Free Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

him ringing it. In a flash, the old valet swooped in and cleared the table. In another flash, he was gone.
    Dorian stretched in his chair and yawned again. He rubbed his eyes as if his head ached. It seemed he’d been going over and over a problem in his mind, sleeplessly, for days. Yet he really did look well. He looked beautiful, in fact. She was not surprised when he did not say the same of her.
    â€œYou look thin,” he said, speaking at last—his voice hoarse and dry as if these were the first words he’d spoken since waking. “I hate when you become thin,” he said, looking at her with black eyes. Rosemary had never seen them so lightless. And his tone was so begrudging. How at odds his unblemished face was with his manner! He was like a water lily: What one saw of him was the bright, vivacious beauty bobbing on the surface, but in the turbid waters below lurked unknowable slime and disease.
    â€œI’ve been eating heartily,” Rosemary lied. Eating had become a near-intolerable chore. She only bothered with it when her stomach began to gnaw and growl. Dorian dreaded the sight of a skeletal girl. When he’d sat for her he had often eyed her full figure with approval. Occasionally, he suggested that she could stand to gain several pounds. Whenever she was around him, she was so nervous as to devastate her appetite, but on the few occasions they had lunched together, she’d made a point of scarfing down everything her plate.
    She would have carried on fictitiously about how much she loved to eat, but Dorian had lost interest. He stared out the window that looked onto the back patio. Everything there was gray and wet. Rosemary was anxious. She both wanted his attention and wanted to get out of the dining room which felt haunted by Dorian’s . . . what was it, gloom?
    She stood up and clapped her hands.
    â€œShall we find the absolutely perfect place to hang your portrait?” she asked, and started toward the door.
    Dorian’s eyes followed her, but he made no move to get up.
    â€œCome on,” she said, suddenly excited to show him her work, knowing that it was all the more beautiful in its elegant frame. She held a hand out to him. He looked at it, stood up, but did not accept. Still, there was a promise as he stood that he would join her.
    He shadowed her down the stairs. She kept feeling the urge to look back at him, so heavy was the sensation of his gaze upon her, but she talked her way through it. The whole way down she chatted about how much she loved how the painting had turned out and how grateful she was that he had agreed to sit for her. She doubted Dorian was paying the least attention and was glad of it.
    She unwrapped and lifted it quickly, her arms still aching from lugging it across town.
    â€œWhere is your fireplace?” she asked of Dorian as he met her in the foyer.
    â€œWhich one?” he said.
    Rosemary laughed. Dorian did not.
    â€œAlright, where is the largest one?” she asked, switching out of her playful tone.
    Dorian raised his eyebrows in the direction of what appeared to be the main dining hall. Rosemary proceeded ahead of him.
    There was a magnificent marble table chaired for over a dozen, with matching Oriental vases all down it bursting with fresh flowers. Oh, how she would like to sit at the head of that table, Mrs. Dorian Gray! At the end of the room was the fireplace. It was lifeless of course, because of the season, but oh, Rosemary imagined it churned quite the fire in the winter!
    â€œWhat about up here?” she cried, leaning the painting against the mantle. No art dwelled there, and it was an ideal place for a portrait. Destiny , she thought. This painting is destined to live here, in the most splendid space of all .
    â€œDorian!” she called. Her voice boomeranged back at her in an echo that revealed her to be diminutive and frightened. She closed her eyes in an effort to conjure courage, and went on.