| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: interview.
'Then why do you call yourself one, sir?'
'I have to ask your pardon, I do not,' says Van Tromp, as
grand as the Pope.
But nothing was of avail against the Squire.
'You sail under false colours from beginning to end,' he
said. 'Your very house was taken under a sham name.'
'It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest,' replied the
Admiral. 'If it WERE my house - '
'Well?' said the Squire, 'what then? hey?'
The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: had longed to know. Was it not natural in a woman whose heart,
repressed by many causes and accidents, was awakening at an age when a
woman feels herself cheated if she has never known, like the women she
sees about her, a happy love? Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so
respectful? Why did he not seek to meet me? There again was another
mockery! But what of that? in falling, I have lost everything; I have
no illusions left; I had tasted of all things except the one fruit for
which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I found myself disenchanted with
the world at the very moment when I was forced to leave it.
Providential, was it not? like all those strange insensibilities which
prepare us for death" (she made a gesture full of pious unction). "All
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: contemptible. Nobody could love her. Humiliation clung to her like
a cold shroud--never to be shaken off, unwarmed by this madness of
generosity.
"Yes. Here. Your home. I can't give it to you and go away, but it
is big enough for us two. You need not be afraid. If you say so I
shall not even look at you. Remember that grey head of which you
have been thinking night and day. Where is it going to rest? Where
else if not here, where nothing evil can touch it. Don't you
understand that I won't let you buy shelter from me at the cost of
your very soul. I won't. You are too much part of me. I have
found myself since I came upon you and I would rather sell my own
Chance |
