Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him!
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. Dorian has flashbacks to the innocence of his childhood when he enters the attic schoolroom. It is here that he locks away the portrait. The room was first used as a playroom when he was a child and then as a study when he grew older. He is somewhat disturbed that the rotting portrait is to be stored here among his childhood memories, but he decides that there is no other place in the house so secure from "prying eyes."