“To Woodhouse?” he said, watching her, to fix her.
“Yes,” she said, a little pale at the lips.
And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
“Will you?” she repeated.
But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“Play something to me,” she cried.
He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
“Yes do,” she said, looking down on him.
And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at her again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a curious mocking caress as the muted voix blanche came through his lips at her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound penetrated her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam’s apple move in his throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.