The tone of the question gave him no clue to the speaker's own thoughts.
"Yes, I do," he said; and then blurted out hastily, "Don't you believe in treating a woman as an equal ?" "I believe in treating her exactly as she wants to be treated." "But every one wants to be treated as an equal, if they're any good." Farron smiled, showing those blue-white teeth for an instant, and Wayne, feeling he was not quite doing himself justice, added, "I call that just ordinary respect, you know, and I could not love any one I didn't respect.

Could you ?" The question was, or Farron chose to consider it, a purely rhetorical one.
"I suppose," he observed, "that they are to be counted the most fortunate who love and respect at the same time." "Of course," said Wayne.
Farron nodded.
"And yet perhaps they miss a good deal." "I don't know _what_ they miss," answered Wayne, to whom the sentiment was as shocking as anything not understood can be.
"No; I'm sure you don't," answered his future stepfather-in-law.

"Go on with your story." Wayne went on, but not as rapidly as he had expected.

Farron kept him a long time on the interview of the afternoon before, and particularly on Mrs.Farron's part, just the point Wayne did not want to discuss for fear of betraying the bitterness he felt toward her.

But again and again Farron made him quote her words wherever he could remember them; and then, as if this had not been clear enough, he asked: "You think my wife has definitely made up her mind against the marriage ?" "Irrevocably." "Irrevocably ?" Farron questioned more as if it were the sound of the word than the meaning that he was doubting.
"Ah, you've been rather out of it lately, sir," said Wayne.