Everything still basked4 in the sunshine. He passed Al Hayat, the stately hotel that dominates the village like a palace built against the sky; and in its pillared colonnades5 and terraces he saw the throngs6 of people having late afternoon tea and listening to the music of a regimental band. Men in flannels8 were playing tennis, parties were climbing off donkeys after long excursions; there was laughter, talking, a babel of many voices. The gaiety called to him; the everyday spirit whispered to stay and join the crowd of lively human beings. Soon there would be merry dinner-parties, dancing, voices of pretty women, sweet white dresses, singing, and the rest. Soft eyes would question and turn dark. He picked out several girls he knew among the palms. But it was all many, oh so many leagues away; centuries lay between him and this modern world. An indescriable loneliness was in his heart. He went searching through the sands of forgotten ages, and wandering among the ruins of a vanished time. He hurried. Already the deeper water caught his breath.
He climbed the steep rise towards the plateau where the Observatory9 stands, and saw two of the officials whom he knew taking a siesta11 after their long day’s work. He felt that his mind, too, had dived and searched among the heavenly bodies that live in silent, changeless peace remote from the world of men. They recognised him, these two whose eyes also knew tremendous distance close. They beckoned12, waving the straws through which they sipped13 their drinks from tall glasses. Their voices floated down to him as from the star-fields. He saw the sun gleam upon the glasses, and heard the clink of the ice against the sides. The stillness was amazing. He waved an answer, and passed quickly on. He could not stop this sliding current of the years.
The tide moved faster, the draw of piled-up cycles urging it. He emerged upon the plateau, and met the cooler Desert air. His feet went crunching15 on the “desert-film” that spread its curious dark shiny carpet as far as the eye could reach; it lay everywhere, unswept and smooth as when the feet of vanished civilizations trod its burning surface, then dipped behind the curtains Time pins against the stars. And here the body of the tide set all one way. There was a greater strength of current, draught16 and suction. He felt the powerful undertow. Deeper masses drew his feet sideways, and he felt the rushing of the central body of the sand. The sands were moving, from their foundation upwards17. He went unresistingly with them.
Turning a moment, he looked back at shining little Helouan in the blaze of evening light. The voices reached him very faintly, merged14 now in a general murmur18. Beyond lay the strip of Delta19 vivid green, the palms, the roofs of Bedrashein, the blue laughter of the Nile with its flocks of curved felucca sails. Further still, rising above the yellow Libyan horizon, gloomed the vast triangles of a dozen Pyramids, cutting their wedge-shaped clefts20 out of a sky fast crimsoning22 through a sea of gold. Seen thus, their dignity imposed upon the entire landscape. They towered darkly, symbolic23 signatures of the ancient Powers that now watched him taking these little steps across their damaged territory.
He gazed a minute, then went on. He saw the big pale face of the moon in the east. Above the ever-silent Thing these giant symbols once interpreted, she rose, grand, effortless, half-terrible as themselves. And, with her, she lifted up this tide of the Desert that drew his feet across the sand to Wadi Hof. A moment later he dipped below the ridge24 that buried Helouan and Nile and Pyramids from sight. He entered the ancient waters. Time then, in an instant, flowed back behind his footsteps, obliterating25 every trace. And with it his mind went too. He stepped across the gulf26 of centuries, moving into the Past. The Desert lay before him — an open tomb wherein his soul should read presently of things long vanished.
The strange half-lights of sunset began to play their witchery then upon the landscape. A purple glow came down upon the Mokattam Hills. Perspective danced its tricks of false, incredible deception27. The soaring kites that were a mile away seemed suddenly close, passing in a moment from the size of gnats28 to birds with a fabulous29 stretch of wing. Ridges30 and cliffs rushed close without a hint of warning, and level places sank into declivities and basins that made him trip and stumble. That indescribable quality of the Desert, which makes timid souls avoid the hour of dusk, emerged; it spread everywhere, undisguised. And the bewilderment it brings is no vain, imagined thing, for it distorts vision utterly31, and the effect upon the mind when familiar sight goes floundering is the simplest way in the world of dragging the anchor that grips reality. At the hour of sunset this bewilderment comes upon a man with a disconcerting swiftness. It rose now with all this weird32 rapidity. Henriot found himself enveloped33 at a moment’s notice.
