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  would have understood; the ethical situation was too delicate for an American; she was too narrow-minded to combine adultery and domestic tranquillity.'

They are so crude, these Americans!' he wailed. 'So crude!'

"An extraordinary situation, Doctor, and yet reasonable when one pauses to consider. The Count was highly esthetic; his wife charmed him in really a very elevated way; he enjoyed her beauty, her society, her bonhomie, no doubt her care and strength, for she was kind-hearted where her passions were not concerned; he may have leaned upon her vigorous young vitality. She and the tomb could not be pictured in the same frame. He appreciated her; wanted her to be happy; was thoroughly good to her, and did not mean that because she was tied to a broken invalid she should be deprived of the fulness of life. An archaic and rather pathetic casuistry, was it not?

"I pondered. 'They are in a small [ 183 ]