| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had
been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately
shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve.
On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman--
they were all numbered now--I had an alarm that perilously skirted it
and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness,
proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during
this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again
without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and,
as I afterward knew, till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was
to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: you be disposing of Mr. Westmacott to-morrow, or must I be doing it
for you?"
With a gasp of dismay young Richard twisted in his chair to confront
this fresh and unsuspected antagonist. What danger was this that he
had overlooked? Then, even as he turned, Wilding's voice fell on his
ear, and each word of the few he spoke was like a drop of icy water
on Westmacott's overheated brain.
"I protest you are vastly kind, Nick. But I intend, myself, to have
the pleasure of killing Mr. Westmacott." And his smile fell now in
mockery upon the disillusioned lad.
Crushed by that bolt from the blue, Richard sat as if stunned, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: splendid best.
"Gaw! What a place!" said Bert.
It was so great, and in its collective effect so pacifically
magnificent, that to make war upon it seemed incongruous beyond
measure, like laying siege to the National Gallery or attacking
respectable people in an hotel dining-room with battle-axe and
mail. It was in its entirety so large, so complex, so delicately
immense, that to bring it to the issue of warfare was like
driving a crowbar into the mechanism of a clock. And the
fish-like shoal of great airships hovering light and sunlit
above, filling the sky, seemed equally remote from the ugly
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