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Rh own. But there are other and more subtle considerations. I had become sufficiently well acquainted with Adelina to know that if I made any condemnatory remarks upon her having taken the matter so vigorously into her own hands, she would simply gaze past me with that quiet look of one who knows and is satisfied to know, her own mind. I should feel about six years old and retire with the assumption of a dignity there was nothing visible to support.

If, on the other hand, I came down heavy and upbraided Adelina with breaking my express orders—well, she might go so far as to shrug. She would in her mind, anyway, and leave me the sense of being an unreasonable self-opinionated, narrow-minded cat, or kitten, at the very least.

On the whole, it seemed better not to say anything, and this was the course I finally adopted—or shrunk into, rather. But it left me with a frustrated, wrung-out sort of feeling that didn't contribute to self-respect.

Now this brings me to the crux of the tale. How far shall we resign the ordering and arranging of our own particular bit of earth to the domination of another? How far should