"And now good-bye.

I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once again.

But that can't be helped.

I quite understand what you feel about it." As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself.

Poor Basil! How little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him! The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry.
There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.
He sighed and touched the bell.