`Oh heavens!' she cried. `Erik! Erik! Have pity on me!'

`Hold your tongue!' said Raoul. `You told me he could hear you!'

But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung her fingers, repeating, with a distraught air;

`Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven!'

`But what is it? What is it?' Raoul implored.

`The ring...the gold ring he gave me.'

`Oh, so Erik gave you that ring!'

`You know he did, Raoul! But what you don't know is that, when he gave it to me, he said, `I give you back your liberty, Christine, on condition that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep it, you will be protected against all danger and Erik will remain your friend. But woe to you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have his revenge!'...My dear, my dear, the ring is gone!...Woe to us both!'

They both looked for the ring, but could not find it. Christine refused to be pacified.

`It was while I gave you that kiss, up above, under Apollo's lyre,' she said. `The ring must have slipped from my finger and dropped into the street! We can never find it. And what misfortunes are in store for us now! Oh, to run away!'

`Let us run away at once,' Raoul insisted, once more.

She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes....Then her bright pupils became dimmed and she said:

`No! To-morrow!'

And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as though she hoped to bring the ring back like that.

Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard.

{two page color illustration} They Sat Like that for a Moment in Silence

`If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug,' he said, aloud, as he went to bed, `she is lost. But I shall save her.'

He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted:

`Humbug!...Humbug!...Humbug!'

But, suddenly, he raised himself on his elbow. A cold sweat poured from his temples. Two eyes, like blazing coals, had appeared at the foot of his bed. They stared at him fixedly, terribly, in the darkness of the night.

Raoul was no coward; and yet he trembled. He put out a groping, hesitating hand toward the table by his bedside. He found the matches and lit his candle. The eyes disappeared.

Still uneasy in his mind, he thought to himself: