"Yes, Christine ... Yes ...
I at least know the name that you thought to keep from me for ever ...
The name of your Angel of Music, mademoiselle, is Erik!"
Christine at once betrayed herself.
She turned as white as a sheet and stammered:
"Who told you?"
"You yourself!"
"How do you mean?"
"By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball.
When you went to your dressing-room, did you not say,
'Poor Erik?'
Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you."
"This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de Chagny!"
"I was not behind the door ...
I was in the dressing-room, in the inner room, mademoiselle."
"Oh, unhappy man!" moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable terror.
"Unhappy man! Do you want to be killed?"
"Perhaps."
Raoul uttered this "perhaps" with so much love and despair in his voice that Christine could not keep back a sob.
She took his hands and looked at him with all the pure affection of which she was capable:
"Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even remember its name...
You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE MAN'S VOICE."
"Is the mystery so very terrible?"
"There is no more awful mystery on this earth.
Swear to me that you will make no attempt to find out," she insisted.
"Swear to me that you will never come to my dressing-room, unless I send for you."
"Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine?"
"I promise."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"Then I swear to do as you ask."
He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be patient.
Chapter XI Above the Trap-Doors
The next day, he saw her at the Opera.
She was still wearing the plain gold ring.
She was gentle and kind to him. She talked to him of the plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career.
He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest.
She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as a stage toward his coming fame.
And when he replied that fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows were only short-lived.
"How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?" he asked.
"Perhaps we shall never see each other again!
I may die during that expedition."
"Or I," she said simply.
She no longer smiled or jested.
She seemed to be thinking of some new thing that had entered her mind for the first time. Her eyes were all aglow with it.
"What are you thinking of, Christine?"
"I am thinking that we shall not see each other again ..."
"And does that make you so radiant?"
"And that, in a month, we shall have to say good-by for ever!"
"Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith and wait for each other for ever."