The Picture of Dorian Gray Large Print

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirredamidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of thelilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleamof the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulousbranches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; andnow and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silkcurtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentaryJapanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense ofswiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through thelong unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns ofthe straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar ofLondon was like the bourdon note of a distant orga