Erik knew that Giry had betrayed him—there was no other way the boy could have found them. Nonetheless, as the mob smashed his home and the fire spread, he went to find her. She was in her room, bend over a bundle of belongings, sobbing. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she shrieked.
"You are not dead!" she gasped, and embraced him. There was no time for surprise or reaction. Bad enough that he kept having to thrust away the memory of a kiss.
"You must hurry," he said, hearing smoke and tears in his own voice. "The building is on fire. Your daughter?"
Giry nodded. "Gathering her things. Help me." One large bundle and two smaller ones later, Meg was at the door. She gasped when she saw him, then averted her eyes.
"Good girl," Giry said. Erik tied the large bundle to his back and carried another. He had nothing but his own tattered clothing, not even a mask.
Giry knew all the alleyways and dark paths as well as he did, so he was content to follow, even as the city behind them glowed orange with the Opéra's burning. He thought he should mourn, everything having collapsed around him. He thought with a pang of his organ and his scores, but mostly it was as if his head was stuffed with cotton wool. He couldn't hold on to any thought. Meg stumbled—she was still in her toe shoes—and he caught her. He could have counted on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of women he had touched in his life, but this he hardly noticed. "I'm tired," he thought, and it seemed as if he had never had any rest, never would.
It was several blocks, or halfway across the city, or a year later that they stopped, and he waited outside in the street while Giry went inside the small inn and got a pair of rooms. He tried to shake his hair into his face and be invisible. Three bedraggled persons were no match for the gossip of the opera house burning to the ground—his worries were groundless. The bed was lumpy, but it seemed clean, and he sank onto it with relief. He still could not make himself think.
There was a soft knock at the door. Erik was startled to see Meg on the other side when he answered. She held a small white object in her hand. It was his mask.