I stooped and picked them up--I placed them all in the hollow of my hand and looked at them.

They had a sweet odor--almost I kissed them--nay, nay, I could not--they had too recently lain on the breast of an embodied Lie! Yes; she was that, a Lie, a living, lovely, but accursed Lie! "Go and kill her" Stay! where had I heard that?
Painfully I considered, and at last remembered--and then I thought moodily that the starved and miserable rag-picker was more of a man than I.He had taken his revenge at once; while I, like a fool, had let occasion slip.

Yes, but not forever! There were different ways of vengeance; one must decide the best, the keenest way--and, above all, the way that shall inflict the longest, the cruelest agony upon those by whom honor is wronged.

True--it would be sweet to slay sin in the act of sinning, but then--must a Romani brand himself as a murderer in the sight of men?
Not so; there were other means--other roads, leading to the same end if the tired brain could only plan them out.

Slowly I dragged my aching limbs to the fallen trunk of a tree and sat down, still holding the dying rose-leaves in my clinched palm.