The maid--a pale, very slim girl with an indifferent expression --found several telegrams in the basket under the table, and handed them to the doctor without a word; but all these were telegrams from patients. Then they looked in the drawing-room, and in Olga Dmitrievna's room.
It was past midnight. Nikolay Yevgrafitch knew his wife would not be home very soon, not till five o'clock at least. He did not trust her, and when she was long away he could not sleep, was worried, and at the same time he despised his wife, and her bed, and her looking-glass, and her boxes of sweets, and the hyacinths, and the lilies of the valley which were sent her every day by some one or other, and which diffused1 the sickly fragrance2 of a florist's shop all over the house. On such nights he became petty, ill-humoured, irritable3, and he fancied now that it was very necessary for him to have the telegram he had received the day before from his brother, though it contained nothing but Christmas greetings.
On the table of his wife's room under the box of stationery4 he found a telegram, and glanced at it casually5. It was addressed to his wife, care of his mother-in-law, from Monte Carlo, and signed Michel . . . . The doctor did not understand one word of it, as it was in some foreign language, apparently6 English.
"Who is this Michel? Why Monte Carlo? Why directed care of her mother?"
During the seven years of his married life he had grown used to being suspicious, guessing, catching7 at clues, and it had several times occurred to him, that his exercise at home had qualified8 him to become an excellent detective. Going into his study and beginning to reflect, he recalled at once how he had been with his wife in Petersburg a year and a half ago, and had lunched with an old school-fellow, a civil engineer, and how that engineer had introduced to him and his wife a young man of two or three and twenty, called Mihail Ivanovitch, with rather a curious short surname--Riss. Two months later the doctor had seen the young man's photograph in his wife's album, with an inscription9 in French: "In remembrance of the present and in hope of the future." Later on he had met the young man himself at his mother-in-law's. And that was at the time when his wife had taken to being very often absent and coming home at four or five o'clock in the morning, and was constantly asking him to get her a passport for abroad, which he kept refusing to do; and a continual feud10 went on in the house which made him feel ashamed to face the servants.
Six months before, his colleagues had decided11 that he was going into consumption, and advised him to throw up everything and go to the Crimea. When she heard of this, Olga Dmitrievna affected12 to be very much alarmed; she began to be affectionate to her husband, and kept assuring him that it would be cold and dull in the Crimea, and that he had much better go to Nice, and that she would go with him, and there would nurse him, look after him, take care of him.
Now, he understood why his wife was so particularly anxious to go to Nice: her Michel lived at Monte Carlo.
He took an English dictionary, and translating the words, and guessing their meaning, by degrees he put together the following sentence: "I drink to the health of my beloved darling, and kiss her little foot a thousand times, and am impatiently expecting her arrival." He pictured the pitiable, ludicrous part he would play if he had agreed to go to Nice with his wife. He felt so mortified13 that he almost shed tears and began pacing to and fro through all the rooms of the flat in great agitation14. His pride, his plebeian15 fastidiousness, was revolted. Clenching16 his fists and scowling17 with disgust, he wondered how he, the son of a village priest, brought up in a clerical school, a plain, straightforward18 man, a surgeon by profession--how could he have let himself be enslaved, have sunk into such shameful19 bondage20 to this weak, worthless, mercenary, low creature.
"'Little foot'!" he muttered to himself, crumpling21 up the telegram; "'little foot'!"
Of the time when he fell in love and proposed to her, and the seven years that he had been living with her, all that remained in his memory was her long, fragrant22 hair, a mass of soft lace, and her little feet, which certainly were very small, beautiful feet; and even now it seemed as though he still had from those old embraces the feeling of lace and silk upon his hands and face--and nothing more. Nothing more--that is, not counting hysterics, shrieks23, reproaches, threats, and lies--brazen, treacherous24 lies. He remembered how in his father's house in the village a bird would sometimes chance to fly in from the open air into the house and would struggle desperately25 against the window-panes and upset things; so this woman from a class utterly26 alien to him had flown into his life and made complete havoc27 of it. The best years of his life had been spent as though in hell, his hopes for happiness shattered and turned into a mockery, his health gone, his rooms as vulgar in their atmosphere as a cocotte's, and of the ten thousand he earned every year he could never save ten roubles to send his old mother in the village, and his debts were already about fifteen thousand. It seemed that if a band of brigands28 had been living in his rooms his life would not have been so hopelessly, so irremediably ruined as by the presence of this woman.
