The Picture of Dorian Gray

A week later, Dorian dines in the conservatory at Selby Royal, where he converses with the pretty and married Duchess of Monmouth. Lady Narborough and Lord Henry are also in attendance. As they all carouse and engage in idle chatter, Dorian suddenly faints. After he’s revived, he refuses to rest apart from the company because he does not want to be alone—he has seen James Vane looking at him through a window. 

The next day, Dorian doesn’t go out. He worries himself instead with thoughts of death. He is terrorized by visions of James Vane, despite not being entirely convinced that he actually saw the man’s face and not an apparition from his paranoid and guilty conscience. A few days later, however, Dorian convinces himself that he imagined James Vane’s face in the window.

In better spirits, Dorian joins a hunting party that includes the Duchess and her brother, Sir Geoffrey Clouston. He strolls with Geoffrey, and they see a hare in the grass. Dorian asks Geoffrey not to shoot it, taking a sudden liking to the creature. But Geoffrey does not listen, and after the gun blast, not only is the hare’s cry heard, but a human cry as well.