..
that..." I clenched my hands together, and looked into his leering face.
"You understand me well enough," I cried, almost angrily.
He looked at me seriously now, a cold glitter in his small eyes.
"I wonder do you understand yourself?" he asked. "I think not. I think
not. Since God has made you a fool, it but remains for man to make you a
priest, and thus complete God's work."
"You cannot move me by your taunts," I said. You have a foul mind, Messer
Fifanti."
He approached me slowly, his untidily shod feet slip-slopping on the wooden
floor.
"Because," said he, "I suspect that Messer Gambara...that Messer Gambara
and Madonna...that...You understand me," he mocked me, with a mimicry of my
own confusion. "And what affair may it be of yours whom I suspect or of
what I suspect them where my own are concerned?"
"It is my affair, as it is the affair of every man who would be accounted
gentle, to defend the honour of a pure and saintly lady from the foul
aspersions of slander."
"Knight-errantry, by the Host!" quoth he, and his brows shot up on his
steep brow. Then they came down again to scowl. "No doubt, my preux-
chevalier, you will have definite knowledge of the groundlessness of these
same slanders," he said, moving backwards, away from me, towards the door;
and as he moved now his feet made no sound, though I did not yet notice
this nor, indeed, his movement at all.
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