“She looked at me steadily with her wild eyes, and then she said: 

“’I’ve always thought you would kill me.  The very first time I saw you I had just met a priest at the door of my house.  And to-night, as we were going out of Cordova, didn’t you see anything?  A hare ran across the road between your horse’s feet.  It is fate.’

“‘Carmencita,’ I asked, ‘don’t you love me any more?’

“She gave me no answer, she was sitting cross-legged on a mat, making marks on the ground with her finger.

“‘Let us change our life, Carmen,’ said I imploringly.  ’Let us go away and live somewhere we shall never be parted.  You know we have a hundred and twenty gold ounces buried under an oak not far from here, and then we have more money with Ben-Joseph the Jew.’

“She began to smile, and then she said, ’Me first, and then you.  I know it will happen like that.’

“‘Think about it,’ said I.  ’I’ve come to the end of my patience and my courage.  Make up your mind—­or else I must make up mine.’

“I left her alone and walked toward the hermitage.  I found the hermit praying.  I waited till his prayer was finished.  I longed to pray myself, but I couldn’t.  When he rose up from his knees I went to him.

“‘Father,’ I said, ‘will you pray for some one who is in great danger?’

“‘I pray for every one who is afflicted,’ he replied.

“’Can you say a mass for a soul which is perhaps about to go into the presence of its Maker?’

“‘Yes,’ he answered, looking hard at me.

“And as there was something strange about me, he tried to make me talk.

“‘It seems to me that I have seen you somewhere,’ said he.

“I laid a piastre on his bench.

“‘When shall you say the mass?’ said I.

“’In half an hour.  The son of the innkeeper yonder is coming to serve it.  Tell me, young man, haven’t you something on your conscience that is tormenting you?  Will you listen to a Christian’s counsel?’

“I could hardly restrain my tears.  I told him I would come back, and hurried away.  I went and lay down on the grass until I heard the bell.  Then I went back to the chapel, but I stayed outside it.  When he had said the mass, I went back to the venta.  I was hoping Carmen would have fled.  She could have taken my horse and ridden away.  But I found her there still.  She did not choose that any one should say I had frightened her.  While I had been away she had unfastened the hem of her gown and taken out the lead that weighted it; and now she was sitting before a table, looking into a bowl of water into which she had just thrown the lead she had melted.  She was so busy with her spells that at first she didn’t notice my return.  Sometimes she would take out a bit of lead and turn it round every way with a melancholy look.  Sometimes she would sing one of those magic songs, which invoke the help of Maria Padella, Don Pedro’s mistress, who is said to have been the Bari Crallisa—­the great gipsy queen.*