Everybody dies, don't they?

Everybody come back, isn't that so?

You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?

How do the dead come back, mother? What's the secret? Chapter 1

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses.

And when the light summer winds stirred amidst the trees of the garden,

there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac,

or the more delicate perfume of the

pink flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying,

smoking, as was his custom innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Watton could just catch the gleam

of the honey-colored blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous

branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flam-like as theirs. And now and then,

the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussar silk curtains that

was stretched in front of the huge window,

producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced

painters of Tokyo who through the medium of an art that is necessary immobile seek to convey

the sense of swiftness and motion.

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long, unmoan grass,

or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine

seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.

The dim roar of London was like the boudon

note of a distant organ. In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood

...