ed seemed to
point that way, and here, on the very threshold of the Unknown, when,
through the door which I was pushing open, my eyes met only an expanse of
absolute blackness, all doubts which had ever been seemed to surround me
in a legion. I have heard that, when a man is drowning, there comes a
time when his whole life passes in review during the space of time which
cannot be computed as even a part of a second. So it was to me in the
moment of my body passing into the church. In that moment came to my
mind all that had been, which bore on the knowledge of my Lady; and the
general tendency was to prove or convince that she was indeed a Vampire.
Much that had happened, or become known to me, seemed to justify the
resolving of doubt into belief. Even my own reading of the books in Aunt
Janet's little library, and the dear lady's comments on them, mingled
with her own uncanny beliefs, left little opening for doubt. My having
to help my Lady over the threshold of my house on her first entry was in
accord with Vampire tradition; so, too, her flying at cock-crow from the
warmth in which she revelled on that strange first night of our meeting;
so, too, her swift departure at midnight on the second. Into the same
category came the facts of her constant wearing of her Shroud, even her
pledging herself, and me also, on the fragment torn from it, which she
had given to me as a souvenir; her lying still in the glass-covered tomb;
her coming alone to the most secret places in a fortified Castle where
every aperture was secured by unopened locks and bolts; her very
movements, though all of grace, as she flitted noiselessly through the
gloom of night.

All these things, and a thousand others of lesser import, seemed, for the
moment, to have consolidated an initial belief. But then came the
supreme recollections of how she had lain in my arms; of her kisses on my
lips; of the beating of her heart against my own; of her sweet words of
belief and faith breathed in my ear in intoxicating whispers; of . . . I
paused. No! I could not accept belief as to her being other than a
living woman of soul and sense, of flesh and blood, of all the sweet and
passionate instincts of true and perfect womanhood.

And so, in spite of all--in spite of all beliefs, fixed or transitory,
with a mind whirling amid contesting forces and compelling beliefs--I
stepped into the church overwhelmed with that most receptive of
atmospheres--doubt.

In