| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: remained undisturbed as we had left them.
Poirot made me recapitulate the scene of the night before,
listening very carefully, and verifying the position of the
various cups.
"So Mrs. Cavendish stood by the tray--and poured out. Yes. Then
she came across to the window where you sat with Mademoiselle
Cynthia. Yes. Here are the three cups. And the cup on the
mantel-piece, half drunk, that would be Mr. Lawrence Cavendish's.
And the one on the tray?"
"John Cavendish's. I saw him put it down there."
"Good. One, two, three, four, five--but where, then, is the cup
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: vengeance, with the net result that he was not looking at Sara Lee more
than he could help.
These Americans were strange. An American girl would cross the seas,
and come here alone with him - a man and human. And she would take for
granted that he would do what he was doing for love of his kind - which
was partly true; and she would be beautiful and sweet and amiable and
quite unself-conscious. And then she would go back home, warm of heart
with gratitude, and marry the man of the picture.
The village had but one street, and that deserted and in ruins. Behind
its double row of houses, away from the enemy, lay the fields, a muddy
canal and more poplar trees. And from far away, toward Ypres, there
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: tarnished gold letters: "The Honorius Hatchard Memorial
Library, 1832."
Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-
uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the
phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to
distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece.
For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the
nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As
the marble tablet in the interior of the library
informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed
marked literary gifts, written a series of papers
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