But, knowing well its effect, he tried to judge it and pass on. The other matters, the object of his journey chief of all, he refused to dwell upon with any imagination. Wisely, his mind, while never losing sight of it, declined to admit the exaggeration that over-elaborate thinking brings. “I’m going to witness an incredible experiment in which two enthusiastic religious dreamers believe firmly,” he repeated to himself. “I have agreed to draw — anything I see. There may be truth in it, or they may be merely self-suggested vision due to an artificial exaltation of their minds. I’m interested — perhaps against my better judgment35. Yet I’ll see the adventure out — because I must.”
This was the attitude he told himself to take. Whether it was the real one, or merely adopted to warm a cooling courage, he could not tell. The emotions were so complex and warring. His mind, automatically, kept repeating this comforting formula. Deeper than that he could not see to judge. For a man who knew the full content of his thought at such a time would solve some of the oldest psychological problems in the world. Sand had already buried judgment, and with it all attempt to explain the adventure by the standards acceptable to his brain of today. He steered36 subconsciously37 through a world of dim, huge, half-remembered wonders.
The sun, with that abrupt38 Egyptian suddenness, was below the horizon now. The pyramid field had swallowed it. Ra, in his golden boat, sailed distant seas beyond the Libyan wilderness39. Henriot walked on and on, aware of utter loneliness. He was walking fields of dream, too remote from modern life to recall companionship he once had surely known. How dim it was, how deep and distant, how lost in this sea of an incalculable Past! He walked into the places that are soundless. The soundlessness of ocean, miles below the surface, was about him. He was with One only — this unfathomable, silent thing where nothing breathes or stirs — nothing but sunshine, shadow and the wind-borne sand. Slowly, in front, the moon climbed up the eastern sky, hanging above the silence — silence that ran unbroken across the horizons to where Suez gleamed upon the waters of a sister sea in motion. That moon was glinting now upon the Arabian Mountains by its desolate40 shores. Southwards stretched the wastes of Upper Egypt a thousand miles to meet the Nubian wilderness. But over all these separate Deserts stirred the soft whisper of the moving sand — deep murmuring message that Life was on the way to unwind Death. The Ka of Egypt, swathed in centuries of sand, hovered41 beneath the moon towards her ancient tenement42.
For the transformation43 of the Desert now began in earnest. It grew apace. Before he had gone the first two miles of his hour’s journey, the twilight44 caught the rocky hills and twisted them into those monstrous45 revelations of physiognomies they barely take the trouble to conceal46 even in the daytime. And, while he well understood the eroding47 agencies that have produced them, there yet rose in his mind a deeper interpretation48 lurking49 just behind their literal meanings. Here, through the motionless surfaces, that nameless thing the Desert ill conceals50 urged outwards51 into embryonic52 form and shape, akin10, he almost felt, to those immense deific symbols of Other Life the Egyptians knew and worshipped. Hence, from the Desert, had first come, he felt, the unearthly life they typified in their monstrous figures of granite53, evoked55 in their stately temples, and communed with in the ritual of their Mystery ceremonials.
This “watching” aspect of the Libyan Desert is really natural enough; but it is just the natural, Henriot knew, that brings the deepest revelations. The surface limestones57, resisting the erosion, block themselves ominously58 against the sky, while the softer sand beneath sets them on altared pedestals that define their isolation59 splendidly. Blunt and unconquerable, these masses now watched him pass between them. The Desert surface formed them, gave them birth. They rose, they saw, they sank down again — waves upon a sea that carried forgotten life up from the depths below. Of forbidding, even menacing type, they somewhere mated with genuine grandeur60. Unformed, according to any standard of human or of animal faces, they achieved an air of giant physiognomy which made them terrible. The unwinking stare of eyes — lidless eyes that yet ever succeed in hiding — looked out under well-marked, level eyebrows61, suggesting a vision that included the motives62 and purposes of his very heart. They looked up grandly, understood why he was there, and then — slowly withdrew their mysterious, penetrating63 gaze.
