| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: moment later, had overtaken his look, and found a place at the
girl's side. She bent forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back,
listening, with the depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to
flattery, enabling him to swallow the strongest doses without
apparent grossness of appetite. Julia winced at her own
definition of the smile.
On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised
his wife by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm. "Did I open
their eyes a bit? Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he
asked gaily.
Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his. "What I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: swing, and I had need of my immediate attention for Miss Anvoy.
Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have said
to-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention had
been rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a
perfect general consciousness that something great was going on:
it was a little like having been etherised to hear Herr Joachim
play. The old music was in the air; I felt the strong pulse of
thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, the plunge; but
I knew something about one of the listeners that nobody else knew,
and Saltram's monologue could reach me only through that medium.
To this hour I'm of no use when, as a witness, I'm appealed to--for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented
and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me--
this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl
herself into the very presence that could make me quail.
I quailed even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw
was never greater than at that instant, and in the immediate
need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness.
"She's there, you little unhappy thing--there, there, THERE,
and you see her as well as you see me!" I had said shortly
before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child,
but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not
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