Chapter 7
For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he had e to look for Miranda and had bee by Caliban. Lord Henry, upoher hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he roud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet. Hallward amused himself with watg the faces i. The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked to each other across the theatre and shared their es with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing i. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.
"What a place to find ones divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine beyond all living things. Whes, you will fet everything. These h people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures, bee quite different when she is oage. They sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as ones self."
"The same flesh and blood as ones self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Lord Henry, who was sing the octs of the gallery through his lass.
"Dont pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I uand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must be fine and o spiritualize ones age--that is something worth doing. If this girl give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she strip them of their selfishness ahem tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been inplete."
"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I khat you would uand me. Harry is so ical, he terrifies me. But here is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five mihen the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have givehing that is good in me."
A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst araordinary turmoil of applause, Sibyl Vaepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at-- one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grad startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she gla the crowded enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through