I was just thinking, while I listened:
"Ah, if her voice goes so straight home, unconsciously, what must be the effect if she sings 'at' somebody?"
Then I saw her do that very thing. Slightly, raising the fan with a little studied gesture, the singer tilted her head and launched from under her eyelashes a deliberate glance at Captain Holiday. I saw him raise his brown chin out of his hand and look back at her hard, too.
Then I saw the Signora's reddened lips tremble, even through the song, into the very wickedest of smiles that would not be suppressed. It dimpled her powdered cheeks; it almost shut her long-lashed eyes; what a tantalizing and lovely sight! But everybody in the place must have seen that she was singing "at" him; must have heard it!
"Carissima!"
cooed that wooing contralto with its invincible appeal,
"Cariss-ima!
My boat and I will come to thee."
And with "thee" the glance was more unmistakably "at" Captain Holiday than before.
Then I knew.
This Spaniard—if she were Spanish?—this stranger with the voice and the fan and the shoulders, and the slim hips and the witching glances that surely no man on earth could withstand, must be "she" of whom Captain Holiday had spoken to me!