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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: excellent health.' Somehow I shouldn't like to see it."
"You won't see it; I'm not in the least celebrated - my obscurity
protects me. But couldn't you bear even to see I was dying or
dead?" my host enquired.
"Dead - passe encore; there's nothing so safe. One never knows
what a living artist may do - one has mourned so many. However,
one must make the worst of it. You must be as dead as you can."
"Don't I meet that condition in having just published a book?"
"Adequately, let us hope; for the book's verily a masterpiece."
At this moment the parlour-maid appeared in the door that opened
from the garden: Paraday lived at no great cost, and the frisk of
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