Bram Stoker

, what a wealth of sor­row in a few words! Poor Mrs. Westenra! poor Lucy!

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things

What I saw was the Count’s head com­ing out from the win­dow. I did not

I was not alone. The room was the same, un­changed in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the bril­liant moon­light, my own foot­step

Some of the “New Wo­men” writers will some day start an idea that men and wo­men should be al­lowed to see each other asleep be­fore pro­pos­ing or ac­cept­ing. But I sup­pose the New Wo­man won’t con­des­cend in fu­ture to ac­cept; she will do the pro­pos­ing her­self. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There’s some con­sol­a­tion in that.

I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a won­der­ful ma­chine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the an­guish of your heart. It was like a soul cry­ing out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be use­ful. I have copied out the words on my type­writer, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.”

Good night, every­body.

Last night the Count asked me in the suavest tones to write three let­ters, one say­ing that my work here was nearly done, and that I should start for home within a few days, an­other that I was start­ing on the next morn­ing from the time of the let­ter, and the third that I had left the castle and ar­rived at Bis­tritz.

He ex­plained to me that posts were few and un­cer­tain, and that my writ­ing now would en­sure ease of mind to my friends; and he as­sured me with so much im­press­ive­ness that he would coun­ter­mand the later let­ters, which would be held over at Bis­tritz un­til due time in case chance would ad­mit of my pro­long­ing my stay, that to op­pose him would have been to cre­ate new sus­pi­cion. I there­fore pre­ten­ded to fall in with his views, and asked him what dates I should put on the let­ters. He cal­cu­lated a minute, and then said:―

“The first should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June 29.”

I know now the span of my life. God help me!

He was very cool out­wardly, but was nervous all the same. He had evid­ently been school­ing him­self as to all sorts of little things, and re­membered them; but he al­most man­aged to sit down on his silk hat, which men don’t gen­er­ally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to ap­pear at ease he kept play­ing with a lan­cet in a way that made me nearly scream.