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: that he had gained something great, and his theory--with an
elaborate innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming back even,
every few years--had then been to preserve, cherish and extend it.
As such plans as these had come to nothing, however, in respect to
acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless little enough
of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of
seed. Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few
germs had sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris. The
process of yesterday had really been the process of feeling the
general stirred life of connexions long since individually
dropped. Strether had become acquainted even on this ground with
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