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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: indeed employed; but observe that it is not displayed. Even in the
heroine the working of the passion is suppressed; and the great
struggle, the true tragedy, the SCENE-A-FAIRE passes unseen behind
the panels of a locked door. The delectable invention of the young
visitor is introduced, consciously or not, to this end: that Mr.
James, true to his method, might avoid the scene of passion. I
trust no reader will suppose me guilty of undervaluing this little
masterpiece. I mean merely that it belongs to one marked class of
novel, and that it would have been very differently conceived and
treated had it belonged to that other marked class, of which I now
proceed to speak.
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