0:00 CHAPTER I. As read by John Gonzales, www.johngon.com
0:27 Chapter 1
0:30 The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses,
0:37 and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden,
0:42 there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac,
0:46 or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
0:53 From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying,
0:58 smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wooten could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
1:08 blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden
1:14 of a beauty so flame-like as theirs.
1:19 And now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long two-source silk curtains that
1:27 were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,
1:35 and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily
1:41 immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
1:46 The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long, unmown grass,
1:52 or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June
1:58 holliox, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the burdened
2:06 note of a distant organ.
2:09 In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a
2:15 young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away,
2:22 was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden
2:26 disappearance some years ago caused at the time some public excitement, and gave rise
2:32 to so many strange conjectures.
2:37 As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a
2:43 smile of pleasure passed across his face,
2:46 and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes,
2:54 placed his fingers upon the lids as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious
2:59 dream from which he feared he might awake. "'It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,' said Lord Harry languidly.
3:12 "'You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too
3:18 vulgar. The Grosvenor is the only place.'
3:22 "'I don't think I will send it anywhere, he answered, tossing his head back in
3:28 the odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. No, I won't send it anywhere.
3:37 Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths
3:42 of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette not send it anywhere my dear fellow why have you any reason you do anything in the world to gain a reputation, as soon as you have one, you seem to want
4:05 to throw it away. It is silly of you. For there is only one thing in the world worse
4:11 than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set
4:18 you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.
4:29 I know you will laugh at me, he replied, but I really can't accept it. I have put too much
4:36 of myself into it.
4:39 Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with laughter. Yes, I knew you would laugh.
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