Both voices are synthetic. I designed them, auditioned them against the text, and keep them; where the breath falls is directed here, line by line.
Carmilla, chapter two
Two chapters in the room now, and the second one picks up the same night.
Le Fanu parts this off as his third chapter, “We Compare Notes.” In the house it reads as chapter two, because chapter one already carried you to the castle gate. What happens after the door closes: the drawing room with the candles lit, the servants nobody liked, the mother’s secret told in a low voice, and then Laura alone in the stranger’s room.
This is where the two voices finally share the page. Laura talks, worries, excuses, decides to like her. Carmilla answers. Twelve years earlier they each had a dream of the other, an iron candlestick, a room of empty beds, a face neither of them forgot. Laura wants to be sure it is only a strange coincidence. She is not sure.
Fourteen minutes, two seconds. The cast is the same as chapter one: Laura narrating, Carmilla speaking. Press play.
Le Fanu’s novel is in the public domain.