The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (bill gates best books .TXT) 📗

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, where, in the hot weather, the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn 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 lyre to the heart of a crimson sky.

It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their gossamer 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 am 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 people who live underground.⁠ ⁠… But he is 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 of the death’s head! I can not 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 sigh, 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, in the open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds can not bear to look at the sun. I have never seen him by daylight⁠ ⁠… it must be awful!⁠ ⁠… Oh, the first time I saw him!⁠ ⁠… I thought that 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 is not there, my ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard⁠ ⁠…”

They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead 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; and 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 had 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 Mamma Valérius 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 him.’ 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