| 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: situation in the crude light which Rosedale's visit had shed on
it. In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew,
had she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honour
that might be called the conventionalities of the moral life?
What debt did she owe to a social order which had condemned and
banished her without trial? She had never been heard in her own
defence; she was innocent of the charge on which she had been
found guilty; and the irregularity of her conviction might seem
to justify the use of methods as irregular in recovering her lost
rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin
her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to make private
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "What is to be done?" he thought.
He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.
"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with
himself.
"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.
"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!"
And he went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over
the hollow cheeks, and fell on Don Juan's hand.
"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted
him; it was as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an
angel.
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