He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the
distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was
this affection distressed? That was what he wished to know and what
was irritating him. "When you saw me in your dressing-room, was that the first time you
noticed me, Christine?" She was incapable of lying. "No," she said, "I had seen you several times in your brother's box. And also on the stage." "I thought so!" said Raoul, compressing his lips. "But then why, when
you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued
your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know
me and also why did you laugh?" The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul
without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden
quarrel which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had
resolved to speak words of gentleness, love and submission to
Christine. A husband, a lover with all rights, would talk no
differently to a wife, a mistress who had offended him. But he had
gone too far and saw no other way out of the ridiculous position than
to behave odiously. "You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will
answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was
in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you
could be interested in any one else!" "If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if
any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you
to leave the room!" "Yes, so that you might remain with the other!" "What are you saying, monsieur?" asked the girl excitedly. "And to
what other do you refer?" "To the man to whom you said, 'I sing only for you! ... to-night I gave
you my soul and I am dead!'" Christine seized Raoul's arm and clutched it with a strength which no
one would have suspected in so frail a creature. "Then you were listening behind the door?" "Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."

"You heard what?" And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raoul's arm. "He said to you, 'Christine, you must love me!'" At these words, a deathly pallor spread over Christine's face, dark
rings formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of
swooning. Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine
had overcome her passing faintness and said, in a low voice:

"Go on! Go on! Tell me all you heard!" At an utter loss to understand, Raoul answered:  "I heard him reply,
when you said you had given him your soul, 'Your soul is a beautiful
thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a
gift. The angels wept tonight.'" Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable
emotion. Her eyes stared before her like a madwoman's. Raoul was
terror-stricken. But suddenly Christine's eyes moistened and two great
tears trickled, like two pearls, down her ivory cheeks. "Christine!" "Raoul!" The young man tried to take her in his arms, but she escaped and fled
in great disorder. While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wit's end
what to do. He refused to breakfast. He was terribly concerned and
bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet,
slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she
not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many
memories in common? He heard that she had had a mass said, that
morning, for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time
praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb. Then, as she
seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, was doing
nothing there, why did she not go back to Paris at once? Raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church
stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions;
but, when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the
dazzling note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground. They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the
snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around
him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had
flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the
hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by
a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men's bones,
arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the
walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened
in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton
churches. Raoul said a prayer for Daae and then, painfully impressed by all those
eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat
down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with
the evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel
the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little
Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had
never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a
little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at
the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind him said:

"Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?" It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his
mouth. "Listen, Raoul. I have decided to tell you something serious, very
serious ... Do you remember the legend of the Angel of Music?" "I do indeed," he said. "I believe it was here that your father first
told it to us." "And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will
send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been
visited by the Angel of Music." "I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed
to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting
the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph. Christine appeared astonished at the Vicomte de Chagny's coolness:

"How do you understand it?" she asked, bringing her pale face so close
to his that he might have thought that Christine was going to give him
a kiss; but she only wanted to read his eyes in spite of the dark. "I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the
other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor
on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel
of Music, Christine." "Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he comes
to give me my lessons daily." "In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly. "Yes, that is where I have heard him; and I have not been the only one
to hear him." "Who else heard him, Christine?" "You, my friend." "I? I heard the Angel of Music?" "Yes, the other evening, it was he who was talking when you were
listening behind the door. It was he who said, 'You must love me.'