|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had
waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his
vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him
the chance to baffle his doom. One's doom, however, was never
baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had
seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him.
The escape would have been to love her; then, THEN he would have
lived. SHE had lived--who could say now with what passion?--since
she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her
(ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism
and the light of her use. Her spoken words came back to him--the
|
