ers of the Angel of Music, in this domain of the Opera in which he
had set up his empire. And Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of
love and despair.

"Christine! Christine!" he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she
must be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the
monster had carried her. "Christine! Christine!"

And he seemed to hear the girl's screams through the frail boards that
separated him from her. He bent forward, he listened, ... he wandered
over the stage like a madman. Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit
of darkness every entrance to which was closed to him, ... for the
stairs that led below the stage were forbidden to one and all that
night!

"Christine! Christine! ..."

People pushed him aside, laughing. They made fun of him. They thought
the poor lover's brain was gone!

By what mad road, through what passages of mystery and darkness known
to him alone had Erik dragged that pure-souled child to the awful
haunt, with the Louis-Philippe room, opening out on the lake?

"Christine! Christine! ... Why don't you answer? ... Are you alive?
..."

Hideous thoughts flashed through Raoul's congested brain. Of course,
Erik must have discovered their secret, must have known that Christine
had played him false. What a vengeance would be his!

And Raoul thought again of the yellow stars that had come, the night
before, and roamed over his balcony. Why had he not put them out for
good? There were some men's eyes that dilated in the darkness and
shone like stars or like cats' eyes. Certainly Albinos, who seemed to
have rabbits' eyes by day, had cats' eyes at night: everybody knew
that! ... Yes, yes, he had undoubtedly fired at Erik. Why had he not
killed him? The monster had fled up the gutter-spout like a cat or a
convict who--everybody knew that also--would scale the very skies, with
the help of a gutter-spout ... No doubt Erik was at that time
contemplating some decisive step against Raoul, but he had been wounded
and had escaped to turn against poor Christine instead.

Such were the cruel thoughts that haunted Raoul as he ran to the
singer's dressing-room.

"Christine! Christine!"

Bitter tears scorched the boy's eyelids as he saw scattered over the
furniture the clothes which his beautiful bride was to have worn at the
hour of their flight. Oh, why had she refused to leave earlier?

Why had she toyed with the threatening catastrophe? Why toyed wit