CHAPTER I

 There was once a gardener. Not only was, but in all probability is, for as far as I know you may meet him to this day. There are no death-bed scenes in this book. The gardener was not the sort of person to bring a novel to a graceful¹ climax² by dying finally in an atmosphere of elevated immorality³. He was extremely thin, but not in the least unhealthy. He never with his own consent ran any risk of sudden death. Nobody would ever try to introduce him into a real book, for he was in no way suitable. He was not a philosopher. Not an adventurer. Not a gay dog. Not lively: but he lived, and that at least is a great merit.

In appearance the gardener was a fairly mediocre⁶ study in black and white. He had a white and wooden face, black hair as smooth as a wet seal’s back, thin arms and legs, and enormous hands and feet. He was not indispensable to any one, but he believed that he was a pillar supporting the world. It sometimes makes one nervous to reflect what very amateur pillars the world seems to employ.

2He lived in a boarding-house in Penny Street, W. A boarding-house is a place full of talk, it has as many eyes as a peacock, and ears to correspond. It is lamentably⁷ little, and yet impossible to ignore. It is not a dignified⁸ foundation for a pillar.

The gardener was twenty-three. Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.

On the first of June, in his twenty-fourth year, the gardener broke his boot-lace. The remains⁹ of the catastrophe¹⁰ dangled¹¹ from his hand. String was out of the question; one cannot be decent dressed in string, he thought, with that touch of exaggeration common to victims of disasters. The world was a sordid¹³ and sardonic¹⁴ master, there was no heart in the breast of Fate. He was bereft¹⁵ even of his dignity, there is no dignity in the death of a boot-lace. The gardener’s twenty-three years were stripped from him like a cloak. He felt little and naked.

He was so busy with his emotions that he had forgotten that the door of his room was open.

It was rather like the girl Courtesy to stand on the landing boldly staring in at a man sitting on his bedroom floor crushed by circumstances. She had no idea of what was fitting. Any other woman would have recognised the presence of despair, and would have passed by with head averted¹⁷.

But the girl Courtesy said, “Poor lamb, has it broken its boot-lace?”

3The gardener continued in silence to watch the strangling of his vanity by the corpse¹⁸ of the boot-lace. His chief characteristic was a whole heart in all that he did.

A tear should have appeared in Courtesy’s eye at the sight of him. But it did not.

“Give me the boot,” she said, advancing into the room in the most unwomanly manner. And she knotted the boot-lace with a cleverness so unexpected—considering the sort of girl she was—that the difference in its length was negligible, and the knot was hidden beneath the other lace.

“Women have their uses,” thought the gardener. But the thought was short-lived, for Courtesy’s next remark was:

“There, boy, run along and keep smilin’. Somebody loves you.” And she patted him on the cheek.

Now it has been made clear that the gardener was a Man of Twenty-three. He turned his back violently on the woman, put on his boot, and walked downstairs bristling²⁰ with dignity.

The girl Courtesy not only failed to be cut to the heart by the silent rebuke²¹, but she failed to realise that she had offended. She was rather fat, and rather obtuse²². She was half an inch taller than the gardener, and half a dozen years older.

The gardener’s indignation rode him downstairs. It spurred him to force his hat down on his head at a most unbecoming angle, it supplied the impetus²³ for a passionate²⁴ slamming of the door. But on the 4door-step it evaporated suddenly. It was replaced by a rosy²⁵ and arresting thought.

“Poor soul, she loves me,” said the gardener. He adjusted his hat, and stepped out into London, a breaker of hearts, a Don Juan, unconscious of his charm yet conscious of his unconsciousness. “Poor thing, poor thing,” he thought, and remembered with regret that Courtesy had not lost her appetite. On the contrary, she had been looking even plumper of late. But then Courtesy never quite played the game.

“I begin to be appreciated,” reflected the gardener. “I always knew the world would find out some day....”

The gardener was a dreamer of dreams, and a weaver²⁷ of many theories. His theories were not even tangible²⁸ enough to make a philosophy, yet against them he measured his world. And any shortcomings he placed to the world’s account. He wrapped himself in theories to such an extent that facts were crowded from his view, he posed until he lost himself in a wilderness³⁰ of poses. He was not the victim of consistency³¹, that most ambiguous virtue³². The dense³³ and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully³⁵ behind them.

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery³⁷, a blessing³⁸ and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed³⁹ it. Had both been blessed—or cursed—with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.

5The million eyes of female London pricked⁴¹ the gardener, or so he imagined, as he threaded the Strand⁴². He felt as if a glance from his eye was a blessing, and he bestowed⁴³ it generously. The full blaze of it fell upon one particular girl as she walked towards him. She seemed to the gardener to be almost worthy⁴⁴. Her yellow hair suffered from Marcelle spasms⁴⁵ at careful intervals⁴⁷ of an inch and a half, every possible tooth enjoyed publicity⁴⁸. The gardener recognised a kindred soul. A certain shade of yellow hair always at this period thatched a kindred soul for the gardener.

He followed the lady.

He followed her even into the gaping⁴⁹ jaws⁵⁰ of an underground station. There she bought cigarettes at a tobacco stall.

“She smokes,” thought the gardener. “This is life.”

He went close to her while she paid. She was not in the least miserly of a certain cheap smell of violets. The gardener was undaunted.

“Shall we take a taxi, Miss?” he suggested, his wide eager smile a trifle damped by self-consciousness. For this was his first attempt of the kind. “They say Kew is lovely just now.”

It was his theory that spoke⁵². In practice he had but threepence in his pocket.

She replied, “Bless you, kid. Run ’ome to mammy, do.”

Her voice sounded like the scent⁵⁴ she wore. It 6had a hard tone which somehow brought the solitary⁵⁵ threepence to mind.

The gardener returned at great speed to Penny Street.

It was lunch-time at Number Twenty-one. The eternal hash approached its daily martyrdom. Hash is a worthy thing, but it reminds you that you are not at the Ritz. There is nothing worse calculated to make you forget a lonely threepenny bit in your pocket.

The gardener had a hundred a year. He was apparently⁵⁷ the only person in London with a hundred a year, for wherever he went he always found himself the wealthiest person present. His friends gave his natural generosity⁵⁸ a free rein⁵⁹. After various experiments in social economy, he found it cheapest to rid himself of the hundred a year immediately on its quarterly appearance, and live on his expectations for the rest of the time. There are drawbacks about this plan, as well as many advantages. But the gardener was a pillar, and he found it easier to support the world than to support himself.

It was on this occasion that his neighbour at luncheon⁶¹, unaware⁶² of his pillar-hood⁶³, asked him what he was doing for a living.

“Living,” replied the gardener. He was not absolutely sure that it made sense, but it sounded epigrammatic. He was, in some lights, a shameless prig. But then one often is, if one thinks, at twenty-three.

7“It’s all living,” he continued to his neighbour. “It’s all life. Being out of a job is life. Being kicked is life. Starving’s life. Dying’s life.”

The neighbour did not reply because he was busy eating. One had to keep one’s attention fixed⁶⁶ on the food problem at 21 Penny Street. There was no time for epigrams. It was a case of the survival of the most silent. The gardener was very thin.

The girl Courtesy, however, was one who could do two things at once. She could support life and impart information at the same time.

“I do believe you talk for the sake of talking,” she said; and it was true. “How can dying be living?”

It is most annoying to have the cold light of feminine logic⁶⁷ turned on to an impromptu⁶⁸ epigram. The gardener pushed the parsnips towards her as a hint that she was talking too much. But Courtesy had the sort of eye that sees no subtlety⁶⁹ in parsnips. Her understanding was of the black and white type.

“Death is the door to life,” remarked Miss Shakespeare, nailing down the golden opportunity with eagerness. 21 Penny Street very rarely gave Miss Shakespeare the satisfaction of such an opening. There was, however, a lamentable⁷¹ lack of response. The subject, which had been upheld contrary to the laws of gravitation, fell heavily to earth.

“Is this your threepenny bit or mine?” asked the girl Courtesy. For that potent⁷² symbol, the victim 8of its owner’s absence of mind, in the course of violent exercise between the gardener’s plate and hers, had fallen into her lap.

Whose idea was it to make money round? I sometimes feel certain I could control it better if it were square.

“It is mine,” said the gardener, still posing as a philosopher. “A little splinter out of the brimstone lake. Feel it.”

Courtesy smelt⁷³ it without repulsion.

“Talk again,” she said. “Where would you be without money?”

“Where would I be without money? Where would I be without any of the vices⁷⁴? Singing in Paradise, I suppose.”

“If I pocket this threepenny bit,” said Courtesy, that practical girl, “what will you say?”

“Thank you—and good-bye,” replied the gardener. “It is my last link with the world.”

Courtesy put it in her purse. “Good-bye,” she said. “So sorry you must go. Reserve a halo for me.”

The gardener rose immediately and walked upstairs with decision into his bedroom, which, by some freak of chance, was papered blue to match his soul. It was indeed the anteroom of the gardener’s soul. Nightly he went through it into the palace of himself.

He took out of it now his toothbrush, a change of raiment, and Hilda. It occurs to me that I have 9not yet mentioned Hilda. She was a nasturtium in a small pot.

On his way downstairs he met Miss Shakespeare, who held the destinies of 21 Penny Street, and did not hold with the gardener’s unexpected ways.

“Your weekly account ...” she began.

“I have left everything I have as hostages with fate,” said the gardener. “When I get tired of Paradise I’ll come back.”

On the door-step he exclaimed, “I will be a merry vagabond, tra-la-la ...” and he stepped out transfigured—in theory.

As he passed the dining-room window he caught sight of the red of Courtesy’s hair, as she characteristically continued eating.

“An episode,” he thought. “Unscathed I pass on. And the woman, as women must, remains to weep and grow old. Courtesy, my little auburn lover, I have passed on—for ever.”

But he had to return two minutes later to fetch a pocket-handkerchief from among the hostages. And Courtesy, as she met him in the hall, nodded in an unsuitably unscathed manner.

The gardener walked, with Hilda in his hand. It became night. Practically speaking, it is of course impossible for night to occur within three paragraphs of luncheon-time. But actually the day is often to me as full of holes as a Gruyère cheese.

To the gardener the beginnings of a walk which he felt sure must eventually find a place in history 10were torn ruthlessly out of his experience. He was thinking about red hair, and all things red.

He hoped that Hilda, when she flowered, would be the exact shade of a certain head of hair he had lately seen.

“Hoping and planning for Hilda like a mother-to-be,” he thought, but that pose was impossible to sustain.

Red hair.

He did not think of the girl Courtesy at all. Only her hair flamed in his memory. The remembrance of the rest of her was as faint and lifeless as a hairdresser’s dummy⁷⁸.

It struck him that auburn, with orange lights in the sunlight, was the colour of heat, the colour of heaven, the colour of life and love. He looked round at the characteristic London female passer-by, the thin-breasted girl, with hair the colour of wet sand, and reflected that Woman is a much rarer creature than she appears to be.

He recovered consciousness in Kensington Gardens at dusk. He remembered that he was a merry vagabond.

“Tra-la-la ...” he sang as he passed a park-keeper.

People in authority seem as a rule to be shy of the pose. The park-keeper was not exactly shy, but he made a murmured protest against the Tra-la-la, and saw the gardener to the gate with most offensive care.

11In theory the gardener spent the night at the Ritz. In practice he slept on the Embankment. He was a man of luck in little things, and the night was the first fine night for several weeks. The gardener followed the moon in its light fall across the sky. Several little stars followed it too, in and out of the small smiling clouds.

The moon threaded its way in and out of the gardener’s small smiling dreams. Oh mad moon, you porthole, looking up into a fantastic Paradise!

The gardener did not dream of red hair. That subject was exhausted⁷⁹.

When an undecided sun blinked through smoked glasses at the Thames, and at the little steamers sleeping with their funnels⁸¹ down like sea-gulls on the water with their heads under their wings, the gardener rose. He had a bath and a shave—in theory—and walked southward. Tra-la-la.

He walked very fast when he got beyond the tramways, but after a while a woman who was walking behind him caught him up. Women are apt to get above themselves in these days, I think.

“I’m going to walk with you,” said the woman.

“Why?” asked the gardener, who spent some ingenuity⁸² in saying the thing that was unexpected, whether possible or impossible.

“Because you’re carrying that flower-pot,” replied the woman. “It’s such absurd sort of luggage to be taking on a journey.”

12“How do you know I’m going on a journey?” asked the gardener, astonished at meeting his match. “By the expression of your heels.”

The gardener could think of nothing more apt to say than “Tra-la-la ...” so he said it, to let her know that he was a merry vagabond.

The woman was quite plain, and therefore worthy only of invisibility in the eyes of a self-respecting young man. She had the sort of hair that plays truant⁸³ over the ears, but has not vitality⁸⁴ enough to do it prettily⁸⁵. Her complexion⁸⁶ was not worthy of the name. Her eyes made no attempt to redeem⁸⁷ her plainness, which is the only point of having eyes in fiction. Her only outward virtue was that she did not attempt to dress as if she were pretty. And even this is not a very attractive virtue.

She carried a mustard-coloured portmanteau.

“I know what you are,” said the gardener. “You are a suffragette, going to burn a house down.”

The woman raised her eyebrows⁹⁰.

“How curious of you!” she said. “You are perfectly⁹¹ right. Votes for women!”

“Tra-la-la ...” sang the gardener wittily⁹².

(You need not be afraid. There is not going to be so very much about the cause in this book.)

They walked some way in silence. The gardener, of course, shared the views of all decent men on this subject. One may virtuously⁹³ destroy life in a good cause, but to destroy property is a heinous⁹⁵ crime, whatever its motive⁹⁶.

13(Yes, I know that made you tremble, but there are not many more paragraphs of it.)

Presently they passed a car, pillowed against a grassy⁹⁷ bank. Its attitude, which looked depressed⁹⁸, was not the result of a catastrophe, but of a picnic. In the meadow, among the buttercups, could be seen four female hats leaning together over a little square meal set forth¹⁰⁰ in the grass.

“Look,” said the suffragette, in a voice thin with scorn.

The gardener looked, but could see nothing that aroused in him a horror proportionate to his companion’s tone.

“Listen,” said the suffragette half an octave higher.

The gardener listened. But all he heard was, “Oh, my dear, it was too killing¹⁰¹....”

Then, because the chauffeur¹⁰² on the bank paused in mid-sandwich, as if about to rebuke their curiosity, they walked on.

“One is born a woman,” said the suffragette. “A woman in her sphere—which is the home. One starts by thinking of one’s dolls, later one thinks about one’s looks, and later still about one’s clothes. But nobody marries one. And then one finds that one’s sphere—which is the home—has been a prison all along. Has it ever struck you that the tragedy of a woman’s life is that she has time to think—she can think and organise¹⁰³ her sphere at the same time. Her work never lets her get away from herself. 14I tell you I have cried with disgust at the sound of my own name—I won’t give it to you, but it might as well be Jane Brown. I have gasped¹⁰⁵ appalled¹⁰⁶ at the banality¹⁰⁹ of my Sunday hat. Yet I kept house excellently. And now I have run away, I am living a wide and gorgeous life of unwomanliness. I am trying to share your simplest privilege—the privilege you were born to through no merit of your own, you silly little boy—the privilege of having interests as wide as the world if you like, and of thinking to some purpose about England’s affairs. My England. Are you any Englisher than I?”

“You are becoming incoherent,” said the gardener. “You are enjoying a privilege which you do not share with me—the privilege of becoming hysterical¹¹⁰ in public and yet being protected by the law. You are a woman, and goodness knows that is privilege enough. It covers everything except politics. Also you have wandered from the point, which at one time appeared to be a picnic.”

(Courage. There is only a little more of this. But you must allow the woman the privilege of the last word. It is always more dignified to allow her what she is perfectly certain to take in any case.)

“The picnic was an example of that sphere of which ‘Oh, my dear, too killing ...’ is the motto. You educate women—to that. I might have been under one of those four hats—only I’m not pretty enough. You have done nothing to prevent it. I 15might have been an ‘Oh, my dear’ girl, but thank heaven I’m an incendiary instead.”

That was the end of that argument. The gardener could not reply as his heart prompted him, because the arguments that pressed to his lips were too obvious.

Obviousness was the eighth deadly sin in his eyes. He would have agreed with the Devil rather than use the usual arguments in favour of virtue. That was his one permanent pose.

A little way off, on a low green hill, the suffragette pointed¹¹¹ out the home of a scion¹¹² of sweated industry, the house she intended to burn down. High trees bowed to each other on either side of it, and a little chalky white road struggled up to its door through fir plantations¹¹³, like you or me climbing the world for a reward we never see.

“I’m sorry,” said the gardener. “I love a house that looks up as that one does. I don’t like them when they sit conceitedly¹¹⁵ surveying their ‘well-timbered acres’ under beetle¹¹⁸ brows that hide the sky. Don’t burn it. Look at it, holding up its trees like green hands full of blessings¹¹⁹.”

“In an hour or two the smoke will stand over it like a tree—like a curse....”

When they parted the gardener liked her a little because she was on the wrong side of the law. There is much more room for the wind to blow and the sun to shine beyond the pale—or so it seems to the gardener and me standing⁷⁰ wistful and respectable 16inside. It is curious to me that one of the few remaining illusions of romance should cling to a connection with that most prosy of all institutions—the law.

I forgot to mention that the gardener borrowed a shilling from the suffragette, thus rashly forming a new link with the world in place of the one he had relinquished¹²⁰ to the girl Courtesy. The worst of the world is that it remains so absurdly conservative, and rudely ignores our interesting changes of pose and of fantasy. I have been known to crave¹²¹ for a penny bun in the middle of a visit from my muse¹²², and that is not my fault, but Nature’s, who created appetites and buns for the common herd¹²³, and refused to adapt herself to my abnormal psychology¹²⁴.

It was interesting to the gardener to see how easily the suffragette parted with such an important thing as a shilling. Superfluity is such an incredible thing to the hungry. The suffragette gave Holloway Gaol¹²⁵ as her permanent address.

Thus accidentally bribed¹²⁶, the gardener, feasting on a cut from the joint¹²⁷ in the next village, refrained from discussing women, their rights or wrongs, or their local intentions, with the village policeman. “She won’t really dare do it,” he thought.

(I may here add that I was not asked by a militant¹²⁸ society to write this book. I am writing it for your instruction and my own amusement.)

The gardener did not sleep under a hedge as all merry vagabonds do—(Tra-la-la)—but he slept 17in the very middle of a large field, much to the surprise of the cows. One or two of these coffee-coloured matrons awoke him at dawn by means of an unwinking examination that would have put a lesser¹³⁰ man out of countenance¹³¹. But the gardener, as becomes a man attacked by the empty impertinences of females, turned the other way and presently slept again.

He washed next morning near to where the cows drank. He had no soap and the cows had no tumblers,—nothing could have been more elemental than either performance.

“I am very near to the heart of nature—tra-la-la,” trilled the gardener. But the heart of nature eludes¹³² him who tries to measure the distance. The only beat that the gardener heard was the soft thud of his own feet along the thick dust of the highway.

About the next day but one he came to a place where the scenery changed its mind abruptly¹³⁴, flung buttercups and beeches¹³⁶ behind it, and drew over its shoulders the sombre cloak of heather and pines.

Under an unremarkable pine tree, listening to the impatient summons of the woodpecker (who, I think, is the feathered soul of the foolish virgin¹³⁹ outside the bridegroom’s door), sat a man. He was so fair that he might as well have been white-haired. His eyes were like two copper¹⁴⁰ sequins set between white lashes¹⁴², beneath white brows, in a white face. His lips were very red, and if he had seemed more detached and less friendly, he would have looked 18like harlequin. But he rose from his seat on the pine needles, and came towards the gardener, as though he had been waiting for him.

The gardener steeled himself against the stranger’s first word, fearing lest he should say, “What a glorious day!”

But the stranger, making a spasmodic attempt to remove a hat which had been left at home, said, “My name is Samuel Rust¹⁴³, a hotel-keeper. Won’t you come and look at my place?”

It was impossible for the gardener to do otherwise, for Mr. Samuel Rust’s place framed itself in a gap in the woods to the right, and was introduced by a wave of its owner’s hand.

“What a red place!” said the gardener.

“Of course. No other name is possible for it,” said Mr. Rust.

The house was built of red brick that had much tangerine¹⁴⁴ colour in it. The flowering heather surged to its very door-step. And thick around it the slim pine tree-trunks shot up, like flame, whispered flame.

The gardener smiled at it. If only Hilda might be the colour of those tree-trunks when she flowered.

Mr. Rust acknowledged the smile in the name of his red place. “It’s an—inoffensive little hole,” he said.

What he meant was of course, “It’s a perfectly exquisite¹⁴⁵ spot.” What is becoming of our old eloquence¹⁴⁶ and enthusiasm? The full-blooded conventions 19are dying, and we have already replaced them by a code of shadows. But whether the life beneath the code is as vivid as ever, remains to be seen. I think myself that manners are changing, but not man. In all probability we shall live to greet the day when “fairly decent” will express the most ecstatic degree of rapture¹⁴⁷.

The gardener was not intentionally¹⁴⁸ modern. It is the tendency of his generation to be modern—it is difficult to believe that it has been the tendency of every generation from the prehistoric¹⁴⁹ downwards¹⁵⁰. And it was the gardener’s ambition to walk in the opposite direction to the tendency of his generation. He shared the common delusion¹⁵¹ that by walking apart he could be unique. This arises from the divine fallacy that man makes man, that he has the making of himself in his own hands.

I am glad that I share this pathetic illusion with my gardener.

So, as he thought the Red Place very beautiful, he said, “I think it is very beautiful.”

But even so he was not sincere throughout. He posed even in his honesty. For he posed purposely as an honest man.

Of course you know that one of the most effective poses is to pose as one who never poses. A rough diamond with a heart of gold.

The first moment Mr. Samuel Rust heard the gardener say Tra-la-la he ceased to have a doubt as to the species of citadel¹⁵² he had invaded.

20“You are one of these insouciant¹⁵³ wanderers, what?” he suggested. “A light-hearted genius going to make a fortune grow out of the twopence in your pocket. You got yourself out of a book. I think your sort make your hearts light by blowing them up with gas.”

True to his code, he then feared that he had spoken with insufficient¹⁵⁵ mediocrity, and blushed. A small circular patch of red, like a rose, appeared high up on either cheek, suddenly bringing the rest of his face into competition with his vivid lips.

“You are wrong about the twopence,” said the gardener, “I have three halfpence.”

“Come and see my Red Place,” said Mr. Rust. “That is, if you’re not bored.”

Boredom¹⁵⁶ and the gardener were strangers. One can never be bored if one is always busy creating oneself with all the range of humanity as model.

“This is an hotel,” said the owner, as they approached the door. “It is my hotel, and it promised to make my fortune. So far it has confined itself to costing a fortune. When I remind it of its promise it puts its tongue in its cheek—what?”

The northern side of the Red Place was quite different in character from the side which first smiled on the gardener. This was because one essential detail was lacking—the heather. Fire had passed over the little space at some recent date in its sleepy history, and had left it sinister¹⁵⁷. Tortured roots 21and branches appealed from the black ground to a blue heaven. The surrounding pine trees, with their feet charred¹⁵⁸ and blistered¹⁵⁹, and their higher limbs still fiercely red, still looked like flames now turned into pillars of delight in answer to the prayer of the beseeching¹⁶⁰ heather.

“Is there anybody in your hotel?” asked the gardener, smoothing his hair hopefully—the young man’s invariable prelude¹⁶¹ to romance.

“Nobody, except the gods,” replied the host. “We sit here waiting, the divine and I. There is a blessing on the place, and I intend to make money out of it. You can see for yourself how wonderfully good it is. If people knew of the peace and the delight.... The table is excellent too—I am the chef as well as the proprietor¹⁶². Our terms are most moderate.”

“All the same you need advertisement,” said the gardener, who, in unguarded moments, was more modern than he knew. “I can imagine most sensational¹⁶³ advertising¹⁶⁴ of a place with such a pronounced blessing on it. Buy up the front page of the Daily Mail, and let’s compose a series of splashes.”

“I am penniless,” began Mr. Rust dramatically, and interrupted himself. “A slight tendency towards financial inadequacy—what?”

“I have three halfpence,” said the gardener, but not hopefully.

“Come in for the night,” begged the host. “I have twelve bedrooms for you to sleep in, and three 22bathrooms tiled in red. Terms a halfpenny, tout¹⁶⁵ compris.”

“Tra-la-la ...” trilled the gardener, for as he followed his host the heather tingled¹⁶⁷ and tossed beneath his feet, and the gods came out to meet him with a red welcome.

“You have nothing to do—what?” said Mr. Samuel Rust, when they were sitting in the high russet hall.

“We-ll ...” answered the gardener, feeling that the suggestion of failure lurked¹⁶⁸ there. “I am a rover, you know. Busy roving.”

“To say that shows you haven’t roved sixty miles yet. When you’ve roved six hundred you’ll see there’s nothing to be got out of roving. When you’ve roved six thousand you’ll join the Travellers’ Club and be glad it’s all over.”

“Six thousand miles ...” said the gardener, as if it were a prayer. His heart looked and leapt towards the long, crowded perspective that those words hinted.

“You’ve never been to sea,” continued Mr. Samuel. And the gardener discovered with a jerk that he was a blue man born for the sea, and that he had never yet felt the swing of blue water beneath his feet.

“No,” he said, “I believe I must go there now.”

And he jumped to his feet.

“If you stay here for the night,” said Mr. Rust, “to-morrow I’ll suggest to you something that—may 23possibly interest you to some slight extent.”

With a clumsy blood-red pottery¹⁶⁹ candlestick, which was so careless in detail as to seem to be the unconscious production of a drunken master-potter, the gardener found his room.

