Pagina 197 de 490

In the dim arrested light that struggled through the

cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a

little changed. The expression looked different. One would have

said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was

certainly strange.

He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind.

The bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows

into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange

expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed

to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering

ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth

as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had

done some dreadful thing.

He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in

ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced

hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that warped his

red lips. What did it mean?