| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: was cold and stormy; and then he lighted for her, whose palaces had
been lit with thousands of wax-tapers, a little cresset, that she
might see to read her prayers through the hours of night.
"There is no faith left in the earth! . . ." she said.
In such a perilous plight did I behold the fairest and the greatest,
the truest and most life-giving of all Powers.
"Wake up, sir, the doors are just about to be shut," said a hoarse
voice. I turned and beheld the beadle's ugly countenance; the man was
shaking me by the arm, and the cathedral lay wrapped in shadows as a
man is wrapped in his cloak.
"Belief," I said to myself, "is Life! I have just witnessed the
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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 Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: She must have been very startled because for a time she couldn't
speak. Then in a faint voice:
"For me! For me!" she faltered out twice.
"For you - or for myself? Yet it couldn't have been selfish. What
would it have been to me that you remained in the world? I never
expected to see you again. I even composed a most beautiful letter
of farewell. Such a letter as no woman had ever received."
Instantly she shot out a hand towards me. The edges of the fur
cloak fell apart. A wave of the faintest possible scent floated
into my nostrils.
"Let me have it," she said imperiously.
 The Arrow of Gold |