| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: enabled him to draw that of the sky at any period, though I allow
this is impossible."
"I doubt his taking so much trouble merely to deceive three
wanderers who lacked the knowledge even to check them," I said.
"But all this misses the point, Bickley. However long they had
slept, that man and woman did arise from seeming death. They did
dwell in those marvelous caves with their evidences of departed
civilisations, and they did show us that fearful, world-wandering
gyroscope. These things we saw."
"I admit that we saw them, Arbuthnot, and I admit that they are
one and all beyond human comprehension. To that extent I am
 When the World Shook |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: an instrument of which all the strings but one are broken in a
last ringing clamour under a heavy blow.
She rose to her feet and looked at him. The very violence of his
cry soothed her in an intuitive conviction of his love, and she
hugged to her breast the lamentable remnants of that affection
with the unscrupulous greediness of women who cling desperately
to the very scraps and rags of love, any kind of love, as a thing
that of right belongs to them and is the very breath of their
life. She put both her hands on Almayer's shoulders, and looking
at him half tenderly, half playfully, she said--
"You speak so because you love me."
 Almayer's Folly |