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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he must
have considered Newman's "advances" with mechanical politeness.
Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging
in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture,
now and then found himself confronted by the conscious,
ironical smile of his host. What the deuce M. de
Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to divine.
M. de Bellegarde's smile may be supposed to have been,
for himself, a compromise between a great many emotions.
So long as he smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should
be polite. A smile, moreover, committed him to nothing more
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