The strata64 built them so marvellously up; the heavy, threatening brows; thick lips, curved by the ages into a semblance65 of cold smiles; jowls drooping66 into sandy heaps that climbed against the cheeks; protruding67 jaws68, and the suggestion of shoulders just about to lift the entire bodies out of the sandy beds — this host of countenances70 conveyed a solemnity of expression that seemed everlasting71, implacable as Death. Of human signature they bore no trace, nor was comparison possible between their kind and any animal life. They peopled the Desert here. And their smiles, concealed72 yet just discernible, went broadening with the darkness into a Desert laughter. The silence bore it underground. But Henriot was aware of it. The troop of faces slipped into that single, enormous countenance69 which is the visage of the Sand. And he saw it everywhere, yet nowhere.
Thus with the darkness grew his imaginative interpretation of the Desert. Yet there was construction in it, a construction, moreover, that was not entirely73 his own. Powers, he felt, were rising, stirring, wakening from sleep. Behind the natural faces that he saw, these other things peered gravely at him as he passed. They used, as it were, materials that lay ready to their hand. Imagination furnished these hints of outline, yet the Powers themselves were real. There was this amazing movement of the sand. By no other manner could his mind have conceived of such a thing, nor dreamed of this simple, yet dreadful method of approach.
Approach! that was the word that first stood out and startled him. There was approach; something was drawing nearer. The Desert rose and walked beside him. For not alone these ribs75 of gleaming limestone56 contributed towards the elemental visages, but the entire hills, of which they were an outcrop, ran to assist in the formation, and were a necessary part of them. He was watched and stared at from behind, in front, on either side, and even from below. The sand that swept him on, kept even pace with him. It turned luminous76 too, with a patchwork77 of glimmering78 effect that was indescribably weird; lanterns glowed within its substance, and by their light he stumbled on, glad of the Arab boy he would presently meet at the appointed place.
The last torch of the sunset had flickered79 out, melting into the wilderness, when, suddenly opening at his feet, gaped80 the deep, wide gully known as Wadi Hof. Its curve swept past him.
This first impression came upon him with a certain violence: that the desolate valley rushed. He saw but a section of its curve and sweep, but through its entire length of several miles the Wadi fled away. The moon whitened it like snow, piling black shadows very close against the cliffs. In the flood of moonlight it went rushing past. It was emptying itself.
For a moment the stream of movement seemed to pause and look up into his face, then instantly went on again upon its swift career. It was like the procession of a river to the sea. The valley emptied itself to make way for what was coming. The approach, moreover, had already begun.
Conscious that he was trembling, he stood and gazed into the depths, seeking to steady his mind by the repetition of the little formula he had used before. He said it half aloud. But, while he did so, his heart whispered quite other things. Thoughts the woman and the man had sown rose up in a flock and fell upon him like a storm of sand. Their impetus81 drove off all support of ordinary ideas. They shook him where he stood, staring down into this river of strange invisible movement that was hundreds of feet in depth and a quarter of a mile across.
He sought to realise himself as he actually was today — mere34 visitor to Helouan, tempted82 into this wild adventure with two strangers. But in vain. That seemed a dream, unreal, a transient detail picked out from the enormous Past that now engulfed83 him, heart and mind and soul. This was the reality.
The shapes and faces that the hills of sand built round him were the play of excited fancy only. By sheer force he pinned his thought against this fact: but further he could not get. There were Powers at work; they were being stirred, wakened somewhere into activity. Evocation84 had already begun. That sense of their approach as he had walked along from Helouan was not imaginary. A descent of some type of life, vanished from the world too long for recollection, was on the way — so vast that it would manifest itself in a group of forms, a troop, a host, an army. These two were near him somewhere at this very moment, already long at work, their minds driving beyond this little world. The valley was emptying itself — for the descent of life their ritual invited.
And the movement in the sand was likewise true. He recalled the sentences the woman had used. “My body,” he reflected, “like the bodies life makes use of everywhere, is mere upright heap of earth and dust and — sand. Here in the Desert is the raw material, the greatest store of it in the world.”
And on the heels of it came sharply that other thing: that this descending85 Life would press into its service all loose matter within its reach — to form that sphere of action which would be in a literal sense its Body.
In the first few seconds, as he stood there, he realised all this, and realised it with an overwhelming conviction it was futile86 to deny. The fast-emptying valley would later brim with an unaccustomed and terrific life. Yet Death hid there too — a little, ugly, insignificant87 death. With the name of Vance it flashed upon his mind and vanished, too tiny to be thought about in this torrent88 of grander messages that shook the depths within his soul. He bowed his head a moment, hardly knowing what he did. He could have waited thus a thousand years it seemed. He was conscious of a wild desire to run away, to hide, to efface89 himself utterly, his terror, his curiosity, his little wonder, and not be seen of anything. But it was all vain and foolish. The Desert saw him. The Gigantic knew that he was there. No escape was possible any longer. Caught by the sand, he stood amid eternal things. The river of movement swept him too.
