“All right, sir,” answered the man, “you will be there in an hour,” and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly towards the river.

CHAPTER 16

A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist.  The public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors.  From some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter.  In others, drunkards brawled and screamed.

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said to him on the first day they had met, “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”  Yes, that was the secret.  He had often tried it, and would try it again now.  There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull.  From time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it.  The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.  Once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile.  A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles.  The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.

“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!” How the words rang in his ears!  His soul, certainly, was sick to death.  Was it true that the senses could cure it?  Innocent blood had been spilled.  What could atone for that?  Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.  Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done?  Who had made him a judge over others?  He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.

On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step.  He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster.  The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him.  His throat burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously together.  He struck at the horse madly with his stick.  The driver laughed and whipped up.  He laughed in answer, and the man was silent.

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider.  The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid.

Then they passed by lonely brickfields.  The fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire.  A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed.  The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.