After his
twenty-fifth year, the stories about him became worse. He was sometimes away
from home for several days; He was seen fighting with foreign sailors in bars;
he was friendly with thieves. And in the houses of fashionable people, men
sometimes turned away when he entered a room. Women’s face sometimes went white
when they heard his name.
But many people only laughed at these stories. Dorian Gray was still a very rich
and fashionable man, and the dinners at his house were excellent. People agreed
with Lord Henry, who once said, in his amusing way, that a good dinner was more
important than a good life.
As the months and years passed, Dorian Gray grew more and more afraid of the picture.
He both hated it and loved it, and he became more and more afraid that someone would
discover his secret. For weeks he tried not to go near it, but he could not stay
away from it for long. Sometimes, when he was staying in friends’ houses, he
suddenly left and hurried back to London. He wanted to be sure that the room was
still locked and the picture was still safe. At one time he used to spend
winters with Lord Henry in a little house in Algiers, but now he no longer
travelled outside England. His fear grew stronger every year, and as time
passed, the face in the picture grew slowly more terrible.
