High City on a Hill (Ch14)

This needs to be the climax to the whole story and hit like a hammer, and after quite a lot of tweaking I'm still not sure that it does. (Or that the thought-process behind Hertha's final conclusion is clear, which is something that was worrying me when I originally wrote this section, over a year ago -- I see that I have just been through exactly the same process of trying to fit more explanation into the ending of the chapter and then taking it all out again because it wasn't working!)

This is the scene that I was envisaging from the start as the main point of the story, and it's just got to work...

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Chapter 14 — “Tell Him How You Feel”

It was from Christine Daaé that I heard the true story of what happened that night — Christine Daaé, bedraggled and defiant in the great salon at the Hôtel Chagny, and still wearing the remains of the white dress into which the Ghost had forced her in a mockery of marriage. She had both hands braced on the back of the couch on which Raoul lay; the doctor had been, and gone, and left behind a sedative draught which she had refused to take, just as she had mutely shaken her head at the offer of more seemly clothing. But the Vicomte, his principal patient, had submitted in exhaustion to the doctor’s ministrations, and had now succumbed to a deep and most merciful slumber in front of a roaring fire in the salon, while his own bedchamber was being prepared. ( Read more... )