| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: her injunction, he began to explain.
"I thought I disliked you--but I have come to the conclusion
it was just the contrary. In reality I was in love with you.
I had been so from the first time I saw you--when I made
that sketch of you at Siena."
"That in itself needs an explanation. I was not at all nice then--
I was very rude, very perverse. I was horrid!"
"Ah, you admit it!" cried Bernard, with a sort of quick elation.
She had been pale, but she suddenly blushed.
"Your own conduct was singular, as I remember it. It was not
exactly agreeable."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: lone mountain outstanding. It was an imposing
but forbidding mass, as steep and bare as the walls
of a fortress; but in the distance, north and south,
as the range curved in a tapering arc that gave
the valley the appearance of a colossal stadium,
the outlines were soft in a haze of pale color. The
sheltered valley between the western heights and
the sand hills far down the bay where it turned to
the south, was green with wheat fields, and a small
herd of cattle grazed on the lower slopes. The
beauty of this superbly proportioned valley was
Rezanov |
