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: He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate and
what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were other
churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in one
way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn't
absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but
without contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other
such rare semblance of the mountain of light she had once mentioned
to him as the satisfaction of her need. As this semblance again
gradually grew great to him and his pious practice more regular, he
found a sharper and sharper pang in the imagination of her
darkness; for never so much as in these weeks had his rites been
|