Hi all,

Thanks for sticking with this story. I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. October holds the anniversary of a traumatic event in my life, and it's been a rough month. I'm only just now climbing back out. I will try to start posting more often. Hope everyone likes this chapter, and I promise to post the next one this coming Saturday. I don't think you'd be too happy with me if I left you hanging for too long this time...

Chapter 20. July, 1887. Saturday afternoon to Saturday night.

Erik came awake instantly at the sound of the front door opening, but stopped himself this time from leaping to a defensive pose. He sat up slowly instead, and looked at Christine. She was taking off her hat, and her face was unreadable. She did not look particularly angry, which seemed to be a good sign, but then she did not look precisely happy, either.

"Did you have a pleasant walk?"

"Of course." He could tell nothing from her tone either. She was becoming skilled herself at the art of controlling one's voice. She walked over to the table on which the house plans lay and stared at them.

"What are these?"

"Plans for our new house. If you wish, we can go live aboveground."

She gave him a searching look for a long moment, then turned back to the blueprints. "You forgot to put in separate bedrooms."

A wave of horror hit him, and rendered him momentarily speechless.

"With a connecting door between them," she continued, still looking at the plans. "I understand that that is the done thing among the bourgeois. That sounds like a good idea for us; that way I won't bother you and you can come to me only when you feel like it."

She turned on her heel and went out of the room. He sank slowly into the chair he had sat in to draw up the plans, and put his head in his hands. Obviously the offer of the gift of a new house had not done the job. She did not care a jot that he was willing to live in the light of day once more for her sake. He could not tell whether she were serious about the separate bedrooms, or whether she was just attempting to wind him up like one of his clocks. His head hurt abominably.

Wearily, he got up again, sat at the piano and started to play the first notes of one of her favourite songs; then he heard the bedroom door shutting decisively, and water starting to run in the bathroom. His hands dropped limply away from the keyboard. If she had been inclined to appreciate this gesture, she would have come back into the room to listen to the music. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against his crooked arm on top of the piano. She had accused him of thinking she was a burden to him; it seemed now that he was nothing but a nuisance to her.

Christine came back attired in her wrapper again, and passed through the parlour and into the kitchen, not looking at him. When she did not come out again, after a while he went and investigated. He found his wife in the dining room eating a cold supper and reading. She refused to make eye contact with him. He realised he had not eaten all day. But she had not asked him to join her... well, she'd hardly do that now, would she? Silently he went into the kitchen and sliced himself some ham, grabbed an apple and some Brie, and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. Even if he might be able to get her to look at him if he joined her in the other room, he did not care to try to have a meal whilst sitting across from Medusa, just at the moment.

They passed the rest of the evening in similar and thoroughly unpleasant fashion, and when Christine headed for bed, Erik simply lay down on the couch again, dressing gown and all.

"Practising for the separate bedrooms already?" she said witheringly, as she went past him with her chin held high.

"I have seen no indication that I should do anything else," he shot back. She slammed the parlour door behind her.

Damn. Why had he lashed out like that? No doubt he had made things even worse now. He should have grovelled and asked her what would please her. His temper had gotten the better of him again. Would he never be able to bring it under control? He should not have married her if that were the case. He was selfish, and thoughtless, and he did not deserve to be married. Not to Christine, anyway.

He rolled over, putting his back to the door and her, and burrowed his twisted cheek into the pillows. He slid back into sleep, but this time it was a heavy, drug-like slumber, and he dreamed vividly.

"Christine, what do you mean by this?" He brandished her note at her.

Christine was standing in the hallway in her blue travelling suit, clutching a black leather valise and a felt hat. The setting sun was pouring its brilliance all around her and sending little points of light dancing through her hair, winking off her tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles.

"Erik, it's just what you saw in my note. Our marriage is over. I am leaving."

He put his hand on the hall-tree to steady himself. His knees trembled. This was not, could not, be happening.

"Christine, no! Do not leave me! I can not bear to be without you! I am sorry for what I did!"

"Sorry?" she snapped, obviously unmoved. "There's nothing you could say that could make this all right. It is not just about me any more, but about everyone else. You've been selfish one too many times. How could you? How could you refuse to come to their wedding?"

