I called to it, but it did not reply; I begged and entreated, but in vain. I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I wish to Heaven it had, dear!⁠ ⁠… That night, I went home in a desperate condition. I told Mamma Valérius, who said, ‘Why, of course, the voice is jealous!’ And that, dear, first revealed to me that I loved you.”

Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul’s shoulder. They sat like that for a moment, in silence, and they did not see, did not perceive the movement, at a few steps from them, of the creeping shadow of two great black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near them that it could have stifled them by closing over them.

“The next day,” Christine continued, with a sigh, “I went back to my dressing-room in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there, spoke to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to Heaven. And it said this with such an accent of human