"You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to
her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear,
“Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because
I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear
heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of
my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you,
you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of
that cruelty, which yet is love; so for a while, seek to know no more of
me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me
more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.
From these foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent
occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my
energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I
only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her arms.
In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a
strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon,
mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a
“You pierce my ears,” said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears
with her tiny fingers. “Besides, how can you tell that your religion and
mine are the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals. What a
fuss! Why you must die—everyone must die; and all are happier when
they do. Come home.”
love growing
into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is
paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling.
I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a
trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain
occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance
of the main current of my story. But, I suspect, in all lives there
are certain emotional scenes, those in which our passions have been most
wildly and terribly roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and
dimly remembered.
Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful
companion would take my hand and hold it with a
fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and
fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover;
it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with
gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along
my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are
mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.” Then she has
thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes,
leaving me trembling.
“Are we related,” I used to ask; “what can you mean by all this? I
remind you perhaps of someone whom you love; but you must not, I
hate it; I don’t know you—I don’t know myself when you look so and
talk so.”
She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my
hand.
Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove in
vain to form any satisfactory theory—I could not refer them to affectation or trick. It was unmistakably the momentary breaking out of
suppressed instinct and emotion. Was she, notwithstanding her mother’s volunteered denial, subject to brief visitations of insanity; or was
there here a disguise and a romance? I had read in old story books of
such things. What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house,
and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance
of a clever old adventuress.
But there were many things against this
hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity.