These hills, now motionless as statues, would presently glide90 forward into the cavalcade91, sway like vessels92, and go past with the procession. At present only the contents, not the frame, of the Wadi moved. An immense soft brush of moonlight swept it empty for what was on the way. . . . But presently the entire Desert would stand up and also go.
Then, making a sideways movement, his feet kicked against something soft and yielding that lay heaped upon the Desert floor, and Henriot discovered the rugs the Arab boy had carefully set down before he made full speed for the friendly lights of Helouan. The sound of his departing footsteps had long since died away. He was alone.
The detail restored to him his consciousness of the immediate93 present, and, stooping, he gathered up the rugs and overcoat and began to make preparations for the night. But the appointed spot, whence he was to watch, lay upon the summit of the opposite cliffs. He must cross the Wadi bed and climb. Slowly and with labour he made his way down a steep cleft21 into the depth of the Wadi Hof, sliding and stumbling often, till at length he stood upon the floor of shining moonlight. It was very smooth; windless utterly; still as space; each particle of sand lay in its ancient place asleep. The movement, it seemed, had ceased.
He clambered next up the eastern side, through pitch-black shadows, and within the hour reached the ledge94 upon the top whence he could see below him, like a silvered map, the sweep of the valley bed. The wind nipped keenly here again, coming over the leagues of cooling sand. Loose boulders96 of splintered rock, started by his climbing, crashed and boomed into the depths. He banked the rugs behind him, wrapped himself in his overcoat, and lay down to wait. Behind him was a two-foot crumbling97 wall against which he leaned; in front a drop of several hundred feet through space. He lay upon a platform, therefore, invisible from the Desert at his back. Below, the curving Wadi formed a natural amphitheatre in which each separate boulder95 fallen from the cliffs, and even the little silla shrubs98 the camels eat, were plainly visible. He noted99 all the bigger ones among them. He counted them over half aloud.
And the moving stream he had been unaware100 of when crossing the bed itself, now began again. The Wadi went rushing past before the broom of moonlight. Again, the enormous and the tiny combined in one single strange impression. For, through this conception of great movement, stirred also a roving, delicate touch that his imagination felt as bird-like. Behind the solid mass of the Desert’s immobility flashed something swift and light and airy. Bizarre pictures interpreted it to him, like rapid snap-shots of a huge flying panorama101: he thought of darting102 dragon-flies seen at Helouan, of children’s little dancing feet, of twinkling butterflies — of birds. Chiefly, yes, of a flock of birds in flight, whose separate units formed a single entity103. The idea of the Group–Soul possessed104 his mind once more. But it came with a sense of more than curiosity or wonder. Veneration105 lay behind it, a veneration touched with awe106. It rose in his deepest thought that here was the first hint of a symbolical107 representation. A symbol, sacred and inviolable, belonging to some ancient worship that he half remembered in his soul, stirred towards interpretation through all his being.
He lay there waiting, wondering vaguely108 where his two companions were, yet fear all vanished because he felt attuned109 to a scale of things too big to mate with definite dread74. There was high anticipation110 in him, but not anxiety. Of himself, as Felix Henriot, indeed, he hardly seemed aware. He was some one else. Or, rather, he was himself at a stage he had known once far, far away in a remote preexistence. He watched himself from dim summits of a Past, of which no further details were as yet recoverable.
Pencil and sketching-block lay ready to his hand. The moon rose higher, tucking the shadows ever more closely against the precipices111. The silver passed into a sheet of snowy whiteness, that made every boulder clearly visible. Solemnity deepened everywhere into awe. The Wadi fled silently down the stream of hours. It was almost empty now. And then, abruptly112, he was aware of change. The motion altered somewhere. It moved more quietly; pace slackened; the end of the procession that evacuated113 the depth and length of it went trailing past and turned the distant bend.
“It’s slowing up,” he whispered, as sure of it as though he had watched a regiment7 of soldiers filing by. The wind took off his voice like a flying feather of sound.