(I know it is a shock to you to find it bedtime at this point, but the gardener and I forgot to notice those parts of the day which I have not mentioned.)

He dreamt of red hair, redder than natural, as red as a sunset, seen at close quarters from Paradise. At midnight he awoke, in the clutch of perfectly irrelevant¹⁷⁰ thoughts.

The room was a velvet¹⁷¹ cube, with the window plastered at one side of it, a spangled square. And the silken moonlight was draped across the floor.

“I am myself,” said the gardener. “I am my world. Nothing matters except me. I am the creator and the created.”

With which happy thought he returned to sleep again.

The Red Place lost its flame-like life at night. Night, that blind angel, has no dealings with colour, and turns even the auburn of the pine-trunks to cold silver. But before the gardener awoke again, the sun had roused the gods of the place to discover the theft of their red gold, and to replace it.

The gardener, as he trilled like a lark¹⁷⁵ in one of the red-tiled bathrooms, was suddenly reminded that he was a merry vagabond.

“I must disappear,” he thought. “No true vagabond 24ever says, ‘Good-bye, and thank you for my pleasant visit.’”

So he prepared to disappear. From his bedroom window he could see, as he dressed, the pale head of Mr. Samuel Rust on a far fir-crowned slope, looking away over the green land towards London, waiting, side by side with the divine.

The gardener took three slices of dry bread from the breakfast which waited expectantly on a table in the hall, and went out. But under a gorse bush amongst the heather, he found some tiny scarlet¹⁷⁶ flowers. He picked two or three, and returning put them on the breakfast plate of Mr. Samuel Rust. He put a halfpenny there too.

“Very vagabondish—tra-la-la ...” he murmured tunefully, and studied the infinitesimal effect with his head on one side.

Then he disappeared. He did it straightforwardly¹⁷⁷ along the open road, as the best vagabonds do, and he was pleased with his fidelity¹⁷⁸ to the part.

Presently he recalled for the first time Mr. Samuel Rust’s promise of a happy suggestion for that morning. For a moment he wondered, for a second he regretted, but he posed as being devoid¹⁷⁹ of curiosity. This is a good pose, for in time it comes true. It eventually withers¹⁸⁰ the little silly tentacles¹⁸¹ which at first it merely ignores. Curiosity needs food as much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it. And I am glad, for it seems to me that curiosity and spite 25are very closely akin⁷⁶, and that spite is very near to the bottom of the pit.

The memory of Mr. Rust’s remark, however, kept the gardener for some moments busy being incurious. He was not altogether successful in his pose, for when the pallid¹⁸³ owner of the Red Place stepped out of a thicket¹⁸⁴ in front of him, he thought with a secret quiver, “Now I shall know what it was....”

“Taking a morning walk—what?” remarked Mr. Rust, achieving his ambition, the commonplace, for once in perfection.

“No,” replied the gardener (one who never told a lie unless he was posing as a liar¹⁸⁵), “I was leaving you. I have left a smile of thanks and a halfpenny on your plate. You know I’m a rover, an incurable¹⁸⁶ vagabond, and my fraternity never disappears in an ordinary way in the station fly.”

It is rather tiresome¹⁸⁷ to have to explain one’s poses. It is far worse than having to explain one’s witticisms¹⁸⁸, and that is bad enough.

“Come back to breakfast,” said Samuel. “I can let you into a much more paying concern than vagabondage.”

It is not in the least impressive to disappear by brute¹⁸⁹ force in public, so the gardener turned back.

The gods did not run out to meet the returning vagabond, as they had run out to meet him arriving. The gardener did not look for them. He was too much occupied in thinking of small cramping¹⁹⁰ things 26like “paying concerns.” The expression sounded to him like a foggy square room papered in a drab marbled design.

“A paying concern does not interest me at all,” he said, feeling rather noble.

“It won’t as long as you’re a merry vagabond. But your situation as such is not permanent, I think. Wouldn’t you like to go and strike attitudes upon the sea?”

The gardener was intensely interested in what followed.

Mr. Samuel Rust was penniless, owing, as he frankly¹⁹¹ admitted, to propensities¹⁹² which he shared with the common sieve¹⁹³. But in other directions he was well supplied with blessings. He had, for instance, a mother. And the mother—well, you know, she managed to scrape along on nine thousand a year—what? The said mother, excellent woman though she was, had refused to finance the Red Place. She had not come within the radius¹⁹⁴ of its blessing. She had no idea that it was under the direct patronage¹⁹⁵ of the gods, and that it promised a fortune in every facet¹⁹⁶. Samuel had explained these facts to her, but she had somehow gathered the impression that he was not unbiassed. In her hand she held the life of the Red Place, and at present held it checked. A little money for advertisement, a few hundred pounds to set the heart of the place beating, and Samuel Rust saw himself a successful man, standing with his gods on terms of equality. But 27his mother had become inaccessible¹⁹⁷, she had in fact become so wearied by the conversation of Samuel upon the subject that she had made arrangements to emigrate to Trinity Islands, somewhere on the opposite side of the world.

“And what is it to do with me?” asked the gardener, who suffered from the drawbacks of his paramount¹⁹⁹ virtue, enthusiasm, and never could wait for the end of anything. “Do you want me to turn into an unscrupulous rogue²⁰⁰ and dog her footsteps because——”

“You can have scruples²⁰¹ or not as you choose,” said Mr. Rust. “But rogue is a word that exasperates²⁰³ me. It’s much the same as ‘naughty-naughty,’ and that is worse than wickedness. The wicked live on brimstone, which is at least honest; but the naughty-naughty play with it, which is irreverent. With or without your scruples, armed only with the blessing and the promise of this place, I want you to cross the Atlantic on the Caribbeania with my mother, and tell her what it is the gods and I are waiting for. That is—just try and talk the old lady round—don’t you know. Any old twaddle would do—what?”

The gardener produced two halfpennies, one of which he placed on each knee.

“And the fare first-class is ...” he said.

“I have a cousin whose only virtue is that he occasionally serves the purpose of coin,” said Mr. Rust. “That is—I know a fellow I can bleed to a 28certain extent—what? He is the son of—well, a middling K-nut at the top of the shipping²⁰⁴ tree—what?”

The gardener had visions of an unscrupulous rogue, neatly²⁰⁶ packed into a crate²⁰⁷ labelled champagne²⁰⁸, being smuggled²⁰⁹ on board the Caribbeania. Truly the pose had possibilities. The affair was, however, vague at present, and the gardener retained, whatever the r?le he was playing, an accurate mind and a profound respect for the exactness of words.

“Will he stow me away?” he asked.

“Not in the way you mean. But there’ll be room for you on the Caribbeania. Come down to Southampton with me now. There’s a train at noon.”

“I have my own feet, and a good white road,” replied the gardener in a poetic²¹⁰ voice. “I’ll join you in Southampton this evening.”

“It’s thirty-five miles,” said Mr. Rust. “And the boat sails to-morrow morning. However.... We haven’t discussed the business side of the affair yet.”

“And we never will. I’ll take my payment out in miles—an excellent currency.”

In spite of the distance of his destination, the gardener stood by his determination to go by road. A friendly farmer’s cart may always be depended on to assist the pose of a vagabond. It would have been extremely hackneyed to approach the opening door of life by train. So he left his blessing with 29the Red Place, and shook the hand of its white master, and set his face towards the sea.

It was still early. The sun had set the long limbs of the tree-shadows striding about the woods; the gorse, a tamed expression of flame, danced in the yellow heat; the heather pressed like a pigmy army bathed in blood about the serene²¹² groups of pines. There was great energy abroad, which kept the air a-tingle¹⁶⁶. The gardener almost pranced²¹³ along.

Presently he came to a woman seated by the roadside engrossed²¹⁴ in a box of matches.

“You again,” said the gardener to the suffragette, for he recognised her by her hat. There was a bunch of promiscuous²¹⁵ flowers attached to her hat. They were of an unsuitable colour, and looked as though they had taken on their present situation as an after-thought, when the hat was already well advanced in years. A mariage de convenance.

“Have you any matches?” was the suffragette’s characteristic reply.

“I never give away my matches to people with political opinions without making the fullest enquiries,” replied the gardener. “People are not careful enough about the future morals of their innocent matches in these days.”

Forgetting the thirty-five miles, he sat down on the bank beside her, and began to refresh Hilda by splashing the water into her pot out of a tiny heathery stream that explored the roadside ditch.

“I can supply you with all particulars at once,” 30said the suffragette in a businesslike voice. “I am going to burn down a little red empty hotel that stands in the woods behind you. There is only one man in charge.”

“You are not,” said the gardener, descending²¹⁶ suddenly to unfeigned sincerity²¹⁷.

“Certainly it is not the home of an Anti,” continued the suffragette, ignoring his remark. “At least as far as I know. But you never can tell. A Cabinet Minister might want to come and stay there any time; there are good golf-links. I had hoped that the last affair, the burning of West Grove—a most successful business—would have been my last protest for the present. I meant to be arrested, and spend a month or two at the not less important work of setting the teeth of the Home Office on edge. But the police are disgracefully lax in this part of the world, and though I left several clues and flourished my portmanteau in three neighbouring villages, nothing happened. I do not like to give myself up, it is so inartistic, and people are apt to translate it as a sign of repentance²²¹. But the little hotel is a splendid opportunity.”

One of the drawbacks of posing yourself is that you are apt to become a little blind to the poses of others. Also you must remember that women, and especially rebellious²²⁴ women, were an unexplored continent to the gardener.

“You are not going to take advantage of the opportunity,” said the gardener, refreshing²²⁵ Hilda so 31violently that she stood up to her knees in water.

“I’ve heard the caretaker is constantly out ...” went on the suffragette.

“Possibly,” admitted the gardener. “But if the house were twenty times alone, you should not light a match within a mile of it. How dare you—you a great strong woman—to take advantage of the weak gods who can’t defend themselves.”

The great strong woman crinkled her eyes at him. She was absurdly small and thin.

“Well, if you won’t lend me any matches, I shall have to try and do with the three I have. I am going to reconnoitre. Good-morning.”

There is nothing so annoying as to have one’s really impressive remarks absolutely ignored. I myself can bear a great deal of passing over. You may with advantage fail to see my complexion and the cut of my clothes; you may be unaware of the colour of my eyes without offending me; I do not care if you never take the trouble to depress your eyes to my feet to see if I take twos or sevens; you may despise my works of art—which have no value except in the eyes of my relations; you may refuse to read my writings—which have no value in any eyes but my own,—all these things you may do and still retain my respect, but when I speak you must listen to what I say. If you don’t, I hate you.

The gardener felt like this, and the retreating form of the suffragette became hateful to him. Somehow delightfully²²⁷ hateful.

32“Come back,” he shouted, but incredible though it may seem, the woman shrugged²²⁸ one shoulder at him, and walked on towards the Red Place.

It was most undignified, the gardener had to run after her to enforce his will. He arrived by her side breathless, with his face the colour of a slightly an?mic beetroot. It is very wrong of women to place their superiors in such unsuperior positions.

I hope I do not strike you as indulging my suffragettism at the expense of the gardener. I am very fond of him myself, and because that is so, his conceit¹¹⁶ seems to me to be one of his principal charms. There is something immorally²²⁹ attractive in a baby vice⁷⁵ that makes one’s heart smile.

The gardener closed his hand about the suffragette’s thin arm.

“You will force me to take advantage of my privilege,” he said, and looked at his own enormous hand.

The suffragette stood perfectly still, looking in the direction she wanted to go.

“Turn back,” said the gardener. But she made a sudden passionate effort to twist her arm out of his grasp. It was absurd, and very nearly successful, like several things that women do.

The gardener’s heart grew black. There seemed nothing to be done. No end could be imagined to the incident. His blue sea future dissolved. He pictured himself standing thus throughout eternity²³⁰, with his hand closed around the little splinter of life 33she called her arm. Time seemed to pass so slowly that in a minute he found he knew her looks by heart. And yet he was not weary of them. I suppose the feeling he found in himself was due to a certain reaction from the exalted²³¹ incident of the blue and golden young lady who had divined the loneliness of the threepenny bit. For he discovered that he did not so very much mind hair that had but little colour in it, and that he found attractive a pointed chin, and an under lip that was the least trifle more out-thrust than its fellow.

“Do you know why I want to stop you?” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not a woman, and don’t understand.”

“Because I am a man, and I understand.”

She was silent.

“Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t. I mean that I am a man, and I am not going to let you go, because you must come with me to the uttermost ends of the earth.”

“Why?”

“Because I love the shape of your face, you dear little thing.”

The gods should not be disturbed. Also there was something very potent in the impotent trembling of her arm.

34There was an unnaturally²³³ long pause. Then she turned round.

“Let us discuss this matter,” she said, and gave him her portmanteau to carry. The gardener loosed her arm and walked beside her. Silence and a distance of a yard and a half were maintained between them for some way.

The gardener was gazing in blank astonishment²³⁴ at that ass¹⁶, the gardener of three minutes ago. Into what foolery had he not plunged²³⁵?

If I could always be the Woman I Am, I should be a most rational and successful creature. It is the Woman I Was who makes a fool of me, and leaves me nervous as to the possible behaviour of the Woman I Shall Be.

There was something in the way the suffragette’s neck slipped loosely into her collar which took a little of the sting out of the gardener’s regrets. But the little plain eyes of her, and the aggressive manners of her, and the misguided morals of her—that was the sequence in which the gardener’s thoughts fell into line.

As for the suffragette, her heart, in defiance²³⁶ of anatomy²³⁷, had gone to her head, and was thundering rhythmically²³⁸ there. She was despising herself passionately²³⁹, and congratulating herself passionately. How grand—she thought: how contemptible—she thought. For she was a world’s worker, a wronged unit seeking rights, a co-heritor of the splendour of the earth, a challenger, a warrior²⁴⁰. 35And now, quite suddenly, she discovered a fact the existence of which she had seldom, even in weak moments, suspected. She found that—taken off her guard—she was a young woman of six-and-twenty.

“How laughable,” she thought—and did not laugh—“I’m as bad as the ‘Oh my dear’ girls.”

“Now,” she said at last, “what did you mean by that?”

“Only that you look like a good friend,” replied the gardener, who, poor vagabond, was blushing furiously. “Mightn’t we be friends?”

“I am a friend to women,” said the suffragette slowly. “I’m a lover of women. But never of men. I wouldn’t stir an inch out of my way for a man. Unless I wanted to.”

“And do you want to?”

She looked at the gardener’s profile with the eyes of the newly discovered young woman of six-and-twenty. Hitherto she had seen him only with the militant eyes of armed neutrality. She looked at the rather pleasing restlessness of his eyes, and the high tilt²⁴¹ of his head. His eyes were not dark with meaning, as the eyes of heroes of novels should be, they were light and quick. The black pupils looked out fierce and sharp, like the pupils of a cat, which flash like black sparks out of the twilight²⁴² of its soul. The gardener’s eyes actually conveyed little, but they looked like blinds, barely concealing²⁴⁴ something of great value.

Presently the suffragette said: “Can you imagine 36what you feel like if you had been running in a race, and you had believed you were winning. The rest were miles behind wasting their breath variously; and then suddenly your eyes were opened, and you saw that you had been running outside the ropes of the course, for you were never given the chance to enter for the competition.”

“Good,” said the gardener enthusiastically. “So you’re tired of running to no purpose, and you’re coming back to the starting-place to begin again.”

“No,” said the suffragette, as firmly as though she had the muscular supremacy²⁴⁵ and could start back that moment to pit her three matches against the gods. “Never. There’s no such thing as running to no purpose. It’s excellent exercise—running, but I’ll never run with the crowd. There are much better things than winning the prize. There’s more of everything out here—more air, more light, more comedy, more tragedy. Also I get there first, you know. When you get the law-abider and the church-goer in a crowd, they increase its moral tone, but they lessen²⁴⁶ its power of covering the ground.”

“Personally I never was inside,” said the gardener, who had a natural preference for talking about himself. “But then I am building a path of my own.”

“Anyway, what did you mean originally?”

The gardener blushed again. He showered reproaches on himself. “Only that we might walk 37into Southampton as friends. And if we liked it.... Besides I owe you a shilling, and you’d better keep an eye on your financial interests. My boat sails to-morrow. You know, it is a nice shock to me to find that a militant suffragette is human at all. When I held your arm, I was surprised to find it was not iron.”

“Did you say your boat sailed to-morrow?”

“I should have said, ‘Our boat sails to-morrow.’”

“There’s no time to walk. We’ll hire a car in Aldershot.”

So at sunset, side by side, they arrived in sight of Southampton’s useful but hackneyed sheet of water.

Even then they had no plans. In youth one likes the feeling of standing on empty air with a blank in front of one.

The suffragette paid for the car without question. “I am quite well off,” she excused herself, as they traversed the smug and comfortless suburbs of the town. “Has that shilling I lent you to invest brought in any interest?”

“I hate money,” posed the gardener; “but I have a profession, you know. I am a gardener.”

“And where is your garden?”

“I have two. This is one”—and he held up Hilda, who was looking rather round-shouldered owing to the exertions²⁴⁸ and emotions of the day—“and the world is the other. It also happens that 38I have had three months’ training in a horticultural college.”

The gardener did not talk like this naturally, any more than you or I do. But in addition to his many other poses he posed as being unique. Unfortunately there is nothing entirely²⁴⁹ unique except insanity²⁵⁰. Of course there are better things than insanity. On the other hand, it is rather vulgar to be perfectly sane²⁵².

The suffragette went to an hotel, and the gardener went to meet Mr. Samuel Rust at their appointed meeting-place.

Mr. Rust looked even more colourless against the brownness of the town than he had seemed against the redness of his place. He wore town clothes, too, and one noticed them, which is what one does not do with a well-dressed man. The ideal, of course, is to look as if the Almighty²⁵³ made you to fit your clothes. There are a great many unfortunates whose appearance persists in confessing the truth—that the tailor made their clothes to fit them.

Mr. Samuel Rust, however, was not self-conscious. He escaped that pitfall²⁵⁴, but left other people to be conscious of his appearance for him.

“Come along,” he said, skipping up to the gardener like a goat, or like a little hill. “I’ve sounded my cousin on the telephone, and the outlook is not otherwise than middling hopeful. He’s promised, in fact, to ship you on board the Caribbeania. 39The question is—what as? What can you do?”

“I am a gardener—in theory.”

“Unfortunately only facts are shipped on Abel’s line.”

“Then all is over. For I am just a sheaf of theories held together by a cage of bones. There is no fact in me at all.”

“Don’t be humble²⁵⁵. It’s waste of time in such a humiliating world.”

“I’m not humble”—the gardener indignantly repudiated²⁵⁶ the suggestion. “I’m proud of being what I am. I am more than worthy of the Caribbeania.”

“Then come and prove it,” said Mr. Rust, and dragged the gardener passionately down the street.

The gardener found himself placed on the door-step of an aspiring²⁵⁸ corner house. Mr. Samuel Rust stood on a lower step with his back to the door. It is part of the code of shadows to pretend, when you have rung the bell, that you do not care whether the door is opened or not.

The gardener, following the code of the socially simple, stood with his nose nearly touching²⁵⁹ the knocker, and his eyes glued to the spot where the head of the servant might be expected to appear. It therefore devolved on him to draw Mr. Rust’s attention to the eventual⁷⁷ appearance of a black-frocked white-capped answer to his summons.

“Ah!” exclaimed Samuel, “Mr. Abel in?”

40The maid, with fine dramatic feeling, stepped aside, thus opening up a vista²⁶⁰, at the end of which could be seen Mr. Abel advancing with both hands outstretched.

When people shake hands with both their hands and both their eyes and all their teeth, and with much writhing²⁶¹ of the lips, you at once know something fairly important about them. They have acquired the letter of enthusiasm without its spirit, and their effect on the really enthusiastic is like the effect of artificial light and heat on a flower that needs the sun.

The gardener became as though he were not there. All that he vouchsafed²⁶² to leave at Mr. Rust’s side in the library of Mr. Abel was a white and sleepy-looking young man, standing on one fourteen-inch foot while the other carefully disarranged the carpet edge. The gardener was not shy, though on such occasions he looked silly. He was really encrusted in himself; loftily superior to Mr. Abel and his like he hung, levitated²⁶³ by the medium of his own conceit, at a level far above Mr. Abel’s house-top.

Fortunately Mr. Abel and Mr. Rust both took his aloofness²⁶⁵ for the sheepishness to be expected of one of his age.

“This is the instrument of my designs, and the victim of your kindness, Abel,” remarked Mr. Rust. “He doesn’t always look such an ass. He is a gardener, by profession.”

41“In theory,” added the gardener, whose armour²⁶⁶ of aloofness had chinks. There is something practical about this inconsistent young man which he has never yet succeeded in smothering²⁶⁷, and to this day, though he poses as being superbly absent-minded, his mind is generally present—so to speak—behind the door.

“In theory,” repeated Mr. Abel, ecstatically amused. He made it his business to shoot promiscuous appreciation²⁶⁹ at the conversation of his betters, and though his aim was not good, he was at least gifted with perseverance²⁷⁰. If you shoot enough, you must eventually hit something. Hereafter he kept his profile agog²⁷¹ towards the gardener, a smile hovering²⁷² round that side of his mouth in readiness for his guest’s next sally.

One pose in which the gardener has never approached is that of the wag, and he made renewed efforts to unhook his mind from this exasperating²⁷³ interview.

“Is there any opening for a gardener on the Caribbeania?” asked Mr. Rust.

“A gardener ...” said Mr. Abel, looking laboriously²⁷⁵ reflective. “We have no gardener as yet on board.”

“But is there a garden?” asked Mr. Samuel Rust acutely.

“A garden,” repeated Mr. Abel, ruminating²⁷⁶ intensely. “There is the winter garden. And a row 42of geraniums on the promenade²⁷⁷ deck. And some trellis work with ivy²⁷⁸. Yes, there is certainly a garden.”

“Then the thing is settled,” said Mr. Rust, and at these hopeful words the gardener rose loudly from his chair.

“Wait a moment,” said Mr. Abel in the same voice as the voice in which Important Note is printed in the Grammar Book. “What about the salary?”

There was no reply and no sensation. The gardener was yearning²⁸⁰ towards the door.

“Of course....” said Mr. Abel. “The position is not one of any responsibility, and therefore could hardly be expected to be a paying one. Your passage out....”

“I wouldn’t touch money. I hate the feel of it,” said the gardener abruptly. That threw Mr. Abel into a paroxysm of humour.

On the door-step the gardener did a heroic thing. He turned back and found Mr. Abel in the hall, completely recovered from his paroxysm.

“What about——” began the gardener, with the suffragette in his mind. “Dangerous to lose sight of her,” he thought.

“What about what?” asked Mr. Abel, and was again very much amused by the symmetry of the phrase. He was a bright-mannered man.

The gardener’s new pose lay suddenly clear before him.

“What about my wife?” he asked.

43He was rather pleased with the sensation he made.

“Your wife?” exclaimed Mr. Rust and Mr. Abel in duet (falsetto and tenor²⁸¹).

“What on earth did you do with her last night?” continued Samuel solo.

“Can’t she ship as stewardess²⁸³?” asked the gardener.

Poor suffragette! But in the eyes of men one woman is much the same as another. Every woman, I gather, is a potential stewardess. This is woman’s sphere when it takes to the water. The gardener thought he knew all about women. All her virtues²⁸⁴ he considered that she shared with man, but her vices he looked upon as peculiarly her own.

“The boat sails to-morrow,” Mr. Abel observed reproachfully. “The stewardesses²⁸⁶ have been engaged for weeks.”

“Why can’t you leave her behind, what?” asked Mr. Rust. “Women do far too much travelling about nowadays. There’s such a thing as broadening the mind too far, you know. Sometimes, like elastic²⁸⁷, it snaps. A lot of women I know have snapped.”

“Yes,” said the gardener. “But it would be better for England if I took her away.”

This spark nearly put an end to the career of Mr. Abel. He squeezed the gardener’s hand in an agony of appreciation.

“I won’t go without her,” said the gardener, rather surprising himself. He gave Mr. Abel no 44answering smile. He was too busy reproaching himself.

“Abel,” implored²⁸⁸ Mr. Rust. “I simply can’t let old Mrs. Paul go without some one to keep the Red Place in her line of thought. This is obviously the man for the job. My career hangs on you. Be worthy. That is—be a sport, now, what?”

“I’ll find your wife a berth²⁸⁹,” said Mr. Abel, accompanying each word with a dramatic tap on the gardener’s arm. “The boat is not full.”

“Settled,” exclaimed Mr. Samuel, and after that, of course, escape followed. The idea of dinner together hovered²⁹⁰ between the two as they emerged into the principal street, but as both were penniless, the idea, which originated chiefly in instinct, died.

The gardener went to call on the suffragette. He was conscientious²⁹¹ in his own way, and fully³⁶ realised that the woman had a right to know that she was now a wife, and, if not a stewardess, an intending passenger on a boat bound immediately for the uttermost ends of the earth.

He found the suffragette, looking sad, playing a forlorn game of solitaire in forlorn surroundings in the little hotel sitting-room²⁹². With her hat off she looked not so ugly, but more insignificant²⁹³. Her hair seemed as if it would never decide whether to be fair or dark until greyness overtook it and settled the question. It had been tidied under protest, and already strands²⁹⁴ of it were creeping over her ears, like deserters leaving a fortress²⁹⁵ by stealth.

45The room was papered and ceiled and upholstered in drab, there were also drab photographs of unlovable bygones on the walls, and some drab artificial flowers in a drab pot on the table.

There are some colour schemes that kill romance. Directly the gardener felt the loveless air of the place, he plunged headlong into the cold interview. Like a bather who, on feeling the chill of the sea, hastens desperately²⁹⁶ to throw it around him from head to foot.

“I have been telling lies,” said the gardener.

“I have been crying,” said the suffragette.

