"I admire you, Francis," he said. "I admire you more than ever before.
If I had kissed you as I intended, you would have known it."
"I do know it, damn you!" I replied. "But you would have strangled me afterwards."
"Why, so I should," he confessed, "even as surely as I mean to shoot you now. But that is neither here nor there. I'm a wild, hungry old devil of a frate, but no man denies that I love a high spirit. I should have kissed you for that, and wrung the breath out of you afterwards for a starved, misbegotten spawn of an English apothecary—as you are, my son. Now hand me one of those pistols of yours, and say your paternoster while you are in the mind."
I handed him the weapon, telling him that I had loaded it myself overnight, but that if he wished to satisfy himself, I had both powder and ball at his service.
He looked somewhat offended. "Do you think, my lad, that I doubt you?" he said. "I tell you that I love you. I would as soon doubt my mother, who is in Heaven, or believe my father, who is not."
"You shall join one or the other of them," said I, "in a few moments. Have no doubt of that, and let me alone. One condition. I will drop my arm and walk into the house, placing my back at your disposal, if you, in the article of death, as you now stand, will pledge your word to save Virginia from Semifonte. What do you say?"
He gazed at me, open-mouthed, eyes aglow, as I stood waiting. I could see that he was torn; I could see the fiend working and gouging within him, and (I believe) a good angel contending against him. Some time this lasted. Then Palamone gave a bitter laugh—like the barking of a leopard in the night.
"Say?" he mocked me. "Why, I say that you are an exquisite, adorable fool—the very pink of fools. For two ticks I would have taken you at your word. For two ticks."
"It was the third that prevented you," says I. "You are not such a villain as you think yourself."
"I believe that I am not, indeed," he says ruefully. "I have lost a chance. Well, I am ready. But here the shadow is bad. Let us go to the obelisks and stand each back to one. There is a passable light there."