Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twelfth chapter of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

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Today we'll be continuing the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Le.

Ro Challo's.

On this way they reached the roof.

Christine tripped over it as slightly as a swallow.

Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and the triangular pediment.

She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below.

She called Raoul to come quite close to her, and they walked side by side along the zinc streets in the leaden avenues.

They looked at their twin shapes in the huge tanks full of stagnant water, or in the hot weather.

The little boys of the ballet, a square or so, learned to swim and dive.

The shadow had followed behind them, clinging to their steps, and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly under the mighty protection of Apollo, who with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge liar to the heart of a crimson sky.

It was a gorgeous spring evening.

Clouds, which had just received their gossoma robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted slowly by.

And Christine said to Raoul, soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul.

But if when the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you, well, you must carry me off by force.

Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?

I don't know, she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion.

He is a demon.

And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan.

I'm afraid now of going back to live with him in the ground.

What compels you to go back, Christine.

If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen.

But I can't do it.

I can't do it.

I know one ought to be sorry for the people who live underground, but he's too horrible.

And yet the time is at hand.

I have only a day left.

And if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice, and he will drag me with him underground and go on his knees before me with his death's head.

And he will tell me that he loves me and he will cry.

Oh, those tears, Raoul.

Those tears in the two black eye sockets in the death's head.

I cannot see those tears flow again.

She wrung her hands in anguish while Raoul pressed her to his heart.

No, no.

You shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you.

You shall not see his tears.

Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once.

And he tried to drag her away then and there, but she stopped him.

No, no, she said, shaking her head sadly not now.

It would be too cruel.

Let him hear me sing tomorrow evening, and then we will go away.

You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly.

He will then be waiting for me in the dining room by the lake.

We shall be free and you shall take me away.

You must promise me that, Raoul, even if I refuse, for I feel that if I go back this time I shall perhaps never return.

And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another side behind her replied didn't you hear her teeth chattered?

No said raoul.

I heard nothing.

It is too terrible, she confessed, to be always trembling like this and yet we run no danger.

Here we are at home in the sky and the open air in the light the sun is flaming, and nightbirds cannot bear to look at the sun.

I've never seen him by daylight.

It must be awful.

The first time I saw him I thought he was going to die.

Why?

Asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking because I had seen him this time Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time.

There is someone in pain, said Raoul.

Perhaps someone has been hurt.

Did you hear?

I can't say, Christine confessed, even when he's not there my ears are full of his thighs still, if you heard they stood up and looked around to them.

They were quite alone on the immense Led roof.

They sat down again and Raoul said tell me how you saw him first.

I had heard him for three months without seeing him.

The first time I heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room.

I went out and looked everywhere, but as you know, Raoul, my dressing room is very much by itself.

I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside.

And it not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions like a real man's voice, with this difference that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel.

I never got the angel of music whom my poor father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead.

I really think that Mama Valerius was a little bit to blame.

I told her about it and she at once said it must be the angel.

At any rate, you can do no harm by asking.

I did so, and the man's voice replied that yes, it was the angel's voice.

The voice which I was expecting and which my father had promised me.

From that time onward, the voice and I became great friends.

It asked leave to give me lessons every day.

I agreed and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my dressing room.

You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what those lessons were like?

No, I have no idea, said Raoul.

What was your accompaniment?

We were accompanied by a music which I do not know.

It was behind the wall and wonderfully accurate.

The voice seemed to understand mine exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me in a few weeks time.

I hardly knew myself.

When I sang, I was even frightened.

I seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it.

But Mama Valerius reassured me.

She said that she knew I was much too simple a girl to give the devil a hold on me.

My progress, my voice's own order, was kept a secret between the voice, Mama Valerius and myself.

It was a curious thing, but outside the dressing room I sang with my ordinary, everyday voice and nobody noticed anything.

I did all that the voice asked.

It said, wait and see.

We shall astonish Paris.

And I waited and lived on in a sort of ecstatic dream.

It was then that I saw you for the first time one evening in the house.

