| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare
and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with
one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot
out those five years of unwavering devotion.
I stayed late that night, Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free,
and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run
up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were
extinguished in the guest-rooms overhead. When he came down the steps at
last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes
were bright and tired.
"She didn't like it," he said immediately.
The Great Gatsby |
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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: deplored it; moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events
that he had been a great means of creating checked his instinct to
interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had got into no danger
on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if
that were the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which
the strangeness of her departure would have made natural. A few
months before this time a performance by Grace of one-tenth the
magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwonted
investigation.
It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to
Fitzpiers's domicilation there. The two men had not met face to
The Woodlanders |
