| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: bent head and knitted brows, trying to fit together the
disjoined pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed
in this trifling business, seemed to give to the quiet room
a perfume of intimacy, to fill it with a sense of sweet
familiar habit; and it came over her again that she knew
nothing of the inner thoughts of this man who was sitting by
her as a husband might. The lamplight fell on his white
forehead, on the healthy brown of his cheek, the backs of
his thin sunburnt hands. As she watched the hands her sense
of them became as vivid as a touch, and she said to herself:
"That other woman has sat and watched him as I am doing.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: town when the express struck her."
"Another circle!" I exclaimed. "Then we are just where we
started."
"Not so bad as that, Miss Innes," Riggs said eagerly. "Nina
Carrington came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong
died. Why was the doctor so afraid of her? The Carrington woman
knew something. I lived with Doctor Walker seven years, and I
know him well. There are few things he is afraid of. I think he
killed Mr. Armstrong out in the west somewhere, that's what I
think. What else he did I don't know--but he dismissed me and
pretty nearly throttled me--for telling Mr. Jamieson here about
 The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: Had she surrendered on this day to her cowpuncher, her wild man?
Was she forever wholly his? Had the Virginian's fire so melted
her heart that no rift in it remained? So she would have thought
if any thought had come to her. But in his arms to-day, thought
was lost in something more divine.
XXIX. WORD TO BENNINGTON
They kept their secret for a while, or at least they had that
special joy of believing that no one in all the world but
themselves knew this that had happened to them. But I think that
there was one person who knew how to keep a secret even better
than these two lovers. Mrs. Taylor made no remarks to any one
 The Virginian |