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CHAPTER I.

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the

light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there

came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the

more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he

was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes,

Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet

and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous

branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so

flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of

birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains

that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind

of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those

pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of

an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of

swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering

their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with

monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the

straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more

oppressive.