nce of an American who so defined faith, 'that faculty which enables
us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow
that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a
little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock
does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep
him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think
himself all the truth in the universe."

"Then you want me not to let some previous conviction inure the
receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. Do I read
your lesson aright?"

"Ah, you are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now
that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to
understand. You think then that those so small holes in the
children's throats were made by the same that made the holes in Miss
Lucy?"

"I suppose so."

He stood up and said solemnly, "Then you are wrong. Oh, would it were
so! But alas! No. It is worse, far, far worse."

"In God's name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?" I cried.

He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed
his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke.

"They were made by Miss Lucy!"

CHAPTER 15

DR. SEWARD'S DIARY--cont.

For a while sheer anger mastered me. It was as if he had during her
life struck Lucy on the face. I smote the table hard and rose up as I
said to him, "Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?"

He raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his
face calmed me at once. "Would I were!" he said. "Madness were easy
to bear compared with truth like this. Oh, my friend, why, think
you, did I go so far round, why take so long to tell so simple a
thing? Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life? Was
it because I wished to give you pain? Was it that I wanted, now so
late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful
death? Ah no!"

"Forgive me," said I.

He went on, "My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the
breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But
even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at
once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we
have always believed the 'no' of it. It is more hard still to accept
so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. Tonight I go
to prov