They each thought that it was thoughtless of the other to be so egotistical at this juncture²⁹⁷. There is nothing that kills an effect so infallibly as a collision in conversation.

“I have been telling lies,” said the gardener, “about you.”

“I have been crying—about you.”

(These women....)

The gardener took a deep breath, recoiled²⁹⁸ for a start, and ran upon his subject.

“I have told them that you are my wife, and that you are coming with me on the Caribbeania, sailing to-morrow morning for Trinity Islands.”

“Told who ... Caribbeania ... Trinity Islands ...” gathered the suffragette, with a woman’s instinct for tripping over the least essential point. And then she interviewed herself laboriously on the subject.

46There was ample motive for a militant protest, and that was a comfortable thought. She was justified²⁹⁹ in throwing any article of the drab furniture at the gardener’s sharp and doubtful face. This creature had put himself in authority over her without the authority to do so; he had decided⁸⁰ to lead her to Trinity Islands, whereas her life’s work lay in England. This cold and curious boy had twisted off its hinges the destiny of an independent woman. She had hitherto closed the door of her heart against to-morrow. She had momentarily liked the idea of having a friend who loved the shape of her face, especially as he was leaving the country to-morrow. The unconventionality of the friendship had crowned as an ornament³⁰⁰ a life of dreadful refinement³⁰¹. She had meant to step for a moment from the lonely path, and now she found that her way back was barred—by this impenetrable trifle. It was infuriating. But the suffragette searched in vain for a trace of real fury in her heart. She tested the power of words.

“It is infuriating,” she said.

“Yes,” said the gardener, not apologetically. “I quite see that.”

But she did not see it herself—except in theory.

“All the same,” said the gardener, “you are an incendiary, not exactly a woman. Can’t two friends, an incendiary and a horticultural expert, go on a voyage of exploration together? Mutual³⁰² exploration?”

“One can be alone in couples,” thought the suffragette. 47“It would be studying loneliness from a new angle. My life has been a lifeless thing, run on the world’s principles; I shall try a new line, and run it on my own principles.”

But, as I may have mentioned, she was a woman, so she said: “What is to prevent my going back to that house in the woods now, and burning it down—if I ever meant to do it?”

“Me,” said the gardener.

“But you can’t sit there with your eyes pinned to me until the boat sails.”

“Unless you give me your word as a World’s Worker that you will not leave the hotel, I shall stay here, and so will you.”

For quite a long time the suffragette’s upbringing wrestled³⁰³ with all comers, but it was a hopeless fight from the first. There is no strength in the principles created out of a lifeless past. Besides, the woman of six-and-twenty was very much flattered and fluttered, whatever the militant suffragette might be.

“I will come with you on your exploration tour,” she said, and her voice sounded like the voice of the conqueror³⁰⁴ rather than the conquered. “I will give my word as a—woman without principles that I will not leave Southampton except to go on board the Caribbeania.”

The gardener left her, he felt innocently drunk. He made his way out of the amethyst³⁰⁵ light of electricity, into the golden light of the outskirts³⁰⁶ of the 48town, and thence into the silver light of the uncivilised moon. On the beach the tide was receding³⁰⁷, despite the groping, grasping hands of the sea, which contested every inch of the withdrawal³⁰⁸. The gardener stumbled upon the soft solidity of the sand above high-water mark, and slept the sleep of the thoroughly³⁰⁹ confused. He dreamt of a pearl-and-pink sea, and of unknown islands.

I need hardly say, after all this preamble³¹⁰, that the suffragette and the gardener sailed next day on the Caribbeania for Trinity Islands.

Mr. Samuel Rust, for some time before the boat started, was conspicuous³¹¹ for a marked non-appearance on the wharf³¹²’s edge.

The gardener, who had a vague feeling that tears should be shed in England on his departure, stood feeling a little cold at heart on the starboard side of the main deck, looking at the tears that were being shed for other people.

The suffragette, who was under the impression that her hand was against all men, stood bleakly³¹³ on the port side, looking at the hydro-aeroplanes leaping self-consciously about the Solent in seven-league boots. She was proud to stand thus aloof²⁶⁴ and unhampered on the threshold of a novelty. The pride she had in her independence was one of her compensations. This is a world of compensations, and that is what makes it the hollow world it is sometimes. So seldom do we get the real thing that in this age we congratulate ourselves upon our compensations.

49Mr. Samuel Rust made a late and dramatic appearance upon the gangway after the first bell of preparation for departure had been rung. His hat, inspired by the prevalent aviation craze, blew away. But Mr. Rust’s thoughts were occupied with other things than the infidelity of hats. He passed the gardener without noticing him, and with restrained fervour addressed a square elderly woman, who stood leisurely³¹⁷ on the deck, surrounded by an officious maid, like a liner being attended to by a tug³¹⁸.

Mr. Samuel Rust did not seem like the sort of person who would have had a mother. He gave the impression of having been created exactly as he stood, with one stroke of the Almighty Finger, and not gradually evolved like you or me. You could imagine the gardener, for instance, at every stage of his existence. You could picture those light bright eyes under those scowling³¹⁹ brows looking out of lace and baby-ribbons in a proud nurse’s arms. You could see him as the fierce little schoolboy, with alternately too much to say and too little. You could imagine him as an old man, with that thick hair turned into a white strong flame upon his head, and those already deep-set eyes blazing out of hewn hollows above his abrupt¹³³ cheek-bones. But Mr. Samuel Rust seemed to have no past and no future.

He addressed the woman who, contrary to appearances, had played an important part in the creating of him.

50“I couldn’t let you go without saying good-bye to you, Mrs. Paul,” he said.

“Of course you couldn’t,” said Mrs. Rust, and the words seemed shot by iron lips from above a chin like a ship’s ram⁶⁴.

Something that might have usurped³²² the name of a kiss passed between them, and Mr. Samuel hurried to the impatient gangway. As he passed the gardener he winked³²³ earnestly, conscious of his mother’s eyes on the back of his head. The gardener, feeling delightfully unscrupulous and roguish, made no sign.

The vulgarly tuneful swan-songs of Cockney emotion trailed from the deck to the wharf and back again. The sound was like thin beaten silver, becoming thinner as the distance increased. There were tears among the women on land, and the shivering water blurred³²⁴ the reflections of the crowd until they looked as though they were seen through tears. The last song fainted in the air, the crowd on the wharf ceased to be human, and became a long suggestion of many colours, a-quiver with waving handkerchiefs.

The gardener looked at Mrs. Paul Rust. There was a tear following one of the furious furrows³²⁵ that bracketed her hyphen of a mouth.

The south of England is a land that reluctantly lets her deserters go. For full twelve hours she stands on tiptoe on the sea-line, beckoning³²⁶ their return.

51The gardener watched the land and felt the sea for long hours. He felt no regret at having forsaken³²⁷ one for the other. For the moment he prided himself on heartlessness, or rather on intactness of heart, for he had left none of it behind. He was proud of the fact that he loved no one in the world. He prided himself on his vices more than on his virtues. There seems something more unique in vice than in virtue.

The gardener had the convenient sort of memory that is fitted with water-tight doors. His mind conducted a process by which the past was not kept fresh and green, nor altogether left behind, but crystallised and packed away on shelves in a businesslike manner. He could label it and shut it away without emotion. He shut away England now, and rejoiced to do so. Poor grey silly England that I am so glad to leave and so glad to see again....

The gardener turned presently to look for his garden, and found—the girl Courtesy.

Her brilliant and magnetic hair.

Her broad face with the abrupt flush on the cheeks, that was an inartistic accompaniment to the red of her hair, and looked as if Nature had become colourblind at the moment of giving Courtesy her complexion.

She herself looked herself—simple yet sophisticated.

“To think of seeing you here,” she said. “Who would have thought it.”

52The gardener was one of those who are never surprised without being thunderstruck. He was very thorough in habit, and drank every emotion to its dregs.

His manners fell in ruins about him. His hat remained upon his head. His words remained somewhere beneath his tongue.

“I got a sudden invitation from a cousin in Trinity Island,” explained Courtesy. “And Dad gave me my passage out as a birthday present. I gave the threepenny bit to a porter, so I hope you don’t want it back. Have you kept a halo for me in this Paradise?”

“There is the glassy sea,” replied the gardener, recovering. “And the halo is just flowering. It is exactly the colour of your hair.”

“I hope the sea will be as you say,” said Courtesy, “for I’m a shockin’ bad sailor.”

And at that moment the sea ceased to be totally glassy. You could suddenly feel the slow passionate heart of the sea beating.

Courtesy did not look at the change in this poetic light at all. She hurried along the deck and disappeared.

Even if you are a good sailor there is, apart from a natural pride in your sailorship, little joy about a first day on board. The climate of the English seas is not adapted to ocean travel. If I could steam straight out of Southampton Harbour into the strong yet restrained heat that I love, if I could glide³²⁹ from 53the wharf—mottled with regrets—straight to the silver and emerald coasts of a certain land I know, where the cocoanut palms lean out over the strip of immaculate sand, to see their reflections in the opal mirror of the sea, I think I should love the first day as much as I love its successors. And yet I would not have the voyage shortened by a minute.

I wonder why nobody has ever brought forward as a conclusive³³⁰ Anti-suffrage⁸⁸ argument the fact that more women are sea-sick than men on the first day of a sea-voyage. I can so well imagine the superb line the logic of such a contention³³¹ would take. If the basis of life is physical ability, and if physical ability depends upon the digestion³³², then must the strong digestion only constitute a right to citizenship³³³. To the wall with the weak digestion.

Mrs. Paul Rust and the suffragette were the only women who scaled the heights of the dining saloon for that evening’s meal. Mrs. Rust looked supremely³³⁵ proud of her immunity³³⁶ from sea-sickness; all the men looked laboriously unaware that such a thing as sea-sickness existed; the suffragette looked frankly miserable³³⁷. The gardener was obliged to remind himself casually³³⁸ from time to time that there was no pose that included sea-sickness.

But any disastrous³³⁹ tendency he might have had to give too much thought to his inner man was checked by the appearance of Mrs. Paul Rust, the fortress he was there to besiege³⁴⁰. She was a truly remarkable¹³⁷ woman to look at. The absence of her hat revealed 54a surprise. Her hair was dyed a forcible crimson³⁴¹. And it might have been mud-coloured like mine for all the self-consciousness she showed. It was so profoundly remarkable that for a time one’s attention was chained to the hair, and one forgot to study the impressive general effect, of which the hair was only the culminating point. Mrs. Rust’s only real feature was her chin, but no one ever realised this. Her eyes and nose were too small for her face, and seemed to fit loosely into that great oval; her mouth was only redeemed³⁴² by the chin that shot from beneath it. Altogether she would have been sufficiently³⁴³ insignificant-looking had it not been for her hair. She proved the truism that the world takes people at their own valuation.

It is always a surprise to me when a truism is proved true. I have come across the rock embedded³⁴⁴ in these truisms several times lately to my cost. And each time it bruises³⁴⁶ my knuckles³⁴⁷ and shocks me. It almost makes one wonder whether, after all, the ancients occasionally had their flashes of enlightenment.

The world thought of Mrs. Paul Rust what she thought of herself. It is so often too busy to work out its own conclusions.

Of a modest woman with a heavy jaw⁵¹, the world would have said, “A dear good creature, but dreadfully underhung.” Of a well-chinned woman with dyed hair, it said, “There goes a strong character.” The hair did it, and the hair was dyed by human 55agency. Providence³⁴⁸ had no hand in the making of Mrs. Rust’s forcible reputation. Nowadays we leave it to our dressmaker, and our manicurist, and our milliner, and our doctor, and our vicar, to make us what we are. This is an age of luxury, and it is so fatiguing³⁴⁹ to assert a home-made personality. Shall I go to my hairdresser and say, “Here, take me, dye me heliotrope³⁵⁰. Make an influential³⁵¹ woman of me”?

The gardener did not quail³⁵² before the terrifying outer wall of Mrs. Rust’s fortress. Believing as he did that man makes himself, and that the pose of victor is as easy to assume as any other, he was unaware of the reality of the word ‘defeat.’ Whether woman also makes herself, I never fully understood from the gardener at this stage. But I gathered that woman takes the r?les that man rejects.

The gardener, as a protégé of Mr. Abel, who, on the Caribbeania, was respected because he was not personally known, found himself treated à la junior officer, streaked³⁵³ with a certain flavour of second-class passenger, but distinctly suggesting ship’s orchestra. He was allowed to have his meals in the first-class saloon, he was occasionally asked about the weather by lady passengers, and the captain and officers looked upon him good-naturedly, as a sort of example of poetic licence.

It seemed a good thing when dinner was over. One had proved one’s courage, and the strain was past. The suffragette, who had given a proof rather 56of obstinacy³⁵⁴ than of courage, retired³⁵⁵ weakly to her cabin. And the gardener stood on deck and looked at the sea, while the moon followed the ship’s course with her eyes. A table companion, an Anglican priest, with a weak chin and piercing eyes, came and leaned upon the rail at the gardener’s side.

“You smoke?” he asked, and you could hear that he was very conventional, and that he believed that he was not.

A man-to-man sort of man.

“No,” said the gardener, and added, “I have no vices.”

He said this sort of thing simply to exasperate²⁰². The pose of indifference³⁵⁷ to the world’s opinion is apt, sooner or later, to lead to the pose of wilful³⁵⁸ pricking³⁵⁹ of the world’s good taste. The gardener had a morbid³⁶⁰ craving³⁶¹ for unpopularity; it was part of the unique pose. Unpopularity is an excellent salve to the conscience; it is delicious to be misunderstood.

The priest did not appear exasperated³⁶². He was tolerant. The man who aims at unlimited³⁶³ tolerance³⁶⁴, as a rule, only achieves the absorbent and rather undecided status of spiritual blotting-paper. But he is a dreadfully difficult man to anger.

I hate talking to people who are occupied in reminding their conscience: “After all this is my sister, albeit³⁶⁷, a poor relation. I must be tolerant.” Then they pray for strength, and turn to me, spiritually renewed, with a brave patient smile.

This was the priest’s pose.

57“You have no vices?” he said, in a slow earnest voice. “How I envy you!”

The gardener was more concerned with the varied³⁶⁸ conversation of the sea. Each wave of it flung back some magic unspeakable word over its shoulder as it ran by. But he answered the priest:

“You don’t really envy me, you would rather be yourself with virtues than me without vices.”

The priest smiled the inscrutable smile of the vague-minded. “You have a very original way of talking. You interest me. Yerce, yerce. Tell me what you were thinking about when I came up.”

The gardener did so at once. Sometimes his imagination weighed heavily upon his mind, and he expanded, regardless of his listeners.

“I was thinking about the things I saw,” he said. “Things that I often see before I have time to think. Snapshots of things that even I have never actually imagined. Do you know, wonders crash across my eyes like a blow, when I am thinking of something else. Ghosts out of my enormous past, I suppose. There was a very white beach that I saw just now, with opal-coloured waves running along it, and a mist whitening the sky. There were very broad red men in grey wolf-skins, standing in the water, dragging dead bodies from the sea. There were little children, blue and thin, lying dead upon the beach. I know the way children’s ribs³⁶⁹ stand out when they are dead. I have never seen a dead child, except those....”

58“You ought to write fiction, yerce, yerce,” said the priest. “You have a very strong imagination.”

“I have,” admitted the gardener. “But not strong enough to control these visions that besiege me.”

The priest, who had preached more and known less about visions than any one else I can think of, was constrained³⁷⁰ to silence.

Next morning the gardener found his garden. He saw it under varied aspects and at varied angles, for a gold and silver alternation of sun and shower chequered the Atlantic, and inspired the Caribbeania to a slow but undignified dance, like the activities of a merry cow. The high waves came laughing down from the high horizon, and curtseyed mockingly at her feet.

There was a bay tree in a tub on either side of the entrance to the garden, and the gardener, as he stood between them, surveying his territory, slid involuntarily from one to the other and back again, as the world wallowed. The garden was conventionally conceived, by a carpenter rather than a gardener. Grass-green trellis-work, which should belong essentially³⁷¹ to the background, here usurped undue³⁷² prominence³⁷³. Arches in the trellis-work, looking to the sea, gave bizarre views, now of the heavy hurried sky, now of the panting sea. Hanging drunkenly from the apex³⁷⁴ of each arch was a chained wicker basket, from which sea-sick canariensis waved weak protesting hands. A few creepers, lacking sufficient 59initiative for the task set before them, clawed incompetently³⁷⁶ at the lowest rungs of the trellis. A row of geraniums in pots shouted in loud brick-red at the farther and more sheltered end of the garden. It was impossible to tolerate the thought of Hilda associating with those geraniums. She was a very vulnerable and emotional soul, was Hilda. Deep orange is a colour beyond the comprehension of the vermilion and vulgar. A few sodden-looking deck-chairs occupied the gardener’s territory, and repelled³⁷⁷ advances. But on the farthest sat the suffragette. She was crying.

If you have ever crossed the Bay of Biscay while weakened by emotion, you will not ask why she was crying.

The gardener dropped his pose between the bay trees, and did something extraordinarily³⁷⁸ pretty, considering the man he was. He sat on the next deck-chair to hers, and patted her knee.

“My fault ...” he said. “My fault....”

Of course he did not really believe that it was his fault, but it was unusually gracious of him to tell the lie.

The suffragette turned her face from him. She had cried away all her vanity. Her hair was lamentable, her small plain eyes were smaller than ever, and her nose was the only pink thing in her face.

“I’m very morbid,” she said. “And that at any rate is not your fault.”

“Don’t let’s think either about you or me,” said 60the gardener, and it would have been wise had he meant it. “We have all our lives to do that in, and it is a pity to do it in the Bay. When one’s feeling weak, it’s easier to fight the world than to fight oneself.”

The suffragette was a grey thing, a snake-soul. To the eye of a grey soul there is something forbidding about the many colours of the universe, and you will always know snake-people by their defensive³⁷⁹ attitude. It is an immensely lonely thing to be a snake, to have that tortuous³⁸⁰ spirit, with no limbs for contact with the earth. And yet the compensation is most generous, for there are few joys like the joy of knowing yourself alone.

In cubes of blue, in curves of mauve,

They spotted³⁸¹ up my firmament³⁸²;

And with my sharp grey heart I strove

To stab the colours as they went.

“Lou-la ...” they said—“Lou-la, a thing

At war without a following.”

“Lou-la ...” they cried—and now cry I—

“At war without an enemy....”

“I can’t think how you dare to speak out your imagination,” said the suffragette. “Most people hide it like a sin.”

He was always willing to be the text of his own oratory³⁸⁴.

“Imagination is my Genesis, and my Book of Revelations,” he answered. “There is nothing with more power. It is stronger than faith, for it can 61really move mountains. It has moved mountains, it has moved England from my path and left me this clear sea.”

The suffragette walled herself more securely in. “I have no imagination at all,” she lied, and then she added some truth: “I am very unhappy and lonely.”

“The other day ...” said the gardener, “you were happy to be independent and alone.”

“That’s why I’m now unhappy to be independent and alone. You can’t discover the heaven in a thing without also tripping over the hell. I like a black and white life.”

“Don’t think,” said the gardener suddenly, and almost turned the patting of her knee into a slap. “It’s a thing that should only be done in moderation. Some day you won’t be able to control your craving for thought, and then you’ll die of Delirium³⁸⁵ Tremens.”

“It’s not such a dangerous drug as some,” smiled the suffragette. “I’d rather have that craving than the drink craving, or the society craving, or the love craving.”

“Better to have nothing you can’t control.”

“You hypocrite! You can’t control your imagination.”

“You’re right,” said the gardener after a pause. He was a curiously³⁸⁶ honest opponent in argument. Besides, she had stopped crying, and there was no special reason for continuing the discussion. Also 62Mrs. Paul Rust at that moment appeared between the bay trees.

Mrs. Rust’s hair looked vicious in a garden, beside the geraniums, which were at least sincere in colour, however blatant³⁸⁷.

“Is this private?” she asked. There was something in the shy look of the garden, and in the reproachful look of the gardener, that made the question natural.

“No,” said the gardener. “This is the ship’s garden.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Paul Rust.

She always said “good” to everything she had not heard before. To her the newest was of necessity the best. Originality³⁸⁸ was her ideal, and as unattainable as most ideals are. For she was not in the least original herself. She was doomed³⁹⁰ for ever to stand outside the door of her temple. And “good” was her tribute of recognition to those who had free passes into the temple. It owned that they had shown her something that she would never have thought of for herself. For nothing had ever sprung uniquely from her. Even in her son she could only claim half the copyright.

The suffragette tried to rearrange her looks, which certainly needed it. There are two sorts of women, the women before whom you feel you must be tidy and the women before whom such things don’t matter. Mrs. Rust all her life had belonged to the former, 63all her life what charm she had, had lain in the terror she inspired.

For the first time the gardener questioned himself as to his plan of attack. Hitherto he had pinned his faith to inspiration. He had left the matter in the hands of his private god, Chance. His methods were very simple, as well as bizarre. His mind was a tortuous path, but he followed it straightforwardly, and never looked back. To do him justice, however, I must say that he searched his repertoire³⁹¹ for a suitable point of conversational³⁹² contact with Mrs. Rust. Finding none, he dispensed³⁹⁴ with that luxury.

“I am the ship’s gardener,” he said, smiling at his intended victim.

Mrs. Rust was broad, and the deck-chair was narrow. It was some time before a compromise between these two facts could be arrived at, so the remark came upon her at a moment of some stress.

“Now, then, what was that you were saying?” she asked at last, in an unpromising voice.

The gardener, who was very literal in very small things, repeated his information, word for word, and inflection for inflection. “I am the ship’s gardener.”

Mrs. Rust grunted³⁹⁶. She showed no tolerance for the thing that was not sensational. Nor had she any discrimination in her search for the novelty. Still, energy is something.

“But I am only ship’s gardener in theory,” persisted 64the gardener. “In practice I don’t even know where the watering-can is kept.”

“Then you are here under false pretences³⁹⁷,” retorted Mrs. Rust a little more genially³⁹⁹, for his last remark was not everybody’s remark.

“I am,” said the gardener, suddenly catching⁴⁰⁰ a fleeting⁴⁰¹ perspective of the path to her good graces.

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust, and turned her little bright eyes upon him.

When she opened her eyes very wide, it meant that she was on the track of what she sought. When she shut them, as she often did, it meant that she did not understand what was said. But it gave the fortunate impression that she understood only too well. She was instinctively⁴⁰² ingenious at hiding her own limitations.

It was the end of that interview, but a good beginning to the campaign.

The sea to some extent recovered its temper within that day. Towards the evening, when slate²²⁰ and silver clouds, with their backs to the Caribbeania, were racing⁴⁰⁴ to be the first over the horizon, the garden was invaded by passengers, racing to be the first over the boundary of sea-sickness. The silence of the unintroduced at first lay, like a pall¹⁰⁷, along the deck-chairs, but a mutual friend was quickly found in Mothersill, whose excellent invention was represented in every work-bag. The bright noise of women discussing suffering rippled⁴⁰⁶ along the garden. Abuse of the Caribbeania’s stewardesses 65sprang from lip to lip. It was a pretty scene, and the gardener turned his back on it, and went below to water Hilda.

The gardener’s cabin, which was impertinently shared by a couple of inferior souls, was as square as a box, and furnished with nautical⁴⁰⁷ economy. The outlook from its porthole was as varied in character as it was limited in size. At one moment one felt oneself the drunken brain behind the round eye of a giant, staring into green and white obscurity; at another one blinked, as a mist of spray like shivered opal spun⁴⁰⁸ up over one’s universe; again one enjoyed an instantaneous glimpse of the flat chequered floor of the Atlantic; and at rare intervals the curtain of the sky slid over the porthole, and the setting sun dropped across the eye like a rocket.

Hilda sat wistfully on the recess⁴⁰⁹ of the porthole, leaning her forehead against the glass. She had a bud, chosen to match Courtesy’s hair. Just as Hilda’s stalk was necessary to hold her bud upright, so Courtesy herself was necessary to support the conflagration⁴¹⁰ of her hair on the level of the onlooker’s eye. Both were necessities, and both were artistically⁴¹¹ negligible.

The gardener looked around the cabin. There is something depressing about other people’s clothes. There is something depressing in an incessant⁴¹² attack on one’s skull⁴¹³ by inanimate objects. There is something depressing in a feeling of incurable drunkenness unrelieved by the guilty gaiety that usually accompanies 66such a condition. There is something depressing about ocean life below decks at any time. The gardener and Hilda sat in despair upon the hardhearted thing that sea-going optimists⁴¹⁵ accept as a bed.

“Of course I don’t want to go home,” the gardener told himself.

Hilda, poor golden thing of the soil, had no doubts as to what she was suffering from. But the gardener wondered why despair had seized him. Until he remembered that the spirit of the sea walks on deck alone, and is never permitted by the stewards⁴¹⁶ to enter the cabins. He climbed the companion-way, like a tired angel returning to heaven after a stuffy⁴¹⁷ day on earth. He came upon Courtesy making a bad shot at the door that leads to the Promenade deck.

“Come and sit in the garden,” he said in a refreshed voice.

On deck, a few enterprising spirits were playing deck quoits against the elements. The general geniality⁴¹⁸ whose rule only lasts for the first three days of a voyage was reigning⁴¹⁹ supreme³³⁴. Young men were making advances to young ladies with whom they would certainly quarrel in forty-eight hours’ time, and young ladies were mocking behind their hands at the young men they would be engaged to before land was reached. The priest, with an appearance of sugared condescension⁴²⁰, was showering missiles upon the Bullboard as though they were blessings. (And they were misdirected.) The inevitable⁴²¹ 67gentleman who has crossed the Atlantic thirty times and can play all known games with fatiguing perfection, was straining like a greyhound on the leash⁴²² towards the quoits which mere¹⁸² amateurs were usurping⁴²³. Captain Walters, who has a twin brother on every liner that ever sailed, was brightly collecting signatures for a petition to the Captain concerning a dance that very evening.

