| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: for those innocent little girls," he said
authoritatively, glad to be disagreeable to his cousin.
"She looks like a hawk among doves."
"The woman is harmless enough," said Miss Vance tartly.
"She speaks exquisite French."
"But what does she say in it?" persisted George. "She is
vulgar from her red pompon to her boots. She has the
swagger of a soubrette and she has left a trail of
perfume behind her--pah! I confess I am surprised at
you, Miss Vance. You do not often slip in your
judgment."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: under the Addison Road Station lamps; and, after one short month,
came Gravesend and Dicky steaming out to his new life, and the girl
crying in a thirty-shillings a week bed-and-living room, in a back
street off Montpelier Square near the Knightsbridge Barracks.
But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land, where "men" of
twenty-one were reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was
expensive. The salary that loomed so large six thousand miles away
did not go far. Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and
remitted more than the fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square. One
hundred and thirty-five rupees out of three hundred and thirty is
not much to live on; but it was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to her.
"I'm afraid you'll never come up to an American husband,
if that's what the wives expect," he said to Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment
with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided.
On the 21st of August Lord Lambeth received a telegram from his mother,
requesting him to return immediately to England; his father had been
taken ill, and it was his filial duty to come to him.
The young Englishman was visibly annoyed. "What the deuce does it mean?"
he asked of his kinsman. "What am I to do?"
Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty,
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