Her simile had struck him like a lash.
"Free--as what ?" he exclaimed hoarsely.

"As _air_?
But--but there's no such freedom, I tell you! Air isn't free any more--or won't be, soon! It will be everything, anything but free, before another year is gone! Free as air?
You--you don't understand! Your father and I--we shall soon own the air.

Free as air?
Yes, if you like! For that--that means you, too, must belong to me!" Again he sought to take her, to hold her and overmaster her.

But she, now wide-eyed with a kind of sudden terror at this latest outbreak, this seeming madness on his part, which she could nowise fathom or comprehend, retreated ever more and more, away from him.
Then suddenly with a quick effort, she stripped off the splendid, blazing diamond from her finger, and held it out to him.
"Wally," said she, calm now and quite herself again, "Wally, let's be friends.

Just that and nothing more.