Karl told him the whole story; and the mental process of regarding it
for the sake of telling it, revealed to him pretty clearly some of the
treatment of which he had been unconscious at the time. Heinrich was
quite sure that his suspicions were correct. And now the question was,
what was to be done next?
“At all events,” said Heinrich, “we must keep you out of the way for
some time. I will represent to my landlady that you are in hiding from
enemies, and her heart will rule her tongue. She can let you have a
garret-room, I know; and I will do as well as I can to bear you company.
We shall have time then to invent some plan of operation.”
To this proposal Karl agreed with hearty thanks, and soon all was
arranged. The only conclusion they could yet arrive at was, that somehow
or other the old demon-painter must be tamed.
Meantime, how fared it with Lilith? She too had no doubt that she had
seen the body-ghost of poor Karl, and that the vampire had, according to
rule, paid her the first visit because he loved her best. This was
horrible enough if the vampire were not really the person he
represented; but if in any sense it were Karl himself, at least it gave
some expectation of a more prolonged existence than her father had
taught her to look for; and if love anything like her mother’s still
lasted, even along with the habits of a vampire, there was something to
hope for in the future. And then, though he had visited her, he had not,
as far as she was aware, deprived her of a drop of blood. She could not
be certain that he had not bitten her, for she had been in such a
strange condition of mind that she might not have felt it, but she
believed that he had restrained the impulses of his vampire nature, and
had left her, lest he should yet yield to them. She fell fast asleep;
and, when morning came, there was not, as far as she could judge, one of
those triangular leech-like perforations to be found upon her whole
body. Will it be believed that the moment she was satisfied of this, she
was seized by a terrible jealousy, lest Karl should have gone and bitten
some one else? Most people will wonder that she should not have gone out
of her senses at once; but there was all the difference between a visit
from a real vampire and a visit from a man she had begun to love, even
although she took him for a vampire. All the difference does _not_ lie
in a name. They were very different causes, and the effects must be very
different.
When Teufelsbürst came down in the morning, he crept into the studio
like a murderer. There lay the awful white block, seeming to his eyes
just the same as he had left it. What was to be done with it? He dared
not open it. Mould and model must go together. But whither? If inquiry
should be made after Wolkenlicht, and this were discovered anywhere on
his premises, would it not be enough to bring him at once to the
gallows? Therefore it would be dangerous to bury it in the garden, or in
the cellar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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