"I was not thinking!" he protested. "You know I don't, sometimes! You married me knowing that!"

"I married you thinking you were going to try to change," she corrected. "I married you thinking that you were going to force yourself to become the man you should have and could have been all along. Well, you didn't, and I'm tired of waiting. I'm going, and I never want to see your ugly face again."

He staggered under the mortal blow. He would never have dreamed she would say such a thing, she who knew him better than anyone, who would know how such words would cut him to the very bone!

"Christine... I beg you, Christine..."

He heard the door slam, and knew that he had lost her irrevocably. Grief crashed over him, and he collapsed onto the Oriental hall carpet. Vaguely he saw before him his own hand with its ruby ring; his magician's hand with its long skilful fingers, that possessed so much talent and dexterity, empty and useless now. His mind and heart and soul were going with her, and he had nothing left.

Nothing.

He wept, knowing the tears would not help, and rocked from side to side. The cushion was incongruously smooth against his face; he clutched the corner of it hard. The light was blinding…why were the lights on, in the daytime?

He blinked hard. For a moment he was unable to make sense of his surroundings, and then gradually his parlour, his real parlour, swam into view. Initially he could not grasp the sheer familiarity of it, and then he suddenly pressed his hand over his pounding heart.

He was here. At home, under the Opera House, not in that strange house that was not really his, not standing in its hallway watching his reason to live ebb away in Christine's wake. It had been a dream.

A dream, yes, but the pain of the dream-Christine's final words would not fade. It lingered, searing and burning. All at once he remembered the real Christine's words of that morning:

"Oh, God, the things you said to me! I'll never forget them!"

His heart felt as though it were cut in two. How was it possible that it still beat, there under his hand? And he had made Christine feel this way. His darling, his beloved, his wife. He had loved her for her sweetness and her innocence; why, why had he risked those? Innocence, once lost, was lost forever. He ought to have known that, better than anyone, he who had been treated with derision, rejection, and cruelty for so much of his life. Did he want to turn her into a bitter, vengeful creature like himself, she whom he had believed would be his saviour?

He shot up from the couch, strode across the room and ran to the bedroom. Its door was not locked this time.

"Christine! Christine..."

She sat bolt upright in bed. "What? What?"

As in the dream, he fell to the floor, kneeling a few feet away from the bed. His elbow hit the carpet, and he stretched out the other hand to her beseechingly.

"Christine, oh, Christine, how could I have said those things to you? How could I?"

"What – oh! You mean yesterday evening?"

"Yes! What else?" he groaned. "You were right. I truly am a monster. But oh, Christine, do not leave me, I beg you!"

"I wasn't planning on leaving you," she said crossly.

Desperately he clung to the lifeline of her words. His entire being was focused on keeping her with him. He could not lose her. It was unthinkable.

"Christine, tell me what to do! I'll do anything, say anything, only to have you love me again!"

"You have nerve, coming in here and waking me up to say I've stopped loving you," she said with great asperity, "when you went to such lengths last night to convince me that it was you who did not love me!"

He cowered before her set mouth and her flinty eyes. "Yes, yes, Erik was a fool, an utter fool to have acted so rashly, but he loved his Christine all the time, and he did not know how to show his love, he has never known how!" The words spilled out of his twisted mouth, nonsensical but uncontrollable. "He knows only how to protect himself, and he lashed out without thinking! He is a fool and a monster!"

Erik realised vaguely that he was repeating himself and sounding like an idiot both, but it seemed unimportant in his frenzied need to make her understand. She had understood him before, when so few others ever had. Would she turn away from him now? He grovelled shamelessly, more than willing to give up his pride now. All pride had gotten him was the risk of losing her.

She slid her legs unexpectedly out of bed, stood up, and came to stand before him. Ecstatic at this, he seized the hem of her night-dress and kissed it penitently. She twitched it out of his grasp and took a step back, saying irritably, "Oh, stop it. You only do that to make me pity you enough to forget I'm angry with you. Well, it won't work."