And there was a change. It had begun. Night and the moon stood still to watch and listen. The wind dropped utterly away. The sand ceased its shifting movement. The Desert everywhere stopped still, and turned.
Some curtain, then, that for centuries had veiled the world, drew softly up, leaving a shaded vista114 down which the eyes of his soul peered towards long-forgotten pictures. Still buried by the sands too deep for full recovery, he yet perceived dim portions of them — things once honoured and loved passionately116. For once they had surely been to him the whole of life, not merely a fragment for cheap wonder to inspect. And they were curiously117 familiar, even as the person of this woman who now evoked them was familiar. Henriot made no pretence118 to more definite remembrance; but the haunting certainty rushed over him, deeper than doubt or denial, and with such force that he felt no effort to destroy it. Some lost sweetness of spiritual ambitions, lived for with this passionate115 devotion, and passionately worshipped as men today worship fame and money, revived in him with a tempest of high glory. Centres of memory stirred from an age-long sleep, so that he could have wept at their so complete obliteration119 hitherto. That such majesty120 had departed from the world as though it never had existed, was a thought for desolation and for tears. And though the little fragment he was about to witness might be crude in itself and incomplete, yet it was part of a vast system that once explored the richest realms of deity121. The reverence122 in him contained a holiness of the night and of the stars; great, gentle awe lay in it too; for he stood, aflame with anticipation and humility123, at the gateway124 of sacred things.
And this was the mood, no thrill of cheap excitement or alarm to weaken in, in which he first became aware that two spots of darkness he had taken all along for boulders on the snowy valley bed, were actually something very different. They were living figures. They moved. It was not the shadows slowly following the moonlight, but the stir of human beings who all these hours had been motionless as stone. He must have passed them unnoticed within a dozen yards when he crossed the Wadi bed, and a hundred times from this very ledge his eyes had surely rested on them without recognition. Their minds, he knew full well, had not been inactive as their bodies. The important part of the ancient ritual lay, he remembered, in the powers of the evoking125 mind.
Here, indeed, was no effective nor theatrical126 approach of the principal figures. It had nothing in common with the cheap external ceremonial of modern days. In forgotten powers of the soul its grandeur lay, potent127, splendid, true. Long before he came, perhaps all through the day, these two had laboured with their arduous128 preparations. They were there, part of the Desert, when hours ago he had crossed the plateau in the twilight. To them — to this woman’s potent working of old ceremonial — had been due that singular rush of imagination he had felt. He had interpreted the Desert as alive. Here was the explanation. It was alive. Life was on the way. Long latent, her intense desire summoned it back to physical expression; and the effect upon him had steadily129 increased as he drew nearer to the centre where she would focus its revival130 and return. Those singular impressions of being watched and accompanied were explained. A priest of this old-world worship performed a genuine evocation; a Great One of Vision revived the cosmic Powers.
Henriot watched the small figures far below him with a sense of dramatic splendour that only this association of far-off Memory could account for. It was their rising now, and the lifting of their arms to form a slow revolving131 outline, that marked the abrupt cessation of the larger river of movement; for the sweeping132 of the Wadi sank into sudden stillness, and these two, with motions not unlike some dance of deliberate solemnity, passed slowly through the moonlight to and fro. His attention fixed133 upon them both. All other movement ceased. They fastened the flow of Time against the Desert’s body.
What happened then? How could his mind interpret an experience so long denied that the power of expression, as of comprehension, has ceased to exist? How translate this symbolical representation, small detail though it was, of a transcendent worship entombed for most so utterly beyond recovery? Its splendour could never lodge134 in minds that conceive Deity perched upon a cloud within telephoning distance of fashionable churches. How should he phrase it even to himself, whose memory drew up pictures from so dim a past that the language fit to frame them lay unreachable and lost?
Henriot did not know. Perhaps he never yet has known. Certainly, at the time, he did not even try to think. His sensations remain his own — untranslatable; and even that instinctive135 description the mind gropes for automatically, floundered, halted, and stopped dead. Yet there rose within him somewhere, from depths long drowned in slumber136, a reviving power by which he saw, divined and recollected137 — remembered seemed too literal a word — these elements of a worship he once had personally known. He, too, had worshipped thus. His soul had moved amid similar evocations in some aeonian past, whence now the sand was being cleared away. Symbols of stupendous meaning flashed and went their way across the lifting mists. He hardly caught their meaning, so long it was since, he had known them; yet they were familiar as the faces seen in dreams, and some hint of their spiritual significance left faint traces in his heart by means of which their grandeur reached towards interpretation. And all were symbols of a cosmic, deific nature; of Powers that only symbols can express — prayer-books and sacraments used in the Wisdom Religion of an older time, but today known only in the decrepit138, literal shell which is their degradation139.