I was so glad that I never thought of concealing my delight when I reached my dressing room.

Unfortunately, the voice was there before me and soon noticed by my air that something had happened.

It asked what was the matter and I saw no reason for keeping our story secret or concealing the place which you filled in my heart.

And the voice was silent.

I called to it, but it did not reply.

I begged and entreated, but in vain.

I was terrified lest it had gone for good.

I wished to heaven it had dear.

That night I went home in a desperate condition.

I told Mama Valerius, who said why, of course, the voice is jealous.

And that, dear, first revealed to me that I loved you.

Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul's shoulder.

They sat like that for a moment in silence.

And they did not see did not perceive the movement at a few steps from them of the creeping shadow of two great black wings.

A shadow that came along the roof so near so near to them that it could have stifled them by closing over them the next day.

Christine continued with a sigh.

I went back to my dressing room in a very pensive frame of mind.

The voice was there, spoke to me with great sadness, and told me plainly that if I must bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to heaven.

And it said this was such an accent of human sorrow that I ought then and there to have suspected and begun to believe that I was the victim of my deluded senses.

But my faith in the voice with which the memory of my father was so closely intermingled remained undisturbed.

I feared nothing so much as that I might never hear it again.

I had thought about my love for you and realized all the useless danger of it, and I did not even know if you remembered me.

Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you.

And I swore to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me, nor ever would be, and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love.

And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages.

Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were spent in a divine frenzy until at last the voice said to me you can now, Christine Diae, give to men a little of the music of heaven.

I don't know how it was that Carlota did not come to the theater that night, nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead, but I sang with a rapture I had never known before, and I felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body.

Oh, Christine, said Raoul, my heart quivered that night at every accent of your voice.

I saw the tears stream down your cheeks, and I wept with you.

How could you sing sing like that?

While crying I felt myself fainting, said Christine.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, you were by my side.

But the voice was there also.

Raoul, I was afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and began to laugh when you would remind me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea.

Alas, there's no deceiving the voice.

The voice recognized you, and the voice was jealous.

It said that if I did not love you, I would not avoid you, but treat you like any other old friend.

It made me seen upon scene at last, I said to the voice, that will do.

I'm going to Paros tomorrow to pray on my father's grave and I shall ask Monsieur Raul de Shegni to go with me.

Do as you please, replied the voice.

But I shall be at Paris too, for I am wherever you are, Christine.

And if you are still worthy of me, if you have not lied to me, I will play you the resurrection of Lazarus on the stroke of midnight on your father's tomb and on your father's violin.

That, dear, was how I came to write you the letter that brought you to Paris.

How could I have been so beguiled?

How was it when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the voice that I did not suspect some imposter?

Alas, I was no longer mistress of myself.

I had become his thing.

But after all, cried Raoul, you soon came to know the truth.

Why did you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare?

Know the truth, Raoul.

Rid myself of that nightmare?

But, my poor boy, I was not caught in the nightmare until the day when I learned to the truth.

Pity me, Raoul.

Pity me.

You remember the terrible evening when Carlota thought that she had been turned into a toad on the stage?

And when the house was suddenly plunged in darkness through the chandelier crashing to the floor?

They were killed and wounded that night and the whole theater rang with terrified screams.

My first thought was for you and the voice.

I was at once easy where you were concerned, for I had seen you in your brother's box and I knew that you were not in danger.

But the voice had told me that it would be at the performance and I was really afraid for it, just as if it had been an ordinary person who was capable of dying.

I thought to myself, a chandelier may have come down upon the voice.

I was then on the stage and was nearly running into the house to look for the voice among the killed and wounded, when I thought that if the voice was safe, it would be sure to be in my dressing room.

And I rushed to my room.

The voice was not there.

I locked my door and with tears in my eyes besought it if it were still alive to manifest itself to me.

The voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which I knew well.

It is the plaint of Lazarus when at the sound of the redeemer s voice he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day.

It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Paris.

And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase come and believe in me.

Whoso believes in me shall live.

