I, Van Helsing, with all my purpose and with my motive for hate.

I was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties and to clog my very soul.

It may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me.

Certain it was that I was lapsing into sleep, the open eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion.

For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.
Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one.