| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: doubt--you would have great difficulty in finding out which men
they are. Therefore leave it alone; never show her what you
suspect."
I even before he quitted me asked him to promise me this. "All
right, I promise"--but he was gloomy enough. He was a lover facing
the fact that there was no limit to the deceit his loved one was
ready to practise: it made so remarkably little difference. I
could see by what a stretch his passionate pity would from this
moment overlook the girl's fatuity and folly. She was always
accessible to him--that I knew; for if she had told him he was an
idiot to dream she could dream of him, she would have rebuked the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: again as animals. The third river passes out between the two, and near the
place of outlet pours into a vast region of fire, and forms a lake larger
than the Mediterranean Sea, boiling with water and mud; and proceeding
muddy and turbid, and winding about the earth, comes, among other places,
to the extremities of the Acherusian Lake, but mingles not with the waters
of the lake, and after making many coils about the earth plunges into
Tartarus at a deeper level. This is that Pyriphlegethon, as the stream is
called, which throws up jets of fire in different parts of the earth. The
fourth river goes out on the opposite side, and falls first of all into a
wild and savage region, which is all of a dark-blue colour, like lapis
lazuli; and this is that river which is called the Stygian river, and falls
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: cigarette, and the flame lighted an instant his responsive finished
face, magnifying into a pleasant grimace the kindness with which he
paid her this tribute. "You're awfully clever, you know; cleverer,
cleverer, cleverer--!" He had appeared on the point of making some
tremendous statement; then suddenly, puffing his cigarette and
shifting almost with violence on his seat, he let it altogether
fall.
CHAPTER XVII
In spite of this drop, if not just by reason of it, she felt as if
Lady Bradeen, all but named out, had popped straight up; and she
practically betrayed her consciousness by waiting a little before
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn't have so
much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get
her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or
critical kind HAD originally occurred. He was really almost
reaching out in imagination--as against time--for something that
would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch
of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They
would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They
would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn,
as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else
failing, she herself decided to take up the case and, as it were,
|
