| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: has to carry all the crockery one has finished using: it was the
last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered with
the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that the
privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a
charming woman can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls
of sentiment he had developed a science of evasion in which the
woman of the moment became a mere implement of the game. He owed
a great deal of delicate enjoyment to the cultivation of this
art. The perils from which it had been his refuge became naively
harmless: was it possible that he who now took his easy way along
the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heights of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: Mrs. Fyne received this without the flutter of an eyelid. Fyne's
masculine breast, as might have been expected, was pierced by that
old, regulation shaft. He grunted most feelingly. I turned to him
with false simplicity. "Don't you agree with me?"
"The very thing I've been telling my wife," he exclaimed in his
extra-manly bass. "We have been discussing--"
A discussion in the Fyne menage! How portentous! Perhaps the very
first difference they had ever had: Mrs. Fyne unflinching and ready
for any responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking--the children in
bed upstairs; and outside the dark fields, the shadowy contours of
the land on the starry background of the universe, with the crude
Chance |
