The sound of the organs echoed off the rocky walls of the cave in the catacombs beneath the Opera Populaire. The water leading to the hideout amplified the sound even further, but the outside world had no right to hear it. In fact, it was the only sound that had surrounded him for a month. He kept thinking back to that day, trying to understand her behavior. He agreed to her terms, didn't kill that idiot when she threw herself into Levi's arms and begged him not to kill Raul, that she would do anything for his life. He spared her pathetic lover. Heck, he even let him go. He didn't trust him to keep the secret of what had happened, but she did. And in return for this mercy, she punished him with silence. Why? Wasn't he generous? But he couldn't be angry with her. He loved her too much. She could be angry with him as much as she wanted. She didn't have to talk to him or look at him. He didn't even dare to dream of her love. All he wanted was to hear her angelic singing again. The one he taught her when she was still so young. So innocent. But all he was left with was his music, which was incomplete without her voice. This was not how he had imagined it. He did not expect her to throw herself into his arms and confess her love, no. He would have been a fool to think so. But he hoped that she would at least listen to the compositions he would write just for her. That she would complete them with her singing. Instead, every day she used his secret passages to watch performances, rehearsals, or simply to see her friends, with whom she would never be able to talk again. She avoided him, he knew that. She was afraid of him, she was disgusted by such a monster. It was something he expected. But didn't he have the right to hope for something else? He knew she was different from all those horrible, disgusting people she surrounded herself with. She saw more in him than a man with a half-deformed face. And yet, she pushed him away. And he had enough. So when she came out from behind the mirror, which was the door to the secret passages, he grabbed her wrist before she could escape to the bedroom he had given her. To his own bed, to which he had no access, sleeping instead in a small boat set on a stone shore, covered with a thin blanket. His grip was not strong, but firm. Demanding that she listen to him. "I understand that you're angry with me. I don't blame you," he said in a low voice, not taking his eyes off her. Even though she stubbornly continued to stand with her back to him. "But we can't live in silence forever. I'll go mad if I don't hear a single sound from your lips for another minute," his breath trembled and his voice broke slightly. He was desperate, like a thirsty man after a long wander through the desert. "You don't have to talk to me. You don't have to look at me. But, please... sing for me, that's all I ask of you."