The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: Pudneys, who had taken him to Birmingham, had already got rid of
him, and we had a horrible consciousness of his wandering roofless,
in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear
wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been
lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the
difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted
genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was
sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide
and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in
silence, talked about when we didn't speak. When we spoke it was
only about the brilliant girl George Gravener was to marry and whom
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