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 di