| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: to escape. At first he was in doubt, but afterwards this
indecision passed. He submitted to custom and yielded to the
devil, and only the peasant garb reminded him of the thought and
feeling he had had.
Every day more and more people flocked to him and less and less
time was left him for prayer and for renewing his spiritual
strength. Sometimes in lucid moments he thought he was like a
place where there had once been a spring. 'There used to be a
feeble spring of living water which flowed quietly from me and
through me. That was true life, the time when she tempted me!'
(He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of her who was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: Anna said, in a voice from which she strove to take the edge
of hardness: "You know where Owen is, Miss Painter tells
me."
"Yes; that was my reason for asking you to see me." Sophy
spoke simply, without constraint or hesitation.
"I thought he'd promised you--" Anna interposed.
"He did; but he broke his promise. That's what I thought I
ought to tell you."
"Thank you." Anna went on tentatively: "He left Givre this
morning without a word. I followed him because I was
afraid..."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: body, once so captivating, but an ignoble, bony structure. As Flore
caught sight of the visitors, she drew across her breast a bit of
muslin which might have been a fragment of a window-curtain, for it
was edged with rust as from a rod. The young men saw two chairs, a
broken bureau on which was a tallow-candle stuck into a potato, a few
dishes on the floor, and an earthen fire-pot in a corner of the
chimney, in which there was no fire; this was all the furniture of the
room. Bixiou noticed the remaining sheets of writing-paper, brought
from some neighboring grocery for the letter which the two women had
doubtless concocted together. The word "disgusting" is a positive to
which no superlative exists, and we must therefore use it to convey
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