| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: no new way of ordering their lives? No--there was none: he
could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow
in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and
ubiquitous children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life
with him? If he did, she would probably have the sense to
refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummer
madness; now the score must be paid ....
He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust
himself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: the hues of opal, and moved in eddies of which he was the centre. He
paused, looked at the Shade, and said:
" 'To-morrow.'
"Then he turned heavenwards once more, spread his wings, and clove
through space as a vessel cuts through the waves, hardly showing her
white sails to the exiles left on some deserted shore.
"The Shade uttered appalling cries, to which the damned responded from
the lowest circle, the deepest in the immensity of suffering, to the
more peaceful zone near the surface on which we were standing. This
worst torment of all had appealed to all the rest. The turmoil was
swelled by the roar of a sea of fire which formed a bass to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: receipt of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at
Bridges had been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a
magazine, on some article to which my signature was attached. "I
read it with great pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its
influence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The
consequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity
of my having saddled you with a knowledge that you may find
something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't imagine how
I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never before
mentioned, no matter in what state of expansion, the fact of my
little secret, and I shall never speak of that mystery again. I
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