The gardener, with unusual cordiality, gave the reeling Courtesy his arm, as they threaded the maze⁴²⁵ of amusements towards the garden.

There was only one deck-chair unoccupied. It was labelled loudly as belonging to some one else, but Courtesy, always bold, even when physically⁴²⁷ weakest, advanced straight upon it. It was next to the suffragette’s. And the gardener became for the first time aware of a cat in a bag, and of the fact that the cat was about to emerge.

The suffragette was the sort of person next to whom empty chairs are always to be found. She had plenty to say, and what she said was often rather amusing, but it was always a little too much to the point, and the point was a little too sharp. She had a certain amount of small talk, but no tiny talk. She was not so much ignored as avoided. She had altogether missed youth, and its glorious power of being amused by what is not, correctly speaking, amusing. Her generation thought her “brainy,” it was very polite to her. Do you know the terrible sensation of being invariably the last to be chosen at Nuts in 68May? This was the suffragette’s atmosphere. My poor suffragette! It is so much more difficult to bear the snub than the insult. Insult is like a bludgeon thrown at the inflated⁴²⁸ balloon of our conceit. With the very blunt force of it we rebound⁴²⁹. But the snub is a pin-prick⁴⁰, which lets our supporting pride out, and leaves us numb⁵⁶ and nothing. I always feel the insult is founded on passion, while the snub springs from innate⁴³⁰ dislike.

“May I introduce Miss Courtesy Briggs ...” began the gardener, hoping for an inspiration before the end of the sentence. “Miss Courtesy Briggs....”

Both women looked expectant.

“Miss Courtesy Briggs ... my wife.”

“O Lor’!” said Courtesy, and then, with her healthy regard for conventions, remembered that this was not the proper retort to an introduction.

“When you left Penny Street, a week ago ...” she said to the gardener, as she shook the suffragette’s hand, “you didn’t tell me you were engaged.”

“I wasn’t,” said the gardener.

Courtesy dropped the subject, because it was hardly possible to continue it. She was not the girl to do what was conventionally impossible. Besides the bugle⁴³¹ was sounding to show that dinner was within hailing distance. Courtesy was a slave of time. Her day was punctuated⁴³² by the strokes of clocks. Her life was a thing of pigeon-holes, and if some of the pigeon-holes were empty they were all 69neatly labelled. She was the sort of person who systematically⁴³³ allowed ten minutes every morning for her prayers, and during that time, with the best intentions, mused²⁶⁸ upon her knees about the little things of yesterday. It is a bold woman that would squeeze Heaven into a pigeon-hole.

Theresa stopped in front of the gardener’s chair. Theresa’s surname had been blown away from her with the first Atlantic wind. So had the shining system in her yellow hair. So had most of her land conventions. She was not a thing of the ocean, but a thing of the ocean liner. She had immediately become Everybody’s Theresa. I could not say that everybody loved Theresa, but I know that everybody felt they ought to.

“Captain said no dance this evening,” said Theresa, in her telegraphic style. “Too much sea on. Doctor said broken legs. But I went and wheedled⁴³⁴. Called the Captain Sweet William. Dance at nine.”

The dance was at nine. There were no limits to what Theresa could do—in her sphere.

A proud quartermaster was superintending the last touches of chalk upon the deck, when the gardener and the suffragette led the exodus⁴³⁵ from the dining-saloon.

In Paradise I hope I shall be allowed a furious walk around a windy rocking deck at frequent intervals throughout eternity. I know of nothing more poetic, and yet more brilliantly prosaic⁴³⁶. At such 70moments you can feel the muscles of life trembling by reason of sheer strength.

The suffragette and the gardener walked so fast that the smoke from the suffragette’s cigarette lay out along the wind like the smoke behind a railway train. The strong swing of the sea threw their feet along. There was a moon in the sky and phosphorus in the sea.

But there are people who go down to the sea in ships, and yet confine their world to the promenade-deck. The heart of Theresa’s world, for instance, was the shining parallelogram, silvered with chalk, on the sheltered side of the deck. Theresa, looking extremely pretty, was superintending the over-filling of her already full programme.

“Mustn’t walk round like that,” she said in the polite tones that The Generation always used to the suffragette. “Must find partners, because the orchestra will soon begin to orch.”

“We are not dancing,” said the gardener. One always took for granted that the suffragette was not dancing.

“If you will dance,” said Theresa, “I will give you number eight.” She assumed with such confidence that this was an inducement, that somehow it became one.

“Thank you very much,” replied the gardener. “I’ll ask Courtesy Briggs for one, too.”

The suffragette sat down upon an isolated⁴³⁷ chair.

“May I have a dance?” asked the gardener of 71Courtesy. “I can’t dart⁴³⁸ or stagger, only revolve⁴³⁹.”

“I was sea-sick only three hours ago,” retorted Courtesy with simplicity⁴⁴⁰. “But I have a lot to talk to you about, so you can have number one. And we’ll begin it now.”

But the orchestra was still idling in the melancholy⁴⁴¹ manner peculiar²⁸⁵ to orchestras. Why—by the way—is there something so unutterably sad in the expression of an orchestra about to play a jovial⁴⁴² onestep?

“I do want to know about your marriage,” pursued Courtesy, whose curiosity was a daylight trait, like the rest of her characteristics. “When did it happen, and where did you meet her, and why did you have a wedding without me to help?”

“I met her—on the way to Paradise,” said the gardener, posing luxuriously⁴⁴³ as an enigma⁴⁴⁴. “We got married on the way too. It was a no-flowers-by-request sort of wedding, otherwise we would have invited you.”

“But I can’t understand it,” said Courtesy. “Only a week ago you were snivelling over a broken boot-lace.”

The gardener’s pose had a fall. He might have expected that Courtesy would trip it up.

The violins, relieving their feelings by a preliminary concerted yell, settled down to a lamentation⁴⁴⁵ in ragtime⁴⁴⁶.

The gardener danced rather well, as his mother had taught him to dance. Courtesy danced rather 72well, after the manner of The Generation. But the Caribbeania danced better than either. She reduced them to planting their four feet wide and sliding up and down. The ship’s officers, with their lucky partners, leaning to the undulations of the deck, like willows⁴⁴⁷ bending to the wind, showed to immense advantage. They evidently knew every wave of the Atlantic by heart. But among the remaining dancers there was much unrest. Captain Walters, who was accustomed to be one of the principal ornaments⁴⁴⁸ of a more stationary⁴⁴⁹ ballroom⁴⁵⁰, at once knocked his partner down and sat upon her. Theresa and a subaltern slid helplessly at the mercy of the elements into a forest of chaperons. The gardener and Courtesy leaned together and clung, with a tense look on their faces.

I dare not say what angle the deck had reached when the orchestra, with an unpremeditated lapse⁴⁵² into a Futurist style of melody, broke loose, and glided⁴⁵³ in a heaving phalanx to join the turmoil⁴⁵⁴. The piano, being lashed⁴⁵⁵ to its post, remained a triumphant⁴⁵⁶ survivor⁴⁵⁷, calmly surveying the fallen estate of the less stable instruments.

“I am not enjoying myself a bit,” said Courtesy, as she disentangled a violin from her hair, and strove to dislodge the ’celloist from his position on her lap. The gardener disliked agreeing with any one, but he seemed by no means anxious to continue dancing. The orchestra also seemed a little loth to 73risk its dignity again at once, and even Theresa, though still plastered with a pink smile, was retiring on the arm of her subaltern to a twilit deck-chair.

In the distance, among her rows of empty chairs, the suffragette was smiling. She had watched the dancing with that half-ashamed sort of amusement which some of us feel when we see others making fools of themselves. And because she smiled, the priest came and sat beside her. He considered himself a temporary shepherd in charge of this maritime⁴⁶⁰ flock, and you could see in his eye the craving for souls to save. He had hardly noticed the suffragette until her smile caught his eye, but directly he did notice her he saw that she was not among the saved. He therefore approached her with the smile he reserved for the wicked.

“Very amusing, is it not?” he said.

Now the suffragette liked to see the young busy with their youth, but because she was a snake she could not bear to say so. Especially in answer to “Very amusing, is it not?”

So she said, “Is it?” and immediately cursed herself for the inhuman⁴⁶¹ remark. Some people’s humanity takes this tardy⁴⁶² form of hidden self-reproach after expression, and then it strikes inward, like measles⁴⁶³.

“Well, that’s as it may be, yerce, yerce,” said the priest, who was so tolerant that he had no opinions of his own, and had hardly ever been guilty of contradiction. 74“That is your husband, is it not?” he added, as the gardener extricated⁴⁶⁴ himself from the knot of fallen dancers.

The suffragette actually hesitated, and then she said, “Yes,” and narrowly escaped adding, “More or less.”

“A most interesting young man,” said the priest, who, with the keen eye of the saver of souls, had noticed the hesitation⁴⁶⁵.

“Naturally he interests me,” said the suffragette.

“He is so original,” continued the priest. “Even his occupation strikes one as original. A gardener on an ocean liner. The march of science, yerce, yerce. Most quaint⁴⁶⁶. I suppose you also are interested in Nature. I always think the care of flowers is an eminently⁴⁶⁷ suitable occupation for ladies.”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But I am not a lady. I am a militant suffragette.”

The priest’s smile changed from the saintly to the roguish. “Have you any bombs or hatchets⁴⁶⁸ concealed⁴⁶⁹ about you?” he asked.

“I wish I had,” she replied. I fully admit that her manners were not her strong point. But the priest persisted. He noted⁴⁷⁰ the absence of any answering roguishness, and recorded the fact that she had no sense of humour. True to his plastic nature, however, he said, “Of course I am only too well aware of the justice of many of women’s demands, yerce, yerce. But you, my dear young lady, you are as yet on the threshold of life; it is written plain upon 75your face that you have not yet come into contact with the realities of life.”

“In that case it’s a misprint,” said the suffragette. “I am twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six,” repeated the priest. “I wonder why you are bitter—at twenty-six?”

“Because I have taken some trouble not to be sweet,” she said. “Because I was not born blind.”

As a matter of fact she had been born morally short-sighted. She had never seen the distant delight of the world at all.

The priest did not believe in anything approaching metaphor⁴⁷¹. He considered himself to be too manly¹⁹. So he deflected⁴⁷² the course of the conversation. “And your husband. What are his views on the Great Question?” (A slight relapse into roguishness on the last two words.)

“I have never asked him. I know he does not believe in concrete arguments from women. Though he approves of them from men.” She fingered a bruise³⁴⁵ on her arm.

“The arguments about women’s lack of physical force are the most incontrovertible ones your cause has to contend with,” said the priest. “Say what you will, physical force is the basis of life.”

“I think it is a confession⁴⁷³ of weakness.”

“There is something in what you say,” said the priest. He did not really think there was, for he had taken no steps to investigate. He was busy thinking that this was an odd wife who did not know 76her husband’s views on a question that obsessed⁴⁷⁴ her own thoughts.

The gardener had by now extracted Courtesy from the tangle⁴⁵⁹, and was steering⁴⁷⁵ her towards a chair.

“Your husband appears to know that young lady with the auburn hair,” said the priest. “He knew her before he came on board, did he not?”

“Apparently he did,” said the suffragette. “I didn’t.”

She was providing him with so many clues that he was fairly skimming along on the track of his prey⁴⁷⁶. When he left her he felt like a collector who has found a promising³⁹⁵ specimen⁴⁷⁷.

“Altogether on the wrong lines,” he told himself, and added, “Poor lost lamb, how much she needs a helping⁴⁷⁸ hand”; not because he felt sorry for her, but because word-pity was the chief part of his stock-in-trade.

Next morning the Caribbeania had flung the winds and waves behind her, and had settled down to a passionless career along a silver sea under a silver sky,—like man, slipping out of the turmoil of youth into the excellent anti-climax of middle life.

Similes⁴⁷⁹ apart, however, the Caribbeania was now so steady that an infant could have danced a jig⁴⁸⁰ upon her deck. Several infants tried. Amusements rushed upon her passengers from every side. A week passed like a wink¹²⁹. Hardly were you awake in the morning before you found yourself pursuing 77an egg round your own ankles with a teaspoon⁴⁸¹. Sports and rumours⁴⁸² of sports followed you even unto your nightly bunk⁴⁸³. Everybody developed talents hitherto successfully concealed in napkins. Courtesy found her life’s vocation⁴⁸⁴ in dropping potatoes into buckets. She brought this homely⁴⁸⁶ pursuit to a very subtle art, and felt that she had not lived in vain. Not that she ever suffered from morbid illusions as to her value. The gardener brought to light a latent gift for sitting astride upon a spar while other men tried with bolsters⁴⁸⁷ to remove him. The suffragette, when nobody was looking, acquired proficiency⁴⁸⁸ in the art of shuffling⁴⁸⁹ the board. When observed, she instinctively donned an appearance of contempt. Mrs. Paul Rust settled herself immovably in a chair and applauded solo at the moments when others were not applauding. The priest, looking in an opposite direction, clapped when he heard other hands being clapped, in order to show the kind interest he took in mundane⁴⁹⁰ affairs.

While occupied thus, one day, he found himself next to Courtesy. That determined⁴⁹¹ lady had her back to a Whisky and Soda⁴⁹² Race then in progress, and looked aggrieved⁴⁹³. She had been beaten in the first heat, whereas she was convinced that victory had been her due. Courtesy suffered from all the faults that you and I—poetic souls—cannot love. She was greedy. She was fat. She could not even lose a race without suspecting the timekeeper of corruption⁴⁹⁴. All the same, there was something so entirely 78healthy and human about her, that nobody had ever pointed out to her her lack of poetry, and of the more subtle virtues.

The priest, who had also never been able to lose a game without losing his temper too, sympathised with Courtesy, and employed laborious²⁷⁴ tact³²⁸ in trying to lead her thoughts elsewhere.

“Trinity Islands are your destination, are they not, yerce, yerce?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Courtesy. “And I wish this old tub would buck⁴⁸⁵ up and get there.”

“You have reasons of your own for being very anxious to arrive?” suggested the priest archly.

“Nothing special that I know of,” answered Courtesy. “I’m only an ordinary globe-trotter.”

Frankly, she was being sent out to get married. But this, of course, was among the things that are not said. Her father had become tired of supporting a daughter as determined to study art in London as she was incapable⁴⁹⁶ of succeeding at it. He had accepted for her a casual invitation from a cousin for a season in the Trinity Islands. The invitation was so very casual that Courtesy had appreciated the whole scheme as a matrimonial straw clutched at by an over-daughtered parent. But her feelings were not hurt. She had bluff⁴⁹⁷, tough feelings.

“How curious that you should have found former friends on board!” said the priest. “How small the world is, is it not?”

“Yes, isn’t it?” assented⁴⁹⁸ Courtesy, whose heart 79always warmed towards familiar phrases. “And so odd, too, him being married within the week like this.”

The priest pricked up his ears so sharply that you could almost hear them click. “So quickly as that?” he encouraged her.

“Yes, when he left the private hotel where he and I were both staying just over a fortnight ago, he was not even engaged. He says such quaint things about it, too. He says he picked her up on the way to Paradise.”

The mention of Paradise confirmed the priest’s worst suspicions. But “Yerce, yerce....” was his only reply to Courtesy.

Late that night the priest walked round and round the deck trying to peer into the face of his god, professional duty. His conscience was as short-sighted as some people’s eyes, and he was often known to pursue a shadow under the impression that he was pursuing his duty.

“Of course I must warn the Captain,” he said. “And that bright young lady who unconsciously gave me the news. And Mrs. Rust, who encourages that misguided young man to talk. And Mrs. Cyrus Berry, who lets her children play with him. As for the woman—I always think that women are the most to blame in such cases.”

Although he was altogether narrow his limits were indefinite, except under great provocation⁴⁹⁹. He had not strength enough to draw the line anywhere. 80“Wicked” was too big a word for him; and although he believed that the gardener and the suffragette were in immediate⁶⁰ danger of hell-fire, he could only call them “misguided.” This applies to him only in his capacity as a priest. In his own interests he was very much more sensitive than he was in the interest of his God.

Sometimes I think that angels, grown old, turn into enemies to trap the unwary. The angel of tolerance was the great saviour⁵⁰⁰ of history, but now he saps the strength of every cause. Either I Am Right, or I May Possibly Be Right. If I may only possibly be right, why should I dream of burning at the stake for such a very illusory proposition? But if I am right, then my enemy is Wrong, and is in danger of hell-fire. That is my theory. My practice is to believe that belief is everything, and that I may worship a Jove or a stone with advantage to my soul. Belief is everything, and I believe. But if my enemy believes in nothing, then I will condemn⁵⁰¹ him. Why should I be tolerant of what I am convinced is wrong?

The priest, in the dark, found some one clinging round his knees. A woman—a little woman—wrapped so tightly in a cloak that she looked like a mummy. Her face was grey, and her lips looked dark. Her hair lay dank and low upon her brow, and yet seemed as if it should have been wildly on end about her head. The whole of her looked horribly restrained—bound with chains—and her 81eyes, which should have given the key to the entreaty⁵⁰² which she embodied⁵⁰³, were tightly shut. For five seconds the priest tried to run away. But she held him round the knees and cried, “Save me, save me!”

Nobody had ever come to the priest with such a preposterous⁵⁰⁴ request before.

“Let me go, my good woman,” he said, audibly keeping his head. “Be calm, let me beg you to be calm.”

She let him go. But she was not calm.

It was very late, and the deck-chairs had been folded up and stacked. As the woman would not rise to the priest’s level, he saw nothing for it but to sink to hers. They sat upon the deck side by side. He felt that it was not dignified, but there was nobody looking. And otherwise, he began to feel in his element. Here was a soul literally⁵⁰⁵ shrieking⁵⁰⁶ to be saved.

“What is it? Tell me. You have sinned?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” replied the woman in a hard thin voice. “I have never deserved what I’ve got. It seems to me that it’s God who has sinned.”

“Hush, be calm,” the priest jerked out. “Be calm and tell me what has upset you so much.”

The woman began to laugh. Her laughter was absurdly impossible, like frozen fire. It lasted for some time, and the world seemed to wait on tiptoe for it to stop. It was too much for the priest’s nerves, and for his own sake he gripped her arm to 82make her stop. She was silent at once. The grip had been what she needed.

“Now tell me,” said the priest.

She paused a little while, and seemed trying to swallow her hysteria. When she spoke it was in a sane, though trembling voice. “I am not Church of England, sir, but you being a man of God, so to speak, I thought ... I am suffering—terribly. There’s something gnawing⁵⁰⁷ at my breast ... I’ve prayed to God, sir; I’ve prayed until I’ve fainted with the pain of kneeling upright. But he never took no notice. I think he’s mistaken me for a damned soul ... before my time. Why, I could see God smiling, I could, and the pain grew worse. I’ve been a good woman in my time; I’ve done my duty. But God smiled to see me hurt. So I prayed to the Devil—I’d never have believed it three months ago. I prayed for hell-fire rather than this. The pain grew worse....”

“Have you seen the doctor?”

“Oh, yes. And he said the sea-voyage would do me good. He couldn’t do nothing.”

“Poor soul!” said the priest, and found to his surprise that he was inadequate⁵⁰⁸ to the occasion. “Poor soul, what can I say? It is, alas⁵⁰⁹, woman’s part to suffer in this world. Your reward is in heaven. You must pin your faith still to the efficacy of prayer. You cannot have prayed in the right spirit.”

“But what a God—what a God ...” shouted 83the woman with a wild cry. “To hide himself in a maze—and me too distracted to find out the way. Why, my tears ought to reach him, let alone my prayers. I’ve sacrificed so much for him—and he gives me over to this....”

“This is terrible, yerce terrible,” said the priest. “My poor creature, this is not the right spirit in which to meet adversity. Put yourself in God’s hands, like a little child....”

The woman dragged herself suddenly a yard or two from him. “Oh, you talker—you talker ...” she cried, and writhed⁵¹⁰ upon the deck.

“Listen,” said the priest in a commanding voice. “Kneel with me now, and pray to God. When we have prayed, I will take you to the doctor, and he will give you something to make you sleep.”

“I won’t touch drugs,” said the woman. “And I don’t hold with that young doctor in brass⁵¹¹ buttons. If I pray now with you, will you promise that I shall be better in the morning?”

“Yes,” said the priest. It was spoken, not out of his faith, but because that seemed the only way to put an end to the scene. And when he prayed, in a musical clerical voice, he prayed not out of his heart, but out of his sense of what was fitting.

The stars bent³⁶⁵ their wise eyes upon the wise sea and bore witness that the priest’s prayer never reached heaven’s gate.

“Now you feel better, do you not?” he asked, when he had said all that had occurred to him, and 84intoned a loud Amen, as if to give the prayer an upward impetus.

“No,” sobbed⁵¹² the woman.

“Who are you? What is your name?”

“I am Elizabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust’s maid,” she replied, and staggered in a lost way into the darkness of the companion-way.

“To-morrow it will be better,” the priest called after her. And wished that he could think so.

The world smiled next morning, when the sports began again. Elizabeth Hammer was invisible, probably concealed in some lowly place suitable to her position. The sea was silver, the sky blazed blue, the sun smiled from its height, like a father beaming upon his irresponsible family. Mrs. Paul Rust looked incredible in a pale dress, designed for peculiarity⁵¹³ rather than grace; pink roses sprigged it so sparsely⁵¹⁴ as to give the impression of birth-mark afflictions rather than decorations. I am not sure whether the feather in her hat was more like an explosion or a palm tree. The gardener rolled upon a deck-chair with three children using him as a switch-back railway. Theresa was smiling from her top curl down to her toes. Even the suffragette was talking about the transmigration of souls to the fourth officer. Everything on the surface was highly satisfactory, and, on board ship, nothing except the surface matters a bit.

The priest had a leaky mind. He never poured out all that was in it, but he could not help letting a 85certain proportion of its contents escape. He paused in his daily walk of thirty times round the deck, and found a seat beside Mrs. Paul Rust.

“Your maid seems to be in a shocking state of health,” he said.

“She suffers from indigestion,” replied Mrs. Rust. “Some fool of a doctor has told her that she has cancer. She has quite lost her head over it.”

“At any rate she appears to be in great pain,” said the priest, who considered that indigestion was rather too unclothed a word for ordinary use. “And pain is a terrible thing, is it not?”

“No,” said Mrs. Rust.

“You mean that you consider it salubrious for the soul?”

“No,” said Mrs. Rust.

“Then I wonder in what way you consider pain desirable?”

Mrs. Rust, who had meant nothing beyond contradiction, shut her eyes and looked immovably subtle. The priest changed the subject. He had a real gift for changing the subject.

“Have you made the acquaintance of that dark young man who acts as the ship’s gardener?” he asked.

“An excellent young man,” said Mrs. Rust, immediately divining that the priest did not approve of him.

“Yerce, yerce, no doubt an excellent young man,” agreed the priest mechanically. “But I have reason 86to believe that his morals are not satisfactory.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust.

“I do not think he is really married to that aggressive young woman he calls his wife.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust. She did not approve of such irregularities any more than the priest did, but she disapproved⁵¹⁵ of disapprobation.

The priest, being constitutionally incapable of argument, and yet unable to broaden his view, was left wordless. But an interruption mercifully rescued him from the necessity of attempting a reply.

Elizabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust’s maid, appeared at the companion door. Her eyes were fixed hungrily upon the sea.

There was a race about to be run, and the starter stood ready to say the word. But Elizabeth Hammer brushed past him and walked across the empty strip of deck. She climbed the rail as though she were walking upstairs, and dropped into the sea.

“Hammer,” barked Mrs. Rust hoarsely⁵¹⁶, as she heard the splash. That word broke the spell. A woman shrieked⁵¹⁸, and Captain Walters shouted, “Man Overboard.”

The suffragette was not a heroine. What she did was undignified and unconscious. The heroine should remove her coat, hand her watch to a friend, send her love to a few relations, and bound gracefully²¹⁸ into the water. The suffragette, fully clothed, tumbled upside down after Elizabeth Hammer. No 87noble impulse prompted her to do it. She did not know of her intention until she found herself in the water, and then she thought, “What a fool!” She could not swim. The Caribbeania looked as distant as heaven, and as high. She felt as if she had been dead a long time since she saw it last. She paddled with her feet and hands like a dog, her mouth was full of water and of hair. She had never felt so abased⁵¹⁹ in her life, she seemed crushed like a wafer into the sinking surface of the nether⁵²⁰ pit. For centuries she wrestled with the sea, sometimes for years and years on end a wave tore at her breath. She never thought of Elizabeth Hammer.

“This is absurd,” she thought, when eternity came to an end, and she had time for consecutive⁵²¹ thought. She felt sure her eyes were straining out of their sockets⁵²², and tried to remember whether she had ever heard of any one going blind through drowning. Then she cried, and remembered that her head must be above water, if she could cry. She knew then that there was some one on her side in the battle. The sea seemed to hold her loosely now, instead of clutching her throat. She had a moment to consider the matter from the Caribbeania’s point of view, and to realise what a pathetic accident had occurred. It dawned upon her that her own hand, wearing her mother’s wedding ring, was just in front of her, holding the cord of a neat white life-buoy. “Caribbeania” painted in black on the life-buoy seemed like a wide mad smile.

88“This is absurd,” bubbled the suffragette. “I shall wake up in a minute now. It’s the air makes one sleepy.” And then she thought of something else for ages and ages, and could not find out what she was thinking of, though she tried all the time.

On the promenade deck of the Caribbeania the gardener stood dumb with enormous astonishment. His soul was dumb, his limbs were numb, his mental circulation was stopped. He had a sort of impression that the Atlantic had been suddenly sprinkled with a shower of women, but he could only think of one drop in the shower.

