(--GIRY is hurrying across. RAOUL appears and calls after her--)
RAOUL
Madame Giry. Madame Giry . . .
GIRY
Monsieur, don't ask me - I know no more than
anyone else.
(--She moves off again. He stops her--)
RAOUL
That's not true. You've seen something, haven't you ?
GIRY (--uneasily--)
I don't know what I've seen . . . Please don't ask me,
monsieur . . .
RAOUL (--desperately--)
Madame, for all our sakes . . .
GIRY (--She has glanced nervously about her and suddenly deciding to trust him, cuts in--)
Very well. It was years ago. There was a travelling
fair in the city. Tumblers, conjurors, human
oddities . . .
RAOUL
Go on . . .
GIRY (--trance-like, as she retraces the past--)
And there was . . . I shall never forget him: a man . .
Iocked in a cage . . .
RAOUL
In a cage . . ?
GIRY
A prodigy, monsieur! Scholar, architect, musician .
RAOUL (--piecing together the jigsaw--)
A composer . . .
GIRY
And an inventor too, monsieur. They boasted he
had once built for the Shah of Persia, a maze of
mirrors . . .
RAOUL (--mystified and impatient, cuts in--)
Who was this man . . .?
GIRY (--with a shudder--)
A freak of nature . . .
more monster
than man . . .
RAOUL (--a murmur--)
Deformed . . .?
GIRY
From birth, it seemed . . .
RAOUL
My God . . .
GIRY
And then . . . he went missing. He escaped.
RAOUL
Go on.
GIRY
They never found him
it was said he
had died . . .
RAOUL (--darkly--)
But he didn't die, did he?
GIRY
The world forgot him,
but I never can . . .
For in this darkness
I have seen him again . . .
RAOUL
And so our
Phantom's this man . . .
GIRY (--starts from her daze and turns to go--)
I have said too much, monsieur.
(--She moves off into the surrounding blackness--)
And there have been too many accidents . . .
RAOUL (--ironical--)
Accidents?!
GIRY
Too many . . .
(--And, before he can question her further, she has disappeared--)
RAOUL (--running after her--)
Madame Giry . . .!
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