| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: perpetual spring of purest delight.
Yet nature allows of no happiness without alloy; and deep down, in the
innermost recess of my heart, I am conscious of a lurking thought, not
shared with her, the pang of which is for me alone. You have too often
come to the help of my inveterate poverty to be ignorant how desperate
matters were with me. Where should I have found courage to keep up the
struggle of life, after seeing my hopes so often blighted, but for
your cheering words, your tactful aid, and the knowledge of what you
had come through? Briefly, then, my friend, she freed me from that
crushing load of debt, which was no secret to you. She is wealthy, I
am penniless. Many a time have I exclaimed, in one of my fits of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled -
as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of
intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure.
Which was it to be? He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes
that he was too idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted
that night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the
strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer
waned.
CHAPTER VIII - A NOCTURNAL VISIT
KIRSTIE had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old - and
yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of
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