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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: words, that from the point of view of her marriage and also of her
eagerness, which was quite a match for mine, this was a solution
more prompt than could have been expected and more radical than
waiting for the old lady to swallow the dose. I candidly admit
indeed that at the time - for I heard from her repeatedly - I read
some singular things into Gwendolen's words and some still more
extraordinary ones into her silences. Pen in hand, this way, I
live the time over, and it brings back the oddest sense of my
having been, both for months and in spite of myself, a kind of
coerced spectator. All my life had taken refuge in my eyes, which
the procession of events appeared to have committed itself to keep
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