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.