| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could
least answer from his own wit. "Why have you never let me come
before?"
"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell
her how I came to know you."
"And what would have been the objection to that?"
"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate
have been that danger."
"Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.
"She didn't know what I went for."
"Of me then she never even heard?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: there was not in all Paris a more deserted spot, a more solemn or more
melancholy prospect. The noise of waters, the chanting of priests, or
the piping of the wind, were the only sounds that disturbed this
wilderness, where lovers would sometimes meet to discuss their secrets
when the church-folds and clergy were safe in church at the services.
One evening in April in the year 1308, Tirechair came home in a
remarkably bad temper. For three days past everything had been in good
order on the King's highway. Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing
annoyed him so much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his
halbert in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his
doublet, half red and half blue, and slipped on a shabby camlet
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: Following mine there came another cart, which
I was surprised to see four oxen pulling with the
greatest ease, notwithstanding that it was loaded
to the top. Behind it walked the owner, smoking
a little, silver-mounted Kabardian pipe. He was
wearing a shaggy Circassian cap and an officer's
overcoat without epaulettes, and he seemed to
be about fifty years of age. The swarthiness of
his complexion showed that his face had long
been acquainted with Transcaucasian suns, and
the premature greyness of his moustache was
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