He would have seen that the crisis was
near. If he had had any real observation he would have noticed that
Carmen's eyes at once kindled, and that the guitar became a different
thing, when M. Colombin, the young schoolmaster, one of the guests,
caught up the refrain of A la Claire Fontaine, and in a soft tenor voice
sang it with Jean Jacques to the end, and then sang it again with Zoe.
Then Carmen's dark eyes deepened with the gathering light in them, her
body seemed to vibrate and thrill with emotion; and when M. Colombin and
Zoe ceased, with her eyes fixed on the distance, and as though
unconscious of them all, she began to sing a song of Cadiz which she had
not sung since boarding the Antoine at Bordeaux. Her mind had, suddenly
flown back out of her dark discontent to the days when all life was
before her, and, with her Gonzales, she had moved in an atmosphere of
romance, adventure and passion.
In a second she was transformed from the wife of the brown money-master
to the girl she was when she came to St. Saviour's from the plaza, where
her Carvillho Gonzales was shot, with love behind her and memory blazoned
in the red of martyrdom. She sang now as she had not sung for some years.
Her guitar seemed to leap into life, her face shone with the hot passion
of memory, her voice rang with the pain of a disappointed life:
"Granada, Granada, thy gardens are gay,
And bright are thy stars, the high stars above;
But as flowers that fade and are gray,
But as dusk at the end of the day,
Are ye to the light in the eyes of my love
In the eyes, in the soul, of my love.
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