t
I then thought that I was the only one to hear his voice. Imagine my
astonishment when you told me, this morning, that you could hear him
too."

Raoul burst out laughing. The first rays of the moon came and shrouded
the two young people in their light. Christine turned on Raoul with a
hostile air. Her eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fire.

"What are you laughing at? YOU think you heard a man's voice, I
suppose?"

"Well! ..." replied the young man, whose ideas began to grow confused
in the face of Christine's determined attitude.

"It's you, Raoul, who say that? You, an old playfellow of my own! A
friend of my father's! But you have changed since those days. What are
you thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I
don't lock myself up in my dressing-room with men's voices. If you had
opened the door, you would have seen that there was nobody in the room!"

"That's true! I did open the door, when you were gone, and I found no
one in the room."

"So you see! ... Well?"

The viscount summoned up all his courage.

"Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you."

She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but, in a tone of
fierce anger, she called out: "Leave me! Leave me!" And she
disappeared.

Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very low-spirited and
very sad. He was told that Christine had gone to her bedroom saying
that she would not be down to dinner. Raoul dined alone, in a very
gloomy mood. Then he went to his room and tried to read, went to bed
and tried to sleep. There was no sound in the next room.

The hours passed slowly. It was about half-past eleven when he
distinctly heard some one moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the
room next to his. Then Christine had not gone to bed! Without
troubling for a reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound,
and waited. Waited for what? How could he tell? But his heart
thumped in his chest when he heard Christine's door turn slowly on its
hinges. Where could she be going, at this hour, when every one was
fast asleep at Perros? Softly opening the door, he saw Christine's
white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the passage. She went
down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above her. Suddenly he
heard two voices in rapid conversation. He caught one sentence: "Don't
lose the key."

It was the landlady's voice. The door facing the sea was opened and
locked