Carmilla

by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

“sunlight personified. She warmed me where I had only ever been cold; she took what was fallow and made it fruitful. I did not know that it was possible. I did not realize my soil was not salted.”

The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold, she said. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life.

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.

It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her. Her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one forever.”

“I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.” How beautiful she looked in the moonlight! Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs that almost turned to sobs. She pressed in mine a hand that trembled; her soft cheek was glowing against my own. “Darling, darling,” she murmured, “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”

You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”