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 again. Then all was still.

Raoul ran back to his room and threw back the window. Christine's

white form stood on the deserted quay.

The first floor of the Setting Sun was at no great height and a tree

growing against the wall held out its branches to Raoul's impatient

arms and enabled him to climb down unknown to the landlady. Her

amazement, therefore, was all the greater when, the next morning, the

young man was brought back to her half frozen, more dead than alive,

and when she learned that he had been found stretched at full length on

the steps of the high altar of the little church. She ran at once to

tell Christine, who hurried down and, with the help of the landlady,

did her best to revive him. He soon opened his eyes and was not long

in recovering when he saw his friend's charming face leaning over him.




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