A/N: Okay so this is, sadly, the last chapter for this story. It's kind of a mixture of a glimpse of the future whilst also giving you flashbacks to tell you what happened the night of Don Juan. I am tempted to do a series of short stories based on the things I've written in this chapter- so let me know if any of you guys would be interested in something like that and I'll get on and write it.

Apologies for any typos I might have missed in this chapter- I've been writing it while travelling to and from London this week (Audition marlarky where I got whiplash from such a huge backhanded compliment where I was told 'Brilliant soprano sound. Excellent! (pause) but operatic isn't what we want; NEXT!' The first time in my life where bella cante training was a problem. Go figure. Sorry about going off on one there, but it's been aggravating me since it happened! Haha!)

Anyway, you lovely, lovely reviewers! You've been making me smile so much; you've said such fantastic things and so I only hope this chatper/epilogue lives up to your expectations. Thank you so much Persephone, Taria Robotnik, IloveTangled, PhantomFan01, RomanticLover1, DarkFairy207, loonynerdxd9, Alydrial, CaptainHooksGirl, Klutz4Eternity; lots of hugs, kisses and karma for you all! And like I said, let me know if you'd be interested in the short stories idea I mentioned.

Read on and enjoy!

Tuppence x

The Opera is Done, The Last Notes Have Been Played.

England, 1949.

"Gerroff me Peter! Argh! Gerroff!"

"I'm not even doing anything!"

"Muuuuuuuuuuuum!"

A woman, approaching forty in years and a hundred in stress levels, came out of a room with a look of extreme impatience and frustration.

"If you two don't stop it now, you'll not be playing outside for a week. Do you hear me? Peter stop bullying your sister; Holly stop making such a racket all the time"

In this moment they may not have looked it but the Goodwills were a very talented, fairly well known and, in some places, infamous family. But right now they just consisted of two young siblings and a Mother reaching the end of her tether. She had once been a celebrated stage actress but after her second child had made the decision to stay at home with her children rather than miss so much time with them due to rehearsals and productions and when her third came along, she was very definitely sure about her decision. Yet, on days such as these, she couldn't help having second thoughts.

"He keeps saying I'm a liar!" Holly protested.

"No, I don't; I said you're making stuff up. And you are!"

"Am not!"

"Are too! The Phantom of the Opera is a just a story to scare babies, baby"

"What on Earth is going on down there?" An elderly voice asked from the top of the stairs and they all turned to see the sixty-odd year old, remarkably elegant in silk scarves and chiffon pants echoing the 1920s fashions of her own youth, as she walked down the stairs.

"Grandma," Peter suddenly calmed down and became apologetic, "Did we wake you?"

"It's mid afternoon Peter; I'm not that old. But yes, as a matter of fact you were loud enough to wake the dead," His grandmother reached the bottom of the grand staircase and walked over to the trio, "And I'll have you know your sister is quite right; the Phantom of the Opera is not merely an old French Fairytale."

"Geneve..." Peter and Holly's mother began to interrupt but Geneve held up a hand to stop her.

"No, no. There's only one way to settle this argument, Penny," She turned to Holly, "Now where have you heard of La Phantome?"

"That new French girl at school," She murmured in reply as though reluctant to give up the goods, "She's moved here from Paris and she was telling us all these ghost stories her parents had been told. And that she knew they were true," this she said pointedly to her older brother, "Because her Grandparents had been there"

"Unless they are very old I very highly doubt that," Geneve countered and Holly's eyes widened as she realised she was possibly about to get the details from her own grandmother who she thought was at least a hundred and therefore knew everything. "Now you know your Great Grandmother?" Geneve asked, leading them all into the living room (Penny reluctantly following and seemingly only out of duty to check Geneve did not tell the children something deemed inappropriate) and taking a seat on the King Louie sofa.

"The French one?" Peter asked.

