| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: This little incident disturbed me more than the harvest of
compliments, gazing and pretty speeches on my most successful evening.
During the lesson I watched him attentively, which I could do the more
safely, as he never looks at me.
As the result of my observations, I made out that the tutor, whom we
took to be forty, is a young man, some years under thirty. My
governess, to whom I had handed him over, remarked on the beauty of
his black hair and of his pearly teeth. As to his eyes, they are
velvet and fire; but he is plain and insignificant. Though the
Spaniards have been described as not a cleanly people, this man is
most carefully got up, and his hands are whiter than his face. He
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: Harry followed without comment. Up we went together, but
slowly. The stair was fearfully steep and narrow, and more than
once I barely escaped a fall.
Suddenly I became aware that light was descending on us from
above. With every step upward it became brighter, until finally it
was as though a noonday sun shone in upon us.
There came an exclamation from Harry, and we ascended faster.
I remember that I counted a hundred and sixty steps--and then, as
a glimmering of the truth shot through my brain into certainty, I
counted no more.
Harry was crowding me from below, and we took the last few
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: Monsieur de Marsay,' said she; 'you have deceived me horribly.'--
'Surely,' I replied, taking up a submissive attitude, 'Madame la
Duchesse will not remember Charlotte's grievances?'--'Certainly,' she
answered bitterly.--'Then, in fact, you hate me?'--She bowed, and I
said to myself, 'There is something still left!'
"The feeling she had when I parted from her allowed her to believe
that she still had something to avenge. Well, my friends, I have
carefully studied the lives of men who have had great success with
women, but I do not believe that the Marechal de Richelieu, or Lauzun,
or Louis de Valois ever effected a more judicious retreat at the first
attempt. As to my mind and heart, they were cast in a mould then and
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