| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: passion of his art; he sees above and beyond what other painters see.
He has meditated deeply on color and the absolute truth of lines; but
by dint of much research, much thought, much study, he has come to
doubt the object for which he is searching. In his hours of despair he
fancies that drawing does not exist, and that lines can render nothing
but geometric figures. That, of course, is not true; because with a
black line which has no color we can represent the human form. This
proves that our art is made up, like nature, of an infinite number of
elements. Drawing gives the skeleton, and color gives the life; but
life without the skeleton is a far more incomplete thing than the
skeleton without the life. But there is a higher truth still,--namely,
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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 Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: the absence of scruple that marks the intercourse of truly
civilized people, you'll probably agree that there are limits;
at least up to now there have been limits ...."
"I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to
show that she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa."
"But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" he
suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy
room. "A whole summer of it if we choose."
Susy smiled. "Apparently she didn't think that enough."
"What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her
child."
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