"Swedish," Geneve corrected, "She just lives in France. Now I know neither have you have met her. She was much too old and tired to travel here by the time you were both born, but your sister Helen; she's met her. Now, she was at the Opera Populaire during the time of the Phantom of the Opera. In fact it was that very Phantom that forced her to move to New York all those years ago." Geneve's eyes glassed over a little as she thought of her Mother, in her nineties now, living in France, refusing to leave Geneve's Father's resting place until she herself could join him. Geneve and her brother had always seen and known how devoted their parents were to one another and had seen the couple grow older and older together without a change. She had wished to have something like that for herself, but Geneve's husband had been killed in the First World War, leaving her to raise her son, Penny's husband, by herself. Though not as by herself as one would presume; her parents had been wonderful and had helped raise Harry, acting as secondary parents rather than grandparents which is why it was a constant source of increasing bitterness for Geneve that Harry had insisted on so little about them being passed on to his own children. And what good had it done him? The children had only ended up asking questions anyway and what could he have expected? Especially with little Holly being as naturally curious and inquisitive as she was; very little got by her.

"My Mother, Christine, was barely eighteen where the famed events began-" Geneve continued, but Holly cut her off.

"Christine?" Her voice was high pitched with childish excitement, "Is she the one from the story?"

"Yes," Geneve nodded, but Peter looked unconvinced.

"Yeah but she's not the really real one," He argued, "She's just where they got the name"

"She most certainly is the really real one," Geneve told him, "Christine Daaé. Of course, she never used that name after she and Daddy left France. It would have been too easy to follow, too easy to find"

"See, she can't be the real one," Peter argued yet again, "Christine in the story was kidnapped and no one ever found her. She disappeared"

"Ah," Geneve smiled, holding up a finger as if to say he had just made the point she wanted him to, "Exactly! That's precisely what they wanted everyone to think!" And she began to tell the story her and Gustave had heard so many times in their childhood (upon their own requests) that she felt as if it were her own tale to tell and not her Mother's.

After the lights had all gone out in the theatre, Christine felt Erik hold onto her so tightly it was as though he were afraid he may lose her in the dark (despite his almost unnatural ability to see in the dark better than any other human) but when she suddenly felt the floor literally disappear from under her she understood why. Her hair whipped about her face and she felt her costume billowing as they seemed to fall at tremendous speeds through several subterranean floors of the opera house. Eventually they slowed a little and then the rope onto which Erik was holding became taut and they stopped a mere few inches from the floor. To unwrap the rope from around his arm, Erik released his grip on Christine, but so disorientated from the sudden drop she stumbled a little and he had to catch her before she fell to the floor. In that moment, in the dimly let damp stone corridor, his eyes scanned her entire face and she thought she could see an expression there that was all too familiar on his half-masked features. One of insecurity; as though he was still unsure that she could have done such as thing as choosing him. And then Christine realised something; she had chosen him and now with their "escape" her choice was now officially made. Her life was to be with Erik. Someone who felt more at home out of the world than in it, someone notoriously violent, someone hideously deformed. But also someone incredibly passionate and protective, talented beyond description with an inner beauty that seemed to transform the very deformity he despised. She placed a hand on his bare cheek gently, assuring him that she was not having second thoughts.

"It will take them at least ten minutes before they restore the gas connection," A woman's voice broke the moment and Christine was surprised to find Madame Giry and Meg stood nearby. Erik let Christine go, once sure she could once again stand without support, and turned to the two women.

"They will no doubt begin to search the entire opera house as soon as possible," She continued, "We need to get you both out of here and to Bougival as soon as possible. I have sent your items on as you asked; I think you should find everything you asked for. My brother-in-law's carriage is waiting for you both along the Rue Scribe."

Erik took Mme Giry's hand and bowed low to place a kiss on the back of the hand of his long time acquaintance, someone he had been afraid to consider a friend despite all facts to prove it. "Madame," He said, using the formal term, "I find your constant resourcefulness astounding and I thank you for all you have done and for the many things I am sure I did not acknowledge"

Madame Giry looked quite taken in the moment and both Meg and Christine were sure, even in the dim torchlight, that they saw her blush. But a second later and the moment was gone.

"Well, both of you. Allons-y. Meg and I shall have to return to the theatre as soon as possible"

"If it hadn't been for Antoinette and Meg Giry I don't think they would have any chance of getting out of Paris" Geneve admitted, "They stayed in a summer cottage with Antoinette's sister Marguerite and her husband for a couple of weeks until the Girys were able to join them. A very private ceremony in the local church married them and shortly after, through false papers- something again arranged by the infalliable Antoinette Giry- they boarded a ship to America. To New York City"

"Where you and Dad were born," Peter acknowledged and his Grandmother nodded.

