| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: bewilderment. It was plain that the memory of the afternoon still
rankled, for he was very short with Jim and inclined to resent
the whole thing. The clock in the hall chimed half after three as
they came down the stairs, and I heard Mr. Harbison stumble over
something in the darkness and say that if it was a joke, he
wasn't in the humor for it. To which Jim retorted that it wasn't
anything resembling a joke, and for heaven's sake not to walk on
his feet; he couldn't get around the furniture any faster.
At the door of the den Mr. Harbison stopped, blinking in the
light. Then, when he saw us, he tried to back himself and his
dishabille out into the obscurity of the library. But Aunt Selina
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers will
understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the fourth floor
but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs that followed
each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment when he saw the
humble brown door of the rooms inhabited by Mademoiselle
Leseigneur. This girl, whose name was not the same as her
mother's, had aroused the young painter's deepest sympathies; he
chose to fancy some similarity between himself and her as to
their position, and attributed to her misfortunes of birth akin
to his own. All the time he worked Hippolyte gave himself very
willingly to thoughts of love, and made a great deal of noise to
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