Pagina 452 di 490

Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with

terror in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly

become too hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death

of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal,

had seemed to him to pre-figure death for himself also. He had

nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood of

cynical jesting.

At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him

orders to pack his things for the night-express to town, and to

have the brougham at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined

not to sleep another night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened

place. Death walked there in the sunlight. The grass of the

forest had been spotted with blood.