| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: Yours &c. L. McLEAN."
This seemed to point but one way; and (uncharitable though it sound) that
this girl, so close upon bereavement, should be able to give herself to a
lover was distasteful to me.
But, most extraordinary, Lin had gone away without a word to her, and she
was left as plainly in the dark as myself. After her first frank surprise
at learning of his departure, his name did not come again from her lips,
at any rate to me. Good Mrs. Pierce dropped a word one day as to her
opinion of men who deceive women into expecting something from them.
"Let us talk straight," said I. "Do you mean that Miss Buckner says that,
or that you say it?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: question of what to do troubled me extremely. I could not venture
to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my
landlady's spiritual nature: it might go off at a word, and in any
direction, like a badly-made firework. And while I praised myself
extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a
friend of her, I was all abroad as to my conduct in the present.
There seemed an equal danger in pressing and in neglecting the
accustomed marks of familiarity. The one extreme looked like
impudence, and might annoy, the other was a practical confession of
guilt. Altogether, it was a good hour for me when the dusk began
to fall in earnest on the streets of Edinburgh, and the voice of an
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