Grandly the figures moved across the valley bed. The powers of the heavenly bodies once more joined them. They moved to the measure of a cosmic dance, whose rhythm was creative. The Universe partnered them.
There was this transfiguration of all common, external things. He realised that appearances were visible letters of a soundless language, a language he once had known. The powers of night and moon and desert sand married with points in the fluid stream of his inmost spiritual being that knew and welcomed them. He understood.
Old Egypt herself stooped down from her uncovered throne. The stars sent messengers. There was commotion140 in the secret, sandy places of the desert. For the Desert had grown Temple. Columns reared against the sky. There rose, from leagues away, the chanting of the sand.
The temples, where once this came to pass, were gone, their ruin questioned by alien hearts that knew not their spiritual meaning. But here the entire Desert swept in to form a shrine141, and the Majesty that once was Egypt stepped grandly back across ages of denial and neglect. The sand was altar, and the stars were altar lights. The moon lit up the vast recesses142 of the ceiling, and the wind from a thousand miles brought in the perfume of her incense143. For with that faith which shifts mountains from their sandy bed, two passionate, believing souls invoked144 the Ka of Egypt.
And the motions that they made, he saw, were definite harmonious145 patterns their dark figures traced upon the shining valley floor. Like the points of compasses, with stems invisible, and directed from the sky, their movements marked the outlines of great signatures of power — the sigils of the type of life they would evoke54. It would come as a Procession. No individual outline could contain it. It needed for its visible expression — many. The descent of a group-soul, known to the worship of this mighty146 system, rose from its lair147 of centuries and moved hugely down upon them. The Ka, answering to the summons, would mate with sand. The Desert was its Body.
Yet it was not this that he had come to fix with block and pencil. Not yet was the moment when his skill might be of use. He waited, watched, and listened, while this river of half-remembered things went past him. The patterns grew beneath his eyes like music. Too intricate and prolonged to remember with accuracy later, he understood that they were forms of that root-geometry which lies behind all manifested life. The mould was being traced in outline. Life would presently inform it. And a singing rose from the maze148 of lines whose beauty was like the beauty of the constellations149.
This sound was very faint at first, but grew steadily in volume. Although no echoes, properly speaking, were possible, these precipices caught stray notes that trooped in from the further sandy reaches. The figures certainly were chanting, but their chanting was not all he heard. Other sounds came to his ears from far away, running past him through the air from every side, and from incredible distances, all flocking down into the Wadi bed to join the parent note that summoned them. The Desert was giving voice. And memory, lifting her hood150 yet higher, showed more of her grey, mysterious face that searched his soul with questions. Had he so soon forgotten that strange union of form and sound which once was known to the evocative rituals of olden days?
Henriot tried patiently to disentangle this desert-music that their intoning voices woke, from the humming of the blood in his own veins151. But he succeeded only in part. Sand was already in the air. There was reverberation152, rhythm, measure; there was almost the breaking of the stream into great syllables153. But was it due, this strange reverberation, to the countless154 particles of sand meeting in mid-air about him, or — to larger bodies, whose surfaces caught this friction155 of the sand and threw it back against his ears? The wind, now rising, brought particles that stung his face and hands, and filled his eyes with a minute fine dust that partially156 veiled the moonlight. But was not something larger, vaster these particles composed now also on the way?
Movement and sound and flying sand thus merged themselves more and more in a single, whirling torrent. But Henriot sought no commonplace explanation of what he witnessed; and here was the proof that all happened in some vestibule of inner experience where the strain of question and answer had no business. One sitting beside him need not have seen anything at all. His host, for instance, from Helouan, need not have been aware. Night screened it; Helouan, as the whole of modern experience, stood in front of the screen. This thing took place behind it. He crouched157 motionless, watching in some reconstructed ante-chamber of the soul’s preexistence, while the torrent grew into a veritable tempest.
