Christine wakes from sleep, dresses, and passes her lover, sleeping at his guard post, to hire a carriage to take her to her father's grave. But the driver she has hired, struck down from behind, is not in the box. Instead it is the Phantom who drives her to the graveyard. Pacing through the snow, past huge statues, Christine mourns her father until she stands at the foot of the steps that lead up to his tomb. There is a light within, and once again the Angel of Music—can it be that the grotesque Phantom is the Angel of Music—coaxes her toward him.
Raoul has awakened barely in time to see the empty bed, the departing carriage, and to find the still half-stunned coachman, who tells him where the girl is going. Bareback, he rides for the cemetary, arriving only in time to stop Christine from ascending the steps toward the voice that seems to be what her father promised her upon his death, the Angel of Music, who, however ugly, holds her destiny. The young aristocrat shouts, rouses her from her trance, saying that the man is not, cannot be her father or whatever she may hope him to be but is instead... 
The Phantom of the Opera, who leaps from the top of the tomb, like a huge bat, but one with a sting, for he has a naked sword in his hand. The two men duel, and Raoul is lightly wounded, but the Phantom is beaten to the ground. As Raoul prepares to drive home his blade in the death-stroke, Christine pleads, "No, Raoul, not like this!" The young man puts up his sword, mounts his horse, swings up his prize—his wife to be—and rides off.
Was it pity that made Christine stay Raoul's hand or perhaps the memory of the Angel who had taught her to sing, albeit for his own ends? Perhaps she acted solely on instinct, that her love for Raoul should not be sullied at its outset by any death. At any rate, the Phantom, deprived of what he was about to claim again, vows war, war upon them both.
(to be continued)