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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: cruel, tinkling rustle the pages flamed and twisted and opened,
as if the fire read them, and collapsed again as if in
agonizing effort to hold their secret even in death! The
closely folded paper refused to burn, it went out again and
again; while each time Philip Malbone examined it ere
relighting, with a sort of vague curiosity, to see how much
passion had already vanished out of existence, and how much yet
survived. For each of these inspections he had to brush aside
the calcined portion of the letter, once so warm and beautiful
with love, but changed to something that seemed to him a
semblance of his own heart just then,--black, trivial, and
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