| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: fancy, but she, too, was looking odd and disturbed.
"Had a good walk with Dr. Bauerstein?" I asked, trying to appear
as indifferent as I could.
"I didn't go," she replied abruptly. "Where is Mrs. Inglethorp?"
"In the boudoir."
Her hand clenched itself on the banisters, then she seemed to
nerve herself for some encounter, and went rapidly past me down
the stairs across the hall to the boudoir, the door of which she
shut behind her.
As I ran out to the tennis court a few moments later, I had to
pass the open boudoir window, and was unable to help overhearing
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: rivalry, though there were some charming women of Geneva, and other
Italians, among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and
the famous singer Tinti, who was at that moment singing.
Rodolphe, leaning against the door-post, looked at the Princess,
turning on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting gaze, charged with the
full, insistent will which is concentrated in the feeling called
desire, and thus assumes the nature of a vehement command. Did the
flame of that gaze reach Francesca? Was Francesca expecting each
instant to see Rodolphe? In a few minutes she stole a glance at the
door, as though magnetized by this current of love, and her eyes,
without reserve, looked deep into Rodolphe's. A slight thrill quivered
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: Then the trick of personification seized upon Neil Bonner and
mastered him. All the forces of his environment metamorphosed into
living, breathing entities and came to live with him. He recreated
the primitive pantheon; reared an altar to the sun and burned
candle fat and bacon grease thereon; and in the unfenced yard, by
the long-legged cache, made a frost devil, which he was wont to
make faces at and mock when the mercury oozed down into the bulb.
All this in play, of course. He said it to himself that it was in
play, and repeated it over and over to make sure, unaware that
madness is ever prone to express itself in make-believe and play.
One midwinter day, Father Champreau, a Jesuit missionary, pulled
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: And at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it
was unwise or it was wrong of him--he could not tell which--to
yield to this attraction. He insisted upon it as a curious thing
that he knew from the very beginning--unless memory has played him
the queerest trick--that the door was unfastened, and that he could
go in as he chose.
I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and
repelled. And it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it
should be so was never explained, that his father would be very
angry if he went through that door.
Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with
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