| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: she was reserved for some final mercy. "But she has been in the
abysses at any rate," said Mrs. Meldrum, "and I really don't think
I can tell you what pulled her through."
"I think I can tell YOU," I returned. "What in the world but Mrs.
Meldrum?"
At the end of an hour Flora had not come in, and I was obliged to
announce that I should have but time to reach the station, where I
was to find my luggage in charge of my mother's servant. Mrs.
Meldrum put before me the question of waiting till a later train,
so as not to lose our young lady, but I confess I gave this
alternative a consideration less acute than I pretended. Somehow I
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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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: woman, her feet in blood, raised aloft by the trial as it were on a
pedestal,--torn, no doubt, by horrible inward anguish and condemned to
absolute silence within her home. Who was this Medea whom the public
well-nigh admired,--the woman with that impenetrable brow, that white
breast covering a heart of steel? Perhaps she was the sister or the
cousin or the daughter or the wife of this one or of that one among
them! Alarm seemed to creep into the bosom of families. As Napoleon
finely said, it is especially in the domain of the imagination that
the power of the Unknown is immeasurable.
As for the hundred thousand francs stolen from Monsieur and Madame des
Vanneaulx no efforts of the police could find them; and the obstinate
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