| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: of the Brys' conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over
the quality of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through
which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically
visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of
crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard
brilliant substance. The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as
a rejuvenation: to Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and
arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final
shape.
He felt it in the way she smiled on him, and in the readiness and
competence with which, flung unexpectedly into his presence, she
|
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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my
hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw
that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if
unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at
length drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long-
-long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I
dared not--I dared not speak! We have put her living in
the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell
The Fall of the House of Usher |
