The buzzing in her temples clouded her eyes so that she could scarcely read the note.
The same phrases leaped out at her.
A red scarf…the attic…Little Lotte.
The rest of the words were too jumbled in Christine's mind for her to properly process.
It's him. It's him. It's HIM.
What she once used to dream, she now dreaded.
Her shoulders seized upward like a startled cat's at the knock on her door. A tremulous "yes" was all she could offer as she sat at her vanity.
She couldn't turn around even as the door opened.
The buzzing pounded like a hammer as she heard that warm deep voice again.
"Christine Daae, where is your red scarf?"
An electric shock down her neck. Hot tears stung her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed and she swayed just slightly in her seat. "...Monsieur?" She still could not face him.
The voice was closer now, right behind her. "You can't have lost it after all the trouble I took. I was just fourteen and soaked to the skin."
The dread vanished and a typhoon of seaside memories and wild infatuation washed over her. "Because you had run into the sea to fetch it!"
She stood and faced him.
He was there – more handsome than in any of her dreams. But more than that, there was the gleam in his eyes: endlessly kind, playful, mature.
"Oh, Raoul! So it is you!"
Raoul could only wordlessly shake his head for a moment, his composure suddenly gone. Now that he was closer to her, he could see more easily that fond, doe-eyed look again, amidst the glory of her new beauty. A faint trace of lemon verbena clung to her long curls. At last he smiled, and Christine forgot she'd ever felt misery. "Christine."
She flew into his arms with the graceless energy of that child at the beach, and Raoul squeezed her to him, squeezed her as if she were the last shred of happiness in a cold, hardened world.
Their laughter was the same and melded together.
After a long moment, Christine pulled away. Suddenly shy, she sat at her vanity again.
But Raoul wouldn't let her escape. Her heart broke as she heard the old playful and mischievous notes in his voice as he stood with his hands on her shoulders. "Is Little Lotte letting her mind wander again? After her great triumph?"
Christine's smile was so sad and happy at the same time. "Ah, so you remember that, too."
"Is she thinking of her fondness for dolls, goblins, shoes...?"
"Riddles, frocks," Christine finished for him, lost in the dream only they shared. Her hand was on his, and they stood thinking and feeling as one.
"Those picnics in the attic," Raoul whispered in a husky voice.
"Father playing the violin."
"As we read to each other dark stories of the north."
Christine suddenly sang.
"No, what I love best, Lotte said,
is when I'm asleep in my bed,
and the Angel of Music sings songs in my head."
Raoul shook his head in amazement again. To hear that old childhood rhyme from this new yet familiar voice, so exquisite and angelic, about turned his heart over. He'd never heard anything so indescribably sweet.
Christine turned to him and there was such a dark innocence about her refined features. "Father said, 'When I'm in heaven, child, I will send the Angel of Music to you.'"
Raoul smiled. "Yes, I remember."
"He told it to me again on his deathbed."
Raoul closed his eyes and nodded. God, what she must have gone through after Gustav's death. The struggles of a girl without a family, with few connections...
A protective impulse surged through him. He wanted to hold her. Hold her.
"Well, father is dead, Raoul." Before he could offer condolences and excuses for his absence, she continued in a rapid voice. "And I have been visited by the Angel of Music."
Ingrained gallantry influenced Raoul's words. "Oh, I've no doubt of it! Your father would be so proud today, Christine. To celebrate, we'll now go to supper!"
Christine then noticed the champagne he held, the bouquet.
The dread came back in a wave.
She wanted to tell him...but how...
"No, Raoul. The Angel is very strict."
He was perplexed, but excused these words as very deadpan teasing. She was an actress, after all, and could pull off that sort of thing. "I shan't keep you up late!"
Christine shook her head. "No, Raoul." She wanted nothing more than to bury her face in his chest, but her Angel...her father...
For all his warmth and liberalism, Raoul was still a victim of his upbringing. He'd been trained to pursue and woo, and his natural enthusiasm convinced him she was simply continuing their game. He ignored her refusal. "You must change. I must get my hat. Two minutes" – The youthful, genuine Raoul suddenly peered out of his eyes and smile again. " – Little Lotte."
It was this reminder of all she held dear that kept Christine from calling out until he was already gone. "Raoul!"
She stood panic-stricken staring out the door as he vanished. "Things have changed, Raoul..."
It was terror that brought her back inside. Terror that turned her toward the mirror once the voice spoke in its thundering rage.
She took in his abuse of the departed Raoul with shuddering resignation. Terror was everywhere inside her.
She must see him, see the face of the Angel, to convince herself that everything that had happened was right.
And to take away the terror.
Terror turned to ecstasy once the Angel's indistinct, ice-pale face appeared in the mirror.
Then she felt and knew nothing as he drew her in, drew her away. All she saw was mist and all she felt was a sleepy surrendering...surrendering that dulled the terror.
Raoul bounded back at the precise moment Christine's hand was seized by the death-cold one on the other side of the mirror. Raoul halted at the closed door. He heard the eerie singing, the cajoling. The door was locked. Jealousy did not inflame his breast; instead, some primal, instinctive fear beat there.
This was not the smug voice of a lover.
There was something too haunting about it, something...predatory. Something not right, and why wasn't Christine saying anything?
He called her name, pounded on the door.
When at last it gave, he found himself alone inside her dressing room, all trace of her gone.
The berserk rage and panic he felt made him realize, in the back of his fevered mind, the truth.
He was in love with Christine.
And she was vanished.
Raoul had the blood of warriors, lions, and champions racing inside his veins. He fought for those he loved with the combined fierce passions of all.
What he couldn't handle was powerlessness.
And here he was, hat in hand, alone in the room she - she - had stood in and now had disappeared from.
Leaving him without a word, without one last look from those soft, mysterious, yearning, and mournful eyes that he knew he'd see until the day he died.
The passion, fear, and frustration bubbled out of him with one cry of frantic love.
"Christine! Angel!"