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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: complex, being mixed up with the image of a woman; perhaps go on
board, not because there was anything for me to do there but just
for nothing, for happiness, simply as a man will sit contented in
the companionship of the beloved object. For lunch I had the
choice of two places, one Bohemian, the other select, even
aristocratic, where I had still my reserved table in the petit
salon, up the white staircase. In both places I had friends who
treated my erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged
with respect, in the other with a certain amused tolerance. I owed
this tolerance to the most careless, the most confirmed of those
Bohemians (his beard had streaks of grey amongst its many other
 The Arrow of Gold |