| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: pause, "take the little pocketbook that you know, and come here, my
dear child. . . . There are twelve thousand francs in it," she said,
when Louis had returned to her side. "That is all your own. Oh me! you
would have been better off if your father----"
"My father," cried the boy, "where is he?"
"He is dead," she said, laying her finger on her lips; "he died to
save my honor and my life."
She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, she would have
wept for pain.
"Louis," she continued, "swear to me, as I lie here, that you will
forget all that you have written, all that I have told you."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you,
would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short,
have renewed the engagement then?"
"Would I!" was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.
"Good God!" he cried, "you would! It is not that I did not think of it,
or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success;
but I was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you.
I shut my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice.
This is a recollection which ought to make me forgive every one
sooner than myself. Six years of separation and suffering
might have been spared. It is a sort of pain, too, which is new to me.
Persuasion |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: that revealed themselves to her kindling and brooding eyes. She rose
once, and going to the bookcase, took out her father's Greek
dictionary and spread the sacred pages of symbols and figures before
her. She smoothed the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement
and hope. Would other eyes look on them with her one day? The thought,
long intolerable, was now just bearable.
She was quite unaware of the anxiety with which her movements were
watched and her expression scanned. Cassandra was careful not to be
caught looking at her, and their conversation was so prosaic that were
it not for certain jolts and jerks between the sentences, as if the
mind were kept with difficulty to the rails, Mrs. Milvain herself
|
