so closely intermingled, remained undisturbed.
I feared nothing so much as that I might never hear it again; I had thought about my love for you and realized all the useless danger of it; and I did not even know if you remembered me.
Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and I swore to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love.
And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages.
Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me, ‘You can now, Christine Daaé, give to men a little of the music of Heaven.’ I don’t know how it was that Carlotta did not come to the theater that night nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead; but I sang with a rapture I had never known before and I felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body!”