It has always puzzled me why teenage fans hate Leroux-Raoul so much, given his very adolescent emotions and reactions -- one would have thought they'd been through similar experiences of a wild crush, violent swings of jealousy, and complete inability to stay away from the beloved object :-)

It's worth noting that when Raoul proposes to take Christine away from the Opera, he is not asking her to elope with him: he explicitly promises to take her to some place of safety and return alone, since at this point she will not consent to marry him. All the elaborate arrangements that he makes are for her benefit, not his -- he has nothing to gain by rescuing her.
(It is only after they have been through the nightmare of Erik's lair together that she agrees to marry her lover after all, since none of the previous arguments still apply: he is no longer in danger from Erik's vengeance, and he has already lost fortune and family for her sake...)

In fact there is a fascinating 'deleted scene' in the original serialisation, in which Christine tells Raoul quite openly that she loves him and that it is for his sake that she cannot accept his hand in marriage: it's fascinating because it turns out to confirm all of the above without a shadow of doubt, but that this was always Leroux's intention is apparent from the surviving text of the novel.