The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: "Ah no," said Strether, "that's not the way it works."
But she had already taken him up. "The way it works--you needn't
tell me!--is of course that you efface yourself."
"With my name on the cover?" he lucidly objected.
"Ah but you don't put it on for yourself."
"I beg your pardon--that's exactly what I do put it on for. It's
exactly the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself. It seems
to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions,
the refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable
little scrap of an identity."
On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at
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