“It is too terrible,” she confessed, “to be always trembling like this! … And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds can not bear to look at the sun. I have never seen him by daylight … it must be awful! … Oh, the first time I saw him! … I thought that he was going to die.”
“Why?” asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking.
“ Because I had seen him! ”
This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time:
“There is someone in pain,” said Raoul. “Perhaps someone has been hurt. Did you hear?”
“I can’t say,” Christine confessed. “Even when he is not there, my ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard …”
They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said:
“Tell me how you saw him first.”
“I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul, my dressing-room is very much by itself; and I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside. And it not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a real man’s voice, with this difference, that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel. I had never got the Angel of Music whom my poor father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead. I really think that Mamma Valérius was a little bit to blame. I told her about it; and she at once said, ‘It must be the Angel; at any rate, you can do no harm by asking him.’ I