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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw
and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--
I can call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily,
how transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon
for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how
the human soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--
had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.
The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against
the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak,
but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance.
"Yes--I took it."
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