| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: young man watching realized that she had the free grace to carry
it out successfully. She danced the fandango to a finish, swept
him another low bow, and presented laughingly to him the
tambourine for his donation. Then, suddenly flinging aside the
instrument, she curtsied and caught at his hand.
"Will the senor have his fortune told?"
Bucky drew a handful of change from his pocket and selected a
gold eagle. "I suppose I must cross your palm with gold," he
said, even while his subconscious mind was running on the new
complication presented to him by this discovery.
He was very clear about one thing. He must not let her know that
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: but I had been too full of my literary concupiscence to think of that.
Now I perceived it; I can scarcely tell how it startled me.
She stood in the middle of the room with a face of mildness bent upon me,
and her look of forgiveness, of absolution, made her angelic.
It beautified her; she was younger; she was not a ridiculous old woman.
This optical trick gave her a sort of phantasmagoric brightness,
and while I was still the victim of it I heard a whisper somewhere
in the depths of my conscience: "Why not, after all--why not?"
It seemed to me I was ready to pay the price. Still more distinctly
however than the whisper I heard Miss Tita's own voice. I was so struck
with the different effect she made upon me that at first I was not clearly
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