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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond the old woman a
gentleman with a lady on his arm. It was from him, from Paul
Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with the lady of
some precious object in the window. Stransom had no sooner
recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with this
growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in
the very act of laying his hand on his friend's arm. It lasted but
the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a wild
question. Was NOT Mrs. Creston dead? - the ambiguity met him there
in the short drop of her husband's voice, the drop conjugal, if it
ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each other.
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