They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The painter was silent and preoccupied.
There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better
than many other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He
drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in
front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be
to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the
crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to
him that he had grown years older.