Page 489 - DRACULA

Dracula

repulse he might not care to go again. There was also
another reason. Renfield might not speak so freely before
a third person as when he and I were alone.
I found him sitting in the middle of the floor on his

stool, a pose which is generally indicative of some mental
energy on his part. When I came in, he said at once, as
though the question had been waiting on his lips. ‘What
about souls?’
It was evident then that my surmise had been correct.
Unconscious cerebration was doing its work, even with
the lunatic. I determined to have the matter out.
‘What about them yourself?’ I asked.
He did not reply for a moment but looked all around
him, and up and down, as though he expected to find
some inspiration for an answer.
‘I don’t want any souls!’ He said in a feeble, apologetic
way. The matter seemed preying on his mind, and so I
determined to use it, to ‘be cruel only to be kind.’ So I
said, ‘You like life, and you want life?’
‘Oh yes! But that is all right. You needn’t worry about
that!’
‘But,’ I asked, ‘how are we to get the life without
getting the soul also?’

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