The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time to
gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no
one guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer.
She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the
monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull
plash of the rain in the far distance, shrinking back whenever
the man Wolfe happened to look towards her. She knew, in spite
of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form
which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by instinct,
although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the
man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique,
Life in the Iron-Mills |