| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: here seem not--seem never to feel the need: any more
than the blessed in heaven."
He lowered his voice to ask: "What sort of a need?"
"Ah, don't ask me! I don't speak your language,"
she retorted petulantly.
The answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still
in the path, looking down at her.
"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?"
"Oh, my friend--!" She laid her hand lightly on his
arm, and he pleaded earnestly: "Ellen--why won't you
tell me what's happened?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: able to see what it's NOT."
He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it
was all beyond him, and that SHE was too, he would still have
sharply challenged her hadn't he so felt it an abuse of her
weakness to do more than take devoutly what she gave him, take it
hushed as to a revelation. If he did speak, it was out of the
foreknowledge of his loneliness to come. "If you're glad of what
it's 'not' it might then have been worse?"
She turned her eyes away, she looked straight before her; with
which after a moment: "Well, you know our fears."
He wondered. "It's something then we never feared?"
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