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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced the
friendship once so charming and comforting. His privation had two
faces, and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his
last attempt to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look
at least. This was the privation he inflicted; the other was the
privation he bore. The conditions she never phrased he used to
murmur to himself in solitude: "One more, one more - only just
one." Certainly he was going down; he often felt it when he caught
himself, over his work, staring at vacancy and giving voice to that
inanity. There was proof enough besides in his being so weak and
so ill. His irritation took the form of melancholy, and his
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