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. Then 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
wish to Heaven it had, dear! ... That night, I went home in a
desperate condition. I told Mamma 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
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 with 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 Daae, give to men a little of the music of
Heaven.' I don't know how it was that Carlotta 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 reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in
the sea! ... Alas, there is 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 scene upon scene. At last, I said to the voice,
'That will do! I am going to Perros to-morrow, to pray on my father's
grave, and I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me.' 'Do as you
please,' replied the voice, 'but I shall be at Perros 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 Perros. 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 impostor? 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 the
truth! ... Pity me, Raoul, pity me! ... You remember the terrible
evening when Carlotta 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? There 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, 'The
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 Perros. And then the
voice began to sing the leading phrase, 'Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me
shall never die! ...'  I can not 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 an 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 can not. 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.