He had always hoped, secretly, that someday she would ask him to take off the mask. Not someday, no, but some day, so that every morning he rose with this nervous joy in his heat- this will be the day, I am sure of it- every single day.

Oh, she loved him, he knew, how blissful they were! She let him touch her, let him kiss her, even let them merge into one, held him while he cried afterwards because he was no longer beautiful. But she never let him take off the mask.

He had hoped that she would overcome his ugliness, and let him walk around their little house with his face bare, not flinching when she saw it, tell him he was as good as anyone, as his mother should have done.

He didn't say this aloud, consciously he knew that he was hideous and undeserving. Consciously he knew that it was the highest of heavens that she would allow him to touch her, wearing his mask in the perfect darkness, that she only flinched a little when his rotting hands caressed her perfect body.

But in the little corner of his mind that had dared to hope for two kisses from his mother, he always dreamed that some day she would say that it was a corpse she loved and a corpse she married and she could look upon his death's head without fear.

One night, as they lay in each other's arms, he asked her, "Christine? Why must I always wear a mask?"

"Erik! You promised," she said, frightened, "you promised that if we were married, you would wear the mask always!"

"Erik doesn't always keep his promises! My angelic little minx, you must know that angels always lie! I just want to take it off, for a little while, in this dark where you cannot see me. He just wants to feel your living breath on his face! Erik thought you loved him?"

"I love you! I love your voice and your mind and your eyes, Erik, but by now-I am sorry- you must know that nobody could love your face!"

"You love me?"

"Forever and a day!"

"Love, Christine, love is a fire that burns you up and purifies anything! I want your love to cremate me, I've been too long buried!"

"Oh, my angel, you have been consumed by so much love that you can barely feel it! A little love, it warms you up and makes your face glow, but a love like ours- everything that touches it is reduced to ashes!"

"I want to be reduced to ashes- ashes, both of us- ashes so you cannot tell the ashes of my face from anything else! Erik's ashes could be as beautiful as anything!"

"I would not love ashes."

"There was a present that I asked for once, asked from my mother and never got…"

She smiled, thinking that he had suddenly changed the topic, forgotten his silly wishes, and now perhaps planned to buy himself some drafting paper or a new violin.

"Two kisses…one for now and one for later…"

"I have kissed you many times, Erik."

"…without the mask?" he finished timidly.

"I have kissed you without the mask, Erik."

"Those were goodbye kisses. I want love kisses, hot love kisses that will make me beautiful and vile with the scars!"

So she took off his mask, touching him only with the very tips of her fingers, as if he were nothing but refuse (which he was).

And she kissed him twice, on the bone-white forehead and the twisted lips.

And he held her while she cried afterwards because he was not beautiful.