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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: its social form, a mere command to present myself before the
grandee. No Royalist devoted by conviction, as I must have
appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning. I put the card
in my pocket and after dining or not dining - I really don't
remember - spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing
thoughts of tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From
time to time I looked at the dummy. I even got up once from the
couch on which I had been writhing like a worm and walked towards
it as if to touch it, but refrained, not from sudden shame but from
sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late
and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture
The Arrow of Gold |
