knees on the floor in an agony of abasement. Pulling her beautiful hair
over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out:--
Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must
bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgment Day. They
all paused. I had thrown myself beside her in an agony of helpless
grief, and putting my arms around held her tight. For a few minutes our
sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away
their eyes that ran tears silently. Then Van Helsing turned and said
gravely; so gravely that I could not help feeling that he was in some
way inspired, and was stating things outside himself:--
It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see fit,
as He most surely shall, on the Judgment Day, to redress all wrongs of
the earth and of His children that He has placed thereon. And oh, Madam
Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that
red scar, the sign of God s knowledge of what has been, shall pass away,
and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know. For so surely as
we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees right to lift the
burden that is hard upon us. Till then we bear our Cross, as His Son did
in obedience to His Will. It may be that we are chosen instruments of
His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other
through stripes and shame; through tears and blood; through doubts and
fears, and all that makes the difference between God and man.
There was hope in his words, and comfort; and they made for resignation.
Mina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old
man s hands and bent over and kissed it. Then without a word we all
knelt down together, and, all holding hands, swore to be true to each
other. We men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of sorrow from the
head of her whom, each in his own way, we loved; and we prayed for help
and guidance in the terrible task which lay before us.
It was then time to start. So I said farewell to Mina, a parting which
neither of us shall forget to our dying day; and we set out.
To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a
vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible
land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant
many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so
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