"In New York State, yes, but I was born in Brooklyn." She told him, "We grew up in a lovely neighbourhood...a very understanding neighbourhood. A lot of them more concerned with my Mother's voice and my Father's notoriety in the world of music and architecture than his...handicapp. He was the mastermind behind most of the design of Coney Island you know and so many Broadway scores and New York Opera Premieres came from his brilliant mind. And he used to be able to weave the most amazing tales. My brother and I used to beg for new ones all the time..." Geneve seemed lost in her own memories for a moment as things came flooding back to her.

"Coney Island?" Peter repeated sceptically at the same time his sister asked, "Did he really wear a mask?"

Geneve, pulled out of her brief reverie, seemed unsure of which question to answer first. She decided Holly's was the quickest.

"Yes, but only in public and when receiving guests. People can only cope with so much. When it was just us he didn't. Mother's idea. She insisted he remove it in the home; she didn't want either of us to grow up with the same prejudices as the rest of the world. To understand and see the beauty underneath. She was right; having grown up knowing no different we never even seemed to notice. We noticed his wearing the mask more than the lack of it and came to think other people were strange for preferring him that way. Mother always was a very wise person, and still is, despite what doctors say now. Age may have made her have a looser tongue than is wise in this family, but she's still all there, mark my words" Question answered, she turned to Peter, "And as for you young man, stop questioning every fact I give you. Yes, Coney Island. No other mind could have the capacity or patience or brilliance to design so many things in one place and in such a fantastic way. Phantasma may be history now, but back then, it drew people in their hundreds of thousands."

"How come you ended up here then?" Peter asked, "Instead of staying in New York?"

Prohibition in New York made all officials, and all firm upholders of the law, paranoid. It also brought out the worst in everyone, no matter what side of the prohibition law they fell on. People became suspicious of one another; you're either with us or against us. Naturally, beady eyes turned to Erik; thinking he must be hiding something. Why else would he wear a mask? The law thought he was bootlegging, the bootleggers thought he was spying for the law. The family became unhappy in their own home. Gustave was already living in Venice, a renowned pianist and violinist, with his wife. Geneve was a single mother to Harry after her husband being killed in the war and so when her parents expressed their wish to leave America she knew she would be going with them. Meg Giry was a success in Broadway comedies and Vaudeville so she and her Mother decided to stay behind; it was a very sad parting of the ways. The two had been their extended family and without them there would be a hole in their lives that would be impossible to ignore. The idea of going separate ways almost prevented the move from happening, but then someone threw bricks through the windows of the house, shouting obscenities about Christine and insults and threats about Erik. That night they knew they had to go.

They had enough money to take their pick and eventually decided on England. A beautiful manor in the middle of the Lancashire countryside found them a place isolated enough to feel content but near enough to the local village to not feel cut off. Though they hadn't expected it, or even hoped for it, that village had accepted them more than anyone in their life ever had. They took Geneve under their wing, feeling sympathy for her loss (there were many other widows to be found wherever they went. It was a dreadful and horrific new fact of life), and lending so many helping hands with Harry. They hadn't questioned Erik's mask, had made no comment on Christine's fame from New York as a great soprano, nor any judgement was made on the amount of money they had. And then one day the most horrendous thing had happened. A pure unhappy accident that had culminated in Erik's face being bared during an evening at the village public house after the May Day festival. No one had spoken, silence reigning supreme, and then the owner of the pub, a woman in her seventies left the pub by her husband in his will, had said nothing but a simple 'Another drink for you two is it then?' and that was that. Her word was almost law in the village and people instinctively turned to her for guidance and at her acceptance of Erik's visage, the rest had no problem following suit. The shock had, of course, been much eased by the fact the Great War had left so many survivors hideously deformed that such facial differences were no longer as inconceivable as they once were, even if Erik's was one of birth rather than the victim of warfare. He still continued to wear the mask in public, but the fact the village had not run in horror gave him a peace of mind long denied him that not even Christine, Gustave or Geneve could have ever given him.

"What rubbish are you filling the kids' heads with Mum?" Harry asked. No one had heard him come in, but he now stood in the doorway, looking at the group in disapproval. His hat and briefcase were in one hand with his coat over his arm.

"I'm not filling them with any rubbish" Geneve argued, "Just letting them know some family history"

"If you're telling them all that rot about the Opera Populaire and that my grandparents were some kind of...kind of-"

"Kind of what?" Geneve cut him off, an edge to her voice, "Your Grandparents gave you everything they had. Supported you in everything. Even when you squandered your talent they didn't say a thing. You could have been as brilliant as my Father and more; you had brains, talent, good looks. You could have been anything, but they didn't blink an eye when you decided to attend law school to become an ambulance chasing solicitor-"

"I do not chase-" Harry began to argue but his Mother carried on relentlessly.

"And how do you repay them? The moment you started out with that London set, you wanted nothing to do with them. Couldn't stand anything that made you different, out of the norm. You only let Penny meet them because you couldn't avoid it. And now you have the audacity to say that when I tell my own grandchildren about their own flesh and blood, that I'm filling their heads with rubbish. Oh I wonder about you sometimes; you take after your Father's side of the family more than I care to admit. They never had any imagination either"

"Refusing to let myself or my family get lost in a world of fantasy and subterfuge and criminal activity, yes, criminal, is not having a lack of imagination, Mother"

"I hate when you two fight!" Peter suddenly shouted, standing up, "I hate it! You're always angry! When I'm older I'm going to be horrible to you just like you are to Grandma!" He yelled, before storming out of the room and upstairs.

"Well done, Mum." Harry said sarcastically.

"Oh and of course that's my fault."

"Come on Holly," Penny said quietly, picking up her young daughter, "Let's go take Oscar for a walk. And we'll ask Peter too. We'll go over the brook hill; that's his favourite isn't it?"

The two of them left the room, Holly doing so rather reluctantly but unable to refuse her Mum, leaving Mother and son to continue their argument, oblivious to the fact they were now the only two left in the room.

"You know you broke my Mother's heart when you didn't come to Paris for the funeral" Geneve continued.

"Not this again," Harry rolled his eyes, "You know it was impossible. Penny was pregnant with Peter, I had an ongoing case. We couldn't have travelled. There was no way. It was their own fault for being in Paris anyway. If they'd stayed up in Lancashire or come down here to London-"

"You still wouldn't have come," Geneve sniffed, "And Dad knew he didn't have much time left and he wanted to spend what little time they had there. They'd met there after all, for pete's sake."

"Yes, but to have him buried there," Harry pointed out in exasperation, "And it wasn't even an official burial. Illegal again. Under a blasted old opera house."

"You know what that place is to them," Geneve said, her tone cool and even and Harry sighed.

"I don't know. It all seems all rather too far fetched to be true. I think they just spun us all one of those tales they were both so fond of, Mum"

"Maybe if you'd attended the funeral you wouldn't think that so easily," She countered, "If Antoinette, Meg and her family could manage to get to Paris, you could have done. They had a damn sight further to travel that's for sure. Your Grandmother was so broken. Something so sad, something that had happened to the entire family, and you weren't there."

Nineteen Thirty Seven. How different the world was from that time long ago at the Opera Populaire. In the time of Hannibal, La Carlotta, The Phantom of the Opera, Angels of Music, young viscounts, hardworking , bumbling Messieurs Andre and Firmin, a strict ballet mistress and her sometimes hopeless corp de ballet. So long ago, as Erik and Christine, now looking so different from how they once did (perhaps only recognisable by Erik's infamous white mask), wandered the streets of Paris in the early hours that it was hard to believe it had ever happened and that that time had ever existed. Back then there had been nothing but horses and carriages and women had worn heavy skirted dresses with evening cloaks and bonnets in cold weather. Now the sound of motor cars were everywhere, woman wore anything from long billowing trousers to above the thigh skirts, cloche hats replaced bonnets and not all hair colours were natural and men were more desperate to learn to dance like Fred Astaire than they were about learning a basic waltz anymore. And one took 'dates' to the picture house rather than the opera house. However, despite all this, the elderly couple (For Erik was only a mere few months from ninety, and Christine was past her seventy-first birthday) found it all too easy to transport themselves back to that time. When they had come across the old Rue Scribe entrance of Erik's old residence, far beneath the Opera House, a place that they had not visited in over fifty years, they had been tempted to make their way in, presuming (correctly) that it had not been touched since the day they left. However, they had to face up to facts that they were far from being as young and fit as they were back then and that there was too much a risk of injury or becoming trapped. Especially with Erik's rapidly decreasing health. Christine didn't like to think about it but he had maybe two months left to live, probably less, but definitely no more than four. So many years gone by and yet it still seemed like too little time. They may have been unable to visit the home of The Phantom of the Opera in their final days together, but Erik did make one request before he died; that he would be laid to rest there. In the place where he had met his redemption in Christine and come across his first act of kindness in Madame Giry when he had been a very young boy. He pleaded, said as long as everyone was with her, Christine would be in no danger of becoming lost or trapped. She would be safe and he would be happy. He needn't have pleaded; Christine would have done anything he asked. She would have travelled with him to the other side of the world for his resting place if he had asked it of her.

Gustave had been a little unsettled that it was not consecrated ground in which his Father was to be buried, but Madame Giry, surprisingly sprightly for a woman in her nineties (Meg was becoming suspicious, even in her own wise old age, that her Mother perhaps in her stoic, determined nature was going to defeat the course of nature itself and live forever.), allayed his fears. Besides, in her opinion, consecrated ground being un beaucoup de merde as God was wherever you chose to find him, Gustave's Father had led a very extraordinary life; it was only fitting his burial should be equally so.

After the funeral, after a few weeks, everyone returned home. Gustave returned to Venice with his family; Geneve, after feeling she could do no more for her Mother, returned to England to her own family; Meg and her family also returned to their home in New York. Yet, when Christine decided she would not be returning to England at all but would remain in Paris with Erik where eventually, when her time came, she would be buried with him, Antoinette Giry also decided to stay. She did not know how many years she had left in her, but besides feeling reluctant to travel again (she was decidedly unfond of boats and aeroplanes downright frightened the life out of her. Man just simply wasn't meant to fly), she wanted to spend them in her home town and keeping company with an old friend. They were visited often by Gustave and his family, and occasionally by Geneve and her very young granddaughter Helen and found the joy of hearing French again instead of brash staccato English a simple yet blissful thing. When the unbeatable and unrelenting Madame Giry finally passed away at the grand old age of 100, and the funeral was done, and everyone had returned home once again, Christine suddenly felt very much alone. Gustave, always an insightful person even as a very young boy, seemed to know this and began to visit his Mother every fortnight despite the time and cost it took to travel. When he was able to bring some little ones from his now sizeable brood of a multi-generation family, Christine felt as though the light of the world itself was brought to her home. Those simple visits were her life's breath and if not for them she felt she would have given up long ago. When the Nazis invaded during the war and there were explosions, warfare and hatred everywhere, her children had begged her to leave. She knew they were right, that she was in so much danger living in the capital, but she just couldn't bear to leave him. Eventually, as the conditions got worse, she took a risk and made her way down to the bowels of the old Opera Populaire, finding the journey remarkably easy despite her age and managed to also repeatedly make the journey to buy food and drink and bring it back. She never entered the room in which Erik was laid to rest, wishing to think of him alive rather than reminded of him dead, but the fact he was so close did help her. When the war was over and the Germans defeated, Christine opted to remain where she was rather than return to her Paris home above ground. When the day came when she could no longer make that journey to and from her new home would be the day her time was up.

"She lives underground, Mother, you can't say that's normal"

Geneve narrowed her eyes at her son.

"I'm not speaking to you when you're like this. You get more and more dismissive of your own family. If you're not careful you're going to grow into a very dull and boring old man in years to come and wonder what happened"

With these words, Geneve got up from her seat and left the room. She headed up to her own bedroom on the first floor, and before sitting down on her chaise-lounge, she took an old wooden box from her dresser. She placed it on her lap as she sat down, opened it, and began to fondly look through the items within. It contained scribbled notes, meaningless to everyone but herself, photos from her days as an opera singer (an alto rather than a soprano like her mother but equally successful and renowned), discarded scores of her Father's, Gustave's attempts at writing his own music when he had been ten years old, a piece of a mask that had broken one day, the first tooth Harry lost, love letters from her late husband along with the few postcards she received from him in the war, the entire handwritten score for her Mother's most well-known aria written by her Father in 1895 "Love Never Dies" (it had become a continuous performance request), the ribbon she wore for her first day in school, the playbill from Meg's first leading performance, a family portrait and finally, pictures from before she was born; pictures of her parents and the Girys aeons before she had even been thought of. Her mother had been so exquisitely beautiful and her Father so handsome. Whenever she had said this as a little girl, he had argued only half of him was (and even that part was debatable, he would joke, to cover the anguish he truly felt) but Geneve saw what her Mother had seen. Despite his deformity there was something in his very being- the way he held himself, the way he thought and conceived- that seemed to take over his deformity. In her opinion, beauty within became beauty without. She took one of the pictures out and looked at it very closely, drinking in the detail, before coming to a decision. She closed the box but did not return this particular photo with the rest of the contents.

Later on, after the children had gone to bed, Geneve went into Holly's room and gently woke her. She handed her the photograph.

"This is a very special photograph of your Great Grandparents; my parents. It's very special because it was taken by my brother with our very first Brownie camera. He was so all over the place we really believed it would be blurred, but it came out perfectly. Now be careful with it because it's old now and very fragile. But because it was taken at home, my Father isn't wearing the mask (though you may notice a broken one on the table in front of them- I'm afraid there had been a bit of a mishap with a stray tennis ball that day). I just thought you might like to know what they both looked like and that when your friend at school tells you more phantom stories or you hear any other tales from anyone else any time in your life you'll remember the Phantom was just a man. Father, husband, friend. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

Holly was a girl wise beyond her five (and a quarter) years and for a moment she didn't answer her Grandmother as she just looked at the photo she had been given. It was sepia coloured and faded and worn at the corners and the background had started to disappear slightly, but clearly in the centre of the photo were two people. One, a man, sat at the table, the other, a woman, stood behind him, looking over his shoulder at a broken white mess on the table. The woman, in her early thirties, had dark hair elegantly pinned into place with a few simple jewels adorning her hair. She was stood elegantly and had a warm radiant smile at the camera. The man looked more as though he had been caught unawares by the camera and was not smiling but wearing an expression of mild surprise. He was around fifty years old and had black hair combed back and his face...Holly looked at it intensely. She could not see what all the fuss was about. The face was far from symmetrical but it was nothing to get in a state over which seemed to be what Marie at school had said, and what her Grandma's stories had implied.

"I don't understand what the big deal was, Grandma"

"I knew you'd get it," Geneve said, smiling warmly and kissing her granddaughter on the forehead, "You just always remember you said that. You hear me?"

"Yes, Grandma," Holly replied, yawning widely and handing the photo back but Geneve shook her head.

"No, no; that's yours now. You look after it carefully, okay?"

Christine was very, very tired. She almost felt as though breathing was an effort. She still had some food and drink left, but she knew she should get more. But she just couldn't bring herself to make that journey. Instead she forced herself up from her chair and steadily walked to look over the trinkets that were everywhere in this labyrinth of rooms. Her old, thin, translucent fingers ran over one of her most favourites; the monkey with the cymbals. She began it's mechanism and the music began to play and she was immediately taken back to the masquerade ball. It was as though it was happening right now instead of nearly seventy years ago. She could feel her sparkling party dress, smell the perfumes, taste the champagne, hear the music, hear the dancers.

"Masquerade...paper faces on parade" She let out a sigh "Long ago in our youth...in Paris...at the Opera..." Her voice a whisper, a mere shadow of what it once was, yet it's musicality still hung there. "Now way back when our choices were made...now the opera is done...the last notes have been played..."

She turned to look at the door to the room in which Erik lay. They had not had a coffin fashioned for him, but merely placed him on the swan bed, an elaborate piece of material (one designed long ago by Gustave's fashion house designer of a daughter) used as a shroud. It had been twenty five years since she had last stood in that room, since she had last seen him. She shuffled towards the door and put her hand on the door handle. Very slowly, she turned it and walked into the room. There he was, nothing more but a dim shape under the cloth. With the dust and the cobwebs (not to mention the creatures that came with them), the room before her seemed like a twisted scene from some bizarre Swedish fairytale.

"Her Father promised her he would send her the Angel of Music," She murmured, recalling the old tale, "Her Father promised her"

Feeling remarkably tired, she instinctively found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, not too far from Erik. She just felt exhausted...if she just lay down for a moment she knew she'd have the energy to get up and carry on again. She lay her head down and closed her eyes...just for a second...

Three days later Gustave came with his youngest grandchild for his usual visit. When he found the place empty he presumed his Mother was out as had happened a couple of times before. But then he saw the door to That Room open. Telling Francesca to stay behind, he walked into the room and found his Mother.

He pulled Francesca away and they left the place. He immediately sent a telegram to his sister in England. The funeral was held at the earliest date everyone could reach Paris. They left the couple together in the swan bed; Geneve left the Love Never Dies piece with them, feeling it had more a place with them than it ever did in her old memory box.