Chapter 7 — The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian takes Basil and Lord Henry to the shabby theatre, confident that Sibyl's Juliet will justify every extravagant claim he has made about her genius. The house is crowded, the manager fawns, and from the first lines something is wrong: Sibyl's voice is pretty but empty, her passion gone. Henry grows bored and urges leaving; Dorian insists on staying.

After the balcony scene fails and the pit hisses, Dorian goes backstage and finds Sibyl radiant. She says she acted badly because real love has made the stage feel false; she has seen through the hollow pageant and chosen him over art. Dorian hears only humiliation.

He tells her she has killed his love, calls her shallow and stupid, and says without her art she is nothing. She pleads on the floor; he leaves with exquisite disdain. Alone in the night he wanders to Covent Garden, then home, where he notices cruelty has entered the painted mouth.

The supernatural bargain becomes visible while he briefly resolves to repent, then tells himself Sibyl deserved it. Wilde shows admiration collapsing the moment a person becomes human instead of a heroine, and marks the first moral cost on the canvas Dorian hoped would stay flawless.