Even if you had not come I should have repented of myself, and sent away the irons.

I can repeat, too, in my defense that I was provoked beyond endurance by this youth's insolence." His tone was silky, light, indolent, as if he would dismiss a trifle about which too much had been said already.

It might have been convincing to any other man, but he felt the stern, reproving gaze of Father Montigny still fixed upon him.
"And what of the ring and the professional swordsman ?" said the priest.
"Are you to turn a youth to a gladiator, even as the blessed martyrs were given to the lions and tigers by the Roman pagans! What of that, Francisco Alvarez?
Are such deeds to be done, here, in our day, in Louisiana, and to pass unchallenged ?" The priest's voice rose and it cut like the sharp edge of a knife.

Never since his boyhood had Francisco Alvarez flushed more deeply, and he moved uneasily on his cane chair.
"You give it a name that does not belong to it," he said.

"It was play, or not much more.