| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: justify myself. I'm simply trying to make you understand.
I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant
to give me up. And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to
be sorry for, to be of use to. That, I swear to you, was
the way it began. The rest was a moment's folly...a flash
of madness...as such things are. We've never seen each
other since..."
Anna was looking at him coldly. "You sufficiently describe
her in saying that!"
"Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is
what you always declare you never do."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: did our best for him, but he died in about two hours. Before
dying, he made us a present of a map we found in his breast
pocket. It showed the location of a very rich mine he had found,
and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to do with as
we pleased.
"Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much
attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other
with his life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half,
each of us keeping one part, in order that nobody else could
steal the secret from the one that held the paper. The last time
I had been in El Paso I had bought my little girl a gold chain
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