She took his hand, and looking at him through her tears, said hoarsely, “No, I shall not forget, for it is well that I remember.  And with it I have so much in memory of you that is sweet, that I take it all together.  Now, you must all be going soon.  Breakfast is ready, and we must all eat that we may be strong.”

Breakfast was a strange meal to us all.  We tried to be cheerful and encourage each other, and Mina was the brightest and most cheerful of us.  When it was over, Van Helsing stood up and said, “Now, my dear friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise.  Are we all armed, as we were on that night when first we visited our enemy’s lair.  Armed against ghostly as well as carnal attack?”

We all assured him.

“Then it is well.  Now, Madam Mina, you are in any case quite safe here until the sunset.  And before then we shall return . . . if . . .  We shall return!  But before we go let me see you armed against personal attack.  I have myself, since you came down, prepared your chamber by the placing of things of which we know, so that He may not enter.  Now let me guard yourself.  On your forehead I touch this piece of Sacred Wafer in the name of the Father, the Son, and . . .”

There was a fearful scream which almost froze our hearts to hear.  As he had placed the Wafer on Mina’s forehead, it had seared it . . . had burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal.  My poor darling’s brain had told her the significance of the fact as quickly as her nerves received the pain of it, and the two so overwhelmed her that her overwrought nature had its voice in that dreadful scream.

But the words to her thought came quickly.  The echo of the scream had not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sank on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasement.  Pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out.

“Unclean!  Unclean!  Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh!  I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement Day.”

They all paused.  I had thrown myself beside her in an agony of helpless grief, and putting my arms around held her tight.  For a few minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away their eyes that ran tears silently.  Then Van Helsing turned and said gravely.  So gravely that I could not help feeling that he was in some way inspired, and was stating things outside himself.

“It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see fit, as He most surely shall, on the Judgement Day, to redress all wrongs of the earth and of His children that He has placed thereon.  And oh, Madam Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that red scar, the sign of God’s knowledge of what has been, shall pass away, and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know.  For so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon us.  Till then we bear our Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His Will.  It may be that we are chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other through stripes and shame.  Through tears and blood.  Through doubts and fear, and all that makes the difference between God and man.”