Walk.

Whoso has believed in me shall never die.

I cannot tell you the effect which that music had upon me.

It seemed to command me personally to come to stand up and come to it.

It retreated and I followed.

Come and believe in me.

I believed in it.

I came.

I came.

And this was the extraordinary thing.

My dressing room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out to lengthen out.

Evidently it must have been in effect of mirrors for I had the mirror in front of me and suddenly I was outside the room without knowing how.

What?

Without knowing how?

Christine.

Christine, you must really stop dreaming.

I was not dreaming, dear.

I was outside my room without knowing how.

You, who saw me disappear from my room one evening may be able to explain it, but I cannot.

I can only tell you that suddenly there was no mirror before me and no dressing room.

I was in a dark passage.

I was frightened and I cried out.

It was quite dark but for a faint red glimmer at a distant corner of the wall.

I tried out.

My voice was the only sound for the singing and the violin had stopped and suddenly a hand was laid on mine or rather a stone cold, bony thing that seized my wrist and did not let go.

I cried out again.

An arm took me round the waist and supported me.

I struggled for a little while and then gave up the attempt.

I was dragged toward the little red light.

And then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face.

I made one last effort.

My limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a hand closed it.

A hand which I felt on my lips, on my skin a hand that smelt of death.

And I fainted away.

When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness.

A lantern standing on the ground showed a bubbling well.

The water splashing from the well disappeared almost at once under the floor on which I was lying with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask.

He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death.

I tried to push them away and ask who are you?

Where's the voice?

His only answer was a sigh.

Suddenly a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape beside the man's.

Black shape in the darkness.

The black shape lifted me on to the white shape.

A glad Naying greeted my astounded ears and I murmured Caesar.

The animal quivered.

Raul.

I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the perfeta which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets.

I remembered that one evening there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the opera ghost.

I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost.

Now, however, I began to wonder with a shiver whether I was the ghost's prisoner.

I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one.

You have heard about the opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?

Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Prophetta.

I made no movement and let myself go.

The black shape held me up and I made no effort to escape.

A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial.

I had the full command of my senses and my eyes became used to the darkness which was lit here and there by fitful gleams.

I calculated that we were in a narrow, circular gallery probably running all around the Opera, which is immense underground.

I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still large enough to hold the town.

But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away.

There were demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and if you come too near them they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces.

Well, while Caesar was quietly carrying me on his back I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small in front of the red fires of their furnaces.

They came into sight, disappeared, and came into sight again as we went on our winding way.

At last they disappeared altogether.

The shape was still holding me up and Caesar walked on unlead and surefooted.

I could not tell you even approximately how long this ride lasted.

I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair in the very heart of the earth.

Even then it may be that my head was turning, but I don't think so.

No, my mind was quite clear.

At last Caesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little.

I felt a moistness in the air and Caesar stopped.

The darkness had lifted.

A sort of bluey light surrounded us.

We were on the edge of a lake whose lead in water stretched into the distance into the darkness.

But the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf.

A boat?

Yes.

But I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing supernatural about that underground lake and boat.

But think of the exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore.

I don't know whether the effects of the cordial had worn off when the man's shape lifted me into the boat but my terror began all over again.

My gruesome escort must have noticed it, for he sent Caesar back, and I heard his hooves trampling up a staircase, while the man jumped into the boat, untied the rope that held it, and seized the oars.

He rode with a quick, powerful stroke, and his eyes under the mask never left me.

We slipped across the noiseless water in the bluey light, which I told you of.

Then we were in the dark again, and we touched shore, and I was once more taken up in the man's arms.

I cried aloud, and then suddenly I was silent, dazed by the light.

Yes, a dazzling light in the midst of which I had been put down.

I sprang to my feet.

I was in the middle of a drawing room that seemed to me to be decorated, adorned and furnished with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent and stupid because of the silk ribbons that tied them to the baskets, like those which they sell in the shops on the boulevards.

They were much too civilized.

Flowers like those which I used to find in my dressing room after a first night.

