I sprung out from my hiding-place. I stood on the spot where they had stood. I tried to bring home to myself the actual truth of what I had witnessed. My brain whirled--circles of light swam giddily before me in the air--the moon looked blood-red. The solid earth seemed unsteady beneath my feet--almost I doubted whether I was indeed alive, or whether I was not rather the wretched ghost of my past self, doomed to return from the grave to look helplessly upon the loss and ruin of all the fair, once precious things of by-gone days. The splendid universe around me seemed no more upheld by the hand of God--no more a majestic marvel; it was to me but an inflated bubble of emptiness--a mere ball for devils to kick and spurn through space! Of what avail these twinkling stars--these stately leaf-laden trees--these cups of fragrance we know as flowers--this round wonder of the eyes called Nature? of what avail was God Himself, I widely mused, since even He could not keep one woman true? She whom I loved--she as delicate of form, as angel-like in face as the child-bride of Christ, St. Agnes--she, even she was--what? A thing lower than the beasts, a thing as vile as the vilest wretch in female form that sells herself for a gold piece--a thing--great Heaven!--for all men to despise and make light of--for the finger of Scorn to point out--for the foul hissing tongue of Scandal to mock at! This creature was my wife--the mother of my child--she had cast mud on her soul by her own free will and choice--she had selected evil as her good--she had crowned herself with shame willingly, nay--joyfully; she had preferred it to honor. What should be done? I tortured myself occasionally with this question. I stared blankly on the ground--would some demon spring from it and give me the answer I sought? What should be done with HER--with HIM, my treacherous friend, my smiling betrayer? Suddenly my eyes lighted on the fallen rose-leaves--those that had dropped when Guido's embrace had crushed the flower she wore. There they lay on the path, curled softly at the edges like little crimson shells. 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. There was a surging noise in my ears--my mouth tasted of blood, my lips were parched and burning as with fever. "A white-haired fisherman." That was me! The king had said so. Mechanically I looked down at the clothes I wore--the former property of a suicide. "He was a fool," the vender of them had said, "he killed himself."