| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: such a way? Can you----" she hesitated; the Duchess smiled.
"My dear child," the great lady went on in a serious tone, "conjugal
happiness has in all times been a speculation, a business demanding
particular attention. If you persist in talking passion while I am
talking marriage, we shall soon cease to understand each other. Listen
to me," she went on, assuming a confidential tone. "I have been in the
way of seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who have
married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant wives. Well,
those wives governed them, as the Emperor governs us; and if they were
not loved, they were at least respected. I like secrets--especially
those which concern women--well enough to have amused myself by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: and a banjo, and they went to official parties. They were a
perfect calendar of the "days" of their friends, which Pemberton
knew them, when they were indisposed, to get out of bed to go to,
and which made the week larger than life when Mrs. Moreen talked of
them with Paula and Amy. Their initiations gave their new inmate
at first an almost dazzling sense of culture. Mrs. Moreen had
translated something at some former period - an author whom it made
Pemberton feel borne never to have heard of. They could imitate
Venetian and sing Neapolitan, and when they wanted to say something
very particular communicated with each other in an ingenious
dialect of their own, an elastic spoken cipher which Pemberton at
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