I credit my recent fancy of italicizing and repeating phrases to reading too much Poe. ;)
XVII. "if you read this line, remember not the hand that wrote it"
The chandelier collapses in a magnificent display of destruction; the opera house burns as he drags her far downward. Again – again she has betrayed him, but this time before all. Why would she do such a thing? What has he done to deserve this addition of insult to injury?
Dimly he realizes that his beautiful opera is burning along with the rest of the theatre; his creation is dying in the flaming glory of his hatred. In a wild streak of fancy, he thinks that perhaps the inferno will not reach the pit, and that somehow his opera will be salvaged and his story told long after he is dead. They will remember him only through his music, knowing him for a hungry, tormented, brilliant soul, and they will appreciate what he has written. He had been well aware of the audience's reception to his music, but they were ignorant; they knew nothing of what it all meant. It is therefore to him a great loss – it contains within it what might have been.
