| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
said.
"Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
that vertigo beating over my head.
"As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: steeple-crowned hat, walking down the path beside Puck. They
ran to meet him, and the man said something to them about rooms
in their head. After a time they understood he was warning them
not to catch colds.
'You've a bit of a cold yourself, haven't you?' said Una, for he
ended all his sentences with a consequential cough. Puck laughed.
'Child,' the man answered, 'if it hath pleased Heaven to afflict
me with an infirmity -'
'Nay, nay,' Puck struck In, 'the maid spoke out of kindness. I
know that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and
that's a pity. There's honesty enough in you, Nick, without
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