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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: cleverly to render Martin miserably self-conscious. Hampered by
this new and unexpected feeling, his attempts to be pleasant fell
flat and he lapsed into his old grimness, while Rose, eating
quickly, confined her remarks to her determination to go to town
in search of a job. Had Martin not talked as he had to his wife
he would have been able, undoubtedly, to disregard her and to
continue the line of chatter which he had hit upon so happily and
which he had never suspected was in him. But the fact, not so
much that she knew, but that from this vantage point of knowledge
she was ridiculing him, was too much for even his
self-possession. It made the light banter impossible. Especially,
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