| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: meaning; the coquette quivered when she felt her friend stroke her
head; her eyes flashed like lightning--then she shut them tightly.
"She has a soul," he said, looking at the stillness of this queen of
the sands, golden like them, white like them, solitary and burning
like them.
"Well," she said, "I have read your plea in favor of beasts; but how
did two so well adapted to understand each other end?"
"Ah, well! you see, they ended as all great passions do end--by a
misunderstanding. For some reason ONE suspects the other of treason;
they don't come to an explanation through pride, and quarrel and part
from sheer obstinacy."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: something together; that we see something. . . . I've got into the
habit of imagining you; I'm always thinking what you'd say or do; I
walk along the street talking to you; I dream of you. It's merely a
bad habit, a schoolboy habit, day-dreaming; it's a common experience;
half one's friends do the same; well, those are the facts."
Simultaneously, they both walked on very slowly.
"If you were to know me you would feel none of this," she said. "We
don't know each other--we've always been--interrupted. . . . Were you
going to tell me this that day my aunts came?" she asked, recollecting
the whole scene.
He bowed his head.
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