So I was, leaning against one of the abbey's remaining walls, and observing moonlit scenery in a euphoric mood, when sweet Lucy first came into my sight. It was close upon the hour of twelve, as I recall, some three nights after my tempestuous arrival. I was roused from contemplation of moon, earth, and sea by the appearance at one corner of my vision of a single figure in some kind of long, white dress, approaching the churchyard along the lengthy flight of steps that led up from the town. I turned to observe this figure more directly and made out that it was a young woman perhaps not yet turned twenty, and rather slight of build, with a diaphanous fall of hair about her shoulders. I did not move. Though with my night-tuned eyes I could see her at a good distance, I stood myself in partial shadow and thought it unlikely that she would become aware of me even if she should pass quite near, as she seemed like to do if she remained on the path that she had chosen.
She was sleepwalking, I realized as she drew within a few score yards, sleepwalking barefoot and in a thin, white nightgown. The gown shimmered about her with the vibration of her stride, calling to mind the blowing of pure snow, or moonlight of the rare Carpathian heights. Her eyes, the rare blue of sunlit English skies, were open, but even had she been fully dressed I would have known she slept-I have a knowing in such matters. Fair hair, to go with such eyes as those; wild heart, which though I heard it as she drew quite near I did not yet begin to understand.
She passed my place of shadow and I thought she was about to go on farther up, into the abbey or around it, but suddenly her footsteps slowed. She halted, and turned so that she seemed to be looking straight away from me, and out to sea; and at that moment, with a small and scarcely perceptible start, she came awake. You, watching from where I watched, could probably not have perceived the change, so easy was it. Nor did she herself know clearly if she woke or dreamt, as her first words showed.
I am not one to doubt the existence of a sixth, or even sixteenth, sense. Too often have the breathing members of humanity surprised me with the quickness and acuity of their perceptions. Even before she had fully awakened Lucy's face turned round in my direction, and my motionless form, in shadow some ten steps away, was the first object which her eyes found in their focus.
She looked at me as calmly as if it were midday, and I no more than some peculiar, quaint grave marker to be studied. She shifted her gaze to the fleeing clouds; the shattered pile of the abbey, whose tumbled stones may have witnessed sights stranger than a vampire in their time; she gazed upon the intermittent moon; then she looked back at me. You will remember that I had been at work to alter my appearance, and I suppose she saw my hair crisp curling brown instead of sere and white, my face perhaps almost unlined.
"Why, then, I am dreaming still," she murmured. "Good sir, what do you in my dreams? I have but lately had three men ask for my hand; am I to hear another wordy proposal of marriage still? But no, you have more the aspect of some old Viking, wrapped in his cape, come to ravish me away across the northern seas." And without her face showing any fear she gave a long shivering shudder, an altogether delicious movement that began somewhere about her throat and undulated down until one set of white toes went out of sight behind the other.
"Perhaps more Hun than Viking, my dear lady," I said, and left my shadow to walk a little closer. "As to the ravishing, that will be largely up to you. But it appears to me that you have already made up your mind in that regard."
She did not draw back as I approached, although she grew a little paler than before. Her eyes, lidding as if toward sleep again, were fixed on mine. "I ask only that you do not smother me with words," she murmured. "I am weary, oh God, so weary, with all the words of men in waking life."
My fangs were aching in my upper jaw. Without another word she came into my arms, as smoothly and willingly as any wench that I have ever clasped to lips or loins. She trembled as I kissed her throat, and with my first touch above the jugular her knees were weakening. I led her to a bench nearby, and stood behind her as she sat, and bent to nuzzle at her neck.
A heavy clock somewhere below struck one in sullen tone. The warm salt richness of her life was trickling in its grateful radiance through my cold veins when I heard a name called: "Lucy! Lucy!" in a girl's voice that seemed to me far off, but was not so.
Lucy stirred beneath my mouth and hands, but when I would have raised my head to see who called her fingers knotted in my hair to clamp my parted lips against her skin. I raised my head anyway-drawing from Lucy a little disappointed moan-and saw and heard the other girl coming in our general direction from the head of the long stairs. Of course it was dear Mina, though I did not know her yet, and saw her only as a cursed interruption of my joy. She was hurrying forward purposefully, and had probably seen the two of us there on the bench; but her path led 'round St. Mary's church and for a few moments she would be out of sight again.
"Tomorrow night," I promised Lucy, holding her cheeks in my hands and looking down into her eyes, which were now almost closed. She was no more than half awake now-not from loss of blood, for the amount drained had been trivial to a healthy girl of nineteen. I saw unforced consent there in her eyes and heard it in her slowly calming breath. With women, of course, sex is far less localized anatomically than it is with most men.
By the time Mina came hurrying 'round the little church, and another racing cloud had fled to bare the moon, I was melted invisibly back into the shadows. Mina ran straight to where Lucy still half reclined upon the bench. Lucy's eyes were now fully closed in almost-self-convincing sleep, though her breathing was still heavy with the excitement of our embrace. Mina, murmuring maidenly endearments and expostulations, hastened to cover my erstwhile victim with a shawl, and stooped to put her own shoes protectively on Lucy's feet. I remarked to myself that this new girl, wearing a full robe over her own nightdress, was also attractive, though in a different way. Where Lucy was slight and dainty, the newcomer was sturdy, but yet graceful with her air of robust health.
As the girls left the churchyard, Mina leading her half-roused friend, I followed at some distance, wanting to discover where Lucy lived. I was somewhat puzzled to see Mina-whose name I still did not know-stop beside a puddle and daub each of her now-bare feet with mud; it came to me that she must be doing this in order that any chance passerby would think her shod. Why this should have been of any great importance I did not know; another vagary of the English mind for me to ponder.
After seeing the girls safely home and noting that they evidently dwelt in the same house I took me to an early rest and slept well through the day.
As for Lucy, Mina was relieved to note in the morning that she showed no ill effects from her night's adventure: "… on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she looks better this morning than she has done for weeks. I was sorry to notice that my clumsiness with the safety pin hurt her. Indeed, it might have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced… there are two little red points like pin pricks, and on the band of her nightdress was a drop of blood. When I apologized and was concerned about it, she laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it. Fortunately it cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny."