“Then you didn’t do it on purpose?” Francie asked.
“On purpose?”
“To get me into a quarrel with them—so that I might be free again.”
“Well, of all the blamed ideas—!” the young man gasped. “YOUR pure mind never gave birth to that—it was your sister’s.”
“Wasn’t it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you’d never consciously have been the means—”
“Ah but I WAS the means!” Mr. Flack interrupted. “We must go, after all, by what DID happen.”
“Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So we’re square, aren’t we?” The term Francie used was a colloquialism generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none the less deeply serious—serious even to pain.
“We’re square?” he repeated.
“I don’t think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Never!” cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a degree that spoke strangely of his hopes.