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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: what he offered her was, in fact, above all things a vast,
sunny immunity from the need of having any.
He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintre had so appointed it,
at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself
with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress,
who always made a point, before her family, of talking to some one else.
Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly and coldly
with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room with her
slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon him,
was to Newman's sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of damp air.
When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh whether
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