| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: like lamps through the dusk. A priest was at the high altar, his
white cope a livid spot in the incense-laden obscurity, the light
of the candles flickering up and down like fireflies about his
head; a few people knelt near by. We stole behind them and sat
down on a bench close to the tabernacle of Orcagna.
"Strange to say, though Florence was not new to me, I had never
been in the church before; and in that magical light I saw for
the first time the inlaid steps, the fluted columns, the
sculptured bas-reliefs and canopy of the marvellous shrine. The
marble, worn and mellowed by the subtle hand of time, took on an
unspeakable rosy hue, suggestive in some remote way of the honey-
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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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: exclusively about the distant sails and the Red Sea littoral. When
he no longer joined us as we sat or walked together, I perceived
that his hostility was fixed and his parti pris. He was brimful of
compassion, but it was all for Cecily, none for the situation or for
me. (She would have marvelled, placidly, why he pitied her. I am
glad I can say that.) The primitive man in him rose up as Pope of
nature and excommunicated me as a creature recusant to her
functions. Then deliberately Dacres undertook an office of
consolation; and I fell to wondering, while Mrs. Morgan spoke her
convictions plainly out, how far an impulse of reparation for a
misfortune with which he had nothing to do might carry a man.
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