Yet Night remained unshaken; the veil of moonlight did not quiver; the stars dropped their slender golden pillars unobstructed. Calmness reigned158 everywhere as before. The stupendous representation passed on behind it all.
But the dignity of the little human movements that he watched had become now indescribable. The gestures of the arms and bodies invested themselves with consummate159 grandeur, as these two strode into the caverns160 behind manifested life and drew forth161 symbols that represented vanished Powers. The sound of their chanting voices broke in cadenced162 fragments against the shores of language. The words Henriot never actually caught, if words they were; yet he understood their purport163 — these Names of Power to which the type of returning life gave answer as they approached. He remembered fumbling164 for his drawing materials, with such violence, however, that the pencil snapped in two between his fingers as he touched it. For now, even here, upon the outer fringe of the ceremonial ground, there was a stir of forces that set the very muscles working in him before he had become aware of it. . . .
Then came the moment when his heart leaped against his ribs with a sudden violence that was almost pain, standing165 a second later still as death. The lines upon the valley floor ceased their maze-like dance. All movement stopped. Sound died away. In the midst of this profound and dreadful silence the sigils lay empty there below him. They waited to be informed. For the moment of entrance had come at last. Life was close.
And he understood why this return of life had all along suggested a Procession and could be no mere momentary166 flash of vision. From such appalling167 distance did it sweep down towards the present.
Upon this network, then, of splendid lines, at length held rigid168, the entire Desert reared itself with walls of curtained sand, that dwarfed169 the cliffs, the shouldering hills, the very sky. The Desert stood on end. As once before he had dreamed it from his balcony windows, it rose upright, towering, and close against his face. It built sudden ramparts to the stars that chambered the thing he witnessed behind walls no centuries could ever bring down crumbling into dust.
He himself, in some curious fashion, lay just outside, viewing it apart. As from a pinnacle170, he peered within — peered down with straining eyes into the vast picture-gallery Memory threw abruptly open. And the picture spaced its noble outline thus against the very stars. He gazed between columns, that supported the sky itself, like pillars of sand that swept across the field of vanished years. Sand poured and streamed aside, laying bare the Past.
For down the enormous vista into which he gazed, as into an avenue running a million miles towards a tiny point, he saw this moving Thing that came towards him, shaking loose the countless veils of sand the ages had swathed about it. The Ka of buried Egypt wakened out of sleep. She had heard the potent summons of her old, time-honoured ritual. She came. She stretched forth an arm towards the worshippers who evoked her. Out of the Desert, out of the leagues of sand, out of the immeasurable wilderness which was her mummied Form and Body, she rose and came. And this fragment of her he would actually see — this little portion that was obedient to the stammered171 and broken ceremonial. The partial revelation he would witness — yet so vast, even this little bit of it, that it came as a Procession and a host.
For a moment there was nothing. And then the voice of the woman rose in a resounding172 cry that filled the Wadi to its furthest precipices, before it died away again to silence. That a human voice could produce such volume, accent, depth, seemed half incredible. The walls of towering sand swallowed it instantly. But the Procession of life, needing a group, a host, an army for its physical expression, reached at that moment the nearer end of the huge avenue. It touched the Present; it entered the world of men.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
strings
|
|
| n.弦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
shuffling
|
|
| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
quarries
|
|
| n.（采）石场( quarry的名词复数 )；猎物（指鸟，兽等）；方形石；（格窗等的）方形玻璃v.从采石场采得( quarry的第三人称单数 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
basked
|
|
| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的过去式和过去分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
colonnades
|
|
| n.石柱廊( colonnade的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
6
throngs
|
|
| n.人群( throng的名词复数 )v.成群，挤满( throng的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
regiment
|
|
| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
flannels
|
|
| 法兰绒男裤； 法兰绒( flannel的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
observatory
|
|
| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
akin
|
|
| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
siesta
|
|
| n.午睡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
beckoned
|
|
| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
sipped
|
|
| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
merged
|
|
| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
crunching
|
|
| v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的现在分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
draught
|
|
| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
upwards
|
|
| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
murmur
|
|
| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
delta
|
|
| n.（流的）角洲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
clefts
|
|
| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
cleft
|
|
| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
crimsoning
|
|
| 变为深红色（crimson的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
23
symbolic
|
|
| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
ridge
|
|
| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
obliterating
|
|
| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
gulf
|
|
| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
deception
|
|
| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
gnats
|
|
| n.叮人小虫( gnat的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
fabulous
|
|
| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
ridges
|
|
| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
weird
|
|
| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
enveloped
|
|
| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
steered
|
|
| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
subconsciously
|
|
| ad.下意识地，潜意识地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
abrupt
|
|
| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
desolate
|
|
| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
hovered
|
|
| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
tenement
|
|
| n.公寓；房屋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
transformation
|
|
| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
monstrous
|
|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
conceal
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
eroding
|
|
| 侵蚀，腐蚀( erode的现在分词 )； 逐渐毁坏，削弱，损害 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
interpretation
|
|
| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
lurking
|
|
| 潜在 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
conceals
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
outwards
|
|
| adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
