The girl grew white, and trembled.  She clinched 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.  Can’t you forgive me for to-night?  I will work so hard, and try to [41] 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 passions 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 to him.  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 with 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 had heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.

When the dawn was just breaking he found himself at Covent Garden.  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 wagons.  A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries.  He thanked