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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge transparent cage,
flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort
of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously.
The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw
a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor,
with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing
in a queue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a
brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent. These latter persons,
who carried portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected, exhausted look;
their garments were not very fresh, and they seemed to be rendering
some mysterious tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxed mustache,
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