Условие:
THE studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light\nsummer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through\nthe open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume\nof the pink-flowering thorn.\nFrom the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was\nlying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry\nWotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honeycoloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed\nhardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now\nand then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long\ntussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,\nproducing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of\nthose pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of\nan art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness\nand motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way\nthrough the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence\nround the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make\nthe stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the\nbourdon note of a distant organ.\nIn the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the fulllength portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in\nfront of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil\nHallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the\ntime, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange\nconjectures.\nAs the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so\nskilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face,\nand seemed about to linger there.
