her shape, saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat
gives when taken unawares, then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's eyes
in form and colour, but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell fire,
instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant
of my love passed into hate and loathing. Had she then to be killed,
I could have done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes
blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a
voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a
careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the
child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast,
growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp
cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act
which wrung a groan from Arthur. When she advanced to him with
outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in
his hands.

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace,
said, "Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My
arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my
husband, come!"

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the
tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of
us who heard the words addressed to another.

As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell, moving his hands from his
face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van
Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden
crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face,
full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.

When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if
arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face
was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had
now no quiver from Van Helsing's nerves. Never did I see such baffled
malice on a face, and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by
mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to
throw out sparks of hell fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the
folds of flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely,
blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death, if looks could
kill, we saw it at that moment.

And so for full half a minute, which seemed a