Dorian did not answer for a few moments.  He was dazed with horror.  Finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, “Harry, did you say an inquest?  What did you mean by that?  Did Sibyl—?  Oh, Harry, I can’t bear it!  But be quick.  Tell me everything at once.”

“I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put in that way to the public.  It seems that as she was leaving the theatre with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had forgotten something upstairs.  They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again.  They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her dressing-room.  She had swallowed something by mistake, some dreadful thing they use at theatres.  I don’t know what it was, but it had either prussic acid or white lead in it.  I should fancy it was prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously.”

“Harry, Harry, it is terrible!” cried the lad.

“Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed up in it.  I see by The Standard that she was seventeen.  I should have thought she was almost younger than that.  She looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting.  Dorian, you mustn’t let this thing get on your nerves.  You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at the opera.  It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there.  You can come to my sister’s box.  She has got some smart women with her.”

“So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,” said Dorian Gray, half to himself, “murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.  Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that.  The birds sing just as happily in my garden.  And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards.  How extraordinarily dramatic life is!  If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it.  Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.  Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.  Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl.  Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?  Sibyl!  Can she feel, or know, or listen?  Oh, Harry, how I loved her once!  It seems years ago to me now.  She was everything to me.  Then came that dreadful night—­was it really only last night?—­ when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.  She explained it all to me.  It was terribly pathetic.  But I was not moved a bit.  I thought her shallow.  Suddenly something happened that made me afraid.  I can’t tell you what it was, but it was terrible.  I said I would go back to her.  I felt I had done wrong.  And now she is dead.  My God!  My God!  Harry, what shall I do?  You don’t know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight.  She would have done that for me.  She had no right to kill herself.  It was selfish of her.”