| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: the light and lay down again.
'You look pale, Elfride,' said Mrs. Swancourt the next morning at
breakfast. 'Isn't she, cousin Harry?'
A young girl who is scarcely ill at all can hardly help becoming
so when regarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table
in obedience to some remark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She
certainly was pale.
'Am I pale?' she said with a faint smile. 'I did not sleep much.
I could not get rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I
would.'
'Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of
all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had
been marked for he had met with a vengeance--he had emptied the cup
to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom
nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke--
that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror,
while the pieces fitted and fitted. So SHE had seen it while he
didn't, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It
was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had
waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his
vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him
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