| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: years younger than behind the counter, in the heat and burden of
the day. It would have been as difficult to guess her approximate
age as that of the black silk, for she had the same worn and glossy
aspect as her dress; but a faint tinge of pink still lingered on
her cheek-bones, like the reflection of sunset which sometimes
colours the west long after the day is over.
When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it
with furtive accuracy just opposite her sister's plate, she sat
down, with an air of obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the
rocking-chairs near the window; and a moment later the shop-door
opened and Evelina entered.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment
Mme Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an
immense bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for
her, but the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only
pointed her chin toward Nana's dressing room at the end of the
passage. Oh, that Nana! They were loading her with flowers! Then
when Mme Bron returned she handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed
a smothered oath to escape her. That beggar La Faloise again!
There was a fellow who wouldn't let her alone! And when she learned
the gentleman in question was waiting for her at the porter's lodge
she shrieked:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: the request; it was debasing loveliness to ask it to
buy and sell, and jarred with his conceptions of her.
All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having
broken into that dignified stronghold at last. His
eyes, she knew, were following her everywhere. This
was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a
triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this
piquing delay. But it had been brought about by
misdirected ingenuity, and she valued it only as she
valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.
Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning
Far From the Madding Crowd |
