When the ground was strewn with the crimson and golden leaves of autumn, and the musk-scented grapes that covered the arbour at the end of the garden were turning
golden brown in the sunshine, I began to write a sketch of my life-a year after I had
written "The Frost King."
I was still excessively scrupulous about everything I wrote. The thought that what I wrote
might not be absolutely my own tormented me. No one knew of these fears except my
teacher. A strange sensitiveness prevented me from referring to the "Frost King"; and
often when an idea flashed out in the course of conversation I would spell softly to her, “I
am not sure it is mine." At other times, in the midst of a paragraph I was writing, I said to
myself, "Suppose it should be found that all this was written by some one long ago!"
What does the word scrupulous mean in the paragraph above?
O careful
o happy
O hectic
O insane