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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: of reflex adjustments from the imminent risk of any allusion to
the "Letters." Flamel suffered his discourse with the bland
inattention that we accord to the affairs of someone else's
suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa's tea-table without
a perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic.
The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in
Alexa's presence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a
beaconing light thrown on the speaker's words: his answers seemed
to bring out a latent significance in her phrases, as the sculptor
draws his statue from the block. Glennard, under his wife's
composure, detected a sensibility to this manoeuvre, and the
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