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: I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is
something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--
I was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her
had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that,
also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water.
This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the confirmed
conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal notice.
She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it
a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking
in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat.
This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently
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