| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: never to rise again."
"How many times have you crossed the steppe in win-
ter?" asked the young Livonian.
"Three times, Nadia, when I was going to Omsk."
"And what were you going to do at Omsk?"
"See my mother, who was expecting me."
"And I am going to Irkutsk, where my father expects
me. I am taking him my mother's last words. That is as
much as to tell you, brother, that nothing would have pre-
vented me from setting out."
"You are a brave girl, Nadia," replied Michael. "God
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: the father, at whom he looked with half-wistful curiosity.
"The fact is, sir," he continued, "there is such a case in my
mind now,
and it is a good deal on my heart, too. So I thought of speaking
to you
about it to-night. You remember Tom Rollins, the Junior who was
so good to me when I entered college?"
The father nodded. He remembered very well indeed the annoying
incidents
of his son's first escapade, and how Rollins had stood by him and
helped to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: any question about her at any time, and it was exactly the same
virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her at the
concert.
This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she
finally met his eyes - it was after a fourth trial - to
predetermine quite fixedly his awaiting her retreat. He joined her
in the street as soon as she had moved, asking her if he might
accompany her a certain distance. With her placid permission he
went as far as a house in the neighbourhood at which she had
business: she let him know it was not where she lived. She lived,
as she said, in a mere slum, with an old aunt, a person in
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