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  my attitude most obviously that of mari complaisant?' 

"Doctor, I got up without a word and lit my big china pipe, and as I struck the head of the match against the wall I felt tempted to strike my own head after it. I felt like a fool. The whole thing became so obvious—should have been so obvious from the very start—and yet, here these two young savages had run away because it seemed the only thing to do, when they might just as well have remained and cheered the soul of the poor old Count, to say nothing of enjoying his hospitality! Here again was I myself blaming the Count for an infatuated old cuckold—and he, the only really logical and sensible person in the whole affair, wailing beside his empty cage!

"Then the humor of the thing struck me and I almost laughed outright. It was so ridiculous, and such a joke on the runaways, who were cooped up in a little fifty-foot pearling yawl or stowed away in a Nipa hut in [ 181 ]