"Your love makes me as gentle as a lamb." Erik's words continued to echo in his ears. He had not slept since he had laid Christine in her bed. The poor dear had been so exhausted from a day full of rehearsals and their singing lessons and helping him clean up after supper that she had not put up a semblance of a fight when he'd suggested she retire for the night. Or perhaps it was the three generous helpings of cake she had managed to eat! She had barely protested when he had lifted her up in his arms and carried her up the corridor to her room.

She had drifted off to the land of dreams as soon as her head had hit the pillow.

He, on the other hand, was still lying in his own bed, wide awake, hours later. His mind would not stop pulsing with thoughts of the preceding day, especially the soft kiss Christine had given him. Her lips were like delicate honeyed rose petals, sweet and soft and inviting. What a contrast they were against the dry parchment of his own skin and his thin lips!

She was such a good girl.

He was such a wicked man.

How was it that she could look past his hideous face and the lies he'd told her over the past few months? She said she loved him, but did she truly know what love was? Did she comprehend what it meant to love a man such as he was? The way she kissed him spoke of hints of passion beneath the surface, but he could simply be imagining it, merely willing it to be there.

And he loved her enough to make up for any lack of feeling on her part. Even if she didn't love him with all her being, surely he could be a good enough husb-

He had to stop himself. If he continued to think of things such as that, he would surely drive himself mad! 'Or madder than I already am,' he thought with a grimace. 'But Christine calms me, brings me back to sanity. She is far too good to me. And so is Anne.'

Madame Anne Valerius was now privy to much of his tortured past. Telling her about it had been exceedingly difficult but delightfully cathartic. It was a burden that none should be forced to share with him, no matter how well-intentioned one was. She had chosen to act the part of a shrivener, a confessor, and he had to admit to feeling lighter than he had in some time.

But one does not speak of past evils without remembering them in all too vivid detail. Once the door to his past was opened, he knew it would be some time before he would be able to close it again.

The screams of his victims slowly increased in his mind. He had committed such atrocities that he knew he could never atone for them, even if he lived another hundred years. A tear eked its way out of his eye and fell onto his pillow. He was not worthy of Christine's love! He was a murderer who should have been locked away long ago! If not for Anahita and her kindness, he never would have believed himself to be the least bit human. Too many had called him a demon and a devil and death itself for him to think himself a part of humanity.

He had not deserved Anahita, either. He had already killed more than he cared to count by the time he had set up in Nizhni, and he had been loathe to sully her soft hands with the blood spilled by his.

But Anahita . . . She had seen something in him that had drawn her to him. And she, with her gentle ways, had slowly brought out the good in him. She had taught him how to dance to the very music he had composed when he couldn't sleep. She helped him create music boxes and games and toys to delight the children who frequented his tent. She had made him into someone who was not a monster.

Had that damned furrier not abducted her and sold her to that wretched harem in Persia, he might have settled in Nizhni with her, or perhaps somewhere a bit to the south. Anahita had always liked the spring, when the world was new and alive and rejuvenated. He would not have become the hired torturer and assassin that he was forced to become after the light was gone from his life. So many lives might have been spared.

On the other hand, he reasoned, those were all political prisoners who had died for being dissidents or enemies of the crown. They would have suffered the same fate no matter who had been in charge of re-educations and imprisonments and . . . disappearances.

And there were several buildings that would not, could not have been built had he not been there under the "employ" of various heads of state. No one else could have envisioned such architectural works of art. Those were sites that many now admired. The world had a bit more beauty in it because of him. He looked at it as a way of making up for the hideousness of his own face.

And, had he not eventually found his way back to France and then to Paris, the Opera Garnier would not be the marvel of architecture that it was. Christine might have gone on mourning her father and wasting her best years in the back of the corps de ballet.

With his help, Christine would easily become a star of the stage! He could compose arias for her voice that would make even the angels weep!

His thoughts, however, kept drifting back to his Anahita. He recalled the depths of her eyes, pools of the darkest tea that he could swim in for hours, and her hair, like a great swirl of ink bouncing upon her shoulders. She had been the first to smile on him with something other than pity, and she had been the only one, until Christine, to hold his pale, cold hand with tenderness.

Erik sighed forlornly. Would that he could erase the sins of his past and be the kind of man Christine deserved! Would that he could undo all the evil he had wrought and keep Anahita from having fallen into the clutches of demented regents! Would that -

"Erik?" Christine called from her bedroom. She sounded panicked.

He extricated himself from the twisted sheets and rushed down the hall. He smoothed his sleeping attire before slowly opening the door. "Yes, Christine?"

She gazed up at him sheepishly. "I . . . I had a bad dream. Will you stay with me?"

He cleared his throat nervously and nodded. When he moved towards the chair in the corner of the room, she asked him to sit beside her on the bed.

"It . . . would not be . . . proper," he reminded her.

"We will only be sitting next to each other. Who is here to judge us?" she asked, her eyes full of innocence.

He sighed and relented. As soon as he set himself next to her, Christine cuddled up beside him. It didn't cease to amaze him how she could show him such affection yet maintain her purity.

She was such a sweet girl.

"Tell me what your dream was, Christine," he requested. He hoped that talking about it would help her fall back asleep.

She grimaced. "It . . . I couldn't . . . I was looking for you, but I couldn't find you . . . I wandered all over Paris and still no trace of you! Finally, I came upon you." Her voice broke and she turned her head.

"You found me . . ." he prompted.

She let out a heavy sigh. "I found you . . . in a café . . . with another woman," she admitted quietly.

"Anoth-" Erik was dumbstruck. He couldn't imagine betraying his dear Christine, and yet, she had had some silly dream that had worried her. He pulled her to him again. "There, there, my dearest. You have no need to worry over that ever coming true. You are far too precious to me for me to cause you such harm."

"Oh, but she was beautiful, Erik! With hair as dark as the night sky and a smile that sparkled like starlight!"

He swallowed the lump that had rapidly formed in his throat. Had her subconscious mind conjured an image of a woman from his past? "Come now, Christine, rest. You have a full day tomorrow." 'And I have work to do that you must not witness.'

She merely nodded and laid her head upon his shoulder and drifted, slowly, back to sleep. She found she slept better knowing he was so near.