One November night Basil came to warn him about the stories that were told in London. "Show me your soul, Dorian," he said at last. "Come upstairs," Dorian answered, "and you shall see it." He unlocked the schoolroom and pulled the cloth from the picture. Basil looked, and a cry of horror broke from him. The face on the canvas was old and swollen and foul, and in the corner was his own signature. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he said. "What was the prayer of your boyhood? Let us say it together." But Dorian felt an uncontrollable hatred, as though the man before him were the cause of it all. He picked up a knife from the table and drove it into the great vein behind the ear, again and again. Months later, on a spring night, he stood before the picture once more. It was worse than ever. He thought that if he destroyed it he would be free. He took the same knife and stabbed the canvas. There was a cry, and a crash. The servants came up and broke in. On the wall hung the portrait, young and beautiful as on the day it was painted. On the floor lay a dead man in evening dress, withered and horrible, with a knife in his heart. They knew who he was only by the rings on his hands.