you ... This anniversary and your sudden
appearance in my room at the Opera, the other evening, reminded me of
the time long past and made me write to you as the little girl that I
then was..."

There was something in Christine's attitude that seemed to Raoul not
natural. He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the
distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was
this affection distressed? That was what he wished to know and what
was irritating him.

"When you saw me in your dressing-room, was that the first time you
noticed me, Christine?"

She was incapable of lying.

"No," she said, "I had seen you several times in your brother's box.
And also on the stage."

"I thought so!" said Raoul, compressing his lips. "But then why, when
you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued
your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know
me and also why did you laugh?"

The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul
without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden
quarrel which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had
resolved to speak words of gentleness, love and submission to
Christine. A husband, a lover with all rights, would talk no
differently to a wife, a mistress who had offended him. But he had
gone too far and saw no other way out of the ridiculous position than
to behave odiously.

"You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will
answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was
in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you
could be interested in any one else!"

"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if
any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you
to leave the room!"

"Yes, so that you might remain with the other!"

"What are you saying, monsieur?" asked the girl excitedly. "And to
what other do you refer?"

"To the man to whom you said, 'I sing only for you! ... to-night I gave
you my soul and I am dead!'"

Christine seized Raoul's arm and clutched it with a strength which no
one would have suspected in so frail a creature.

"Then you were listening behind the door?"

"Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."

"You heard what?"

And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raoul's arm.

"He said to you, 'Chris