grown thicker and poured into the room. Then it occurred to me that I
had shut the window before I had come to bed. I would have got out to
make certain on the point, but some leaden lethargy seemed to chain my
limbs and even my will. I lay still and endured; that was all. I closed
my eyes, but could still see through my eyelids. (It is wonderful what
tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.) The
mist grew thicker and thicker and I could see now how it came in, for I
could see it like smoke--or with the white energy of boiling
water--pouring in, not through the window, but through the joinings of
the door. It got thicker and thicker, till it seemed as if it became
concentrated into a sort of pillar of cloud in the room, through the top
of which I could see the light of the gas shining like a red eye. Things
began to whirl through my brain just as the cloudy column was now
whirling in the room, and through it all came the scriptural words a
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Was it indeed some such
spiritual guidance that was coming to me in my sleep? But the pillar was
composed of both the day and the night-guiding, for the fire was in the
red eye, which at the thought got a new fascination for me; till, as I
looked, the fire divided, and seemed to shine on me through the fog like
two red eyes, such as Lucy told me of in her momentary mental wandering
when, on the cliff, the dying sunlight struck the windows of St. Mary s
Church. Suddenly the horror burst upon me that it was thus that Jonathan
had seen those awful women growing into reality through the whirling mist
in the moonlight, and in my dream I must have fainted, for all became
black darkness. The last conscious effort which imagination made was to
show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist. I must be
careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one s reason if there were
too much of them. I would get Dr. Van Helsing or Dr. Seward to prescribe
something for me which would make me sleep, only that I fear to alarm
them. Such a dream at the present time would become woven into their
fears for me. To-night I shall strive hard to sleep naturally. If I do
not, I shall to-morrow night get them to give me a dose of chloral; that
cannot hurt me for once, and it will give me a good night s sleep. Last
night tired me more than if I had not slept at all.
* * * * *
_2 October 10 p. m._--Last night I slept, but did not dream. I must have
slept soundly, for I was not waked by Jonathan coming to bed; but the
sleep has not refreshed me, for to-day I feel terribly weak and
264