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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: threshold of the door,--he with his arms folded and motionless like a
statue on a tomb; she leaning against the blind door. Both seemed to
be gazing at him and counting his steps. Nothing is so embarrassing to
a creature naturally timid as to feel itself the object of a close
examination, and if that is made by the eyes of hatred, the sort of
suffering it causes is changed into intolerable martyrdom.
Presently Birotteau fancied he was preventing Mademoiselle Gamard and
the abbe from walking in the narrow path. That idea, inspired equally
by fear and kindness, became so strong that he left the garden and
went to the church, thinking no longer of his canonry, so absorbed was
he by the disheartening tyranny of the old maid. Luckily for him he
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