“How red her face was as she went under—and what a dear she is!”

The Caribbeania had flung the two women behind her, and swept upon her way, only for a second had the red face of the suffragette floated like a cherry upon the water beside the black wall of the ship. The fourth officer had flung a life-buoy. Theresa had fainted. There was a black cork-like thing a thousand miles away which the fourth officer said was the head of one of the women. The Caribbeania, checked in her scornful attempt to proceed uncaring, was being brought round in a circle. A boat was being lowered.

There was a long silence on the promenade deck.

Presently—“Is it—her?” asked Courtesy in a husky voice by the gardener’s side.

“Of course,” answered the gardener.

89Elizabeth Hammer had found the sleep she sought without recourse to drugs.

Everybody watched the distant boat receive the thin small warrior out of the grasp of the sea, and then sweep in wide circles on its search for Elizabeth Hammer.

The dream ended. The boat drew alongside. The suffragette, who had to some extent collected herself, made a characteristic attempt to step unassisted from the boat. It failed. Everybody had come down to the main deck to gratify their curiosity. The suffragette was carried on deck, though she obviously supposed she was walking. She looked somehow out of proportion to the elements with which she had battled.

“You poor lamb,” said Courtesy, looking very dry and motherly beside her. “How do you feel? I’m coming to help you into bed.”

“I am perfectly well, thank you,” said the suffragette.

“Why did you jump overboard if you couldn’t swim?” asked the fourth officer, who was young and believed that there are always reasons for everything.

“It was a mistake,” said the suffragette testily⁵²³, and was led below by Courtesy and a stewardess.

Tongues were loosened. Everybody reascended to the upper deck to vent⁵ their sympathy on Mrs. Paul Rust.

She had remained in her chair, because she felt 90that any other woman would have retired below after witnessing the suicide of an indispensable part of her travelling equipment. But she could not control her complexion. Her face was blue-white like chalk, beneath her incongruous hair. She would reply to no questions, and the priest, after making several attempts to create for himself a speaking part in the drama, was obliged to abandon his intention as far as she was concerned, for lack of support. He turned to the gardener, whose stunned⁵²⁴ mind was now regaining⁵²⁵ consciousness.

“I do indeed congratulate you on the rescue of your—your wife,” said the priest. “Yerce, yerce. As for that other poor soul, I was afraid she might make some attempt of the sort. She was suffering from some internal complaint, and had lost control of herself. Of course she had confided⁵²⁶ in me—yerce, yerce. I was so fortunate as to be able to say a few words of comfort. Perhaps it was a merciful release. But I hope she was prepared at the last. I hope that in that awful moment she thought upon her sins.”

“I hope so too,” said the gardener. “It is good to die with a happy memory in the heart.”

The general impression was that Elizabeth Hammer had made a mistake, poor thing. She was the subject of much conversation but little conjecture⁵²⁷. The big problem of her little mind was not so much buried as never unearthed⁵²⁸. She had made a mistake, poor thing. That was her epitaph.

91The suffragette was of course a heroine. She was a heroine for the same reason as Elizabeth Hammer was a poor thing—because nobody had analysed her motives⁵²⁹. It would have been heresy⁵³⁰ to suggest that the heroine’s motive had been pure hysteria. She had done a very useless thing in a very clumsy way, but because it had been dangerous she was promoted to the rank of heroine.

“I have been a damn fool,” mourned the suffragette, writhing profanely⁵³¹ on her bunk.

“Nonsense,” said Courtesy briskly. “You have been frightfully brave. It was only hard luck that you couldn’t save the woman.”

“But I didn’t try. I had forgotten all about her until this moment.”

“Nonsense,” repeated Courtesy, busy with a hot-water bottle. “You were splendid. We didn’t know you had it in you.”

The suffragette laughed her secret laugh, which she kept hidden beneath her militant exterior⁵³³. The sort of laughter that flies, not unsuitably, in the very face of tragedy.

“This is a change,” she said.

“What is?”

“To be respected.”

“My dear gal⁵³⁴, we all respected you all along. Personally I always told them: ‘Mark my words,’ I said, ‘that gal’s got brains.’”

“Yes, I expect they needed to be told.”

“Nonsense,” said Courtesy.

92“For the last five years,” said the suffragette, “I have followed my conscience over rough land. I have been suffragetting industriously⁵³⁵ all that time. And every one laughed behind their hands at me. Not that I care. But to-day I have been a fool, and they have promoted me to the rank of heroine.”

“Nonsense,” said Courtesy. “You’re not a fool. And surely you never were a suffragette.”

“I am a militant suffragette,” said the suffragette proudly. “It takes a little courage and no hysteria to march through the city with drunk medical students waiting to knock you down at the next corner; and it takes hysteria and no courage to fall by mistake into the Atlantic.”

“You quaint dear,” said Courtesy, who had not been giving undivided attention to her patient’s remarks. “I do believe you’ve got something in you besides brains after all. There now, you must try and sleep. Pleasant dreams. And if you’re a good gal and wake up with some roses in your cheeks, you shall have your husband to come and have tea with you.”

“No,” said the suffragette. “Don’t call him that.”

Courtesy wrenched⁵³⁷ the stopper of the hot-water bottle tightly on, as though she were also corking⁵³⁸ up her curiosity.

As she went upstairs Courtesy discovered that she quite liked the suffragette—from a height. For a person suffering from brains, and from a mystery, 93and from political fervour, and from lack of physical stamina⁵³⁹, the woman was quite surprisingly likeable.

On deck, Courtesy’s friendly feeling was immediately put to the test. Mrs. Paul Rust beckoned⁵⁴⁰ her to her side.

“That woman who jumped into the water after Hammer ... she is quite well again, of course?” It was rather difficult for Mrs. Rust to put this question, because the most obvious form was, “How is she?” and that would have been far too human.

“She’ll be all right,” said Courtesy. “And even if she wasn’t she wouldn’t say so. She keeps herself to herself. You’ve torn a button off your coat. Shall I sew it on for you? You’ll miss your maid.”

“I shall not,” said Mrs. Rust. “She was a fool to behave in that way. Nothing but indigestion.”

“You shouldn’t speak hardly of the dead,” said Courtesy, indomitably conventional.

“Stuff and nonsense,” retorted Mrs. Rust, and closed her eyes in order to close the subject. “That young woman...”

“I shall call her the suffragette,” said Courtesy. “She says she is one, and she looks like one.”

“At any rate, the priest tells me she is not married to the ship’s gardener. Is that so?”

“It’s not the priest’s business. Nor mine either.”

“You would drop her like a red-hot coal if she were not married.”

“Time enough to decide that later. I don’t approve 94of irregularity, of course. Marriage after all is an excellent idea.”

That turned the balance successfully in the suffragette’s favour. “You are wrong,” said Mrs. Rust. “Marriage is an idiotic⁵⁴¹ institution. It must have been invented by a man, I feel sure. It is like using ropes where only a silken thread is necessary.”

“O Lor’,” said Courtesy.

Mrs. Paul Rust decided to reach the truth by interrogating⁵⁴² the gardener. She always tried to approach a mystery by the high-road, rightly considering that the high-road is the most untrodden way in these tortuous days.

“Come here,” she called to the gardener, when Courtesy disappeared to see if her patient was asleep.

“Is that young woman who foolishly jumped into the sea—your wife?” she asked.

The gardener had resisted hours of siege on the subject. He was tired. Besides he instinctively understood Mrs. Rust.

“In some ways she is,” he replied, after rather a blank pause.

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust.

“Is that young man who owns a little red hotel in the woods in Hampshire your son?” asked the gardener, suddenly face to face with an opportunity.

“In some ways he is,” replied Mrs. Rust inevitably⁵⁴³, without a smile.

The gardener became more and more inspired. 95“Because if you are his mother, I am his friend, and you may be interested to know that I put your point of view clearly before him when I met him last. He told me that you were unwilling⁵⁴⁴ to treat his hotel as an investment, and I said, ‘Why should she?’ I said, ‘You may take it from me that she won’t.’”

“Then you had no business to take my intentions for granted,” retorted Mrs. Rust. “What the dickens did you mean by it?”

“I told him ...” continued the gardener, almost suffocating⁵⁴⁵ in the grasp of his own cleverness, “that obviously you could take no notice of so vague a scheme. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred, I said, would do as you were doing.”

“You had better have minded your own business,” interrupted Mrs. Rust wrathfully. “And you had better mind it now. I shall do exactly what I like with my money, no matter what the other ninety-nine women would do.”

“I was afraid you would be annoyed by my speaking like this,” said the gardener humbly⁵⁴⁷. “It is only natural.”

“Stuff and nonsense. Do you know that the priest is shocked by his suspicions about you and your suffragette?”

“I don’t mind,” said the gardener. “Being a priest, I suppose he is paid to be shocked sometimes. I don’t object to being his butt⁹⁹.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust. “Then you don’t continue to assert that she is your wife.”

96“I can’t be bothered to continue to assert it,” said the gardener.

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust.

The gardener felt that the reward of the successfully unscrupulous rogue was within his reach. Lying in a good cause is a lovely exercise. The warm feeling of duty begun surged over him. He had justified his presence on board the Caribbeania, he had been true to Samuel Rust. The suffragette was not drowned. The blue sea was all round him. There was little else to be desired.

“I shan’t be an unscrupulous rogue a moment longer than I can help,” thought the gardener. “I shall pose as being good next. We will be married on landing.”

Courtesy at that moment returned and said, “Your wife would like you to come and have tea with her.”

“Don’t leave us alone,” begged the gardener of Courtesy as they went below. “I don’t know how to behave to heroines.”

He was obviously at a loss when he reached the suffragette’s cabin. He had never seen her with her hair down, and that upset him from the start. He shook her gently but repeatedly by the hand, and smiled his well-meaning young smile. He did not know what to say, and this was usually a branch of knowledge at which he was proficient⁵⁴⁸.

“Did you know that Captain Walters won the 97sweep yesterday on the Captain’s number?” he asked.

“Don’t be a donkey,” said Courtesy. There was a genial³⁹⁸ lack of sting about Courtesy’s discourtesies, which kept her charm intact through all vicissitudes⁵⁴⁹. “She doesn’t want to hear about the sweep. Let her be just now. She’s busy pouring out your tea.”

For in the same spirit as the nurse allows a convalescent child to pour out tea from its own teapot, Courtesy had encouraged the suffragette to officiate. The headquarters of the meal, on a tray, were balanced upon the invalid⁵⁵⁰’s bunk. It was not a treat to the suffragette, who loathed⁵⁵² all the details of Woman’s Sphere, but for once she did not proclaim the ungracious truth.

“I’m sorry,” she said nervously⁵⁵³. “It’s years since I did anything of this sort. But I don’t know whether you take milk and sugar.”

The gardener distrustfully eyed the hot water with vague aspirations⁵⁵⁴ towards tea-dom that dripped into his cup.

“I don’t take either milk or sugar, thank you,” he said, “I like my troubles singly.”

“Naughty boy,” said Courtesy, helping herself generously to cake. “You are beastly rude. And you’re a naughty gal, too, you suffragette. You ought to know how your husband likes his tea.”

“But he’s not my husband,” said the suffragette.

The gardener sat with a bun arrested half-way to 98his mouth. He had lived a self-contained existence, and had never before had a pose of his dismantled⁵⁵⁵ by an alien hand. The experience was most novel. He liked the suffragette more and more because she was unexpected.

“Nonsense,” said Courtesy. “You’re feverish⁵⁵⁶. You’ll tell me what you’ll be sorry for, in a minute.”

“It’s true; and I’m far from sorry for it,” said the suffragette. “It’s almost too good to be true, but it is. I’m still alone. But because he thought I was a menace to England’s safety, he brought me away—by force.”

“Perfectly true,” corroborated⁵⁵⁷ the gardener.

“You babies,” said Courtesy. “It’s lucky for you it’s only me to hear you.”

“It’s not a secret,” said the gardener. “I’ve just been talking about it to Mrs. Rust.”

“And what did she say?” asked Courtesy and the suffragette together.

“She said, ‘Good.’”

At that moment the voice of Mrs. Rust was heard in the passage outside. “Miss Briggs.”

Courtesy ran clumsily from the cabin.

“That button,” said Mrs. Rust. “You said you would.... Myself I never can remember which finger I ought to wear my thimble on, or at what angle the needle should be held....”

Anybody else, arrived within three feet of the suffragette’s door, would have thrown a smile round the corner. But Mrs. Rust did not. She did possess 99a heart, I am told, but a heart is such a hackneyed thing that she concealed it.

“What do you intend to do when you get to Trinity Islands?” asked the suffragette.

“I don’t know what we shall do,” replied the gardener. “I hate knowing about the future. I am leaving it—not to fate, but to my future self.”

“Don’t you believe in fate?”

“No. I believe in myself. I believe I can do exactly what I like.”

“And what about me? Can’t I do exactly what I like? Do you think you can do exactly what you like with me?” asked the suffragette militantly⁵⁵⁸.

“So far I seem to have succeeded even in that.”

She laughed.

After a pause he said suddenly, “I am a brute to you, you dear, unaccommodating little thing. Somehow my will and my deed have got disconnected in my dealings with you. It is curious that having such good intentions I should still remain the villain⁵⁵⁹ of the piece. Yet I meant—if ever I had a woman—to make up to her for all I have seen my mother go through.”

“When you have a woman—perhaps you will ...” said the suffragette. “You must wait and see.”

“Come up and see land,” shouted Courtesy, running in with a semi-buttoned coat in her hand.

The gardener shot up the companion-way, and, 100behold, the gods had touched the sea, and fairyland had uprisen.

A long vivid island, afire in the ardent⁵⁶⁰ sun. Its mountain was golden and eccentric in outline, its little town and fortresses⁵⁶¹ had obviously been built by a neat-fingered baby-god out of its box of bricks. The tiny houses had green shutters⁵⁶³ and red roofs. There was no doubt that the whole thing had only been created a minute or two before, it was so neat and so unsullied. It was nonsense to call the place by the name of a common liqueur, as the quartermaster did, any one could see it was too sudden and too faery to have a name or to make a liqueur. There was something very exciting in the way it had leapt out of a perfectly empty sea, and in the way it sped over the horizon, as if shrinking from the gaze of the proud Caribbeania.

It passed. The gardener had looked at a dream. Courtesy had looked at good dry land. Captain Walters had looked at the monastery⁵⁶⁴ from which the liqueur emanated⁵⁶⁵. Mrs. Rust had not looked at all. It is surprising that there should be so much difference in the material collected by such identical instruments as one pair of human eyes and another.

Islands are gregarious⁵⁶⁶ animals, they decorate the ocean in conveys. The Caribbeania, her appetite for speed checked, began to stalk them with bated breath.

“We’ll be going through the Hair’s Breadth to-morrow at seven,” said the Captain, in a fat, selfcongratulatory 101voice, as though he had himself created the channel he referred to. “You must all get up early to see her do it.”

There are few penances⁵⁶⁷ easier than early rising on board ship. There are no inducements to stay upon the implacable plane that is your bunk, in the hot square cube that is your cabin. Your ear is tickled⁵⁶⁸ by the sound of the activities of food in the saloon outside; you can hear the sea singing in a cheerful, beckoning way past your inadequate porthole. You emerge from your cabin and find men in pyjamas⁵⁶⁹, and ladies in flowered dressing-gowns and (if possible) thick pig-tails, or (if impossible) pleasing head-erections of lace, sitting in rows at sparkling tables, and being fed by stewards with apples and sandwiches. There is scarcely ever any need to remind the voyager by sea about the tiresome superiority that distinguishes the ant.

The Captain, therefore, had a large audience ready for his sleight-of-nerve feat¹³⁸ of threading the Hair’s Breadth. He looked very self-conscious on the bridge.

Land climbed slowly down the spangled sloped sea from the horizon. There seemed to be no gap in the quivering line of it. Presently, however, as if it had quivered itself to pieces, the line was shattered. Silver channels appeared beckoning on every side. The Caribbeania, blind except to her duty, headed towards the least likely-looking channel of all. The most ignorant passenger on the ship could 102have told the Captain that he was running into certain destruction. Many longed to take command, and to point out to the Captain his mistake. Like a camel advancing foolhardily upon the needle’s eye the Caribbeania approached. Her speed was slackened, she went on tiptoe, so to speak, as if not to awaken⁵⁷¹ the gods of ill-chance, but there was nothing faltering⁵⁷² about her. She thrust her shoulders into the opening.

(It would be waste of time to inform me that in nautical language a ship has no shoulders.)

You could have whispered a confidence to the palm trees on either side—except that you would have been afraid to draw enough breath to do so, for fear of deflecting⁵⁷³ the ship an inch from her course.

Courtesy was, as usual, bold. She spoke in quite an ordinary voice. “Why, look, there’s a man with hardly anything on, paddling! How killing! He’s the colour of brown paper!”

“You’ll soon be dead in Trinity Islands if you find that killing,” snapped Mrs. Rust. “The Captain evidently doesn’t know his business. We’re at least six feet nearer to this shore than the other.”

The first of Trinity Islands heaved before them quite abruptly when they had traversed the channel. The land seemed to have been petrified⁵⁷⁴ in the act of leaping up to meet them. I think the wind had changed upon it at a moment of grotesque⁵⁷⁵ contortion⁵⁷⁶. My nurse used always to warn me that this 103climatic change might fatally occur when my anatomical experiments became more than usually daring.

Green woods had veiled the harsh shapes of the hills. Palms waved their spread hands upon the sky-line. A tangle of green things tumbled to the water’s edge. Far away to the right a faint blessing of pearl-coloured smoke and a few diamonds flung among the velvet slopes of the hills hinted at the watching windows of Port of the West. Shipping clustered confidentially⁵⁷⁷ together on either side of the Caribbeania, like gossips commenting jealously on the arrival of a princess of their kind. The entering liner shook out little waves like messages to alight on the calm shore.

The whole scene looked too heavy to be painted on the delicate sea. It was absurd to think that that pale opal floor should be trodden by the rusty⁵⁷⁸ tramp-steamers, the tall red-and-black sailing ships, the panting tugs⁵⁷⁹, the blunt and bloated coal-tenders laden⁵⁸⁰ with compressed niggerhood. There were broadheaded catfish⁵⁸¹, and groping jellyfish in the water, and they alone looked fashioned from and throughout eternity for the tender element that framed them.

The suffragette, who had risen from her berth, contrary to the advice of Courtesy and of the doctor, looked at the first of Trinity Islands with her soul in her eyes and a compressed adoration⁵⁸² in her breast. For there was a silver sea, silver mist enclosing the 104island, and a silver shore shining through the mist. Silver, of course, is idealised grey—grey with the memory of black and white refined away. Silver is the halo of a snake-soul.

The day was mapped out in so many ways by the different passengers of the Caribbeania, that, from their prophetic descriptions, you could hardly recognise it as the same slice out of eternity. There were globe-trotters, eager to trot⁴⁹⁵ this tiny section of the globe in hired motor-cars, others anxious to buy souvenirs in Port of the West all day, others nervously determined to call upon the Governor in search of a Vice-regal luncheon, others without imagination desirous of fishing for catfish from the poop, and a very few who dared to avow⁵⁸³ their intention of spending the day in absorbing cold drinks on the verandah of the King’s Garden Hotel.

In theory the gardener wished to lie upon a chair on the shady side of the deck, with a handkerchief over his face all day. Such a course would have been flattering to his dignity and to his worship of aloofness. In practice his unquenchable energy and that of the suffragette were too much for him. He was vividly⁵⁸⁴ stirred by the strange land. The clawlike hands of the palms beckoned him.

Following the suffragette, he bounded on to the first launch as eagerly as though he were not a man of theory. Behind him bounded Courtesy, and behind her Mrs. Paul Rust strove to bound. Courtesy, the gardener, and the suffragette sat squeezed in a 105row upon a dirty seat in the launch. Mrs. Rust, because sitting in a squeezed row was against her principles, stood. By these means she kept many men-passengers standing in wistful politeness during the whole journey of three miles to the shore.

The bay swept its wide arms farther and farther round them. The palm trees on the promontories⁵⁸⁵ on either side of the town looked no longer beckoning, but grasping.

“Oh, isn’t it good!” said the gardener, thrilling so that Courtesy and the suffragette, by reason of compressed propinquity, had to thrill too. He took the suffragette’s hand violently, and waggled it to and fro. “Isn’t it fine ...” and he jumped his feet upon the deck.

“You babies,” said Courtesy. For the suffragette, even though she did not jump her feet, was jumping her eyes, and obviously jumping the heart in her breast. Most unorthodox for a snake.

“We shall run head foremost into the wharf,” said Mrs. Rust in a final voice. “What a pity it is that sailors never know their work.”

“Yes, isn’t it,” agreed the gardener, as if he had been longing⁴²⁶ to say something of the sort. “Extraordinary. Fine. Won’t it be fine if we run head foremost into the wharf, and sink, to be sealed up in this blue jewel here!”

He tried to pat the bay with his hand.

“Closed in the heart of it,” said the suffragette, “like flies in amber⁵⁸⁶.”

106“I shouldn’t like it at all,” sniffed⁵⁸⁷ Courtesy.

“Not like flies in amber,” said the gardener. “Because flies spoil the amber.”

“Well, you and I wouldn’t exactly decorate the sea,” remarked the suffragette.

“Look at those cannibals waiting for us,” said Courtesy. “My dears, I’m simply terrified.”

The cannibals received them from the launch with the proverbial eagerness of cannibals. In the first three minutes of their arrival on land the travellers could have bought enough goods to furnish several bazaars⁵⁸⁸ had they been so inclined. The suffragette, by tickling⁵⁸⁹ the chin of a superb blue and yellow bird, was considered to have tacitly concluded a bargain with the owner as to the possession of it, and there was much discussion before she was disembarrassed of her unwelcome protégé. The gardener bought two walking-sticks in the excitement of the moment, before he remembered that he was devoid of money. The owner of the walking-sticks, however, kindly⁵⁹⁰ reminded him of the one-sidedness of the purchase, and he was obliged to borrow from the suffragette.

The town, like a brazen⁵⁹¹ beauty feigning⁵⁹² modesty⁵⁹³, was withdrawn⁵⁹⁴ a little from the wharves⁵⁹⁶. There was a dry-looking grass space with goats as its only gardeners. This the party crossed, and the sensitive plant ducked and dived into its inner remoteness as they passed. The streets in front of them, hot and glaring, pointed to the hills, like fevered fingers pointing to peace which is unattainable.

107The main street received them fiercely. The heat was like the blaring of trumpets⁵⁹⁷. The trams were intolerably noisy, clanking, and rattling⁵⁹⁸ like a devil’s cavalry⁵⁹⁹ charge. Black, shining women, with the faces of bull-dogs—only not so sincere—swung in a slow whirlwind of many petticoats up and down the street, with vivid burdens of fruit piled in ochre-coloured baskets on their heads. Little boys and girls, with their clothes precariously⁶⁰⁰ slung⁶⁰² on thin brown shoulders, and well aired by an impromptu system of ventilation, ran by the gardener’s side, and reminded him of the necessity of quatties and half-pinnies, even in this paradise of the poor, where sustenance⁶⁰³ literally falls on your head from every tree in the forest.

“This is exhausting,” said Mrs. Paul Rust, forced by extreme heat into a confession of the obvious. “Policeman, where can we get a cab?”

“Yes, please, missis,” replied the policeman, who was tastefully dressed in white, by way of a contrast to his complexion.

“Nonsense, man,” said Mrs. Rust. “I repeat, where can a cab be found?”

“No, please, missis,” replied the policeman, acutely divining that his first answer had been found wanting.

“You fool,” said Mrs. Rust, another unoriginal comment wrung⁶⁰⁴ from her by the heat.

The policeman understood this, and giggled⁶⁰⁶ bashfully in a high falsetto.

108“Missis wanta buggy?” asked a tobacconist, with a slightly less dense complexion, from his shop door. “Policeman nevah understand missis, he only a niggah.”

The gardener, as ever prone⁶⁰⁷ to paint the lily, hurried into the breach⁶⁰⁸. “Ah yes, of course, we white men, we always hang together, eh?”

It was The Moment of that tobacconist’s life. The gardener all unawares had crossed in one lucky stride those bitter channels that divide the brown man from the black, the yellow man from the brown, the white man from the yellow, and the buckra, the man from England, from all the world.

Three buggies suddenly materialised noisily out of Mrs. Rust’s desire. They were all first upon the scene, as far as one could judge from the turmoil of conversation that immediately arose on the subject. The gardener tried to look firm but unbiassed. The three women stood and waited in a state of trance.

The sun was working so hard at his daily task in the sky, that one could almost have pitied him for being called to such a flaming vocation in this flaming weather.

Finally, Mrs. Rust awoke and, entering the nearest buggy, shook it to its very core as she seated herself and said, “King’s Garden Hotel.”

She could hardly have been recognised as the Mrs. Rust of the Caribbeania. You could see her pride oozing⁶⁰⁹ out in large drops upon her brow. Her hat was on one side, and completely hid her sensational 109hair, but for one flat wisp, like an interrogation mark inverted⁶¹⁰, which reached damply to her eyebrow⁸⁹.

The buggy horse, which consisted of a few promiscuous bones, badly sewn up in a second-hand⁶¹¹ skin, was more than willing to pause until the rest of the party should be seated, and even then seemed desirous of waiting on the chance of picking up yet another fare. It was, however, reminded of its duty by its driver, and turned its drooping⁶¹² nose in the direction of the King’s Garden Hotel.