And in the midst of all these flowers stood the black shape of the man in the mask with arms crossed, and he said, don't be afraid, Christine.

You are in no danger.

It was the voice.

My anger equalled my amazement.

I rushed at the mask and tried to s***** it away so as to see the face of the voice.

The man said, you are in no danger so long as you do not touch the mask.

And taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more.

His humility gave me back some of my courage, and the light restored me to the realities of life, however extraordinary the adventure might be.

I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things.

The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets of which I could almost have told whence they came and what they cost were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing room quite as commonplace as any that at least had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the opera.

I had no doubt to do with a terrible, eccentric person who in some mysterious fashion had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the opera house, five stories below the level of the ground.

And the voice the voice which I had recognized under the mask was on its knees.

Before me was a man, and I began to cry.

The man, still kneeling must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, it is true, Christine, I am not an angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost.

I am Eric.

Christine's narrative was again interrupted.

An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her.

Eric, what echo?

They both turned round and saw that night had fallen, raoul made a movement as though to rise but Christine kept him beside her.

Don't go, she said I want you to know everything here.

But why, Christine?

I'm afraid of your catching cold.

We have nothing to fear except the trapdoors, dear and here we are, miles away from the trapdoors and I am not allowed to see you outside the theater.

This is not the time to annoy him we must not arouse his suspicion.

Christine.

Christine.

Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till tomorrow evening and that we ought to fly at once.

I tell you that if he does not hear me sing tomorrow it will cause him infinite pain it is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good you are right in that, Raoul for certainly he will die of my flight.

And she added in a dull voice but then it counts both ways, for we risk his killing us.

Does he love you so?

He would commit murder for me but one can find out where he lives one can go in search of him now that we know that Eric is not a ghost one can speak to him and force him to answer.

Pristine shook her head no, no, there is nothing to be done with Eric except to run away then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?

Because I had to and you will understand that when I tell you how I love him.

Oh, I hate him, cried Raoul and you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too?

No, said Christine simply no, of course not.

Why you love him?

Your fear, your terror all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind the kind which people do not admit even to themselves, said Raoul bitterly the kind that gives you a thrill when you think of it.

Picture it a man who lives in a palace underground and he gave a leery then you want me to go back there?

Said the young girl cruelly take care, Raoul I've told you I should never return.

There was an appalling silence between the three of them the two who spoke and the shadow that listened behind them before answering that, said Raoul at last, speaking very slowly, I should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not hate him.

With horror, she said, that is the terrible thing about it he fills me with horror and I do not hate him.

How can I hate him, Raoul?

Think of Eric at my feet, in the house, on the lake, underground he accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness, he confesses his cheat.

He loves me.

He lays at my feet in immense and tragic love.

He carried me off for love.

He has imprisoned me with him underground for love.

But he respects me, he crawls.

He Moans he Weeps and when I stood up Raoul and told him that I could only despise him if he did not then and there gave me my liberty, he offered it.

He offered to show me the mysterious road only only heroes too.

And I was made to remember that though he was not an angel, nor a ghost nor a genius, he remained the voice, for he sang and I listened and stayed.

That night we did not exchange another word.

He sang me to sleep.

When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished little bedroom with an ordinary mahogany bedstead lit by a lamp, standing on the marble top of an old Louis Philippe chest of drawers.

I soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led to a very comfortable bathroom.

On returning to the bedroom, I saw on the chest of drawers a note in red ink which said my dear Christine, you need have no concern as to your fate.

You have no better nor more respectful friend in the world than myself.

You are alone at present in this home which is yours.

I'm going out shopping to fetch all the things that you can need.

I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a mat man.

I ran round my little apartment looking for a way to escape which I could not find.

I upgraded myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me to fall into the trap.

I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time.

This was the state of mind in which Eric found me.

After giving three taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not noticed and which he left open.

He had his arms full of boxes and parcels and arranged them on the bed in a leisurely fashion while I overwhelmed him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask if it covered the face of an honest man.

