“I can never be happy again, whatever happens,” Carmen said, with anguish.  “He loves some one else.  He doesn’t care for me.”

“He’ll learn to care.  This slip of a thing that’s come between you and ’im, my lady, will fly away out of his mind like a bit of thistledown.  When I’m done with her—­she’s got rid of for good.”

“Oh, but the horror of it—­the getting rid of her!  It don’t weaken one bit, Simeon.  I’ve brought her here for that, just that, and it shall be done.  In some moods, for a minute or two, I rejoice in the thought of it.  I want it.  I’d even like to be there and see.  Madame Vestris says that in my last incarnation I was a Roman Empress—­that I used to go to the gladiator shows, and turn my thumb down, as a sign that the wounded ones who failed in the fight were to be killed by their conquerors in the arena.  And that, once when I hated a Christian girl, I went to see her killed by lions.  She—­Madame Vestris—­watched the whole scene in her crystal.  Very likely it’s true, what she says.  I believe in her.  She’s wonderful.  But I’m softer in this incarnation than in the last, I guess.  It frightens me and turns me sick when I think how I shall dream and wake up nights afterward—­even if I’m married to Nick.  Oh, it’s awful!  But it’s the only way.  He was meant for me!  He’s mine.  She’ll have to go.  And I don’t care how much I suffer, if only I have him for my husband in the end.”

“You’ll have him,” said Simeon Harp.  “It’s going to be.  And there ain’t no need for you to dream bad dreams. You ain’t doing the thing.  It’s me.  It was me thought of it.  It’s me who’ll carry it out.”

“Supposing you fail?” she whispered.

“I won’t, if you’ll do your part.  Just the little part, my lady; we can’t get on without your doin’.  You send her there, to the right place; that’s all.  For the rest you can count on me.”

“Oh!” Carmen shuddered, and put her hands before her face.  “To think it’s for to-day—­to-day! If only the other thing had gone through all right, and she’d been made so hideous that he couldn’t look at her, this horror might have been saved.  I’d have wanted no more.  Once he’d seen her face, that he thinks so angelic, red, and swollen and hardly human, he could never have felt the same toward her again.  And it wouldn’t have hurt her much in the end.  But evidently she isn’t the kind that’s affected by that stuff.  I know there are some who aren’t.  Those two haven’t spoken about the box to me, Simeon.  I was afraid at first Nick might suspect, and be watching.  But that’s nonsense, of course.  And she wouldn’t be here now if the idea had crossed his mind.”

“Nobody’ll ever know,” said Simeon.  “I went such a long way.  I changed trains three times and walked miles in between.  Besides, when I posted the box I was wearin’ something different from what I ever wear here.  I was another man to look at.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure you did your part well,” Carmen said quickly.  “It was Fate interfered.  I felt it would.  All the cards near me were black just then.  I don’t know what I should do without you, Simeon—­good old watch-dog!  You shall be rich the rest of your life if you win me happiness.”