| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: young friend had already left England, finding to that end every
convenience on the spot and not having had to come up to town. My
thoughts however were so painfully engaged there that I should in
any case have had little attention for them: the event occurred
that was to bring my series of visits to a close. When this high
tide had ebbed I returned to America and to my interrupted work,
which had opened out on such a scale that, with a deep plunge into
a great chance, I was three good years in rising again to the
surface. There are nymphs and naiads moreover in the American
depths: they may have had something to do with the duration of my
dive. I mention them to account for a grave misdemeanor--the fact
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: young man rolled over on his face on the sand, and lay
speechless and helpless.
The captain meanwhile set out rapidly for Attwater's house.
As he went, he considered with himself eagerly, his thoughts
racing. The man had understood, he had mocked them from the
beginning; he would teach him to make a mockery of John
Davis! Herrick thought him a god; give him a second to aim in,
and the god was overthrown. He chuckled as he felt the butt of
his revolver. It should be done now, as he went in. From behind?
It was difficult to get there. From across the table? No, the
captain preferred to shoot standing, so as you could be sure to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: her passion without a struggle. Still they had yielded, though
tardily; and at this moment she would have been ready to consummate
the love union for which her mother had prepared her, as Emilio sat
there holding her beautiful, aristocratic hand,--long, white, and
sheeny, ending in fine, rosy nails, as if she had procured from Asia
some of the henna with which the Sultan's wives dye their fingertips.
A misfortune, of which she was unconscious, but which was torture to
Emilio, kept up a singular barrier between them. Massimilla, young as
she was, had the majestic bearing which mythological tradition
ascribes to Juno, the only goddess to whom it does not give a lover;
for Diana, the chaste Diana, loved! Jupiter alone could hold his own
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