So it is that she differ from all
other. Usually when the UnDead sleep at home," as he spoke he made a
comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was
'home', "their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was
when she not UnDead she go back to the nothings of the common dead.
There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill
her in her sleep."
This turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I was
accepting Van Helsing's theories. But if she were really dead, what
was there of terror in the idea of killing her?
He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for he
said almost joyously, "Ah, you believe now?"
I answered, "Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to
accept. How will you do this bloody work?"
"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall
drive a stake through her body."
It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman
whom I had loved. And yet the feeling was not so strong as I had
expected. I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of
this being, this UnDead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it.
Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?
I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he stood as
if wrapped in thought. Presently he closed the catch of his bag with
a snap, and said,
"I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best.
If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this moment,
what is to be done. But there are other things to follow, and things
that are thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know.
This is simple. She have yet no life taken, though that is of time,
and to act now would be to take danger from her forever. But then we
may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell him of this? If you,
who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on
the child's at the hospital, if you, who saw the coffin empty last
night and full today with a woman who have not change only to be more
rose and more beautiful in a whole week, after she die, if you know of
this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to
the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how
then, can I expect Arthur, who know none of those things, to believe?
"He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying. I
know he has
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