embryonic
|
|
| adj.胚胎的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
granite
|
|
| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
evoke
|
|
| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
evoked
|
|
| [医]诱发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
limestone
|
|
| n.石灰石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
limestones
|
|
| n.石灰岩( limestone的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
ominously
|
|
| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
isolation
|
|
| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
grandeur
|
|
| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
eyebrows
|
|
| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
motives
|
|
| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
penetrating
|
|
| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
strata
|
|
| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
semblance
|
|
| n.外貌，外表 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
drooping
|
|
| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
protruding
|
|
| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
jaws
|
|
| n.口部；嘴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
countenance
|
|
| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
countenances
|
|
| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
everlasting
|
|
| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
concealed
|
|
| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
dread
|
|
| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
ribs
|
|
| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
luminous
|
|
| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
patchwork
|
|
| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
glimmering
|
|
| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
gaped
|
|
| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
impetus
|
|
| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
tempted
|
|
| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
engulfed
|
|
| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
evocation
|
|
| n. 引起，唤起 n. <古> 召唤，招魂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
descending
|
|
| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
futile
|
|
| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
insignificant
|
|
| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
torrent
|
|
| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
efface
|
|
| v.擦掉，抹去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
glide
|
|
| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
cavalcade
|
|
| n.车队等的行列 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
vessels
|
|
| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
ledge
|
|
| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
boulder
|
|
| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
boulders
|
|
| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
crumbling
|
|
| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
shrubs
|
|
| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
unaware
|
|
| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
panorama
|
|
| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
darting
|
|
| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
entity
|
|
| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
veneration
|
|
| n.尊敬，崇拜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
awe
|
|
| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
symbolical
|
|
| a.象征性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
vaguely
|
|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
attuned
|
|
| v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 )；调音 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
anticipation
|
|
| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
precipices
|
|
| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
evacuated
|
|
| 撤退者的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
vista
|
|
| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
passionately
|
|
| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
curiously
|
|
| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
pretence
|
|
| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
obliteration
|
|
| n.涂去，删除；管腔闭合 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
majesty
|
|
| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
deity
|
|
| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
reverence
|
|
| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
humility
|
|
| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
gateway
|
|
| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
evoking
|
|
| 产生，引起，唤起( evoke的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
theatrical
|
|
| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
potent
|
|
| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
arduous
|
|
| adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
revival
|
|
| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
revolving
|
|
| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
sweeping
|
|
| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
lodge
|
|
| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
instinctive
|
|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
slumber
|
|
| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
recollected
|
|
| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
decrepit
|
|
| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
degradation
|
|
| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
commotion
|
|
| n.骚动，动乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
shrine
|
|
| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
recesses
|
|
| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
incense
|
|
| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
invoked
|
|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
harmonious
|
|
| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
lair
|
|
| n.野兽的巢穴；躲藏处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
maze
|
|
| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
constellations
|
|
| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
hood
|
|
| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
reverberation
|
|
| 反响； 回响； 反射； 反射物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
syllables
|
|
| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
countless
|
|
| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
friction
|
|
| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
partially
|
|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
crouched
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
reigned
|
|
| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
consummate
|
|
| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
caverns
|
|
| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
cadenced
|
|
| adj.音调整齐的，有节奏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
purport
|
|
| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
fumbling
|
|
| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
167
appalling
|
|
| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
rigid
|
|
| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
dwarfed
|
|
| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
pinnacle
|
|
| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
stammered
|
|
| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
172
resounding
|
|
| adj. 响亮的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |