| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: do not know if there was a moon, but there was the urban
substitute for it - the arc light. It threw the shadow of the
balcony railing in long black bars against her white gown, and as
it swung sometimes her face was in the light. I drew a chair close
so that I could watch her.
"Do you know," I said, when she made no effort at speech, "that you
are a much more formidable person to-night, in that gown, than you
were the last time I saw you?"
The light swung on her face; she was smiling faintly. "The hat with
the green ribbons!" she said. "I must take it back; I had almost
forgotten."
The Man in Lower Ten |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: all, giving her life, to bring it to an end, she had come with him
every step of the way. He had lived by her aid, and to leave her
behind would be cruelly, damnably to miss her. What could be more
overwhelming than that?
Well, he was to know within the week, for though she kept him a
while at bay, left him restless and wretched during a series of
days on each of which he asked about her only again to have to turn
away, she ended his trial by receiving him where she had always
received him. Yet she had been brought out at some hazard into the
presence of so many of the things that were, consciously, vainly,
half their past, and there was scant service left in the gentleness
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: tell him all you know. He's at Weybridge. Know the way?"
"I do," I said; and he turned his horse southward again.
"Half a mile, you say?" said he.
"At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops south-
ward. He thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no
more.
Farther along we came upon a group of three women and
two children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cot-
tage. They had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling
it up with unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture.
They were all too assiduously engaged to talk to us as we
War of the Worlds |
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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: You don't say, 'Mr.' Shakespeare."
"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters?"
"Yes, if he had been your lover and someone wanted them!"
And I added that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more
convinced by Miss Bordereau's tone, that he would have come
himself to Venice on the business were it not that for him there
was the obstacle that it would be difficult to disprove his
identity with the person who had written to them, which the old
ladies would be sure to suspect in spite of dissimulation
and a change of name. If they were to ask him point-blank
if he were not their correspondent it would be too awkward
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