Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was hiscustom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweetand honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bearthe burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds inflight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-facedpainters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to conveythe sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through thelong unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of thestraggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London waslike the bourdon note of a distant organ. In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a youngman of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting theartist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, suchpublic excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures