...the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose red cheeks
and the lily-white neck and shoulders who gave the explanation in a
trembling voice: “It’s the ghost!

While there are things about which one does not boast, there are others for which to be pitied would be all too humiliating.

They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.

Are people so unhappy when they love?"
"Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.

Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant!
-Erik in The Phantom of the Opera

Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her. But that she could marry the young man she pleased because she had cried with me, and mingled her tears with mine. ~ Erik