He replied serenely, you shall never see Eric's face.

And he reproached me with not having finished dressing at that time of day.

He was good enough to tell me that it was 02:00 in the afternoon.

He said he would give me half an hour and while he spoke, wound up my watch and said it for me.

After which he asked me to come to the dining room, where a nice lunch was waiting for us.

I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bathroom.

When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, eric said that he loved me but that he would never tell me so except when I allowed him and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music.

What do you mean by the rest of the time?

I asked.

Five days, he said, with decision.

I asked him if.

I should then be free.

And he said you will be free, Christine, for when those five days have passed you will have learned not to see me.

And then from time to time you will come to see your poor Eric.

He pointed to a chair opposite him at a small table and I sat down, feeling greatly perturbed.

However, I ate a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and drank half a glass of Toquet which he had himself, he told me, brought from the Conesberg sellers.

Erik did not eat or drink.

I asked him what his nationality was and if that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian origin.

He said that he had no name and no country, and that he had taken the name of Eric by accident.

After lunch he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat.

But I snatched away my hand and gave a cry.

What I had touched was cold and at the same time boney, and I remembered that his hand smelt of death.

Oh, forgive me, he moaned, and he opened a door before me.

This is my bedroom, if you care to see it.

It is rather curious.

His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation.

I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person.

The walls were all hung with black, but instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funeral upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the dai's array many times repeated in the middle of the room with a canopy from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff and under the canopy, an open coffin.

That is where I sleep, said Eric.

One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.

The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head.

Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls.

On the desk was a music book covered with red notes.

I asked Leave to look at it and read dawn one Triumphant.

Yes, he said, I compose sometimes.

I began that work 20 years ago.

When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.

You must work at it as seldom as you can, I said.

He replied I sometimes work at it for 14 days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.

Will you play me something out of your Don One Triumphant?

I asked, thinking to please him.

You must never ask me that, he said in a gloomy voice.

I will play you Mozart if you like, which will only make you weep.

But my dawn won.

Christine burns, and yet he is not struck by fire from heaven.

Thereupon we returned to the drawing room I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment.

I was going to remark upon this, but Eric had already sat down to the piano.

He said you see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it.

Fortunately, you've not come to that music yet for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris.

Let us sing something from the opera Christine Daie.

He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me.

What did you do?

I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words.

We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us.

I sang destimona with a despair a terror which I had never displayed before.

As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note.

Love, jealousy, hatred burst out around us in harrowing cries.

Eric's black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Mora Venice.

He was a fellow himself.

Suddenly I felt a need to see beneath the mask.

I wanted to know the face of the voice and with a movement which I was utterly unable to control sliftly my fingers tore away the mask.

Horror.

Horror.

Christine stopped at the thought of the vision that had scared her while the echoes of the night which had repeated the name of Eric now thrice moaned to the cry horror.

Horror.

Horror.

Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely raised their eyes to the stars that shone in a clear and peaceful sky.

Raoul said, strange Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of plaintive sounds.

One would think that it was sorrowing with us.

When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of lamentations.

She took Raoul's protecting hands and hers and with a long shiver continued yes, if I lived to be a hundred I should always hear the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes.

Raoul, you have seen death's heads when they have been dried and withered by the centuries.

And perhaps if you were not the victim of a nightmare you saw his death's head at Paris and then you saw Red Death stalking about at the last masked ball.

But all those deaths head were motionless and their dumb horror was not alive.

But imagine, if you can red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in order to express with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose and its mouth the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon and not array of light from the sockets.

For as I learned later, you cannot see his blazing eyes except in the dark.

I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth and as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me.

Leaning over me, he cried, look.

You want to see?

See.

Feast your eyes.

Glut your soul on my cursed ugliness.

Look at Eric's face.

Now you know the face of the voice.

You were not content to hear me, eh?

You wanted to know what I looked like.

Oh, you women are so inquisitive.

Well, are you satisfied?

I'm a very goodlooking fellow, eh?

When a woman has seen me as you have, she belongs to me.

