| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which she
held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had
the power to make her drop them.
"May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another
woman--but not the one she thinks."
Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move.
After a moment he sat down beside her, and, taking
her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the gloves and fan
fell on the sofa between them.
She started up, and freeing herself from him moved
away to the other side of the hearth. "Ah, don't make
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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 Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: "Jack--is it--really you?" she asked.
He answered with a kiss.
She slipped out of his arms breathless and scarlet. "Tell me all--"
"There's much to tell, but not before you kiss me. It has been more than
a year."
"Only a year! Have I been gone only a year?"
"Yes, a year. But it's past now. Kiss me, Mescal. One kiss will pay
for that long year, though it broke my heart."
Shyly she raised her hands to his shoulders and put her lips to his.
"Yes, you've found me, Jack, thank God! just in time!"
"Mescal! What's wrong? Aren't you well?"
The Heritage of the Desert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: only to sit in the night and silence, and see your friends
devoured; for life is a deceit, and the bandage is taken from your
eyes."
Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters came with the
bowl. Desire of that kava rose in the missionary's bosom; he
lusted for it like a swimmer for the land, or a bridegroom for his
bride; and he reached out his hand, and took the bowl, and would
have drunk. And then he remembered, and put it back.
"Drink!" sang the daughter of Miru.
"There is no kava like the kava of the dead, and to drink of it
once is the reward of living."
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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 Pupil by Henry James: already flushing faintly into knowledge, that there was nothing
that at a given moment you could say an intelligent child didn't
know. It seemed to him that he himself knew too much to imagine
Morgan's simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.
The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on: "I'd
have spoken to them about their idea, as I call it, long ago, if I
hadn't been sure what they'd say."
"And what would they say?"
"Just what they said about what poor Zenobie told me - that it was
a horrid dreadful story, that they had paid her every penny they
owed her."
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