| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: would have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but
he enjoyed quite as little the vacant alternative.
After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that
to have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of
diminishing their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her
in greater freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled
together. Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly
sincere. They began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame
imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning or ending,
had been connected with their visits to the church. They had
either strolled away as they came out or gone in to rest on the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Love, children, happiness?'
And she exclaimed,
'Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild!
What! though your Prince's love were like a God's,
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice?
You are bold indeed: we are not talked to thus:
Yet will we say for children, would they grew
Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die;
They with the sun and moon renew their light
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