The Phantom of the Opera

by Gaston Leroux

None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy.

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball;

They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent.

What the hell

And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow,

As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind.

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.

There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them.