Beneath the Porcelain Mask

28. "Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain."

The sudden appalled silence was broken only by my hysterical sobbing. Father Mansart looked at me in amazement, but in Erik's eyes I saw fear and great misery.
"You are overwrought," the priest said briskly, as he pressed me into a chair. "It is understandable. Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain."

~ Madeleine

Susan Kay, Phantom.

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"To Rouen, please," I instructed the cab driver, my voice quiet and low in the early dawn air. Even long before sunrise, Paris was coming alive with the smells of food and calls of shop owners to their delivery persons. Yet I felt the need to be as quiet as the shadows I was keeping to, for fear that either Erik hear me from the House five stories below my feet, or Jeremy would catch me on his way to work.

"You'll need to change halfway, mademoiselle," he said. I nodded.

"I'm sure this will suffice for the length you must go." I handed the fare to his navigator, who counted it out, nodded and opened the door for me, helping me up and holding my dress away from the wheels. I sat on the raggy seat and looked out at the Opera House, where the faces of various gods stared accusingly at me for leaving so suddenly. I scowled back at them and looked through the other window.

The carriage jolted into action at the whistle and whip of the driver. I smoothed out my lilac dress and took my book from my suitcase, settling down for the journey.

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By the time the driver called for the horse to stop and the carriage wheels stopped turning, it was long since gone lunchtime. I awoke from a deep sleep to see a man at the side of a river, standing by an easel, a paint palette to hand and dark hair sticking out from beneath his cap. For a moment, I thought I was seeing Jeremy.

I groaned and pushed myself up from the seat as the footman opened my door and helped me out with a polite, gloved hand.

"New carriages are over there, Mademoiselle," he said, pointing me up the street as a series of stableboys gathered to take the horse to cool down.

"Thank you," I replied, taking my suitcase from him and heading for them.

The painter looked up at me as I walked past him, a look of shock turning to curiosity. I raised my chin.

"Seen something strange?" I said, and he laughed as I went on.

"I know your type; I'd ask to paint you, but I doubt you'd sit still long enough."

I smirked, handing him four sous for a watercolour of a black horse cantering through breaking waves, which I was sure Jeremy would like, and walked on.

I boarded another carriage and took out the light lunch I'd made that morning, praying that the journey would be worth it in the end.

I slept again as the afternoon turned to evening, eventually sliding away to nightfall. It was eight o'clock by the time we arrived at St-Martin-de-Boscherville, Rouen. I rented a room in an inn for the night and sat by the window to watch the silver moon rise above the forest nearby, relaxing against the wall on the window sill.

I was home.

~•~•~•~■~•~•~•~

Golden flickers of light fell upon my eyelids. I sighed, screwing them tighter, and buried my face in the bed sheets. Not yet. Five minutes more...