The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: that occasion I splashed along in the rain, that I couldn't have
done anything else; and yet I remember saying to myself that it was
hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books, but I had
lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike spoiled
for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had
taken to the man still more than I had ever taken to the books.
CHAPTER VI.
SIX months after our friend had left England George Corvick, who
made his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which
imposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of some
difficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise to
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