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They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee

standing. The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a

gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and yet it

seemed to him to be better than many other things that might have

happened. After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He

drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the

flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A strange

sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never

again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come

between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring

streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the

theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.

CHAPTER VII.