Signs of their maturity appear when the boys have a serious conversation about Finny's accident. Finny realizes that Gene did shake the tree limb purposely so that he would fall. However, he knows that this action was spontaneous, and that Gene never meant to cause him life-long grief. Finny sympathetically says to his best friend, "Something just seized you. It wasn't anything you really felt against me, it wasn't some kind of hate you've felt all along. It wasn't anything personal" (865). Gene admits to Finny that he feels incredibly guilty and replies, "It was some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that's all it was" (865).
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