"
"I am sure you deserve to be," I smiled.
"I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved
to have a wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate,
the perfect mistress and the perfect mother."
I reflected for a while on the life that the Captain suggested
to my imagination.
"It is obvious that to lead such an existence and make so
great a success of it, you must both have needed a strong will
and a determined character."
"Perhaps; but without one other factor we could have achieved nothing."
"And what was that?"
He stopped, somewhat dramatically, and stretched out his arm.
"Belief in God. Without that we should have been lost."
Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Coutras.
Chapter LV
Mr. Coutras was an old Frenchman of great stature and
exceeding bulk. His body was shaped like a huge duck's egg;
and his eyes, sharp, blue, and good-natured, rested now and
then with self-satisfaction on his enormous paunch. His
complexion was florid and his hair white. He was a man to
attract immediate sympathy. He received us in a room that
might have been in a house in a provincial town in France, and
the one or two Polynesian curios had an odd look.
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