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"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to

himself, "murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little

throat with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all

that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden. And to-night I

am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup

somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic

life is! If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would

have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually,

and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here is the

first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life.

Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been

addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white

silent people we call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or

listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once! It seems years ago to me

now. She was everything to me.