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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: one's self for not having loved Margaret Aubyn was a good deal
like being disturbed by an inability to admire the Venus of Milo.
From her cold niche of fame she looked down ironically enough on
his self-flagellations. . . . It was only when he came on
something that belonged to her that he felt a sudden renewal of
the old feeling, the strange dual impulse that drew him to her
voice but drove him from her hand, so that even now, at sight of
anything she had touched, his heart contracted painfully. It
happened seldom nowadays. Her little presents, one by one, had
disappeared from his rooms, and her letters, kept from some
unacknowledged puerile vanity in the possession of such treasures,
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