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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: should he screw himself to that if the door he had seen closed were
at present open? He could hold to the idea that the closing had
practically been for him an act of mercy, a chance offered him to
descend, depart, get off the ground and never again profane it.
This conception held together, it worked; but what it meant for him
depended now clearly on the amount of forbearance his recent
action, or rather his recent inaction, had engendered. The image
of the "presence" whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -
this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he
stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to
him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his
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