Ultimately it was my wife who decided Christine's fate.
I knew I wasn't a good man. Still I always believed there existed within me the capacity for goodness. If only I had love, if only I could be wholly and completely loved for myself, then I would not commit any other horrible act ever again. I thought I could be a good husband. Perhaps it was a delusion, but it felt absolutely necessary to invest in it, as though my sense of equilibrium—my very survival, even—depended upon maintaining that single positive projection of myself.
Now, I stood with a vial of slowly cooling poison in my grasp, realizing I was in fact absolutely dreadful at marriage. My task was complete. I could not make anymore progress toward a solution for the time being, as Christine was not scheduled to return to the opera house until morning. My sense of purpose diminished. Tension gradually left my knotted muscles, and my head cleared.
I fell to my knees before my wife's glass case, thinking apologetic words in every language I could recall. I peered in on her, pleading forgiveness for my increasingly neglectful behavior. I was being a very bad husband.
Her smile, of course, never faltered.
I wound the music box I had installed in her chest for the first time since my failed attempt to make her sing. I listened to the chiming melody, and I tried to imagine what she might say if she could speak. I had to consider her wishes. It was the sort of thing I supposed a good husband ought to do.
The artificial song appealed to me even less than it had all those months ago. The mimicry was quite close. I knew Christine's voice better than before, and still it was very near perfection. I concluded, then, that the poison I held seemed to clash with my wife's eternally serene expression, and the unique draw of Christine's voice was a highly specific alchemy of qualities which could obviously be dispelled with the slightest tinkering.
The situation, therefore, could be resolved without resorting to blunt-force destruction. I myself was rather fond of the immediate impact this particular formula had upon the throat, but I felt certain my wife would prefer a subtler, gentler method which would not cost Christine both her livelihood and her only admirable trait. Her voice would in all probability benefit from a little strategic refinement.
I put the poison aside and conceded to my wife's silent request. It was the sort of thing I supposed a good husband ought to do.