Читать книгу Dorian Gray - John Garavaglia - Страница 6

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skillfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he was deep in thought.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Wotton lethargically. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”

As the artist looked at the gracious figure he had captured in his painting, the smile pressed from his face and he hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he frowned, shaking his head. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”

Lord Wotton raised his eyebrows and looked at him in disbelief. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men were ever capable of any emotion.”

“I know you will laugh at me, Harry,” Basil replied, “but I really can’t. I have put too much of myself into it.”

DORIAN GRAY

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