Dorian goes down to his country house, where he entertains a large party of guests, though all the while he lives in deadly terror lest Sybil's brother should trace him. During a _battue_ a man is accidentally shot by one of Dorian's guests. It is at first thought that the victim of the accident is one of the beaters but it turns out to be a stranger, a seafaring man presumably. Dorian goes to look at the body, and to his intense relief finds that the dead man is his assailant of some nights back. Back in London one night Dorian Gray determines that he will reform, and, curious to see whether his good resolutions have had any effect on the portrait, he goes up to look at it. No, it still bears the same repulsive look, and in a rage he stabs at it with the knife with which he had murdered Basil. A loud agonised cry rings through the house, and when the servants at last make their way into the room they find hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, while lying on the floor with a knife through his heart was a dead man "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage," whom they could only identify by the rings on his fingers. Such, shorn of all its brilliant dialogue and exquisite descriptive passages, is the story of "The Portrait of Dorian Gray," in its bald outlines. As an imaginative work it must rank high, and in spite of the fantastic character of the plot and its inherent improbability, it exercises a weird fascination over us as we read. That its author (more even in the treatment than in the plot) was inspired by Balzac's incomparable "Peau de Chagrin" is beyond question. In the one story we have a man purchasing a piece of shagreen skin inscribed with Sanskrit characters which, as each of its possessor's desires are gratified, by its shrinkage marks a diminution in the span of his life. In the other, whilst the original man remains outwardly unchanged, his portrait ages with the years and reveals in its features all the passions and sins that gradually transform his nature. In both cases the story ends in tragedy. The colouring of the tale is one of its most remarkable features. In passages of rare beauty Oscar Wilde gives us descriptions of jewels and perfumes, rare tapestries and quaint musical instruments. The catalogue of the jewels as set out by him deserves to be quoted for the marvellous knowledge of precious stones it reveals as well as for the exquisite description of them.