| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: he secured to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him
back his independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which
make the happiness of many a marriage.
Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some
attempt to read her husband's heart, and found it closed. Little by
little, she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly
loved; he neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children.
There could be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that
was not of the heart, but which, to a woman's mind, is not less
withering. His love was dormant, not lost: this might be a
consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Many a light foot shone like a jewel set
In the dark crag: and then we turned, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shales and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We are so
much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday
that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are
driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to show us
what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each
other.
One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his
outside. That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough
looking little man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of
something human in his soul. He had heard of our little journey,
and came to me at once in envious sympathy. How he longed to
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