Page 53 - Phantom of the Opera

to pray on her father's grave, and she told the voice that she was "Christine," Raoul interrupted, "we are wrong to wait until
going to ask Raoul to go too because she was annoyed with the tomorrow evening; we should go immediately."
voice's arguments with her about Raoul. "If he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him
.
She told Raoul that after the chandelier came down, she was unbearable pain .. and we risk being killed."
so happy that he was unhurt — she could see Raoul with his "Does he love you so much?"
brother — but she was afraid for the voice. Then, in her dressing "He would commit murder for me."
room, his voice came to her and commanded her to come. She "Why did you go back to him?"
explained that her room seemed to become longer and the "Because I had to. And you will understand when I tell you
mirrors made such a strange effect that before she knew it, she how I left him."
was outside the room. "Oh, I hate him!" cried Raoul. "And you, Christine, do you
"I cried out," she told Raoul. "A stone-cold hand seized my hate him too?"
wrist and did not let go. I was in the hands of a man in a large "No," said Christine simply.
coat and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. My mouth Raoul, in his confused emotional condition, accused Christine
.
opened to scream, but a hand closed it .. a hand that smelled of of loving Erik, a man who lived in an underground palace. She
death. Then I fainted." warned him that if she went back there, she would never return.
She told Raoul that when she opened her eyes, she was being Then, they sat in silence — the three of them: the two who spoke
carried through the underground cellars of the opera house. She and the shadow that listened, behind them.
was taken through dark passages to the edge of a lake. In the blue "Since you do not hate him, what feeling does he fill you
light, she could see a boat. The man took her in the boat across with?" asked Raoul after some minutes.
the lake to a great room filled with flowers and said, "Don't be "Horror!" she said. "He fills me with horror, but I do not hate
afraid, Christine; you are in no danger." It was the voice! Until him. He loves me! He has an enormous and tragic love for me!
that moment, she had not imagined that the voice and the Opera And when I told him that I could only hate him if he did not
.
ghost were the same. give me my freedom,... he offered it .. he offered to show me
"My anger equaled my amazement," she told Raoul. "I rushed the mysterious road. But then he sang and I was reminded that
at the mask and tried to pull it off. The man said, 'You are in no he was still the voice.
danger if you do not touch the mask.' He forced me into a chair. "The next day, he showed me his room, where he is writing
The adventure was extraordinary, but at least I was not in the a piece of music called Don Juan Triumphant* which he began
cellars of the Opera. I was, however, with a very strange and twenty years ago. And when I asked him to play some of it for
mysterious man who had succeeded in making those cellars his me, he said, 'You must never ask me that. Some music is so
home — under the opera house, five floors below the level of the terrible that it destroys all who approach it.' Then he suggested
ground. I began to cry and the man understood my tears because that we sing something from the Opera, but he said this in
he said, 'It is true, Christine! I am not the Angel of Music, nor a
genius, nor a host... I am Erik!'" * Don Juan: the name for a man who is a great lover of women.
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