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 did in obedience to His Will.

It may be that we are chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other through stripes and shame.