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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: to my surprise, it was announced to me his wife had called. I
hesitated, after she had come up, about telling her Saltram was in
the house, but she herself settled the question, kept me reticent
by drawing forth a sealed letter which, looking at me very hard in
the eyes, she placed, with a pregnant absence of comment, in my
hand. For a single moment there glimmered before me the fond hope
that Mrs. Saltram had tendered me, as it were, her resignation and
desired to embody the act in an unsparing form. To bring this
about I would have feigned any humiliation; but after my eyes had
caught the superscription I heard myself say with a flatness that
betrayed a sense of something very different from relief: "Oh the
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