When they reached that heavenly verandah, they felt for a moment as though they were suffering from delusions⁶¹³. The Caribbeania seemed to have arrived on shore bodily. A long vista of familiar profiles rocked cheek by jowl, nose beyond nose, from end to end of the verandah. There was Theresa, who had made no secret of her intention of accompanying Captain Walters “for a lark” on a visit to a Trinity Island Picture Palace. There was the priest, who had expressed a determination (which nobody had tried to alter) to explore the famous botanical gardens all by himself all day. There was the fourth officer, who had left the Caribbeania inspired by a vision of a long walk to a sandy beach with a bathe at the end of it. There was the captain, who had set out to buy his wife a stuffed alligator⁶¹⁴ as a silver-wedding present.

That cool strip of green rocking-chairs had acted on them all like a spider’s web, with the manager of 110the King’s Garden sitting in the middle of it, murmuring cool things concerning drinks in an iced voice. Exquisite white linen⁶¹⁵ suits of clothes, the only blot³⁶⁶ on whose spotlessness was the nigger inside them, ambled⁶¹⁶ up and down the line, like field-marshals reviewing the household cavalry, armed humanely⁶¹⁷ with lemon squashes and whiskies and sodas⁶¹⁸.

The gardener, Mrs. Rust, the suffragette, and Courtesy enlisted⁶¹⁹ in this force, and sat in a state of torpor⁶²⁰ only partially⁶²¹ dispelled⁶²² by luncheon, until Mrs. Rust began to look herself again. Her hat straightened and elevated itself to its normal position, and perched upon her hair like a nest of flowers on a ripe hay-field. The curls dried up like parsley after rain.

Little by little the other tourists regained⁶²⁴ consciousness, and with much show of energy set forth to the nearest buggy stand.

At about five, Courtesy, who was never happy unless she was moving with the crowd, became restless.

“Let’s take a buggy and go back to the wharf,” she suggested.

“We will hire a four-wheeler and return to the pier³⁵⁶,” said Mrs. Rust in a contradictory⁶²⁵ voice.

Buggy or four-wheeler, there was only one sort of vehicle to be found in Port of the West. They manned the nearest conveyance⁶²⁶ and quibbled not over its title.

“It would be frightful⁵³² if we missed the boat,” 111said Courtesy, who always said the thing that everybody else had already thought of saying, but rejected.

For the Caribbeania had begun raking the atmosphere with hoarse⁵¹⁷ calls for its dispersed⁶²⁷ passengers.

But at the wharf the launch was still fussily⁶²⁸ collecting the mails.

There was a flame-coloured azalea leaning gorgeously out of the shade of the eaves of a customs house. It was Courtesy’s colour—so obviously hers that Courtesy herself unconsciously answered its call.

“Ou—I say, that colour,” she said, and ceased, because she could not voice the echo that streamed from her heart to the azalea’s. It bent towards her like a torch blown by the wind.

“It’s autumn,” said the gardener. “And that azalea is the only thing that knows it on the island.”

“Good,” commented Mrs. Rust. “All this green greenhouse rubbish has no sense ...” she waved her hands to the palm trees that plaited their fingers over the sky in the background.

“Autumn, I think ...” began the gardener, addressing the azalea, “autumn runs into the year, crying, ‘I’m on fire, I’m on fire ...’ and yet glories all the while; just as I might say, ‘This is passion, this is passion ...’ and so it is passion, and pain as well, but I love it....”

“What a funny thing to say!” said Courtesy. “Do you say that sort of thing by mistake, you 112quaint boy, or do you know what you’re talking about?”

“My lips say it by mistake,” said the gardener. “But my heart knows it, especially when I see—a thing like that. Otherwise, why should I have become a gardener?”

He looked round for the suffragette to see if she had caught this spark out of his heart, and whether the same torch had set her alight. She was not there.

“Come now, everybody,” said Courtesy. “The launch’ll be starting in a minute.”

“But the suffragette’s not here,” said the gardener.

There was an instant’s blank as heavy as lead.

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “I can’t wait here all day. If she wants to moon around and miss the boat, let her. I am going.”

She gave a hand each to two niggers, and sprang like a detachable earthquake into the launch.

“I think I ought to wait,” said Courtesy. “She’s a little shaky after yesterday, and you’re such an irresponsible boy, gardener. She may have fainted, while we were looking the other way. Or she may be in that crowd buying souvenirs.”

The gardener looked in the crowd for that well-known round hat with the faded flowers. But he knew that she would never buy a souvenir.

“You jump in, gardener. I’ll wait,” said Courtesy. “Perhaps there’ll be another launch.”

113“Lars’ launch, missis, please,” said one of the mariners⁶²⁹ of the vessel⁶³⁰ in question.

“Come at once, girl,” said Mrs. Rust’s harsh voice from the stern.

Courtesy wavered.

Mrs. Rust made a great effort. She became extremely red. “Don’t you understand, girl, you must come?” she shouted. “I can’t spare you.... I like you....” She cleared her throat and changed her voice. “Can’t sew ... buttons ... companion ... large salary....”

But the first part of the sentence reached Courtesy’s sympathy. She jumped into the launch.

The gardener stood on the hot wharf, and his heart turned upside down. His plans were stripped from him once more by this disgracefully militant creature who had broken into his life. He hovered on the brink⁶³¹ of several thoughts at once.

“The little fool. The dear little thing. The little devil.”

He ran round the customs house. He felt convinced that it was interposing its broad person between him and his suffragette. He could almost see it dodging⁶³² to hide her from his sight.

“I shall find her in a minute,” he thought. “I’m a lucky man.” He thought that his hopes were pinned to the probability of arriving on the Caribbeania in time.

On the brown grass space there were only the goats. The gardener was astonished not to see the 114fleeing form of a woman making for the town. Things can be done very quickly if they must. The gardener was at the corner of the main street before he had time to think another thought. He looked back, and saw in one fevered glance the launch only just parting from the shore.

“Have you seen a lady in white with a brown hat?” he asked of a policeman.

“Yes, please, sah.”

“Which way?”

The conversation was from beginning to end above the policeman’s head. But such a very hot buckra man must be humoured. At random⁶³³ the policeman pointed up the main street. The gardener was indeed a man of luck, for that was the right direction.

The main street on a fiery⁶³⁴ afternoon was as long as eternity, but in certain states of mind a man may bridge eternity in a breath, and not know what he has crossed.

He was on the race-course. He looked back and the launch was approaching the Caribbeania in the far-off bay, like a dwarf⁶³⁵ panting defiance at a giant.

When he was half-way across the race-course, he saw a white figure surmounted⁶³⁶ by a brown straw hat, in the Botanical Gardens, in the shade of a banyan⁶³⁷ tree.

The suffragette had lighted a cigarette in a laborious attempt to appear calm, but she pressed her hand to her breast as though she had been running. 115“I’m not coming,” she shouted, when he was within shouting distance.

He vaulted⁶³⁸ the railing of the race-course, and the railing of the garden. “What a bore!” he said. “Then I must stop too.”

“Why?” she asked.

Very far off, the launch was nestling at the side of the Caribbeania.

“For reasons I cannot be bothered to repeat to you.”

She veiled herself in a cloud of smoke.

“You know,” he added, “this is a repetition of the Elizabeth Hammer episode. Pure hysteria. Darling.”

There was an appreciable⁶³⁹ pause.

“Why, you’re right. So it is,” said the suffragette.

“Come on,” shouted the gardener. “We can catch it yet.”

“If I come,” she said, “it will be strong, not weak.”

“Of course,” said the gardener. “Come on.”

“It would be much easier to stay here.”

“Oh, much,” panted the gardener. “Come on, come on.”

So they ran, and on the way back they discovered how interminable the main street was, and how relentless⁶⁴⁰ is the sun of the West Atlantic. But when they reached the wharf, the launch was still clinging to the liner.

116“A guinea,” shouted the suffragette, who was experiencing the joys of very big-game hunting, “to the boatman who can get us up to the Caribbeania before she starts.”

She spoke in the voice of one accustomed to speaking in Trafalgar Square, and everybody understood her. A boat practically cut the feet from under them before she had finished speaking, and in it they splashed furiously out into the bay.

“We shall catch it,” said the gardener, rowing energetically with one finger. “I’m a man of luck.”

He was posing as one who would not utter a reproach. It was a convenient pose for all concerned. When they were about half-way, the suffragette said, “You know—it takes a little courage to admit hysteria.”

“Of course it does, my dear,” said the gardener. “I wouldn’t have done it for the world.”

Presently they were within bare shouting distance of the whale which had threatened to make Jonahs of them. A liner’s farewells are like those of a great many women I know, very elastic indeed.

“You’ll do it,” shouted a voice from the high boat-deck.

They did it. The Captain shook his finger at them from the bridge.

“What happened?” asked Courtesy, meeting them on the main deck with a shawl to put round the suffragette. Some women seem to think that a 117shawl, or a hot bath, or a little drop of sal-volatile are equal to any emergency under the sun.

“She didn’t know that was the last launch,” said the gardener, still posing as the magnanimous defender⁶⁴¹.

“Yes, I did,” said the suffragette.

“She was buying a souvenir round the corner,” persisted the gardener.

“No, I wasn’t,” contradicted the lady. “I made up my mind not to come back to the Caribbeania.”

“Ou, I say, how killing of you!” said Courtesy. “But he changed your mind?”

“No. I overcame it.”

“You quaint mite,” said Courtesy.

The gardener’s pose momentarily ended here, for he was stricken with whirling of the head and sickness, after running in the sun. Although there was a touch of martyrdom about it, it was not a dignified ending to a really effective pose. He had to seek the comfort of Hilda in his cabin.

Hilda had three flowers now, and they had cost her her independence, for she leaned upon a stick. But among her round green leaves she held up bravely her trinity of little gold suns.

The gardener being thus removed, Courtesy and the suffragette sat on the promenade-deck, and discussed the day. The suffragette was astonished to find herself in this position, being addressed as “my dear,” by a contemporary. “Just like a real girl,” 118she thought, for as she had never passed through the mutual hair-brushing stage with other girls, she always expected to be hated, and never to be loved. She found it rather delightful²²⁶ to have Courtesy’s hand passed through her arm, but she also found it awkward, and hardly knew how to adjust her own arm to the unaccustomed contact. The very small details of intercourse⁶⁴² are very hard indeed to a snake, though pleasant by reason of novelty.

“So you didn’t want to come back, and he bullied⁶⁴³ you?” said Courtesy, frankly inquisitive⁶⁴⁴. “After all, my dear, that’s what women are for.”

“It is NOT!” shouted the suffragette. “Women are not born with a curse on them like that. I chose to come back; I made a great effort, and came.”

“O Lor’!” said Courtesy, and tactfully changed the subject. Courtesy’s tact was always easily visible to the naked eye. “My dear, I must tell you what a killing interview I had with old Mrs. Rust. She clutched my arm when I got into the launch—think of that, my dear—and presently she said in a gruff sort of frightened voice, as if she was confessing a crime, ‘Miss Courtesy, I refuse to part with you; you are what I have been looking for; you are not to pay any attention to anybody else—do you hear? I forbid it.’ I screamed with laughter—on the quiet, you know. I said, ‘Do you want me to be a substitute for Hammer, Mrs. Rust?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Hammer was only a stopgap; I was keeping the position open for a person like you. I will 119give you two hundred a year if you will promise to stay by me as long as you can bear me’—and then she shouted as if she had made a mistake, and thought that noise could cover it—‘I mean as long as I can bear you.’”

“So what did you answer?” asked the suffragette.

“My dear, two hundred a year—what could I say?”

“But what were you originally going out to Trinity Island for?” asked the suffragette. “To visit relatives, weren’t you? What will they say?”

“Oh, they won’t say anything—to two hundred a year. I was really only coming out as a globe-trotter. I loathe⁵⁵¹ colonial relations.”

The matrimonial motive was the skeleton in Courtesy’s cupboard.

“But wasn’t it killing, my dear?”

“Very killing,” agreed the suffragette gravely. She felt like one speaking a foreign tongue.

And then it occurred to Courtesy that she was squeezing the arm of one who, after all, had a criminal disregard of convention. She withdrew her arm, and proceeded to try and storm that house which she considered to be built on sand.

“I wish I could understand what you are up to, my dear?” she said. “Can’t I persuade you to leave that naughty gardener, or to marry him? You needn’t run away, or drown yourself or anything, just say to him, ‘This won’t do.’ I should be 120frightfully glad if I could feel you were all right. Why don’t you get married on landing?”

“We don’t want to,” said the suffragette, who was too inexperienced in the ways of The Generation to feel offended. “We neither of us ever pretended to want to.”

“Ou yes, of course I know the catchwords. I know you just came together as friends, and didn’t see any harm in it.”

“But we didn’t come as friends—we came as enemies.”

“Yes,” said Courtesy, with a furrowed⁶⁴⁵ brow. “But really, my dear, enemies don’t do these things.”

“They do. We do.”

“But, my good girl, you must know—you can’t be as innocent as all that.”

“Great Scott, no!” said the suffragette. “I’m not innocent!”

“Then am I to conclude,” said Courtesy, suddenly frigid⁶⁴⁶, “that you fully realise the meaning of the life you are leading?”

“You are to conclude that,” said the suffragette, in a voice of growing militancy⁶⁴⁸. “I realise its meaning much more fully than you do. I shall leave the gardener directly it becomes convenient to me to do so. For an utter stranger his behaviour has certainly been insufferable.”

“O Lor’!” exclaimed Courtesy, falling back upon her original line of defence. “An utter stranger 121... I must go and button Mrs. Rust into her evening gown.”

There is something very annoying to a woman in being accused of innocence⁶⁴⁹. The suffragette was quite cross.

For the next two days the Caribbeania threaded her way cautiously between shore and shore. The horizon was frilled with palm-embroidered lands. Dry, terrible-looking beaches, backed by arid⁶⁵⁰ brown hills, marred⁶⁵¹ the soft character of those calm seas. It was as if the Caribbeania saluted⁶⁵² the coast of South America, and South America turned her back upon her visitor. At two or three ports in that forbidding land the boat touched. Drake had passed that way, and had left his ill-gotten halo upon the coast, but that was the only life of the land. The flat, dead towns seemed brooding over flat, dead tragedies.

It was almost a relief to the travellers when the last night fell, and the ship was enclosed in darkness and its trivial insularity⁶⁵³. There was a great dance that night. Captain Walters called it the Veterans’ dance, because the chalked deck was thick with non-combatants, who had determined to cast care aside and join with youth, because after all it was the last night, and one would never meet any of these people again. As a matter of fact, there was no youth to be joined, for youth sat out and began its farewells. Half a dozen hours is not an over-large allowance 122of time for farewells between people who have known each other three throbbing⁶⁵⁴ ocean weeks.

The suffragette actually danced with the chief engineer. He always danced with ladies who could not find partners, being a conscientious young man of forty-two, with a brand-new bride at home. The suffragette knew well that by his courtesy she was branded as one undesired, and she laughed her invisible cynical⁶⁵⁵ laugh.

I think men are akin to sheep as well as to monkeys, and the theory only needs a Darwin to trace the connection. I have yet to meet the man who, where women are concerned, does not follow in the track of others of his kind. I think that very few men conceive an original preference for a woman unbiassed by the public tendency.

Directly the gardener saw the suffragette dancing with the chief engineer, he wondered why he was not dancing with her himself, although she danced rather badly. The gardener felt a mysterious call to go and monopolise her directly she was at liberty.

“I’m glad you have come to talk to me,” said the suffragette. “Because I shall go on shore early to-morrow, and should like to say good-bye to you.”

“Good-bye?” questioned the gardener.

“You didn’t really expect me to stay with you, did you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the gardener, and thought how peaceful and how stupid life would be without her. “I shan’t dream of letting you go.” And even while 123he said it, he experienced the awful feeling of being powerless to make his words good. He realised for the first time how indispensable to a man’s sight are soft straight hair that has never committed itself to any real colour, and a small pointed face, and quick questioning eyes. But there was something indescribable, peculiar to the suffragette, that made it impossible to humble oneself before her. She was anything but a queen among women; no man had ever wished to be trodden under her feet, though they were small and pretty. Plain people often have pretty hands and feet, a mark of Nature’s tardy self-reproach.

To any other woman, the gardener might have said, “Please, my dear ...” with excellent results. He had a good voice with a tenor edge to it, and he could pose very nicely as a supplicator. But not to the suffragette.

“I have not brought you all this way just to let you return to your militant courses,” he said, with a sort of hollow firmness. “I owe a duty to Trinity Island, after all, now that I have imported you.”

The suffragette smiled and said she was tired and would go to bed—good-bye.

The gardener said Good-night.

The Caribbeania and the first ray of the sun reached the Island simultaneously⁶⁵⁶ next morning. When the gardener came on deck at half-past seven he found himself confronted by the town of union, backed by its sudden hills. The Caribbeania, like a 124robber’s victim, ignominiously⁶⁵⁷ bound to the pier, was being relieved of its valuables. The air was thick with talk. On the pier the over-dressed representatives of British rule, in blue serge and gold braid, rubbed shoulders with the under-dressed results of their kind tyranny, in openwork shirts and three-quarters of a pair of trousers.

“Your wife went off early,” said the fourth officer to the gardener. “I asked her whether she were eloping all by herself, and she said you knew all about it.”

“Thanks,” said the gardener curtly⁶⁵⁸.

You will hardly believe me when I tell you that his first conscious thought after this announcement was that he had no money to tip the steward²⁸² with. The suffragette meant a good deal to him, and among the things she meant was temporary financial accommodation.

I hope that you have noticed by now that he was not a money-lover, but a steward was a steward, and this particular steward had been kind in improvising⁶⁵⁹ a crutch⁶⁶⁰ for Hilda. Any assistance from the suffragette was, of course, taken as temporary: independence was one of the gardener’s chronic⁶⁶¹ poses. He meant to change it from a rather hollow dream into reality on arriving on the Island; he supposed that he would be able to turn his brains into money. He considered that no such brain could ever have landed at union Town. Its price in coin, which had been rather at a discount in the stupid turmoil of London, 125would be instantly appreciable under this empty sky. His pose on the Island was to be The One Who Arrives, in capital letters.

He went down to his cabin to pack his little luggage. He had nothing beloved to pack now; men’s clothes seem to be inhuman things without a touch of the lovable, and they were all he had. For Hilda was dead. For the last week of her life she had been a little concrete exclamation⁶⁶² of protest against her unnatural²³² surroundings. One born to look simply at the sun, from the shelter of a whitewashed⁶⁶³ cottage wall, with others of her like jostling beautifully round her; a fantastic fate had willed that she should reach the flower of her life in a tipsy cabin, with a sea-wind singing outside the thick glass against which she leant. The gardener had given her a sailor’s grave somewhere near the spot in the Spanish Main to which I hope the spirit of Drake clings, for his mother-sea received him there. It was hardly a suitable ending for Hilda, but it was the best available.

The gardener set himself to put his scanty⁶⁶⁴ property together stealthily, and creep from the boat, that the stewards might not see him go. He had an unposed horror of ungenerosity. To him, as to most men, the tip was more of a duty than the discharge of a debt. He suffered keenly for a while from the discovery that there was no escaping from the stewards to-day, they were stationed with careful carelessness at every corner. Presently the siege was 126raised unexpectedly by the arrival of the boot-boy with a note.

“The lady left it, sir.”

It contained a five-pound note, and it was addressed in the suffragette’s small defiant⁶⁶⁵ handwriting.

Of course the hero of a novel should have thrown the whole missive into the sea. He should have struck an attitude and explained to the admiring boot-boy that such gifts from a woman could only be looked upon as an insult. But you must remember the gardener considered that the fortunes of the Island were at his feet. And he would not have gone so far as to pose at his own expense—not to speak of the steward’s. He put the note in his pocket, and went to the purser for change.

When his duties were discharged, he came on deck to collect any plans that might be in the air. It is a most annoying fact that theories will not take the place of plans. In theory you may be The One Who Arrives, but in practice you have to think about passing the customs and finding a cheap hotel and getting yourself a sun-helmet. I think the world has an antipathy⁶⁶⁶ to heroes; it certainly makes things very hard for them.

On deck Courtesy was sitting calm and ready. Her plans had been made for three days. She had only just stopped short of writing a time-table for the hourly career of herself and Mrs. Rust throughout their sojourn⁶⁶⁷ on the island. She had a genius for details.

127“The suffragette has disappeared,” said the gardener. A disarming⁶⁶⁸ frankness was one of his weapons.

“I’m jolly glad,” replied Courtesy. “I believe you owe that to me, you naughty boy. I gave her a bit of my mind about it the other day.”

The gardener uttered no reproaches. He felt none. For he had learnt by now that the suffragette would never be affected⁶⁶⁹ by a bit of anybody’s mind.

“What are you going to do?” asked Courtesy. “We are going to the St. Maurice Hotel for four days—Father Christopher told us of it—and at mid-day on Saturday we go up to the hills for a fortnight, and then we hire a car and tour round the Island, staying twenty-four hours at Alligator Bay.”

“I’m going to look for work,” said the gardener.

“Sugar or bananas?”

“Neither. Head-work.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “Nobody on the Island ever uses their head except to carry luggage on.”

“That’s why I shall find work. There’s no competition in my line.”

“You funny ...” giggled Courtesy. “Isn’t he quaint, Father Christopher?”

For the priest was passing on his twenty-second circuit of the deck.

“Very droll⁶⁷⁰, no doubt,” said the priest in the voice of a refrigerator, and continued to pass. He 128was very much annoyed with the gardener’s soul.

The gardener waited till he came round again before saying to Courtesy, “Besides, I have to look for the suffragette.”

“I hope you won’t find her this time,” said Courtesy. “Will you come to tea with us one day, and tell us which of your searches seems most hopeful. You see, now the suffragette’s gone, you are respectable for the moment, and I needn’t be afraid for Mrs. Rust’s morals.”

When Courtesy giggled, her hair laughed in the most extraordinary way. Everything she did was transmuted⁶⁷¹ into something wonderful by that halo of hers.

“I’ll come to-day, if I may,” said the gardener, who had never mastered the art of social diffidence. “You’d better have me to-day, for I hope I shan’t be respectable to-morrow.”

Courtesy did not want him to-day. In her code there was only one programme for the first day in a strange land. It was made up of a visit to the principal church, the principal shop, the principal public gardens, and to a few “old-world relics⁶⁷³ of the past.” It did not include ordinary five-o’clock tea with a familiar figure. But, on the other hand, her invincible⁶⁷⁴ conventionality made it impossible for her to evade⁶⁷⁵ the gardener’s suggestion. Courtesy was content to suffer for her convictions. At any rate, you will notice that Mrs. Rust was not consulted.

“You may come,” Courtesy said. “At five. 129We are due back from the cathedral at a quarter to.”

Probably the reason why Mrs. Rust submitted to Courtesy’s tyranny from the first was that no other woman in the world would have done so.

The land reeled under the gardener’s feet as he arrived. The only comfort in parting with the sea after a long intimacy⁶⁷⁶ is that for the first day or two the land follows the example of its sister element. The gardener found more difficulty in walking straight along union High Street than he had experienced along the deck of the Caribbeania.

The morning was yet very young when he put his little luggage down at the bamboo-tree arch of a house that proclaimed itself ready to receive boarders at moderate terms. He relied much on impulse, and the little house, which was lightly built on its own first story, so to speak, beckoned to him. But only in theory, for when he mounted the flight of wooden steps, and, through the open door, saw the dirty living-room, seething⁶⁷⁷ with gaudy⁶⁷⁸ trifles, he knew that in practice it was better suited to his means than to his mind.

However, he had rung the bell. One has to pay penalties for acting⁶⁷⁹ on impulse. A woman with black wire hair, a face the colour of varnished⁶⁸⁰ deal, and a pale pink dressing-gown, appeared. Luckily she transpired⁶⁸¹ to be the hostess before the gardener had voiced the fact that he mistook her for a drunken housemaid.

130“I want a room here,” began the gardener, who had never wanted anything less in his life. But the three pounds lay very light in his pocket.

“We can give you one,” said the lady, and took his portmanteau. She could have given him several, but not one worth having. She conducted him through one or two doors that led from the living-room. Each showed a less attractive bedroom than the one before, but the cheapest was barely within the range of prudence⁶⁸², as far as the gardener’s pocket was concerned. In a leaden voice, proceeding⁶⁸³ from a heart of lead, he concluded a bargain for the temporary possession of the least inviting⁶⁸⁴. And when it was done, and the portmanteau deposited drearily⁶⁸⁵ in the middle of a dirty linoleum⁶⁸⁶ floor, he discovered that time had been standing still, and that it was hardly nearer five o’clock than before.

It was the first time he had realised the four thousand miles that lay between him and the kindly grey pavements of Penny Street. He remembered the look of the London lamps reflected in the slaty⁶⁸⁷ mirrors of London streets ... the smile of the ridiculous little griffin who sits on a pedestal at the top of Fleet Street, playing the ’cello with his shield ... the shrugging shoulders of St. Paul’s on tiptoe on the peak of Ludgate Hill ... the dead leaves blowing down the Broad Walk, in the rain....

There is no pose that saves you from that awful 131longing for the things that are no longer yours, and which you hated while you possessed.

“I said I was enough for myself. And I am not,” said the gardener, and hid his face in the mosquito net.

Strange things in barbaric colours made the garden outside a whirlpool. Sometimes these things say to you: “You are a very long way from home”; and you exult⁶⁸⁸, and think This is Life. But sometimes they say again: “You are a very long way from home”; and you cry out, and think This is Worse than Death.

Now there are moral drawbacks about the posing habit. But there are also advantages, though possibly none deserved. For after three minutes of despair the gardener straightened himself, blinked, and began putting his spare shirt into a drawer that would not shut. He was posing as One Who was Seeing Life, and who was Making the Best of it. The vision that inspired this brave pose was the ghost of a pair of small haggard eyes, set in a short pointed face, eyes that cried easily and never surrendered. A thin unbeautiful ghost with clenched⁶⁹⁰ fists, and in the air, the ghost of a low and militant voice.

“I am not enough,” the gardener admitted. “But together, we are enough.”

