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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: to see herself surrounded--a species of vegetation for which she
carried a collection of seedlings, as we may say, in her pocket.
She found her chief happiness in the sense of exerting a certain
power and making a certain impression; and now she felt the annoyance
of a rather wearied swimmer who, on nearing shore, to land,
finds a smooth straight wall of rock when he had counted upon a clean
firm beach. Her power, in the American air, seemed to have lost its
prehensile attributes; the smooth wall of rock was insurmountable.
"Surely je n'en suis pas la," she said to herself, "that I let
it make me uncomfortable that a Mr. Robert Acton should n't
honor me with a visit!" Yet she was vexed that he had not come;
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