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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: kicking off his sodden shoes, he supped quietly in the room of which
shattered door and broken window reminded him of his odd interview with
Ruth, and of the comedy of love she had enacted to detain him there.
The thought of it embittered him; the part she had played seemed to
his retrospective mind almost a wanton's part - for all that in name
she was his wife. And yet, underlying a certain irrepressible nausea,
came the reflection that, after all, her purpose had been to save his
life. It would have been a sweet thought, sweet enough to have overlaid
that other bitterness, had he not insisted upon setting it down entirely
to her gratitude and her sense of justice. She intended to repay the
debt in which she had stood to him since, at the risk of his own life
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