When I returned to my room, I realized that I had forgotten to put a shawl or robe over my nightgown. I blushed at my own carelessness.
Though my limbs still ached from the day's practice, I was no longer sleepy. I took the paper and pencils and sat down on the little sofa in my room.
I looked at the white paper and knew at once what I would draw. I sketched Erik sitting alone in the library, his hand to his face, Christine's ring on the chain around his neck, his mask at his feet.
By the time I had finished the picture, I was crying . I hastily put the picture away in the desk drawer to avoid staining it with my tears.
I sat down on edge of the bed and let the tears com for the first time since Maman's death. I knew for certain that I was in love with Erik. Not because of the little presents, not because he had taken me in when I was so lost and alone. Sometimes love needs no reason, no explanation. I loved him and could not do otherwise.
And he still loved Christine. I did not doubt that he would love her until he died.
Erik must have heard me weeping. He drew aside the curtain and dropped on one knee next to me.
"Marguerite, what is wrong?"
No, no! I could not tell him the truth. Nor could I lie to him. I did not answer him. I just shook my head and held back a sob.
"Poor girl, you're sick with weariness."
He gently pushed me down onto the pillows and drew the covers over me.
"Would you like me to stay here with you?"
I remembered that first night when I slept in his arms. I would have given my soul to repeat that, but I didn't dare.
"No, Erik," I whispered, "But thank you. For everything."
He left me then. He turned down the lamp and lowered the curtain.
A few minutes later, I heard the sound of his violin. A melody so soft and sweet that I might have been merely imagined that I heard it. But it was real and it was the first time I had heard him play it since he had repaired it.
I dreamed that I was returning from practice. I was alone; Erik had not come to meet me at the mirror and I was alarmed. I rushed down the steps in my pink slippers, my feet aching as they almost always did.
When I came to the lake, the boat was not there. On the other side, the portcullis was lowered and I saw no lights beyond it.
"Erik," I called. He did not answer and the echoes of my cry were absorbed into the shadows.
I decided I would wade across and see if I could get through the portcullis. I bent to unlace the torturing slippers.
At that moment, I saw the boat moving toward me across the lake. The dark figure that guided it was too small and slight to be Erik. It was a woman in a black dress.
"Meg Giry! Into the boat," she ordered., her voice sharp and her face impassive.
I meekly obeyed and we crossed the lake without light or sound.
The portcullis slid upward and we entered Erik's home. She lit a small lamp and held it high as if she wished to show me something. I looked around and saw that something was very wrong.
The candles had all burnt down to misshapen cascades of wax. Thick dust covered everything...the furniture, Erik's books, the organ. The violin lay on the floor, broken beyond repair. The black lace curtain was so ragged it was little more than a cobweb hanging limply across the entrance to the bedroom. The velvet coverings of my bed were threadbare and musty.
"What does he want from you, Meg Giry?"
I started at the sound of my childhood name. She saw my reaction.
"What does he want from you, Marguerite?"
"Maman, what do you mean? I don't understand."
"What does he want? Why does he keep you here? With Erik, there is always a price to pay."
"He asks nothing of me."
"And what do you want from him," she demanded.
I would not answer her. I knew that I could not have his love - that remained Christine's. There was nothing else.
I stared at my mother in silence.
"Meg Giry, you deserve better than this. I did not raise you to have you spend your life in a cellar, to be the companion of a living ghost. Are you mad, Meg Giry?"
"Maman, I am happy here. I will stay here as long as he allows me."
"Allows! What price, Meg? Think of it."
I took the lamp from her and walked away.
Curled up in the velvet bed, I tried to forget the dream. I knew there was no truth in my mother's warning. I knew it was just a dream born of exhaustion.
As I dressed the next morning, I saw that I was pale, there were blue-gray shadows beneath my eyes. Erik noticed, too, when I met him at the boat.
"You are not going to practice today.
An hour later, we were in a carriage. It was a clear, chilly morning and the leisurely drive took out beyond the edge of Paris. I looked across to my companion. Erik sat in the corner, a dark hat low over his forehead, shadowing his mask. To the girls of the chorus and the ballet rats, the Ghost existed only within the confines of the Opera House. What would they have thought it they knew that one of their number was seated with him in a closed carriage as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
For he did have something in him that made my strange life with him seem so right and proper. The most natural thing in the world.
He had not told me where we were going, only that I should take my sketch book and pencils.
The carriage dropped us off along a quiet wooded road. Erik said something to the driver and the carriage left us. Along one side of the road, there was a pair of old gate posts. A little path led from the gate posts into a grove of sorts.
Picking up my satchel and offering me his arm (for the frozen ground of the path was uneven in places), Erik led me into the grove.
Once we let the road, Erik seemed to relax. During the ride, he had been quiet and tense, as if he feared someone might notice him.
"You've come here before, haven't you."
"Yes," he admitted, "but never by day."
The path was long, curving through the bare trees before it ended in a clearing. At the far edge of the clearing, there was a small river, its edge laced with bits of ice. Cold sunlight sparked on the water.
Most of the clearing was filled with ruins, the remnants of an old stone building. There were stone walls, broken arches. I could see what remained of a garden...bits of paths and borders lost amid the dead grass. A statue lay tipped against the wall, the graceful figure of a woman with outstretched arms. The head and hands were gone.
To some, the sight of the ruins might have seemed desolate, but to a young woman who had been raised within the artificial domain of the Opera and who had rarely left Paris, it was a romantic delight.
Erik set my bag down on the remains of a sundial. He walked into the ruins, looking up at them with affection. He ran his hand fondly along the columns supporting a delicate arch and I remembered that he had an interest in architecture.
"Well, Marguerite, what do you think?"
As he spoke, he gestured at the ruins and his black cloak swirled about him.
"It's beautiful, Erik. Where are we? What is this place?"
He shrugged.
"I don't know. A convent, I think. It must have been destroyed during the Reign of Terror," he replied, looking at the forlorn statue with regret.
For the better part of an hour, we wandered the ruins together. I tried to picture Erik there, walking along in the darkness. And I wondered if he'd ever brought Christine there. I didn't think so. She was such a delicate little thing; I could not imagine that she would have enjoyed such an excursion, day or night.
I surprised myself by asking him if he'd ever shown the old convent to Christine.
My boldness seemed to surprise him, too. It was the first time that either of us had mentioned her name since the day I gave him her letter. For a moment, I thought he would be angry. To my relief, he was not.
"No," he said, quietly, "I never did. I didn't think she would care for it."
By now, we had come back to the sundial. I took the sketchbook and found a seat on a stone ledge just inside the broken arch. While I drew - or at least attempted to - the ruins, the river, the bare trees, the damaged statue, Erik continued to walk through the ruins, lovingly examining them.
Finally, he came back to me. Watching him stride across the deserted cloister, I thought I could hear my heart pounding, a dark figure against the silver of the river, the pale gray of the stone.
It took all my resolve not to tell him, then and there, that I loved him. I knew that if I did, everything would end. I was certain he would send me a way. His heart was still Christine's; I was just a poor abandoned kitten that he had taken in. I was a temporary companion for him, nothing more.
"Come, we must return. It's getting colder now and the carriage will be waiting."