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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: business with her would be just to have a go at her head and to
arrange in that view for an early sitting. It would have been as
impossible, I think, to be impertinent to her as it would have been
to throw a stone at a plate-glass window; so any talk that went
forward on the basis of her loveliness was the most natural thing
in the world and immediately became the most general and sociable.
It was when I saw all this that I judged how, though it was the
last thing she asked for, what one would ever most have at her
service was a curious compassion. That sentiment was coloured by
the vision of the dire exposure of a being whom vanity had put so
off her guard. Hers was the only vanity I have ever known that
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