Pagina 40 di 490

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist

it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has

forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have

made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great

events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain,

and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place

also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and

your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you

afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and

sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with

shame-"

"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't

know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find

it. Don't speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to

think."