After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.
For a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round
at the silent square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows
and its staring blinds. The sky was pure opal now,
and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it.
From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising.
It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge,
that hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall
of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets:
thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.
He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table,
passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom,
a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born
feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung
with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered
stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning
the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil
Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise.
Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled.
After he had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed
to hesitate. Finally, he came back, went over to the picture,
and examined it. 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.
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