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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: despair of rendering the great and glorious charm of her daily moods;
yet the human soul is often stirred as deeply by her calm as by her
emotion, and by silence as by storm.
For a moment no one spoke on board the boat. Every one watched that
sea and sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they
felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession
of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when
all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed
pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the
colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but
down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood;
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