us all."
I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of
delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me
till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was
in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the
nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a
bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw
perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent
over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness
which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck
she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in
the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the
red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went
her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and
seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear
the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips,
and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my
throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to
tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft,
shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my
throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and
pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited,
waited with beating heart.
But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick
as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of
his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened
involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the
fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes
transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the
fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I
imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His
eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, aseyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as
if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly
pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick
eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of
white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the
woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were
beating them back. It was the same imperious gesture that I had
seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in
a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring in the room
he said,
"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on
him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs
to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with
me."
The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer
him. "You yourself never loved. You never love!" On this the other
women joined, and such a mirthless,hard, soulless laughter rang
through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed
like the pleasure of fiends.
Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and
said in a soft whisper, "Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can
tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that
when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go!
Go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done."
"Are we to have nothing tonight?"said one of them, with a low
laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the
floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing
within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped
forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a
gasp and a low wail, as of a half smothered child. The women closed
round, whilst I was aghast with horror. But as I looked, they
disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. There was no door near
them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. Theythem, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. They
simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out
through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms
for a moment before they entirely faded away.
Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.I awoke in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count
must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the
subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. To be
sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes
were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My
watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it
the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But
these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my
mind was not as usual, and, for some cause or another, I had
certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof. Of one thing I
am glad. If it was that the Count carried me here and undressed me,
he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I
am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would
not have brooked. He would have taken or destroyed it. As I look
round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is
now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than
those awful women, who were, who are, waiting to suck my blood.
18 May.—I have been down to look at that room again in daylight,
for I must know the truth. When I got to the doorway at the top of
the stairs I found it closed. It had been so forcibly driven
against the jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered. I could
see that the bolt of the lock had not been shot, but the door is
fastened from the inside. I fear it was no dream, and must act on
this surmise.
19 May.—I am surely in the toils. Last night the Count asked me
in the sauvest 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. I would fain have rebelled, but felt that
in the present state of things it would be madness to quarrel
openly with the Count whilst I am so absolutely in his power. And