You cut life to pieces with your epigrams."
"You know nothing then?"
"What do you mean?"
Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray, took both his hands in his own, and held them tightly.
"Dorian," he said, "my letter—don't be frightened—was to tell you that Sibyl Vane is dead."
A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet, tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp.
"Dead!
Sibyl dead!
It is not true!
It is a horrible lie!
How dare you say it?"
"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the morning papers.
I wrote down to you to ask you not to see anyone till I came.
There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed up in it.
Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced.
Here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal.
One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.
I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre?
If they don't, it is all right.
Did anyone see you going round to her room?
That is an important point."
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!