He began coughing and gasping29 for breath. He ought to have gone to bed and got warm, but he could not. He kept walking about the rooms, or sat down to the table, nervously30 fidgeting with a pencil and scribbling31 mechanically on a paper.
"Trying a pen. . . . A little foot."
By five o'clock he grew weaker and threw all the blame on himself. It seemed to him now that if Olga Dmitrievna had married some one else who might have had a good influence over her--who knows?-- she might after all have become a good, straightforward woman. He was a poor psychologist, and knew nothing of the female heart; besides, he was churlish, uninteresting. . . .
"I haven't long to live now," he thought. "I am a dead man, and ought not to stand in the way of the living. It would be strange and stupid to insist upon one's rights now. I'll have it out with her; let her go to the man she loves. . . . I'll give her a divorce. I'll take the blame on myself."
Olga Dmitrievna came in at last, and she walked into the study and sank into a chair just as she was in her white cloak, hat, and overboots.
"The nasty, fat boy," she said with a sob32, breathing hard. "It's really dishonest; it's disgusting." She stamped. "I can't put up with it; I can't, I can't!"
"What's the matter?" asked Nikolay Yevgrafitch, going up to her.
"That student, Azarbekov, was seeing me home, and he lost my bag, and there was fifteen roubles in it. I borrowed it from mamma."
She was crying in a most genuine way, like a little girl, and not only her handkerchief, but even her gloves, were wet with tears.
"It can't be helped!" said the doctor. "If he's lost it, he's lost it, and it's no good worrying over it. Calm yourself; I want to talk to you."
"I am not a millionaire to lose money like that. He says he'll pay it back, but I don't believe him; he's poor . . ."
Her husband begged her to calm herself and to listen to him, but she kept on talking of the student and of the fifteen roubles she had lost.
"Ach! I'll give you twenty-five roubles to-morrow if you'll only hold your tongue!" he said irritably33.
"I must take off my things!" she said, crying. "I can't talk seriously in my fur coat! How strange you are!"
He helped her off with her coat and overboots, detecting as he did so the smell of the white wine she liked to drink with oysters34 (in spite of her etherealness she ate and drank a great deal). She went into her room and came back soon after, having changed her things and powdered her face, though her eyes still showed traces of tears. She sat down, retreating into her light, lacy dressing-gown, and in the mass of billowy pink her husband could see nothing but her hair, which she had let down, and her little foot wearing a slipper35.
"What do you want to talk about?" she asked, swinging herself in a rocking-chair.
"I happened to see this;" and he handed her the telegram.
She read it and shrugged36 her shoulders.
"Well?" she said, rocking herself faster. "That's the usual New Year's greeting and nothing else. There are no secrets in it."
"You are reckoning on my not knowing English. No, I don't know it; but I have a dictionary. That telegram is from Riss; he drinks to the health of his beloved and sends you a thousand kisses. But let us leave that," the doctor went on hurriedly. "I don't in the least want to reproach you or make a scene. We've had scenes and reproaches enough; it's time to make an end of them. . . . This is what I want to say to you: you are free, and can live as you like."
There was a silence. She began crying quietly.
"I set you free from the necessity of lying and keeping up pretences," Nikolay Yevgrafitch continued. "If you love that young man, love him; if you want to go abroad to him, go. You are young, healthy, and I am a wreck37, and haven't long to live. In short . . . you understand me."
He was agitated38 and could not go on. Olga Dmitrievna, crying and speaking in a voice of self-pity, acknowledged that she loved Riss, and used to drive out of town with him and see him in his rooms, and now she really did long to go abroad.
"You see, I hide nothing from you," she added, with a sigh. "My whole soul lies open before you. And I beg you again, be generous, get me a passport."
"I repeat, you are free."