He whistled a comic song tentatively. The Englishman never whistles or sings to suit his feelings. 132He dies to the tune¹⁵⁴ of “Tipperary,” or goes to his wedding humming the “Dead March in Saul.”

There was no more life to be seen in that hot little room, even by one fixed in an optimistic pose. He emerged into the sitting-room, and through an opposite and open door he could see the pink dressing-gown, containing his landlady⁶⁹¹, heaving sleepily under a mosquito net. One of her bare feet was drooping under the net. At this he had to swallow down London again violently, and remember that he was Seeing Life, and that he was Luckier than Most.

Did you know that the surest way of ensuring luck is to be sure that you are lucky?

“Now I will find my suffragette,” he said, standing between the bamboos at the gate. And he expelled an entering misgiving⁶⁹² that he was perhaps presuming on his luck.

It was curiously cool in the shade of the high cactus⁶⁹³ hedge that ran along one side of the way. A fresh breeze, like the unbidden guest at the wedding, conscious that it was not attired⁶⁹⁴ in character, crept guiltily in from the sea. The sun, which would have disclaimed⁶⁹⁶ even distant relationship with the cool copper halfpenny that inhabits English skies, fretted⁶⁹⁷ out the black shadows across and across the white street. The gardener thought painfully of many glasses of cold water that he had criminally wasted in England. He stiffened⁶⁹⁸ his long upper lip, and tried to look for new worlds instead of remembering the old.

133He went into the Botanical Gardens, and sat on a seat opposite the mad orchids⁷⁰⁰. I think the Almighty was a little tired of His excellent system by the time He came to the orchids, so He allowed them to fashion themselves. For they are contrived⁷⁰¹, I think, and not spontaneously created like the rest.

On the other end of the seat were two children, so blessedly English that for a moment the gardener smelt Kensington Gardens. The girl wore very little between her soft neck and her long brown arms and legs, except a white frill or two, and a passion flower in her sash. The boy, more modest, was encased in a white sailor suit. Both were finished off at the feet with sandals.

Hardly had the gardener sat down when he was regretfully aware that he had sat by mistake on a pirate-ship in mid-ocean. The two commanders looked coldly at him from their end of the treasure-laden deck, and there was an awkward silence which somehow left the impression that much exciting talk had immediately preceded it on that vessel.

“I beg your pardon,” said the gardener. “I forgot to tell you that I am the prisoner you seized when you captured your last prize. There was a desperate resistance, but in spite of heavy odds⁷⁰², you overcame me.”

The boy, because he was a boy, looked for a second towards his mahogany-coloured Nana, who was staring an orchid⁶⁹⁹ out of countenance farther up the path. The girl, because she was a girl, looked 134neither right nor left, but straight at the gardener, and said: “All right then. But you mustn’t let your feet dangle¹² into the sea. And you must be very frightened.”

The gardener restrained his feet, and became so frightened that the whole vessel shook. The boy continued to look doubtful, until his sister reminded him in a hoarse whisper: “It’s all right, Aitch, we were wanting somebody to walk the plank⁷⁰³.”

In providing a willing villain, the gardener was supplying a long-felt want in pirate-ships. So thoroughly did he do his duty that when he was finally obliged as a matter of convention to walk the walking-stick blindfolded⁷⁰⁴, and die a miserable death by drowning in the gravel-path, the pirate-ship seemed to have lost its point.

“Let’s betend,” said the lady-pirate, “that Aitch and me are fairies, and we touch you with our wand and you turn into a speckled pony⁷⁰⁵.”

“Greatscod, no,” said Aitch; for there are limits to what a fellow of seven can betend in company. “Don’t let’s have any fairying, my good Zed. Let’s betend we’re just Aitch and Zed, and we’ll show the prisoner the Secret Tree.”

So they set off, and the Nana, who might as well have been a Nanning-machine for all the individuality she put into her work, trotted⁷⁰⁶ behind them.

The Secret Tree was one of those secrets that remain inviolate⁷⁰⁷ because it occurs to nobody to lay them bare. It was an everyday little palm tree, exquisitely⁷⁰⁸ 135bandaged by Nature in cocoanut matting; it was very fairy-like, and when you looked up at its fronds⁷⁰⁹ in their infinite intersections⁷¹⁰ against the sky, you saw a thrill, like the thrill you see on a cornfield curtseying in the wind, or in the light moving across watered silk. In one of the folds of the palm tree’s garment a White Pawn⁷¹¹, belonging to Aitch, had made his home. He lived there for days at a time—the gardener was told with bated breath—and the park-keeper never knew he was there. At night he saw the fireflies light their lamps, and heard the swift slither of the fearful scorpion⁷¹²; once he had reported an adventure with a centipede three times his own size. That pawn was the epitome⁷¹³ of People Who Stay Up Late At Night, and Are Not Afraid of the Dark. A super-grown-up.

On their way to the garden gate, each child held a hand of the gardener, and the automatic Nana walked behind. As they came out into the main street, the gardener thought that the houses looked like skulls—so white they were, and so soulless, and their windows so black and empty.

“Greatscod,” said Aitch, “what is happening to the church steeple?”

For it was reeling in front of them, to the tune of a paralysing open roar from underground.

Behind them the automaton⁷¹⁴ blossomed madly into life, Nana fled shrieking back into the garden.

Those two things happened, one by one, like sparks struck out of a flaming experience. Then everything 136happened at once, and yet lasted a lifetime. There seemed not a second to spare, and yet nothing to be done.

The gardener felt unspeakably terrified, his mother earth shot away from under him, truth was proved false. He discovered that he had seized Aitch and Zed, one under each arm; and later on—his memory having vaulted the blank—he found that he was lying on them in the gutter⁷¹⁵, and that Aitch was yapping like a dog. Zed was crying, “Mother, Mother.” And the gardener, with a quick vision of some one watering a cool English herbaceous border, also said, “Mother, Mother.”

After a while a green beetle ran past his eye, and he recalled the moment, and raised himself upon his hands and knees. A fire of pain burnt him suddenly, and he turned his head and saw a pyre of twisted iron posts heaped upon his legs.

The air was thick with strange sounds, muffled⁷¹⁶ as if from a gramophone. Some one quite near, but unseen, was shouting, “Oh, Oh,” as regularly as a clock’s chime. There was a rending⁷¹⁷ wheeze⁷¹⁸ behind them, and the gardener looked round in time to see a palm tree sink with dignity into a trench⁷¹⁹ that had been gashed⁷²⁰ at its feet. But that might have been a dream.

He felt absolutely sick with horror. His head seemed as though it were all at once too big for his skin. His whole being throbbed⁷²¹ terribly in a sort 137of echo of the three throbs⁷²² that had laid life by the heels.

Yock—Yollock—Yollock. A pounce⁷²³, and then two shakes, like a terrier dealing¹⁷⁴ with a rat. Why had one ever trusted oneself to such a risky⁷²⁴ crumb⁷²⁵ of creation as this world? The gardener lost himself in littleness. And presently found that he had insinuated⁷²⁶ himself into a sitting position, and was feeling very sick indeed.

“That was an earthquake,” remarked Zed, with the truly feminine trick of jumping to foregone conclusions. And she burst into tears, wailing⁷²⁸ still, “Mother, Mother.”

“It is funny we should both have thought of her,” observed the gardener, forgetting that there was room for more than one mother in this tiny world. His eyes were fixed on a thin and fearful stream of blood that was issuing from between two bricks in the mass of miscellany that had once been a house. “Blood—from a skull?” he thought, and fainted.

For centuries his mind skirted round some enormous joke. It was so big that he could not see its point, and then again it was so little that he lost it. At any rate it was round, and turned with a jovial hum.

Later on he was aware of the solution of a problem which he felt had been troubling him all his life. What colour was the face of a nigger pale with fright? It was several colours, chiefly the shade of 138a wooden horse he had once loved, but mottled. But the whites of the eyes were more blue than white, they shone like electric light. With an effort he fitted the various parts of his mind together.

“Hullo, constable,” he said in a voice he could not easily control. “This is a pretty business, isn’t it?” And he tried to rise, and to whistle a bar or two, in an effort to assume the pose of the hero who trifles in the face of death. But he could not rise. He was pinned to the pavement by a leg that seemed somehow to have lost its identity.

It is not in the least romantic to be hurt. There is something curiously dirty in the feeling of one’s own pain, and in the sight of one’s own blood, though wounds in others are rather dramatic.

Now Courtesy was a person who, without ever trying to be sensational, was often unexpected by mistake. Coincidence seemed to haunt her. Out of the hundred streets that lay shattered in union Town that afternoon, she chose the one in which the gardener lay, and, accompanied by the priest, she bore down upon that unheroic hero, laden with brandy and bandages. The gardener saw her large face, frank as a sunflower, between him and the yellow sky.

The priest was quite obviously a saviour. You could see in his eye that he was succouring the wounded. You could hear in his voice as he addressed the terrified hotel porters who followed him that he was busy rising nobly to an emergency.

139“Why, gardener,” said Courtesy, in the tones of one greeting a friend at a garden party. “You here? I was wondering what had become of you. Now what’s the matter with you?”

She poured him out some brandy, as though it were the ordinary thing for a lady to offer to a friend in the street. And the gardener’s world regained its feet, he wondered why he had been so frightened.

“Poor little mites,” said Courtesy to Aitch and Zed. “They won’t forget this in a hurry, will they?”

There is something very comforting in the utterly⁷²⁹ banal¹⁰⁸. That is why the instinct is so strong in good women to make you a cup of tea, and poke⁵³ the fire, when you are crossed in love.

“But if she had been the suffragette ...” thought the gardener. He knew quite well that the thing would not have been so well done, had it been the suffragette. He was fully aware that the operation of having his leg put into improvised⁷³⁰ splints, and of being lifted upon a door, would have been much more painful, had it been accomplished⁷³¹ by the little nervous hands of the suffragette, instead of the large excellent hands of Courtesy.

It is discouraging to those of us who have spent much money on becoming fully efficient in first aid and hygiene⁷³² and practical economy and all the luxuries of the modern female intellect, to find how perfect imperfection can seem.

140“Thank you—you little darling,” said the gardener with his eyes shut, when, after a few spasms of red pain, he was safe upon the door. White-clad hotel porters stood like tombstones at his head and feet.

“Lor’ bless you,” said Courtesy. “Take him to the St. Maurice, porter. It’s the only place left more or less standing, I should think.”

“It is not,” said the priest. “Excuse me, Miss Briggs, there are thousands in this stricken town in need of our help, and I should prefer that only the gentler and worthier⁷³³ of the sufferers should come under that roof. There are many excellent resting-places where our friend here would be far more suitably placed. You ought to know his character by now, and you must think of your own good name.”

“Rot,” said Courtesy. “What do his morals matter when he’s broken his leg?”

“Remember you are also succouring these innocent children,” persisted the priest. “Would you have them under the same roof?”

“Rot,” repeated Courtesy. “The roof’ll be all right.”

“Dose little children ...” said the policeman suddenly. “He covahed dem when dat house was fallin’. Verree brave gentleman. I chahnced to be runnin’ by....”

“Of course he did,” said Courtesy. “The St. Maurice, porter.” And seizing Aitch and Zed each by a hand, she started the procession.

141The High Street looked as if one side of it had charged the other with equally disastrous results to both. At different points in it, fire and heavy smoke were animating⁷³⁴ the scene. Distracted men and women panted and moaned and tore at the wreckage⁷³⁵ with bleeding hands. A little crying crowd was collected round a woman who lay nailed to the ground by a mountain of bricks, with her face fixed in a glare of terrible surprise. By the cathedral steps the dead lay in a row, shoulder to shoulder, with the horrid⁷³⁷ uniformity of sprats upon a plate. Courtesy lifted up Zed and called Aitch’s attention to the healthier distress⁷³⁸ of a little dog, which ran around looking for its past in the extraordinary mazes⁷³⁹ of the present.

The gardener, swinging along painfully upon his door, opened his eyes and saw the fires. To his surprise he recognised the house which could boast the highest flames. Its wall had fallen to disclose the shattered remains of the rooms in which the gardener had lately wrestled with despair. The bamboos and the gorgeous garden watched unmoved the pillar of fire that danced in their midst. There was no sign of the wire-haired woman.

But only one thought came to the gardener’s mind on the subject. “Why she will see that. It is a beacon⁷⁴⁰ from me to her.”

As a matter of fact she did not.

A pretty woman, crying in a curious laughing voice, ran into Courtesy’s arms. “My little babies ...” she quavered. “What a catastrophe. I don’t 142know where my husband is. There is a grand piano on my bed.”

“This is my mother,” said Aitch.

“Come along to the St. Maurice,” said Courtesy. “That’s where I am taking your babies to. Our piano there is still in its proper place.”

So they all followed the gardener.

“Somebody must go and find a doctor,” said Courtesy at the door of the St. Maurice. She looked suggestively at the priest.

But he replied, “I wash my hands of the matter, Miss Briggs. I consider this to be a judgment⁷⁴¹ on that young man.”

“A judgment?” wept the mother of Aitch and Zed. “Why, what has he done?”

“He saved the lives of your babies,” replied Courtesy. “And anyway, a judgment needs a surgeon just as much as a simple fracture.”

“Yerce, yerce, only don’t ask me to help,” said the priest. “I prefer to succour those deserving of help.” And he went out into the street again. He seemed wedded⁷⁴² to the word succour. It is a pose word, and fitted him exactly. Nothing but an earthquake could have made this worm turn. But the effect of the disaster on the priest was an obstinate⁷⁴³ certainty that there was a Jonah in the case, and that, as heaven was never to blame, the wicked were entirely responsible.

“Oh, Lor’,” said Courtesy. “I’ll have to go for a surgeon myself.”

143“I’ll go with you,” cried the mother of Aitch and Zed, whose name, for the sake of brevity, was Mrs. Tring. “I don’t know what has become of my Dally⁷⁴⁴” (who was her husband).

“Somebody must sit with the gardener,” said Courtesy, when she came back from a successful search for an intact bed, into which, with the help of a housemaid, she had inserted the gardener.

“I will sit with him,” said the harsh voice of Mrs. Rust, as she rose from a seat where she had been sitting with an enormous paper bag held in a rigid⁶⁴⁷ hand. “I refuse to run about the streets with brandy. All the old cats are doing that.”

“Why, Mrs. Rust,” observed Courtesy, whose conventionality was not quite so striking after an earthquake as it had been upon the comparatively stable Atlantic. “I had clean forgotten that you existed.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust. “I was buying mangoes when the incident occurred. Perhaps the gardener would like a mango.”

“Perhaps he would. I am so glad to see that you don’t take the same view about the gardener as the——”

“I never take the same view,” barked Mrs. Rust. “Show me the boy’s room.”

So the gardener saw that poisonous hair advance along a shaft⁷⁴⁵ of sunlight that intruded⁷⁴⁶ through the broken shutter⁵⁶².

144“Your jug⁷⁴⁷ and basin are broken,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful.”

“Oh, there are several things broken in this town,” he said feverishly⁷⁴⁸. “Windows and necks and a heart or two.”

Mrs. Rust sat deliberately⁷⁴⁹ on a chair and burst into tears.

“I was buying mangoes,” she sobbed stormily, “from a black man with bleached⁷⁵⁰ hair. And the whole of a shop-front fell out on him. One brick hit my toe. I looked at the man through a sort of cage of fallen things. It was as if—one had trodden on red currants.”

“What did you do?” panted the gardener. “How fine to live in a world where things happen.”

“I ran away,” said Mrs. Rust shakily. “I didn’t pay for the mangoes.”

“I would rather have had this happen,” said the gardener after a pause, “and have broken my leg, than have had an ordinary day to meet me on Trinity Island.”

After another pause, he added: “But I have lost the suffragette. And that is another matter.”

“Was she killed?” asked Mrs. Rust, steeling herself against the commonplace duty of condolence.

“Certainly not,” replied the gardener. “She is a militant suffragette.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Rust.

“How good the world is,” said the gardener, “to provide such excellent material. The sea, and the 145earthquake, and a fighting woman to love. Just think—an earthquake—on my first day. I am a man of luck.”

“You have broken your leg,” Mrs. Rust informed him.

“I have,” admitted the gardener rather fretfully. “But then everything has its price.”

“A good many other people have come off much worse,” said Mrs. Rust. “I’m not complaining, mind, but any other woman would say you were disgracefully selfish. A lot of people are dead, and a lot of other people’s people are dead....”

“The longer I live ...” said the gardener, from the summit of his twenty-three years, “the surer I am that we make a fuss which is almost funny over death. We run after it all over the world, and then we grumble⁷⁵¹ at it when it catches us up from behind. It’s an adventure, of course, but then—so is—shaving every morning. Compare death with—love, for instance.”

He felt ashamed of this after he had said it, and tried to cover it with a little laugh which shook him, and changed into a yelp⁷⁵². After breathing hard for a little while he went on.

“We who have survived this ordeal⁷⁵³ have gained much more than we risked. I know that anything is worth a risk, the risk in itself is the gain, and to risk everything for nothing is a fine thing. Why otherwise do we climb Alps, or hunt the South Pole? In theory, I would run in front of an express train to 146save a mou. In theory I don’t mind what I pay for danger. That’s why I love the suffragette; she would risk her life for a little vote, and her honour for a bleak³¹⁴ thing like independence.”

“Do you love the suffragette?” asked Mrs. Rust, who was at heart a woman, although she believed herself to be a neutral intelligence.

“I do, I do,” cried the gardener, suddenly and gloriously losing his pose of One Who Evolves a New Scale of Values—in other words, the pose of a Paradox⁷⁵⁴. But his emotion awoke his nerves, and for a while, although the suffragette obsessed his imagination, pain obsessed the rest of the universe.

When Courtesy and the doctor came in, they found the gardener with a temperature well into three figures. So for some time Mrs. Rust was not allowed to see the patient.

By the time the gardener felt better, the earthquake, in the eyes of the townspeople of union, had become not so much of a horror as a disaster, a thing possible to dilate⁷⁵⁵ upon and even to lie about. The homeless were beginning to look upon homelessness as a state to be passed through rather than the end of things, the bereaved⁷⁵⁶ were discovering little by little that life may arise from ashes, and that sackcloth may be cut quite becomingly. Those ghosts of dead hope who still searched among the ruins were looked upon as “poor things” rather than companions in sorrow. Young nigger ladies, dressed in 147pink and silver, flaunted⁷⁵⁷ their teeth and their petticoats around the firemen who worked desultorily⁷⁵⁸ at the little gaseous⁷⁵⁹ fires that broke out among the lamentable streets. The one church that remained standing was constantly full. (The picture palace had met the fate it perhaps deserved.) There is nothing in the world so saved as a saved nigger. And nothing so lost as a lost nigger. After an earthquake it always occurs to these light and child-like minds that it is safer to be saved. The horse has fled from the stable, but the door might as well be attended to, and the padlock of salvation⁷⁶⁰ is not expensive. Fervent⁷⁶² men and women throng⁷⁶³ the pews, shouting hymns⁷⁶⁴ down the back of each other’s neck, and groaning⁷⁶⁶ away sins they do not realise, to the accompaniment of words they do not understand. Those who have lived together in innocent sin hurry to the altar for the ring, which, to these harmless transgressors, is as the fig-leaf apron⁷⁶⁷ of Eden, and heralds⁷⁶⁸ virtuous⁹⁴ tragedy.

When the gardener became well enough to resent being ill, he was allowed visitors, among whom was one, by name Dallas Tring, Esquire. This was a very honest man who, in spite of having an excellent heart, believed that he always told the truth at all costs. The only lie he permitted himself, however, was constantly on his lips. It was: “I take your meaning.”

It was obviously unnatural to him to be enthusiastic. 148It is to most very honest people. He came into the gardener’s room like an actor emerging from stage fright on to the stage.

“You saved my children from being crushed to death,” he said, and seized the gardener’s hands. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Oh, not at all,” murmured the gardener. “I pretty nearly crushed them to death myself. Have a whisky and soda.”

This last is the Trinity Island retort to everything, its loophole, its conversational salvation. The average Englishman takes several weeks to acquire the habit in the real Island style, but the gardener was always more adaptable⁷⁶⁹ than most.

Privately⁷⁷⁰ he did feel unreasonably⁷⁷¹ conceited¹¹⁷ about the rescue. He would have admitted that the impulse to gather Aitch and Zed beneath his prostrate⁷⁷² form had been unconscious, but he considered that unconscious heroism⁷⁷³ proves heroism deeply ingrained. Nevertheless, the people who voice your conceit for you are only a little less trying than the people who relieve you of the duty of being humble. One must do these things for oneself.

Mr. Dallas Tring was glad to have accomplished his duty, which was not spontaneous, but had been impressed upon him by his wife. Left to himself he would have said: “Say, that was good of you. I’d have been cut up if anything had happened to the kids.”

His wife not having warned him how to proceed, 149he began now to talk about the banana crops. It was only towards the end of the interview that he risked himself once more upon the quicksands of emotion.

“Look here, you know, it’s altogether unspeakable—what I owe you. Those are the only children we have. Aitch is a fine boy, don’t you think?”

“Fine,” agreed the gardener, relieved to be allowed a loophole of escape from, “Not at all.”

“You’re a fine boy yourself,” added Mr. Tring. “When you get well, will you come and help me?”

“What to do?”

“To start again.”

“Oh, yes,” replied the gardener. “I love starting again. What I never can do is to go on.”

After this the gardener, considered to be stronger, was allowed to see Mrs. Rust again. She was now but little better than a fretful echo of Courtesy.

Some people seem born to walk alone, and others there are who are never seen without a group behind them. Courtesy was as far a leader of men as can be compatible with having no destination to lead them to. She never knew what it was to be without a “circle.” Acquaintances were as necessary to her as air, and she used them, as she used air, innocently for her own ends.

Mrs. Rust never attained⁷⁷⁴ to the dignity either of being alone or the leader of a group, though she worshipped independence. She believed she had bought precedence of Courtesy for ￡200 a year.

150And on the occasion of this visit to the gardener, she believed that she was about to shock and surprise that wise young man.

“Do you know what I have done?” she asked, when she had to some extent overcome the nervous cautiousness of behaviour impressed upon her by the absent Courtesy.

“I do not,” said the gardener, whose gently irreverent manner towards her was his salvation in her eyes. “It’s sure to be something that any one else would be ashamed of doing.”

Mrs. Rust bridled⁷⁷⁵. “It was partly to annoy you that I did it,” she said. “Because you dared to advise me not to. I have sent my son Samuel a cheque, so as to launch his hotel.”

“Rash woman,” protested the gardener. “If you knew your son Samuel as well as I do——”

“I know he is my son, so he cannot be altogether a fool.”

The gardener bent his thick threatening eyebrows upon her.

“Do you know what else I have done?” she continued.

“I tremble to think,” replied the invalid.

“I have advertised for your suffragette in the union Paper. Courtesy said what a mercy it would be if she should have got safely away and wouldn’t come back, so I advertised, just to show that I disagreed. I never knew her name, so I described her appearance....”

151“Her little size ...” he said eagerly. “Her small and hollow eyes. Her darling-coloured hair that always blew forward along her cheeks....”

“Well, I didn’t put it like that,” said Mrs. Rust.

“She had such wonderful little hands,” said the gardener, upon whom a sick-bed had a softening⁷⁷⁶, not to say maudlin⁷⁷⁷ effect. “You could see everything she thought in her hands. They were not very white, but pale brown. You might have mentioned them. But she is obviously mine. Nobody could overlook that. Nobody could overlook her at all.”

“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Rust, “she is a perfectly insignificant-looking young woman. And I am sure that she would strongly resent your describing her as though she were a dog with your name on its collar. She had sensible views about women.”

You have been intended to suppose all this time that the suffragette had succumbed⁷⁷⁸ to the earthquake, but as she is the heroine—though an unworthy one—of this book, I am sure you have not been deceived. Loth as I am to admit that a friend of mine should have been so near to such an experience without reaping the benefit of it, I am obliged by tiresome truth to confess that she was never aware of the earthquake as an earthquake at all.

She was in the train when it happened, a little Christian⁷⁷⁹ the Pilgrim, making her way through many difficulties up to the Delectable⁷⁸⁰ Mountains. Far off they stood, defying the pale sea and the pale plains, 152shadowed mountains, each with its cool brow crowned by a halo of cloud.

The train service in Trinity Islands is not their chief attraction. First, second, and third class alike may watch the vivid country from the windows, otherwise there is no compensation for rich or poor. The price of a first-class fare is supposed to guarantee your fellow-passengers matching yourself as nearly as possible in complexion; it also entitles you to a deformed⁷⁸¹ wicker chair in a compartment⁷⁸² that a cow would appeal against in the Home Country. The wicker chair, unsettled by its migratory⁷⁸³ life, amuses itself by travelling drunkenly around the truck, unless you lash¹⁴¹ yourself to the door-handle with your pocket-handkerchief, or evolve some other ingenious device.

The suffragette was always without inspirations in the cause of comfort. She was a petty ascetic⁷⁸⁴, and never thought personal well-being⁷⁸⁵ worth the acquiring. Her body was an unfortunate detail attached to her; she resented its demands, and took but little more care if it than she did of the mustard-coloured portmanteau, another troublesome but indispensable part of her equipment. She put her body and the portmanteau each into a wicker chair in the train, and promptly⁷⁸⁶ forgot how uncomfortable they both were.

