Ch 2 – Let's Not Argue

Raoul's mother received the two of us graciously, especially considering the state we arrived in. R.'s wound was tended to and we were both fed and bathed. I was put to bed in a magnificent room with a warm fire; R. stayed up talking to his family late into the night.

It soon developed that R.'s family did not completely approve of our match. I wished he had told me that at the time we had become engaged. Apparently a childhood infatuation with a musician's daughter was one thing, but marriage to an opera girl was quite another. As his family and I became reacquainted over the next three months, however, friendship bloomed, and I was most fortunate that they accepted me for myself.

I should have been blissfully content. Part of me was serenely happy and truly wanted to make Raoul happy, but part of me yearned everlastingly for that magical darkness on the shore of the underground lake; that place lit by a thousand candles where a man with everything to lose had sung his heart out for me.

I had not expected this. I had expected to be able to walk away and not look back.

Nor was I the only one whose thoughts the Phantom occupied. Raoul continued to press me with questions – at first just now and then, but later, incessantly.

"Tell me more about these private singing lessons," he had demanded one afternoon.

"There's nothing to tell that I haven't told. I never saw him until after the night of the gala."

"When I heard him in your dressing room." Bitterly.

"Yes."

"I wanted you to come to supper with me."

"I told you I couldn't go." I had begun to have my suspicions about that initial supper invitation. I wondered whether it had originally been marriage on his mind at all.

"Yes, but why did you go with him?"

"Is he always to be between us? I don't know! He's…mesmerizing. I was curious."

"Mesmerizing! And then you met him in the cemetery."

"Not by design on my part!"

"You were walking towards him."

"I was. It was all mixed up in my mind: my father, his spirit, the angel, the Phantom, my teacher. I was confused."

"And are you still confused?"

"Why do you ask me such questions? I'm here – with you."

"Yet you chose him."

"To save your life!"

"I wonder."

I looked at him in shock. I had to concentrate in order to calm my feelings.

"That was unworthy of you," I said, finally.

He apologized then. After every row of this nature, he'd be repentant, and we'd go out, or walk in the gardens, and things would be as before.

Except that every time R. questioned me, my own doubts grew deeper.

And every night, I cried in secrecy and in silence for the angel who no longer sang me to sleep…but who still haunted my dreams.