| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: workings of spring. Glennard, though he felt himself brought
nearer to his wife, was still, as it were, hardly within speaking
distance. He was but laboriously acquiring the rudiments of their
new medium of communication; and he had to grope for her through
the dense fog of his humiliation, the distorting vapor against
which his personality loomed grotesque and mean.
Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us
enables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge
of self-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness.
If Glennard did not hate his wife it was slowly, sufferingly, that
there was born in him that profounder passion which made his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: involuntary terror seizes me and my lungs seem to be without air.
Meanwhile, Captain Nemo reflected silently, and evidently an idea
had struck him; but he seemed to reject it. At last, these words
escaped his lips:
"Boiling water!" he muttered.
"Boiling water?" I cried.
"Yes, sir. We are enclosed in a space that is relatively confined.
Would not jets of boiling water, constantly injected by the pumps,
raise the temperature in this part and stay the congelation?"
"Let us try it," I said resolutely.
"Let us try it, Professor."
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more.
Then I again shifted my eyes--I faced what I had to face.
VII
I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can
give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval.
Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms:
"They KNOW--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!"
"And what on earth--?" I felt her incredulity as she held me.
"Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!"
Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only
now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--
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