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There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at

night, and they troubled his imagination in the day. The

Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning-poisoning by a

helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a

jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian

Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he

looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize

his conception of the beautiful.

CHAPTER XII.

It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth

birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.