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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: she felt that there had been something prophetic in the quality of
its solitude; it seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness
in which all her after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came;
not a hand fell on the door-latch; and the tick of the clock in the
back room ironically emphasized the passing of the empty hours.
Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the coming
crisis in the sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if not
knowing on what it trod. The elder sister's affection had so
passionately projected itself into her junior's fate that at such
moments she seemed to be living two lives, her own and Evelina's;
and her private longings shrank into silence at the sight of the
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