only thought of their emotions.  When they took lovers, it was merely
  to have some one with whom they could have scenes.  Lord Henry had told
  him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.  Why should he trouble
  about Sibyl Vane?  She was nothing to him now.
  
  But the picture?  What was he to say of that?  It held the secret of
  his life, and told his story.  It had taught him to love his own
  beauty.  Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?  Would he ever look
  at it again?
  
  No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses.  The
  horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it.
  Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that
  makes men mad.  The picture had not changed.  It was folly to think so.
  
  Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
  smile.  Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight.  Its blue eyes
  met his own.  A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the
  painted image of himself, came over him.  It had altered already, and
  would alter more.  Its gold would wither into grey.  Its red and white
  roses would die.  For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck
  and wreck its fairness.  But he would not sin.  The picture, changed or
  unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.  He would
  resist temptation.  He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at
  any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil
  Hallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for
  impossible things.  He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,
  marry her, try to love her again.  Yes, it was his duty to do so.  She
  must have suffered more than he had.  Poor child!  He had been selfish
  and cruel to her.  The fascination that she had exercised over him
  would return.  They would be happy together.  His life with her would
  be beautiful and pure.
  
  He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the
  portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it.  "How horrible!" he murmured
  to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it.  When he
  stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath.  The fresh morning
  air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions.  He thought only of
  Sibyl.  A faint echo of his love came back to him.  He repeated her
  name over and over again.  The birds that were singing in the
  dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 6 & 7
target: Lord Henry and Basil Hallward discuss Dorian's engagement at the painter's house. They are planning to dine with Dorian before going to see Sibyl's performance that night. Basil can't believe that Dorian is really engaged, saying that Dorian "is far too sensible" to make such a rash decision. To this, Henry replies that "Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then." Basil is taken aback by Henry's detached, artistic fascination with Dorian's life. The artist disapproves of Dorian's actions, and is worried about the boy's emotional health; Henry, however, is delighted, knowing that whatever the outcome is, it will be greatly entertaining. Dorian arrives, insisting that he be congratulated. Basil says that was hurt to hear about the engagement from Henry, and not from Dorian himself. Henry quickly changes the subject. Dorian wants Basil to approve of his actions, saying "I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays?" Basil reluctantly agrees with Dorian. When Henry cynically remarks about the business-like nature of marriage, Basil objects, saying that Dorian "is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon anyone. His nature is too fine for that." Henry continues to philosophize about the nature of women and how they act when in love. To him, "Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them." Dorian is sure that Sibyl's acting will put an end to Henry's cynicism and reconcile all disagreements between the three men. When they see her perform, they will be too overwhelmed by her beauty to consider anything else. The three men leave to see the play, Romeo and Juliet. The theater is surprisingly crowded that night. Once seated in their box, Lord Henry observes the obnoxious, unrefined behavior of the lower-class theatergoers. Basil comforts Dorian against Henry's cynicism. The play begins, and they all note that the orchestra is terrible. Finally, Sibyl appears on stage. She looks beautiful, but acts terribly. Her voice is exquisite, but "from the point of view of tone" is "absolutely false." Dorian is horrified and confused. The other two men are disappointed, but are too polite to make any remarks. Her performance, usually the one saving grace in the theater's otherwise dreadful productions, only gets worse as the play progresses. After the second act, the audience hisses, and Dorian's guests stand to leave. Basil tries to comfort the boy, saying that Sibyl must be ill, and that he shouldn't be upset, since "Love is a more wonderful thing than art" anyway, to which Henry replies that "They are both simply forms of imitation". Dorian is inconsolable. Henry tells him to cheer up, since "the secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming." The two men leave, and Dorian forces himself to suffer through the rest of the performance. Afterwards, he rushes backstage to confront Sibyl. She is delighted to see him and surprised at his anger, since she had assumed that he would know the reason for her terrible performance. When he demands to be told why she performed badly, she tells him that having met him, she can no longer believe in the theater. Before Dorian, she says, "acting was the one reality of my life," and now he has "freed my soul from prison" and "taught me what reality really is." Having experienced true love, she says, "it would be profanation for me to play at being in love." Dorian is horrified, disgusted, and completely unable to love her anymore. She can't believe it, and when he pulls away from her touch, she falls to the floor, groveling at his feet. Dorian feels repulsion rather than empathy, and leaves her sobbing on the floor. Strangely numb and unable to come to terms with Sibyl's lost talent or his unexpected callousness towards her, Dorian aimlessly wanders the city until dawn. He returns home, where he happens to glance at Basil's portrait, and is puzzled to find that the facial expression is slightly different: there seems to be "a touch of cruelty in the mouth." He rubs his eyes and changes the lighting, but is certain that the picture has changed. The cruelty in the expression reminds him of his cruelty to Sibyl, but he feels wronged for the misery that she has caused him with her bad acting, and consoles himself by thinking that "women were better suited to bear sorrow than men...When they took lovers, it was merely to have someone with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were." Unable to make any sense of the picture's transformation, he realizes, after much pondering, that "It held the secret of his life, and told his story...changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience." Exhausted, he covers the portrait with a screen, and goes to sleep.
feat_summary_analysis: Dorian's relationship with Sibyl is the first major casualty of the devotion to sensual pleasure inspired by Lord Henry.  Valuing artistic beauty above all else allows Dorian to confuse his love for Sibyl's acting with a love for Sibyl herself.  She seems to be the perfect wife, because Dorian believes that she can offer him all of Shakespeare's heroines in a single body.  Indeed, Dorian remarks to Basil that he has "had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."  Dorian's love is a means of escaping reality; therefore, Sibyl's awareness of "what reality really is" is unacceptable. His resulting cruelty towards her is the first undeniable mark of the corruption of Dorian's character, and therefore causes the first visible change in his portrait.  He considers the aesthetic pain caused by her poor acting to be on par with Sibyl's emotional devastation at his rejection.  This belief is rooted in the sentiment expressed by Lord Henry before the trio leaves for the play, when he says "I love acting.  It is so much more real than life."  This statement is a clear indication of Henry's continuing influence on Dorian. We are also reminded of the statement in the preface that "Those who go beneath the surface  do so at their peril."  Dorian is not prepared to see the person beneath the surface of Sibyl's acting.  The preface also states that "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."  Dorian saw himself reflected in Sibyl's acting, because it was artful, but once her acting is revealed as artless, he can no longer see himself in it, and his feelings for her disappear.  What he thought was love for Sibyl is really a form of vanity; the pain of enduring her poor performance is actually the pain of not seeing his own reflection. In Chapter 7, Dorian undergoes several dramatic changes of character: he transforms from a devoted lover, to a bitter art critic, to a cruel betrayer, and seemingly back to a devoted lover.  This final change is, however, superficial.  He decides to do the honorable thing and marry Sibyl, but only when faced with the possibility of watching the beautiful image in the portrait succumb to degradation.  The corruption of Dorian's soul has begun in earnest, as reflected by the first visible change in the portrait. Interestingly, this chapter marks a turning point in the narrative: the focus switches from Lord Henry to Dorian.  Now that Henry's influence has begun to show its effects, the narrative no longer appears as concerned with Lord Henry himself.  At this point, the story begins to focus solely on Dorian as a corrupt figure.  At the end of the chapter, as Dorian feebly resolves to spend less time with Lord Henry and to marry Sibyl, he is acting more out of vanity than out of love or a true sense of morality; a fact that will be revealed when the portrait fails to change for the better. This is not the last time Dorian will fail to recognize the vanity that lies behind his decisions.