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cringe when I touch you? Why
do you seek to escape my embrace? Do you expect me to believe that
you love me?"
    "I do love you,” I said, backing away towards
the door.
    He advanced upon me like an animal about to
devour its prey. "You do not know the meaning of the word. Love
does not cower from the warmth of a hand. It does not run from the
passion in a kiss."
    Yes, it does , I thought. Sometimes,
it does .
    "It seeks out these things. It dies if it is
not nourished by tenderness and affection. It feeds on itself."
    “You don’t understand,” I stammered, nearly
stumbling as I retreated from his steely gaze.
    “Make me understand.”
    “Why must you be so discontented? Aren’t my
kisses enough?”
    He snorted derisively. “You see a plant
drooping for lack of water and you think a few drops will sustain
it?”
    How many times did I dream about this as a
child? How many fantasies did I have – as I sat in the dark,
one-room cottage where I sewed until my fingers nearly bled – where
a man would take me in his arms and demand my affection? But those
images didn't portray me as I really am. In those fantasies, I
didn't look they way I really did.
    I was almost at the door. "I do love you.
Please believe me."
    "Then prove it." He was upon me in a trice.
Seizing both my arms, he clasped me in a fierce embrace. His lips
came down hard upon mine, crushing them painfully against my teeth.
He had kissed me many times before, but never like this. His hands
lost their tenderness as they traveled over my clothes. I fought to
stay them.
    There was untold ferocity in his affections
now, and a sharp pang of fear constricted my chest. He looked at
me. There was a hunger in his eyes, a bloodthirst that roused
dormant demons within him. The very eyes that I had admired for
their depths of feeling now showed me the extremes of his
carnality.
    Erik was gone. The man before me was the
Phantom of the Opera.
    On that impulse, I bolted. He bellowed after
me, but all I could hear was the voice inside my head. Coward , coward , coward . He was right.
Everything he said was true. How could I make him understand?
    I turned the corner and crashed into his
imperious, black-clad figure. This blasted maze was his playground,
and he knew its passageways better than I did.
    “Do you think you can fool me?”
    I backed away from him, my heart hammering
wildly. I did not know what form his revenge would take.
    He approached me with catlike stealth. “Do
you think me so dull-witted that I cannot see what you are
doing?”
    “Erik, please…” I begged, not certain what it
was I was asking.
    “I have endured pain far beyond your
imagination. There is not a thought in your head or an ache in your
heart that I haven’t had a thousand times over.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean,” he said with an air of superiority,
“that I can read your sentiments as clearly as if you had
articulated them to me, which you obviously can’t. You run from
me,” he said, with strained patience, “because you have convinced
yourself that you are damned to suffer a loveless existence.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, hiding a
twinge of vulnerability.
    “It is not my disfigurement that alarms you,
but your own.”
    “You can’t understand,” I insisted, even as I
cursed his perspicacity. “I just feel that the time isn’t
right.”
    “Liar,” he said in a tone that reminded that
this was not something I wanted to be found guilty of in his
eyes.
    “It’s different with you. You cannot know
what it is like to be me.”
    He laughed mirthlessly, folding his arms
across his chest. “By all means, my downy young chick, pray explain
to me what it is like to live with a physical deformity. I’m all
attention.”
    His sarcasm angered me. “This body is my
prison. I can do nothing to escape it.”
    “Your argument is compelling. Do carry
on.”
    Now he was mocking me, and it made me
furious. “At least I did not build a prison. I did not dig