| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: They were both seated by this time, and Lydgate answered immediately--
"I think I know what you mean. You had heard that there was
an execution in the house?"
"Yes; is it true?"
"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did
not mind talking about the affair now. "But the danger is over;
the debt is paid. I am out of my difficulties now: I shall be freed
from debts, and able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan."
"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in
his chair, and speaking with that low-toned quickness which often
follows the removal of a load. "I like that better than all
 Middlemarch |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: HOOK?--was one she had never yet found the occasion to apply.
To-day she felt that even the complete mastery of the volume
would hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it
probable, even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an
Allusion, it would be only to find that Osric Dane used a
different volume (Mrs. Leveret was convinced that literary people
always carried them), and would consequently not recognise her
quotations.
Mrs. Leveret's sense of being adrift was intensified by the
appearance of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye
its aspect was unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs.
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