He wrapped one arm about his head and pressed his face into the carpet, wishing there were some way of prostrating himself even further before her. "Then what... what shall I do?" he begged, sinking the fingers of his other hand into the rug's pile. "Tell me... please... Erik is too stupid to know what Christine needs. Christine, I will do anything to make you pleased with me again, but I do not know what it must be."

"Well," she said acerbically, "You might start by getting up off the floor. You look a sight."

"Erik always looks a sight," he muttered into the carpet. "He can not help it."

"Don't talk nonsense. It annoys me to see you there like that. Can you not at least bring yourself to look at me?"

All right, finally, there was something he could do that she wanted. He sat up and raised his eyes to her, standing there with her loose tresses framing her lovely face. At first he could only think of how dazzling she was, until slowly details became noticeable, and he saw that there was an avid, interested look in her eyes.

He tried again. "Christine, I had no business to say what I did. It was wrong."

"What was wrong?"

"Ahhh – what I said?"

"And what was that?"

With an inward groan he tried to remember what exactly he had said. Displaying a memory which he would greatly have preferred she did not possess just now, she would not be put off, but led him through each of his transgressions, one by one, demanding remorse for each. Dutifully he parroted the words he hoped she wanted him to say. Then he pleaded, "Christine, please, please let me do something to make amends."

"Such as?" she asked. She looked like Aphrodite, beautiful and untouchable, looming over him robed in white with her glorious hair tumbling over her shoulders. What offering would appease his goddess?

"Flowers?"

"Hah."

"Jewels?"

"No."

"A new dress?"

"What for? You won't bother to look at me in it."

"Singing?"

"Forget it. I know where you'd be hoping that led."

"A walk in the park on Sunday?"

"So you can show me off, I assume? Not likely."

It seemed his penance was not over. She was toying with him now, feline-like. Her pout was adorable.

"Well, what then?"

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, and then, very deliberately, turned and walked back to the bed. Without a second look at him, she drew her nightgown off over her head, totally ignoring his soft sound of surprise, and sat down on the mattress, drawing her legs up onto it. She stretched her arms out and up languidly, arching her spine and letting her head fall backward so that her breasts jutted out and her hair swept across her bare back. A sudden, lurid memory image hit him, of the last time she had assumed that pose; a second later her outstretched palms had hit the mattress. But he had better not try anything of that sort right now.

"I'm very tense, Erik. All my muscles ache."

All her – oh. She meant to torture him, then. So be it.

"Lie down on your stomach then," he responded, and was grateful for the years he had spent training himself to have such supreme control over his voice that he could keep the desire out of it even at a time like this. He rose from his supplicant's position.

She arranged herself artfully on the bed, peeking at him as she did so. Refraining from making comment, he sat beside her and massaged her muscles, using the techniques he knew she liked. He did not allow his hands to slip to the soft areas of her body that tempted him, nor let them wind through her beautiful hair. After a while, she signed and turned onto her back, increasing his torment, and ordered, "Now my feet."

He moved lower on the bed, and did as she asked. He kept his eyes strictly on his task, knowing she'd see the lust in them if he glanced up. Then he wondered suddenly if he'd be in worse trouble if she thought he didn't want her. He allowed himself one longing look as a test, and when he met her triumphant stare, he knew that that had been exactly what she wanted. He was unable then to stop himself from pressing a reverent kiss to her delicate instep.

She shifted slightly on the bed and made a sound that he knew indicated pleasure. Encouraged, he did it again, thinking that he could stay like this forever, kneeling and worshiping at the feet of his queen like the dog he was. He kissed her ankle, then her calf. She snatched her foot away, and said peevishly, "I shouldn't let you touch me, you know."

"Then why did you ask for a massage?"

A long look passed between husband and wife. Finally Erik ventured to say tentatively, "You wore your perfume last night."

"I did." Her tone offered him nothing. He tried again, afraid that he was being rash but nearly vibrating with the desire to know what she was thinking.

"I have been neglecting you."

"That presumes I want your attentions," she purred.

"You could stop me if you chose."

"I still might," she said archly. "You're not to touch me, remember."

That was unmistakably a challenge. And one which any other man would not have been able to meet.

But then, no other man had his voice.

O-O-O O-O-O