| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: sensual side to her love, could allow herself to be expansive; she
boldly and confidently poured out her angelic spirit, she stripped it
bare, just as during that diabolical night, La Tinti had displayed the
soft lines of her body, and her firm, elastic flesh. In Emilio's eyes
there was as it were a conflict between the saintly love of this white
soul and that of the vehement and muscular Sicilian.
The day was spent in long looks following on deep meditations. Each of
them gauged the depths of tender feeling, and found it bottomless; a
conviction that brought fond words to their lips. Modesty, the goddess
who in a moment of forgetfulness with Love, was the mother of
Coquettishness, need not have put her hand before her face as she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: Here, however, Eugenia observed no indications of this custom,
the absence of which was more anomalous as there was a charming
avenue of remarkably graceful, arching elms in the most
convenient contiguity to a large, cheerful street, in which,
evidently, among the more prosperous members of the bourgeoisie,
a great deal of pedestrianism went forward. Our friends passed
out into this well lighted promenade, and Felix noticed a great
many more pretty girls and called his sister's attention to them.
This latter measure, however, was superfluous; for the Baroness
had inspected, narrowly, these charming young ladies.
"I feel an intimate conviction that our cousins are like that," said Felix.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: cloister were assembled in the refectory.
On the dais sat the stately Abbess Addula, daughter of
King Dagobert, looking a princess indeed, in her purple tunic,
with the hood and cuffs of her long white robe trimmed with
ermine, and a snowy veil resting like a crown on her silver
hair. At her right hand was the honoured guest, and at her
left hand her grandson, the young Prince Gregor, a big, manly
boy, just returned from school.
The long, shadowy hall, with its dark-brown rafters and
beams; the double row of nuns, with their pure veils and fair
faces; the ruddy glow of the slanting sunbeams striking upward
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