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.  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.

CHAPTER 4

Jonathan Harker’s Journal Continued

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.