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 had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him.  He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so.  As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round.  Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise.  He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table and stabbing again and again.

There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood.  Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air.  He stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move.  Something began to trickle on the floor.  He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down.  Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened.

He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet.  He opened the door and went out on the landing.  The house was absolutely quiet.  No one was about.  For a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness.  Then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so.