Scene 2
BACKSTAGE
 
(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 . . .!