Question

Read the following passage carefully:

Constance sat upright at the mahogany desk, her ledgers arranged in neat, parallel rows that mirrored the tidy geometry of the street below. She dipped her pen with mathematical precision, recording the quarterly yields of the textile mill with neither satisfaction nor resentment. It was a duty inherited, and duty, to Constance, was the single anchor in an otherwise drifting world. Across the room, sprawled on the velvet chaise lounge, her sister Beatrice leafed through a volume of French poetry, occasionally sighing at the grey London drizzle. "Must you measure out your life in ledgers, Constance?" Beatrice murmured, letting a page flutter closed. "The wind today smells of coal-smoke and rain, yet you treat it as if it were merely a column of figures to be balanced." Constance did not look up. "The rain does not pay the weavers, Beatrice, nor does it keep the roof over this library. Your poetry is a luxury paid for by the very columns you despise." Beatrice smiled languidly, tracing the gilded spine of her book. "Perhaps. But your columns are a fortress built to keep life out, whereas my verses are a window to let it in. I would rather catch cold from an open window than suffocate behind your stone walls."

Which of the following best describes the primary narrative function of the contrast between Constance's focus on ledgers and Beatrice's interest in poetry?