S DIARY

11 October, Evening.--Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this, as he
says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record
kept.

I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs.
Harker a little before the time of sunset. We have of late come to
understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar
freedom. When her old self can be manifest without any controlling
force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action. This
mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise
or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds
are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon. At first
there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened,
and then the absolute freedom quickly follows. When, however, the
freedom ceases the change back or relapse comes quickly, preceded
only by a spell of warning silence.

Tonight, when we met, she was somewhat constrained, and bore all the
signs of an internal struggle. I put it down myself to her making a
violent effort at the earliest instant she could do so.

A very few minutes, however, gave her complete control of herself.
Then, motioning her husband to sit beside her on the sofa where she
was half reclining, she made the rest of us bring chairs up close.

Taking her husband's hand in hers, she began, "We are all here
together in freedom, for perhaps the last time! I know that you will
always be with me to the end." This was to her husband whose hand had,
as we could see, tightened upon her. "In the morning we go out upon
our task, and God alone knows what may be in store for any of us. You
are going to be so good to me to take me with you. I know that all
that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul
perhaps is lost, no, no, not yet, but is at any rate at stake, you
will do. But you must remember that I am not as you are. There is a
poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me, which must
destroy me, unless some relief comes to us. Oh, my friends, you know
as well as I do, that my soul is at stake. And though I know there is
one way out for me, you must not and I must not take it!" She looked
appealingly to us all in turn, beginning and ending with her husband.

"What is that way?" asked Van Helsing in a hoarse voice. "What is
that way, which we must not, may not, take?"

"That I may die now, either by my own hand