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: in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before.
This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations
and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper,
of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils.
It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere
infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they
were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made,
in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved.
I don't mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did
anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers:
I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed
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