'Erik,' 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 am thinking of the
splendor of your genius!' Then Erik 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 hem 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; toward the end of my captivity he let me out through
the gates that closed the underground passages in the Rue Scribe. Here
a 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 myself suspected when saying
good-by to him. Poor Erik! Poor Erik!" "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
Erik! 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
Erik increased my horror of him; for each of those visits, instead of
calming him, as I hoped, made him mad with love! And I am so
frightened, so frightened! ..."

"You are frightened ... but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking,
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 dread of Erik, 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 string of Apollo's lyre. Chapter XIII  A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover


Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing
eyes that showed only in the dark; and they did not stop before they
came to the eighth floor on the way down. There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were
empty. Suddenly, a queer-looking form stood before them and blocked
the road:

"No, not this way!" And the form pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the
wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form,
which wore a sort of long frock-coat and a pointed cap, said:

"Quick! Go away quickly!" Christine was already dragging Raoul, compelling him to start running
again. "But who is he? Who is that man?" he asked. Christine replied:  "It's the Persian." "What's he doing here?" "Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera." "You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we
really saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollo's
lyre, just as we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and
there would have been no more question of him." "My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo's lyre:
that is no easy matter." "The blazing eyes were there!" "Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took
for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the
strings of the lyre." And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her. "As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it
would be better to go at once. Why wait for to-morrow? He may have
heard us to-night." "No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not
thinking of us." "You're so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!" "Come to my dressing-room." "Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?" "Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did
not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here." "It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know,"
said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very plucky of you to let us play at
being engaged?" "Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, 'I trust you,
Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am.' Are people so
unhappy when they love?" "Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved." They came to Christine's dressing-room. "Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage?" asked Raoul. "You heard him through the walls here, therefore he can
certainly hear us." "No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressing-room
again and I believe Erik's word. This room and my bedroom on the lake
are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him." "How can you have gone from this room into that dark passage,
Christine? Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we?" "It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and,
instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the
secret passage to the lake and there call Erik." "Would he hear you?" "Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very
curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who
amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man
could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows." "Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!" "No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all." "A man of Heaven and earth ... that is all! ... A nice way to speak of
him! ... And are you still resolved to run away from him?" "Yes, to-morrow." "To-morrow, you will have no resolve left!" "Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that
understood?"