She loves me forever.

I am a kind of dawn one, you know.

And drawing himself up to his full height with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, look at me.

I am dawn one, triumphant.

And when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair.

Enough, enough.

Cried Raoul.

I will kill him.

In heaven's name, Christine, tell me where the dining room on the lake is.

I must kill him.

I'll be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know.

Yes, I want to know how and why you went back.

I must know.

But in any case, I will kill him.

Oh, Raoul, listen, listen.

He dragged me back by my hair, and then oh, it is too horrible.

Well, what?

Out with it.

Exclaimed Raoul fiercely.

Out with it.

Quick.

Then he hissed at me I frighten you, do I?

I daresay.

Perhaps you think that I have another mask, a and that this this my head is a mask.

Well?

He roared, tear it off as you did the other.

Come.

Come along.

I insist.

Your hands, your hands.

Give me your hands.

And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face.

He tore his flesh with my nails.

Tore his terrible, dead flesh with my nails.

No.

He shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace.

Know that I am built up of death from head to foot, and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you.

Look, I'm not laughing now.

I'm crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask, and who therefore can never leave me again.

As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back.

I know you would have come back.

But now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good, so I shall keep you here.

Why did you want to see me?

Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me when my own father never saw me, and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask?

He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs.

And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections.

Presently I heard the sound of the organ and then I began to understand Eric's contemptuous phrase when he spoke about the opera music.

What I now heard was utterly different from what I had heard up to then.

His dawn won triumphant, for I had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget.

The horror of the moment seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob but little by little it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable.

It intoxicated me and I opened the door that separated us.

Eric rose as I entered, but dared not turn in my direction.

Eric, I cried, show me your face without fear.

I swear that you are the most unhappy and sublime of men.

And if ever again I shiver when I look at you, it will be because I'm thinking of the splendor of your genius.

Then Eric turned round, for he believed me and I also had faith in myself.

He fell at my feet with words of love with words of love in his dead mouth and the music had ceased.

He kissed the hymn of my dress and did not see that I closed my eyes.

What more can I tell you, dear?

You now know the tragedy.

It went on for a fortnight, a fortnight during which I lied to him.

My lies were as hideous as the monster who inspired them, but they were the price of my liberty.

I burned his mask and I managed so well that even when he was not singing, he tried to catch my eye like a dog sitting by its master.

He was my faithful slave and paid me endless little attentions.

Gradually I gave him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking on the banks of the lake and to row me in the boat on its leaden waters.

Towards the end of my captivity he let me out through the gates that closed the underground passages in the rue Scribe.

Here our carriage awaited us and took us to the Bois.

The night when we met you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away.

Then at last, after a fortnight of that horrible captivity during which I was filled with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror, by turns he believed me when I said I will come back.

And you went back, christine groaned Raoul.

Yes, dear.

And I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing sob which he gave on the threshold of the tomb.

That sob attached me to the unfortunate man more than I am myself suspected when saying goodbye to him.

Poor Eric.

Poor Eric.

Christine, said Raoul, rising, you tell me that you love me, but you had recovered your liberty hardly a few hours before you returned to Eric.

Remember the masked ball?

Yes.

And do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul, to the great danger of both of us?

I doubted your love for me during those hours.

Do you doubt it still, Raoul?

Then know that each of my visits to Eric increased my horror of him.

For each of those visits, instead of calming him as I hoped, made him mad with love.

And I'm so frightened.

So frightened.

You are frightened.

But do you love me?

If Erik were goodlooking, would you love me, Christine?

She rose in her turn, put her two trembling arms round the young man's neck and said, oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips.

Take them.

For the first time and the last, he kissed her lips.

But the night that surrounded them was rent asunder they fled as at the approach of a storm, and their eyes, filled with red of Eric, showed them before they disappeared, high up above them, an immense night bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the strings of Apollo's.

Liar.

Thank you for joining Bite Out of Time books today while we read a byte of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is BRI Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of The Phantom of the Opera.

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