| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: Marguerite.
"He wants you to forgive him."
"Precisely."
"And you do?"
"One has to; but he wants more than that."
"What, then?"
"He wants to have supper with us."
"And do you consent?"
"What do you think?"
"I think that you are two children who haven't an atom of sense
between you; but I also think that I am very hungry, and that the
Camille |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: in the habit of using such means of coercion; besides, he is
habitually so mild and well-conducted, that I cannot but think
you must have given provocation for such excessive violence.'
This reply disconcerted G---- M---- beyond measure and he went
away, declaring that he knew how to be revenged on the governor,
as well as on me, and everyone else who dared to thwart him.
"The Superior, having ordered some of the brotherhood to escort
him out of the prison, remained alone with me. He conjured me to
tell him at once what was the cause of the fracas.--`Oh, my good
sir!' said I to him, continuing to cry like a child, `imagine the
most horrible cruelty, figure to yourself the most inhuman of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: some adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our
long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror,
huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural. If I had met
a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at
least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in life,
between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved.
The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little
more to make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't
express what followed it save by saying that the silence itself--
which was indeed in a manner an attestation of my strength--
became the element into which I saw the figure disappear;
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