A month later, Dorian pays a visit to Henry, finding his wife at home. She is pleased to meet the man with whom her husband has become so preoccupied. After Dorian's comment that one is obligated to engage in conversation when bad music is being performed, she remarks that "that is one of Harry's views...I always hear Harry's views from his friends, that is the only way I get to know them." Henry (or "Harry") arrives, and his wife exits. Henry tells Dorian never to marry a woman as sentimental as his wife, a trait which he blames on the fairness of her hair.
Dorian delivers the news that he has come to share: he is in love with a girl named Sibyl Vane. She is an actress who plays all of the young leading female roles at a theater devoted solely to Shakespeare's works. The theater and the rest of the cast are of very poor quality, but Sibyl is apparently a brilliant actress and stunningly beautiful. Dorian went backstage to meet her after the third performance he had attended, and found her to be completely unaware of her own skill, seemingly unable to separate real life from that of the stage. He tells Henry that she prefers to call him "Prince Charming," because, as Dorian says, "She regarded me merely as a person in a play. She knows nothing of life." This purity and naivete is indescribably charming to Dorian: he has fallen madly in love, and tells Henry that he worships Sibyl and that she is the only thing that matters to him.