Christine led Raoul to a door that opened onto the roof. Although it was winter, the late afternoon sun made it feel like spring. Christine and Raoul gazed over the rooftops of Paris, never suspecting that a shadow was following them.
"The time will come when you must take me away," Christine said. "And if I refuse, you must carry me off anyway."
"Are you afraid you'll change your mind about marrying me?" Raoul asked.
"I'm afraid of returning to live with Erik underground."
"I don't understand why you go back to him when you could be with me."
"If I don't return tomorrow, terrible things may happen." Christine gave her fiancé a look of despair. "I can't do it! He's too horrible! He'll drag me underground and tell me he loves me and he'll cry! Oh, the sight of those tears flowing from that skull!"
"Then let's leave at once!" Raoul tried to pull her toward the door that led below, but she stopped him.
"Not now." Christine shook her head sadly. "It would be too cruel. Let him hear me sing tomorrow night, and then we'll flee. You must fetch me in my dressing room at midnight."
Christine sighed and thought she heard someone sigh in return. "Did you hear that?"
Raoul shook his head and urged her to sit.
"These days I'm always trembling with fear," she said, "and yet we're safe here in the open air and the light. I've never seen Erik in daylight. That must be an awful sight! The first time I saw him, I thought he was going to die."
"Why?" Raoul asked.
"Because I had seen him." Christine said each word slowly, as if that would help Raoul understand, but it did not.
"Tell me how you first saw Erik's face."
"At first I only heard his voice and the accompanying music behind the wall in my dressing room. I thought he was the Angel of Music. I should have been suspicious, though, when he became jealous of you."
"Why are you still involved with him?" Raoul cried. "Now that you know the truth about him, why haven't you fled from this horrible nightmare?"
"Know the truth? Fled this nightmare? My poor boy, I wasn't caught in the nightmare until I saw Erik and learned the truth. Do you remember the night the chandelier fell?"
"How could I forget it?"
"I knew you were safe because you were in your brother's box. But I had no idea what had happened to the Angel of Music, who'd planned to attend the performance. I ran to my dressing room and called out, pleading with him to reply. Suddenly I heard a long, beautiful, familiar note—the beginning of the piece my father used to sing."
"The music we heard in the graveyard at Perros-Guirec?"
Christine nodded. "I cannot describe the effect that music had on me. It seemed to command me to come toward it. I stood up, and as I moved—this was the most extraordinary thing—my dressing room seemed to lengthen. It must have had something to do with the mirror because suddenly I was beyond the room in a dark space. And I had no idea how that happened."
"I saw something similar the night of the masked ball! So what is on the other side of the mirror?"
"I was in a dark passage, and I cried out. A cold, bony hand seized my wrist and dragged me away. As my eyes grew used to the dark, I saw my captor. He was wrapped in a large black cloak and wearing a black mask that hid his whole face. I tried to scream, but he put a hand over my mouth, and I fainted."
"Oh, my poor, dear Christine!"
"When I awoke, we were beside a bubbling spring. I was lying with my head on the knee of the masked man, who was bathing my temples with water. I asked his name, but he said nothing as he lifted me onto a white horse. I recognized it at once as the horse that had been stolen from the opera stables."
"But where were you?"
"I suspected we were in the cellars, but I wasn't sure where. The horse seemed to be plodding down a narrow, circular ramp. I'd wandered as far as the third cellar before, but I knew there were two more below. At last we came to a boat on a lake."
"A boat on a lake!" Raoul cried. "There's a lake underneath the opera house?"
"Yes. It's a man-made lake, created when the opera house was built on wet ground. Few people have actually seen it. The mysterious figure put me in the boat, and as he rowed across the lake, I fainted again. I woke up in a brightly lit drawing room filled with flowers."
"How strange!" Raoul said.
"Yes, but the strangest thing was how ordinary the room was—the furniture, the flowers, the paintings. And in the midst of the flowers stood the man, saying, 'Don't be afraid, Christine.' It was the voice!"
"The voice!" Raoul gasped. "You must have been shocked!"
"I was shocked—and angry. I rushed at the man and tried to snatch away his mask, but he grabbed my hand and said, 'You're in no danger as long as you don't touch the mask.' He knelt before me, and I began to cry because he wasn't the Angel of Music—he was a man. He said, 'It's true, Christine, I'm not an angel or a ghost. I am Erik.'"
An echo on the roof seemed to repeat the name. Christine shuddered, and Raoul started to get up. "It's getting dark," he said.
"Don't go!" Christine said. "We have nothing to fear except the trapdoors, and those are far below us. We must not arouse Erik's suspicions, and this is not the time to annoy him."
But Raoul stood. "Christine, something tells me we're wrong to wait until tomorrow night. We should flee tonight."
"I must sing for him one last time, or he'll be terribly disappointed. I'm terrified of him, and yet I don't hate him. He imprisoned me underground because he loves me." Christine patted the roof next to her. "Stay, and I'll finish my story about seeing Erik's face."