lown up in the middle of the performance ... if
Christine Daae said no!

Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening! ...

And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to
espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did not know
that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many
members of the human race!

Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!

And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the
stone steps, for the light in the trap-door overhead that led to the
room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves:

"Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!"

At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the
first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind:

"What is the time?"

Ah, what was the time? ... For, after all, eleven o'clock to-morrow
evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us the
time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days and days
... for years ... since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should
be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack! "Did you hear
that? ... There, in the corner ... good heavens! ... Like a sound of
machinery! ... Again! ... Oh, for a light! ... Perhaps it's the
machinery that is to blow everything up! ... I tell you, a cracking
sound: are you deaf?"

M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We
rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went, anything
to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of
mirrors!

We found the trap-door still open, but it was now as dark in the room
of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left. We dragged ourselves
along the floor of the torture-chamber, the floor that separated us
from the powder-magazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called: M.
de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I reminded him that I had saved his
life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness: what
was the time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had
spent there, but we were incapable of reasoning. If only we could see
the face of a watch! ... Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagny's was
still going ... He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for
the Opera ... We had not a match upon us ... And yet we must know ...
M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands... He
questioned the hands of the watch with