Question

Read the following passage carefully before choosing your answer:

Mr. Pendelton adjusted his spectacles and looked out at the rain-slicked cobblestones of Lombard Street. The young clerk, Harris, was speaking of the new telegraph lines with a feverish devotion that Pendelton found both exhausting and slightly absurd. To Harris, the copper wires draping the city were reins guiding a new, swifter world; to Pendelton, they were merely black threads stitching together a tapestry of unnecessary haste. He remembered when news arrived by packet boat—slow, heavy with the salt of the sea, carrying a dignity that no instant spark could replicate. He kept his head lowered over the ledger, not because the numbers required his undivided attention, but because he feared that looking up would reveal his profound alienation from the very room he had occupied for thirty years. He muttered a brief word of agreement, his pen resuming its rhythmic scratching, a sound that felt to him like a small, stubborn anchor in a shifting tide.

Which of the following best describes Mr. Pendelton’s primary motivation for keeping his head lowered over the ledger?