| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: clumsily built staircase, with a rope by way of a hand-rail. At the
door of the lodging in the attic she stopped and tapped mysteriously;
an old man brought forward a chair for her. She dropped into it at
once.
"Hide! hide!" she exclaimed, looking up at him. "Seldom as we leave
the house, everything that we do is known, and every step is
watched----"
"What is it now?" asked another elderly woman, sitting by the fire.
"The man that has been prowling about the house yesterday and to-day,
followed me to-night----"
At those words all three dwellers in the wretched den looked in each
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: who sets out to poison his wife. He has lived by his wits as the
saying goes. Presumably, therefore, he has some wits. He is not
altogether a fool. Well, how does he set about it? He goes
boldly to the village chemist's and purchases strychnine under
his own name, with a trumped up story about a dog which is bound
to be proved absurd. He does not employ the poison that night.
No, he waits until he has had a violent quarrel with her, of
which the whole household is cognisant, and which naturally
directs their suspicions upon him. He prepares no defence--no
shadow of an alibi, yet he knows the chemist's assistant must
necessarily come forward with the facts. Bah! do not ask me to
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
