| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: shared, that as soon as the man knows what it is in his own
heart, he is sure of what it is in the woman's.
This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial
as it is astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence of
years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and
awakens dormant sensibilities. Hitherto the man had found it
a good policy to disbelieve the existence of any enjoyment
which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back upon
the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to
look exclusively on what was common and dull. He accepted a
prose ideal, let himself go blind of many sympathies by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: against the severance of the union she had deplored.
She flung her arms round Troy's neck, exclaiming wildly
from the deepest deep of her heart --
"Don't -- don't kiss them! O, Frank, I can"t bear
it-i can't! I love you better than she did: kiss me
too, Frank -- kiss me! You will, Frank, kiss me too!"
There was something so abnormal and startling in
the childlike pain and simplicity of this appeal from a
woman of Bathsheba's calibre and independence, that
Troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from his neck,
looked at her in bewilderment. It was such and unex-
 Far From the Madding Crowd |