"Your reasoning is powerful, Norman, but it's not your reason that influences your action. Your act is, as you said before, in accordance with your feelings. I might combat your reason, but I cannot change your convictions. What can we do?"
"Well, it's not so terribly urgent to get rid of him."
"Why, send him to a lunatic asylum, of course."
"What a ghastly piece of perverted common sense. O, you Englishmen; you have never realized that the French Revolution has occurred. You are still a hundred years behind the Continent. But I am Alsandrian, my friend, I am Southern; I have all the Southern weakness."
"And some of the Southern charm," added Norman. Though he had recovered under the stress of the ethical argument from the hypnotic fascination to which he had succumbed, he began to be not so sure that he did not like this strange and gracious person.
"But none of the Southern faithlessness," Arnolfo rejoined. "Trust me, Norman. Trust me and I will be faithful to you to death. I--we all of us need you so desperately. This about the murder was only nonsense--to hear what you had to say, though I'm afraid the good Sforelli suggested it in earnest. There is good work, man's work, an Englishman's work to be done here. Once the fantastic stuff--the mummery--is over, you may achieve true greatness."
"I shall become a thief," said Norman. "Do you want to argue that?"
"You are right to remember it. That repugnance you must sacrifice: you are going to seize an all but worthless property and make it fine land for corn and olive."
"Yet what I said of murder applies to theft: I am helping to cut at the basis of society."
"But to found a new one. Come, in this objection you will not persist. You have not the same emotion, you do not really mind."
"Or, rather, you wake in me such emotions--such schoolboy emotions--that I cannot control them. It's a game--but it's worth playing. I don't care what awaits me--discovery-disaster--death! I don't care if you're fooling me. I follow you, Arnolfo. What are your orders?"
"Continue to play the part the Poet assigned to you, that is all. Hint of the mystery. I will prepare the rest as quickly as I can. About the King, I will arrange something to please you. And now, good-bye."