She moved to another seat nearer him to look at the expression of his face. She did not believe him and wanted now to understand his secret meaning. She never did believe any one, and however generous were their intentions, she always suspected some petty or ignoble39 motive40 or selfish object in them. And when she looked searchingly into his face, it seemed to him that there was a gleam of green light in her eyes as in a cat's.
"When shall I get the passport?" she asked softly.
He suddenly had an impulse to say "Never"; but he restrained himself and said:
"When you like."
"I shall only go for a month."
"You'll go to Riss for good. I'll get you a divorce, take the blame on myself, and Riss can marry you."
"But I don't want a divorce!" Olga Dmitrievna retorted quickly, with an astonished face. "I am not asking you for a divorce! Get me a passport, that's all."
"But why don't you want the divorce?" asked the doctor, beginning to feel irritated. "You are a strange woman. How strange you are! If you are fond of him in earnest and he loves you too, in your position you can do nothing better than get married. Can you really hesitate between marriage and adultery?"
"I understand you," she said, walking away from him, and a spiteful, vindictive41 expression came into her face. "I understand you perfectly42. You are sick of me, and you simply want to get rid of me, to force this divorce on me. Thank you very much; I am not such a fool as you think. I won't accept the divorce and I won't leave you--I won't, I won't! To begin with, I don't want to lose my position in society," she continued quickly, as though afraid of being prevented from speaking. "Secondly43, I am twenty-seven and Riss is only twenty-three; he'll be tired of me in a year and throw me over. And what's more, if you care to know, I'm not certain that my feeling will last long . . . so there! I'm not going to leave you."
"Then I'll turn you out of the house!" shouted Nikolay Yevgrafitch, stamping. "I shall turn you out, you vile44, loathsome45 woman!"
"We shall see!" she said, and went out.
It was broad daylight outside, but the doctor still sat at the table moving the pencil over the paper and writing mechanically.
"My dear Sir. . . . Little foot."
Or he walked about and stopped in the drawing-room before a photograph taken seven years ago, soon after his marriage, and looked at it for a long time. It was a family group: his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, his wife Olga Dmitrievna when she was twenty, and himself in the r?le of a happy young husband. His father-in-law, a clean-shaven, dropsical privy46 councillor, crafty47 and avaricious48; his mother-in-law, a stout49 lady with small predatory features like a weasel, who loved her daughter to distraction50 and helped her in everything; if her daughter were strangling some one, the mother would not have protested, but would only have screened her with her skirts. Olga Dmitrievna, too, had small predatory-looking features, but more expressive51 and bolder than her mother's; she was not a weasel, but a beast on a bigger scale! And Nikolay Yevgrafitch himself in the photograph looked such a guileless soul, such a kindly52, good fellow, so open and simple-hearted; his whole face was relaxed in the na?ve, good-natured smile of a divinity student, and he had had the simplicity53 to believe that that company of beasts of prey54 into which destiny had chanced to thrust him would give him romance and happiness and all he had dreamed of when as a student he used to sing the song "Youth is wasted, life is nought55, when the heart is cold and loveless."
And once more he asked himself in perplexity how he, the son of a village priest, with his democratic bringing up--a plain, blunt, straightforward man--could have so helplessly surrendered to the power of this worthless, false, vulgar, petty creature, whose nature was so utterly alien to him.
When at eleven o'clock he put on his coat to go to the hospital the servant came into his study.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The mistress has got up and asks you for the twenty-five roubles you promised her yesterday."
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1
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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4
stationery
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| n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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6
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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7
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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8
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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9
inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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10
feud
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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11
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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14
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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15
plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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16
clenching
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 ) | |
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17
scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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18
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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21
crumpling
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| 压皱，弄皱( crumple的现在分词 )； 变皱 | |
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22
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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23
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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24
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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25
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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28
brigands
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| n.土匪，强盗( brigand的名词复数 ) | |
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29
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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30
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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31
scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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32
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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33
irritably
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| ad.易生气地 | |
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34
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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35
slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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36
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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37
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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38
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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40
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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41
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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42
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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43
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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44
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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45
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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46
privy
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| adj.私用的；隐密的 | |
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47
crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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48
avaricious
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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50
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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51
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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52
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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53
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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54
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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55
nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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