whinnied low as in joy, and licked at my hands and were quiet for a
time. Many times through the night did I come to them, till it arrive to
the cold hour when all nature is at lowest; and every time my coming was
with quiet of them. In the cold hour the fire began to die, and I was
about stepping forth to replenish it, for now the snow came in flying
sweeps and with it a chill mist. Even in the dark there was a light of
some kind, as there ever is over snow; and it seemed as though the
snow-flurries and the wreaths of mist took shape as of women with
trailing garments. All was in dead, grim silence only that the horses
whinnied and cowered, as if in terror of the worst. I began to
fear--horrible fears; but then came to me the sense of safety in that
ring wherein I stood. I began, too, to think that my imaginings were of
the night, and the gloom, and the unrest that I have gone through, and
all the terrible anxiety. It was as though my memories of all Jonathan s
horrid experience were befooling me; for the snow flakes and the mist
began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy
glimpse of those women that would have kissed him. And then the horses
cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as men do in pain. Even
the madness of fright was not to them, so that they could break away. I
feared for my dear Madam Mina when these weird figures drew near and
circled round. I looked at her, but she sat calm, and smiled at me; when
I would have stepped to the fire to replenish it, she caught me and held
me back, and whispered, like a voice that one hears in a dream, so low
it was:--
No! No! Do not go without. Here you are safe! I turned to her, and
looking in her eyes, said:--
But you? It is for you that I fear! whereat she laughed--a laugh, low
and unreal, and said:--
Fear for _me_! Why fear for me? None safer in all the world from them
than I am, and as I wondered at the meaning of her words, a puff of
wind made the flame leap up, and I see the red scar on her forehead.
Then, alas! I knew. Did I not, I would soon have learned, for the
wheeling figures of mist and snow came closer, but keeping ever without
the Holy circle. Then they began to materialise till--if God have not
take away my reason, for I saw it through my eyes--there were before me
in actual flesh the same three women that Jonathan saw in the room, when
they would have kissed his throat. I knew the swaying round forms, the
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