| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: discovered Cordemais' crutch standing discarded behind the door, M.
Binet became alarmed. A dreadful suspicion entered his mind. He
grew visibly pale under his paint.
"But this evening he couldn't walk without the crutch!" he exclaimed.
"How then does he come to leave it there and take himself off?"
"Perhaps he has gone on to the inn," suggested some one.
"But he could n't walk without his crutch," M. Binet insisted.
Nevertheless, since clearly he was not anywhere about the market-hall,
to the inn they all trooped, and deafened the landlady with their
inquiries.
"Oh, yes, M. Cordemais came in some time ago."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: stranger of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He
would have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but
he enjoyed quite as little the vacant alternative.
After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that
to have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of
diminishing their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her
in greater freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled
together. Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly
sincere. They began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame
imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning or ending,
had been connected with their visits to the church. They had
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