“Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera.”
“You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we really saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollo’s lyre, just as we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and there would have been no more question of him.”
“My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo’s lyre: that is no easy matter.”
“The blazing eyes were there!”
“Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the strings of the lyre.”
And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her.
“As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it would be better to go at once. Why wait for tomorrow? He may have heard us tonight.”
“No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not thinking of us.”
“You’re so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!”
“Come to my dressing-room.”
“Hadn’t we better meet outside the Opera?”
“Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here.”
“It’s a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know,” said Raoul bitterly, “that it was very plucky of you to let us play at being engaged?”