She wrote on, filling two, three, four sheets. Suddenly, she raised her head and hid the sheets in her bodice. … She seemed to be listening. … Raoul also listened. … Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm? … A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls … yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing! … The song became plainer … the words were now distinguishable … he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice … but, for all its softness, it remained a male voice. … The voice came nearer and nearer … it came through the wall … it approached … and now the voice was in the room , in front of Christine. Christine rose and addressed the voice, as though speaking to someone:
“Here I am, Erik,” she said. “I am ready. But you are late.”
Raoul, peeping from behind the curtain, could not believe his eyes, which showed him nothing. Christine’s face lit up. A smile of happiness appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they receive the first hope of recovery.
The voice without a body went on singing; and certainly Raoul had never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more gloriously insidious, more delicate, more powerful, in short, more irresistibly triumphant. He listened to it in a fever and he now began to understand how Christine Daaé was able to appear one evening, before the stupefied audience, with accents of a beauty hitherto unknown, of a superhuman exaltation, while doubtless still under the influence of the mysterious and invisible master.
The voice was singing the Wedding-night Song from Romeo and Juliet . Raoul saw Christine stretch out her arms to the voice as she had done, in Perros churchyard, to the invisible violin playing “ The Resurrection of Lazarus .” And nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang:
“Fate links thee to me forever and a day!”