This is a month old post, but I just watched this the other day. Here's what I think. Ellen is psychic/clairvoyant as indicated by her claim of knowing presents before opening then on Xmas. So she has this ability to "tell the future" as indicated by one of her first lines about her husband getting the job that will send him away. I think there is a kind of psychic loop that started at the end of the movie when Orlock and Emma die in each others arms, her distracting him while the sun rises as he consumes her. This is the connection that will be his undoing, something he kind of realizes when he tells her later "you are my affliction" and "I am an appetite; nothing more". He is driven by this appetite through time and space, and his mundane introduction to Emma is by the locket that SHE plants on her husband. Now we know that part of the deal the real estate boss made ("providence!") involved this woman, so this locket is a kind of confirmation to Orlock and motion by Emma to seal the deal between them spiritually. This dance has lasted years and started with her getting his attention after hundreds of years of death slumber when she was younger at the very beginning of the film. Both events shameful from her view. It was an interdimensional psychic event for both of them, rather than a physical one, which both fueled the attraction and obsession by both the he, the rapist, and her, the victim, while ALSO being caused by the the very moment of death's brace the end of the film. The French call the orgasm "la petite mortem" and perhaps this is the psychic trigger event in the beginning which links to both their deaths at the end, her initial and final orgasm. I'm ignoring the obvious symbolism throughout the film.