(There is much fascination⁷⁸⁷ in the big world, but I think the most wonderful thing in it is the passing of the little bubble worlds that blow and burst in many 153colours around you and me every minute of our lives. In a ’bus or at a ball, in a crowd around a fallen horse, meeting for a moment as reader and writer of a book, or shoulder to shoulder in church singing to a God we all look at with different eyes, these things happen and will never happen exactly that way again. How I wondered at the cut of your moustache, O stranger, how I wondered at the colour of your tie.... But your little daughter with the thin straight legs and the thin straight hair pressed to your side, her glorying face filled with the light of novelty, and prayed that drive to heaven might never cease. And next to you was the girl who had just discovered the man by her side to be no saint, but a man. And he was trying by argument to recover his sanctitude. “But strite now, Mibel, I never dremp you’d tike it so ’ard. ’S only my bit of fun....” There was the man in khaki, next to me, born an idler, brought up a grocer’s assistant, and latterly shocked into becoming a hero.... There was the conductor, a man of twisted humour, chanting the words of his calling in various keys through the row of sixpences that he held between his lips, while the little bell at his belt tolled⁷⁸⁸ the knell⁷⁸⁹ of one ticket after another.... A little oblong world glazed⁷⁹⁰ in, ready to my hand. But I got out at the Bank, and the world went on to Hammersmith Broadway.... These things are, and never shall be again. The finest thing about life is its lack of repetition. I hate to hear that history repeats itself. My comfort is that 154history is never word-perfect in so doing. Fate has always some new joke up her sleeve. Sometimes the joke is not funny, but certainly it is always new.)

There were two Eves and an Adam in the world which evolved from chaos⁷⁹¹ under the suffragette’s eyes, as the train moved out of union station. Also a dog. We are never told about Adam’s dog, but I am sure that he had one, and that it wagged its tail at him as he awoke from being created, and snapped at the serpent, and did its best to propitiate⁷⁹² the angel with the flaming sword.

Dogs seldom ignored the suffragette. As a race they have either more or less perspicacity⁷⁹³ than ourselves—you may look at it as you will—and they seldom concur⁷⁹⁴ with the public verdict of humanity on its own species. And in the suffragette a confiding⁷⁹⁵ dog was never disappointed, for she knew the exact spot where the starched⁷⁹⁶ buckram of one’s ear is sewn on to one’s skull, on which it is almost unbearably⁷⁹⁷ good to be scratched.

This dog was the sort whose name is always Scottie when he is owned by the unenterprising. He wore his forelegs so short and so bent that he looked as though he were continually posing as being thoroughbred. When he drew himself up to his full height, the under outline of his figure was about three inches from the ground. When at leisure he walked broadly and foursquare, as a table would walk, if endowed with life; when speeding up, he cantered diagonally—forefeet together—hindfeet together—no 155one foot moving independently of its twin.

The sort of conversation that this dog and the suffragette immediately began did not prevent the latter’s hearing the conversation that was woven by her fellow-passengers across the loom⁷⁹⁸ of the train’s roaring.

The fact that the dog’s name was really Scottie should give you a clue as to his mistress’s character. It was perhaps malicious⁷⁹⁹ of me to describe her as an Eve; that would have made her blush. For she was very fully clothed in blue serge. It is almost impossible for the average woman to conduct the business of life except in blue serge. We travel in blue serge (thin for the tropics, thick and satin-lined for our native climate), we sit at our desk in blue serge, we meet our Deity⁸⁰⁰ or our stockbroker⁸⁰¹ in blue serge, in blue serge we raid the House of Commons. Perhaps the root of the feminist⁸⁰² movement lies in blue serge. If I were defended by a crinoline, or rustled⁸⁰³ in satin or gingham or poplin, I might have been an exemplary spinster in my sphere to-day.

The other Eve, attired (for she was obviously cosmopolitan⁸⁰⁴) in fawn⁸⁰⁵ tussore, occupied an undue fraction of the little universe. She was the sort of person whose bosom⁸⁰⁶ enters a room first, closely followed by her chin. Black eyes and a hooked Spanish nose led the rear not unworthily. She intended to be looked at, and she hoped to be recognised as a notorious novelist. For she was a momentary⁸⁰⁷ novelist with a contempt for yesterday and no concern at 156all for to-morrow. A public of a hundred thousand housemaids was all she asked.

One of the virtues of men is that they are not intended for fancy portrayal⁸⁰⁸. Why should one ever describe the outward surface of a man, unless he is the hero of one’s book, or unless one is engaged to marry him? The particular Adam in this compartment comes under neither of these headings. He is copiously⁸⁰⁹ reproduced all over the world, but clusters thickest in Piccadilly. Possibly you see him at his best very far away from Piccadilly. There is something that transfigures the commonplace in the fact of having kissed the very hem²⁹ of the Empire’s wide-flung robe.

“I say, Miss Brown, how’s Albert?” asked the young man.

For the other occupants of the little world seemed mutually familiar. It occurred to the suffragette that Fate always threw her with people who knew each other and did not know her.

Miss Brown, the Eve in blue serge, bridled. To all women so flawlessly brought up as Miss Brown, there exists a sort of electricity in the voice of man which sends a tremor⁸¹⁰ across their manners, so to speak.

“Albert, Mr. Wise, is still very weakly. I sometimes wonder whether I shall rear him. His mental activities, I am told, have outgrown⁸¹¹ his physical strength.”

The young man fanned himself. And indeed 157mental activities sounded unsuited to the climate. The sun spilt square flames upon the floor through the window. The silhouette⁸¹² of the passing landscape scorched⁸¹³ itself across the sky-line. Tattered⁸¹⁵ bananas looked like crowds of creatures struck mad by a merciless sun.

The voice of the lady novelist seemed to reach the suffragette through a veil.

“That child will make his mark. He has the most marvellous mental grasp....”

Two hills to the northwest moved apart in the middle distance, like the curtains from a stage. And there was union Town lying white beside her sea, white, but veiled by her green gardens. Port King George, on an attenuated⁸¹⁷ isthmus⁸¹⁸, stretched its parallel form along to shield the mother coast from the Atlantic. Even from here you could see the white gleam of the ocean’s teeth, as they gnashed upon the reef. A spike⁸¹⁹ of calm steel water lay between union Town and her defending reef. The suffragette thought: “A skeleton in the grass with a sword beside it....” She also looked at the toy figure of the Caribbeania, so close to land as to be disguised as part of the island. Her two funnels mingled⁸²⁰ with the factory chimneys by the wharf.

“But he is sure to have landed by now,” thought the suffragette. She felt unsentimentally interested in the fact. It was too hot to feel more.

“I happened to mention the Book of Genesis,” said the lady novelist. “And Albert produced a 158most ingenious theory about the scientific explanation of the fable⁸²³ of creation. I wish I had such a nephew. What a marvellous link with the coming generation!”

“On the other hand,” said Mr. Wise, “I happened to mention Alice in Wonderland, and he said it was out of date, and, as a dream, most improbable.”

“I am sorry he criticised the Bible in your hearing,” apologised Miss Brown. “I am afraid he has a tendency towards irreverence⁸²⁴.”

“I wish he had,” muttered Mr. Wise.

Acres of sugar filed past the window. High waved the proud crests⁸²⁵ of it, all innocent of its mean latter end as a common comestible. The suffragette’s mind laboured under a rocking confusion of green tufted miles,—and somewhere on the outskirts of her thoughts, a little sallow Albert entrenched⁸²⁷ behind an enormous pair of spectacles.

“A glorious child,” said the lady novelist, in her monopolising tones. “Simply glorious. Quite an experience to have met him.”

“Good copy, eh?” grinned Mr. Wise.

“Excellent. You know I collect copy.”

Now the suffragette collected copy, but she did it without self-consciousness. There are several kinds of copy-collectors. Some of us squeeze our copy into little six-shilling novels, or hack²¹¹ it into so many columns for the benefit of an unfeeling press. Some of us live three-score years and ten, and then wake suddenly to find our copy-coffers full. Upon which 159we become bores, and our relations hasten to engage a paid companion for us. But some of us carry our lives about with us sealed up in our holy of holies, and take pride in hiding the precious burden that we bear. Copy-collecting may become a religion; to the suffragette, who never put pen to paper for any one else’s benefit, and who never told an anecdote⁸²⁸, this pursuit was the great consolation⁸²⁹ for a bleak life. At the gate of death, or on the step of Paradise, such a soul may be found filling its pockets with the gold of secret experience. I think the mania⁸³⁰ is most acute when no thought of eventual print intrudes⁸³¹. Its most encouraging characteristic to the lonely is the sense of irresponsibility it brings. After all I may go and turn cart-wheels down the Strand, I may murder you, or throw my last shilling into the Thames, I may go half-way to Hell, and if I miscalculate the distance and fall in—it’s all copy. To the lady novelist, however, copy was but a currency to spend. Every experience in her eyes formed a part of a printed page, surrounded by a halo of favourable⁸³² reviews. She never wrote a letter without an eye on her posthumous⁸³³ biography, never met a notable individual without taking a mental note for the benefit of a future series of “Jottings about my Generation.” Both she and the suffragette kept diaries, but only the suffragette’s had a lock and key.

The engine was approaching the climax of its daily task. It faltered⁸³⁴. Looking out of the window, Mr. Wise described its arrival at the foot of a pronounced 160hill. The engine gazed up the perspective of its duty, and panted prophetically, as pants an uncle before a game of stump-cricket.

“This hill is always a surprise to the engine,” said Mr. Wise. “Every day it has two or three tries, and yet it never learns the knack⁸³⁵.”

The suffragette’s fingers tore at the arm of her chair. It was not only too hot to travel, it was also much too hot to cease to travel. She felt a crisis approaching.

Her window had stopped artistically opposite a little slice of distant world, carved out between the trunks of two great cotton trees. union Town, perceptibly diminished since its last appearance, languished⁸³⁶ again around its bay. Against the white water you could see the cathedral and the factory chimneys, the spires⁸³⁷ of God and the spires of mammon.

The suffragette, as she looked, saw the cathedral spire³¹⁶ cock suddenly awry⁸³⁸ and bend over, like a finger in three joints⁸³⁹.

“The heat,” she thought. “I believe I’m dying.”

Almost at once after that the train suffered a great spasm⁴⁶, as though yearning for the top of the hill.

“She’s going to try again,” said Mr. Wise.

The suffragette’s head cocked suddenly awry, she bent over in three joints like a finger, and slid off her chair in a faint.

A prostrated⁸⁴⁰ suffragette is a contradiction in terms. 161This one became a child, lying in ungraceful angles, in need of its mother.

“By Jove!” said Mr. Wise. Miss Brown, after lifting up her skirt carefully, knelt upon her petticoat.

An ebony ticket-inspector⁸⁴¹ rushed into the compartment.

“Ull right! Ull right!” he shouted. “Ull ovah! Nobuddy killed!”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Wise. “Why should they be? Only a faint.”

“Earthquake, sah, earthquake!” yelled the inspector. “Jes’ look at the steeple daown in taown!”

There was no steeple to look at.

“My—what an eventful journey!” said the lady novelist.

“Poor little thing,” said Miss Brown to the suffragette, in almost human tones. “Better now, better now?”

The suffragette began to struggle a little. Even had she been in her grave, I think pity would have aroused a spark of militant protest in her bones.

“Tell her to make an effort,” said the lady novelist, who had never in her forty years been guilty of physical weakness. “Pretend not to notice her. Probably hysteria.”

This well-worn accusation⁸⁴² touches a familiar chord in the ear of any rebel. It opened one of the suffragette’s eyes. She had black eyebrows which suggested 162that she might have fine eyes, but she had not. When her eyes were shut you only saw the hopeful suggestion.

“Come, come,” said Miss Brown, handing Mr. Wise’s brandy flask⁸⁴³ back to him, and becoming aware that her petticoat was bare to the gaze of an unmarried gentleman and a negro inspector. “Might I trouble you to lift the young lady on to a chair?” she added, as she rose.

Seven stone of political agitator⁸⁴⁴ takes but little time to move.

“A most eventful journey,” said the lady novelist.

Miss Brown, now decently seated on a chair, stroked the suffragette’s hand. “Are you going to friends, my child?” she asked.

“No, enemies, I expect,” said the suffragette drearily.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must know where you are going,” said the novelist severely⁸⁴⁵.

“Booked to Greyville,” said the inspector, who had picked up her ticket, and was thoughtfully clipping it all over.

“Do you know any one in Greyville?” asked Miss Brown.

“No.”

“Were you going to an hotel?”

“I suppose so.”

163Some kind deeds are so obvious that they are impossible to escape.

“Albert can move into the back room,” said Miss Brown.

And the train, as if relieved to have this affair settled, moved on up the hill.

By the time the chapel⁸⁴⁶ bell, which Island engines always wear, had begun to sound its warning to the pigs upon the line at Greyville Junction⁸⁴⁷, the suffragette’s independence was a thing dissolved. Her protests had no weight. Constitutionally she was unable to be politely firm. She must either be militant or acquiescent⁸⁴⁸; she knew not the half measures of civilisation⁸⁴⁹. And it was impossible to be militant in the face of Miss Brown’s impersonal⁸⁵⁰ sense of duty.

“If only she had been a more interesting person this might have been like the beginning of a novel,” murmured the lady novelist to Mr. Wise. That young man, who was wearing the sheepish look peculiar to the Englishman in the presence of matters which he considers to be feminine, shrugged his shoulders.

At Greyville station Miss Brown emerged like an empress from incognito⁸⁵¹. A black coachman, with so generous an expanse of teeth that you suspected them of being the only line of defence between you and the inner privacies of his brain, was on the platform. He seemed torn between acquired awe³⁷⁵ of Miss Brown, and an innate desire to conduct the welcome 164heartily. The station-master bowed. The porter chirruped to Scottie.

“New visitor, missis?” gasped the coachman, looking at the suffragette. He had taken some time to assimilate the visitorship of the lady novelist. His mind was being educated at too great a speed.

“Gorgeous fellow,” said the lady novelist, who considered all black people gorgeous because they were not white. The conversation of John the coachman had already filled two note-books, though he had never said anything original in his life.

There is so much superfluous⁸⁵² sunshine in Trinity Islands that splashes of it have been lavished⁸⁵³ upon all sorts of unnecessary details, the lizards⁸⁵⁵, and the birds, and the self-conscious orchids roosting in the trees. Some of it has even been rolled into the roads, making them white and merry and irresponsible. The buggy horses feel the tingle of it, for they seldom walk; although the Creator specialised in hills on Trinity Island.

Down from some lofty market came the peasant women; their children, their donkeys, their tawdry clothes, trappings and merchandise, soaked with sun. Fantastic in outline, fairies of a midsummer day’s dream, the little donkeys capered⁸⁵⁶ on spindle legs, bestridden by wide panniers, and by the peasant women, riding defiantly⁸⁵⁷ like brigands⁸⁵⁸, with bandanas round their heads, and sun-coloured draperies.

It is curious that fashion has not yet decreed a 165mania for dyeing one’s complexion mahogany, that one might wear flame-colour with impunity⁸⁵⁹.

The buggy scattered⁸⁶⁰ the marketers. The Island horse, a plebeian⁸⁶¹ creature of humble stature⁸⁶², seldom meets with the luxury of feeling superior. But the Island donkey is nothing but a door-mat on four legs, clogged⁸⁶³ red with the hectic⁸⁶⁴ mud of its mother land. A cheap-jack’s pony would feel a prince beside it.

Mr. Wise, who had been met at the station by a very small brown boy with a very tall brown horse, had cantered away in another direction, with a message of greeting to Albert, the sincerity of which Miss Brown had possibly overrated.

A bungalow⁸⁶⁵ crouched⁸⁶⁶ behind a copper-coloured hedge upon the sky-line. Two cotton trees surveyed it, one on each side. A drive of the violently ambitious kind shot at an impossible angle up to its door-step.

“That is Park View, my home,” said Miss Brown.

“Of course, as your dog’s name is Scottie,” murmured the suffragette.

Miss Brown looked surprised. The poor suffragette’s attempts at polite interchange of fatuities⁸⁶⁷ never seemed to meet with the usual fate of such efforts. Her trivialities somehow always fell upon silence; if she ventured on the throwing of a light bridge over a gap in the conversation, it seemed to snap communication instead of furthering it. She was, of course, unlucky, but she was also, it must be 166admitted, too earnest in intention for petty intercourse. She tried too hard.

The buggy, commending its springs to the mercy of Providence, charged the drive of Park View.

On the door-step, carefully posed, Albert was reading a very large book. He started laboriously as the buggy approached, and placed the book under his arm, taking care that the title should be visible. An emaciated⁸⁶⁸ child, with manners too old, and clothes too young, for his years.

“I have dot bissed you at all, Ah-Bargaret,” said Miss Brown’s genial nephew. “I have been too idterested id by dew book od Chebistry. I ab quite sorry you have cob back.”

“Chemistry,” retailed⁸⁶⁹ Miss Brown to the lady novelist. “A child of ten. And—did you notice, he was so deep in his book, he got quite a start when we arrived.”

Albert, at Park View, met with that appreciation of his poses which we all hope to meet in heaven.

“Albert, you are to move into the back room,” said Miss Brown.

“Why?” asked Albert.

“To make room for this lady.”

“Priceless child,” said the lady novelist in brackets.

“Because she needs somewhere to rest,” said Miss Brown in a voice of tentative reproof⁸⁷⁰.

“But so do I.”

“I had better move into the back room myself, then,” sighed his aunt.

167The suffragette began those hopeless protests which make the burden of an obligation so heavy. It is so very much easier as well as more blessed to give than to receive, that the wonder is that generosity should retain the name of a virtue. Up to a certain point we are all altruists, because it is too much trouble to be otherwise.

Albert, who, having gained his point, was once more comparatively genial, prepared to bring the suffragette to his feet.

“I expect you are wudderig what is the dabe of the book I ab readig,” he suggested to her as she stepped shakily from the buggy.

“No, I was not,” she replied gently. “I’m afraid science bores me.”

“Wha-t a lot you biss,” observed the child. “You probably spedd your precious time id dancig, ad dressig yourself up, ad bakig berry. How buch better——”

“Albert,” said his aunt, “this lady is tired and waiting to pass.”

“Yes, but I ab speaking to her.”

The suffragette smiled at him, and gave him her portmanteau to carry.

The earthquake at union Town had shot the most lurid⁸⁷² rumours into Greyville. All the Park View servants had suddenly gone to church. The whole village was enjoying an impromptu half-holiday. The triangular⁸⁷³ village green, which held Greyville together and formed the pedestal of the Court-house, 168echoed with news at every stage of exaggeration. One of the mildest rumours was that union Town had fallen into the sea. It was said on the highest authority that the Devil had run along the streets, throwing flames right and left. No actual news arrived, the sources of news being wrecked⁸⁷⁴, but towards evening all the Americans whose cars had survived the ordeal suddenly invaded the hills, suffering from nerves and a lack of luggage.

Miss Brown says she does not believe in doing a thing unless you do it thoroughly. She says this as if it had never been said before; she propounds⁸⁷⁵ it as one propounds a revolutionary theory. But unlike most theory makers⁸⁷⁶, she always translates such boasts into action. She performed the feat of keeping a militant suffragette in bed for the rest of that day.

The suffragette lay and imagined the gardener and the earthquake at different stages of contact. She thought of him fighting to get out of a falling house, and her eyes shone. She thought of him with his head bound up, and wriggled⁸⁷⁸ where she lay. She thought of him unhurt, walking with his usual gait as though he were marching to a band, and this thought left her neutral. She never thought of him dead.

She never believed in death either as a punishment or a reward. She had either lost the art of faith, or else she had never found it. She pictured death as a blink of the eyes, as an altering of the facet turned 169towards life, never as a miracle. She was the only person I ever knew who honestly looked on death as unworthy of contemplation.

Of course if a friend steps round a corner, you lose sight of that friend. But you must get used to the windings⁸⁸⁰ of the road. If you are a suffragette, you have to be your own friend. You must not stretch out your hands to find the hands of another; you must keep them clenched by your side. On the other hand, even a suffragette is human—(I daresay you have doubted this)—and my suffragette was only a little less human than you or I. The fact must stand, therefore, that when she thought of the gardener in pain, she forgot to clench⁶⁸⁹ her fists.

It may still be a mystery to you why the suffragette should expend⁸⁸¹ ingenuity in running away from her only friend.

If you are a rebel of thorough nature, you believe that your cause is such a good cause that no supporter can be worthy of it. And, in the effort to reach worth, you may possibly arrive, step by step, at the Theory of the Hair Shirt, to which my suffragette had attained. For in throwing her little weight on the side of the best cause she could see, she cowed: “All my life long to discard everything superfluously⁸⁸² comfortable or easy. To despise peace, and to love loneliness....”

This is the texture⁸⁸³ of the Hair Shirt worn beneath the armour of a rebel. You may call it hysteria. 170And perhaps you are perfectly right. But perhaps there are even better things than being perfectly right.

The night on the Island falls as abruptly as though he who manages the curtain had let go the string by mistake.

With the night came a trayful of supper for the suffragette, and with the supper came Albert, not of course in the useful r?le of supper purveyor⁸⁸⁴, but only as an ornament.

“This earthquake id Udiod Towd seebs to have beed quite a catastrophe.”

“Quite,” agreed the suffragette.

“I caddot picture ad earthquake,” continued Albert. “I suppose doboddy cad picture such ad urheard-of disaster.”

“I can,” said the suffragette. “I expect my picture is all wrong, but it’s certainly there. I see it red and grey, which is the most vicious discord⁸⁸⁵ I know.”

“Red ad grey?” repeated Albert. “Why red ad grey? What for idstadce is red, ad what grey?”

“Why,” said the suffragette rather lamely⁸⁸⁶, “I suppose the quaking is red, and the pain grey.”

“You seeb to be talking dodsedse,” said Albert, with creditable toleration. “I expect the flabes are red, ad the sboke grey. However, go od with your picture.”

“I think the world would suddenly give a lurch⁸⁸⁷ to one side, and you would wonder what had happened, and why you felt so sick. Before you realised 171anything else you would notice a sort of dazzle of chalk-white faces all round you.”

“The people are dearly all degroes id Udiod Towd.”

“Then you would understand, but still you wouldn’t believe that this thing was really happening to you. You would see the houses curtsey sideways in a leaping dust, and a house front, with its windows, all complete, would shoot across the street with an unbearable⁸⁸⁸ roar, pricked by cracking noises....”

“Why would it dot fall od you?”

“Because things don’t. And there would be a great chord of screams. And men running a few yards this way or that, and then back again, yelping⁸⁸⁹, with lighted pipes still in their mouths....”

“What ad ugly picture. How cad you see it all so clearly?”

“I have been thinking all day—of a friend of mine, who must have seen it. I don’t expect an earthquake is a pretty thing, although there is something beautiful about any curious happening.”

“I doad’t agree with you,” said Albert. “There are oadly a few beautiful thigs. Roses ... ad sudsets ... ad love....”

“Really, Albert,” protested the suffragette, “what do you know about love?”

“Well, if it cobs to that—what do you dow about earthquakes? I cad picture love, easily. A bad, kissing a girl, udder a cocoadut palb....”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed the suffragette, bounding 172so violently in her bed as to cause a serious storm in her soup. “Kissing’s not love. Everything that was ever said or written about kissing, I think, must have been said or written by a man. It’s only another of their tyrannies, to which, for the sake of love, women have had to submit.”

“You sowd like a suffragette whed you talk like that,” mocked Albert.

“No wonder,” she replied. “I am one.”

Albert looked shocked to find himself in the presence of such a monstrosity. He went at once to warn his aunt. And she replied: “It doesn’t matter, Albert dear, she’s only staying a few days, till she is well enough to make other plans.”

The suffragette, left to her cooling soup, reviewed her theories and her practice.

“What’s the good of being hard?” she asked herself, “if you are not hard enough? Either you are harder than the world and can bruise it, or the world is harder than you and bruises you. There is no point in just having a hard crust. As well be dough⁸⁹⁰.”

In the middle of the night there was a loud wail⁷²⁷ from Albert’s room. The suffragette, whose room adjoined his, was the first on the spot.

“I seeb to have a bad paid,” cried Albert, who was always cautious in his statements, “id the heart. It feels like cadcer, I thigk.”

“I don’t think so,” said the suffragette. “Perhaps you are only in love.”

173She went and knocked on Miss Brown’s door.

“But I doad’t wadt Ah-Bargaret,” said Albert, as his aunt came in. “I should hate to die lookig at Ah-Bargaret. I ab sure I ab going to die.”

“We’ll see that you don’t,” said the suffragette, as she began to rub his side, his poor little ribs, furrowed like a ploughed field.

“But you are an invalid yourself,” objected Miss Brown jealously. “You had better go back to bed.”

“Doh, she is dot ad idvalid, she’s a suffragette,” whined⁸⁹¹ Albert. “I doad’t wish her to go back to bed.”

Even Albert, with his wide range of scientific ways of being inconvenient⁸⁹², could scarcely have chosen a more impossible moment for an illness. Next day it became apparent that every doctor on the Island who had survived the disaster had plunged into the whirlpool of its after effects. Nursing on the Island is in a rudimentary stage at all times, but what nurses existed were not to be dragged now from union Town.

The lady novelist said: “I know I must appear heartless, dear Margaret, not to be helping to nurse him, but the sight of suffering gives me such acute pain.... It’s not heartlessness, you see, it’s that my heart is too tender.”

“I wish she would go to an hotel then,” said the harassed⁸⁹³ Miss Brown to the suffragette. “She wants her meals so good and so regular, and I seem to hate the sight of food just now.”

It was against the suffragette’s principles to hope 174anything so desirable without translating her hope into action. It was also beyond her powers to be diplomatic.

“I think you had better go to the hotel,” she said militantly to the lady novelist. “You would be better fed there, and we should be more comfortable alone.”

“In that case perhaps I had better, not being welcome in my friend’s house,” replied the novelist. “I was going to suggest it myself, as the sound of that priceless child’s cries wrings⁸⁹⁴ my heart.”

The suffragette therefore gained her point at the expense of tact, which, as future historians will note, is a characteristic of suffragettes.

Albert’s temperament⁸⁹⁵ was not that of the Spartan⁸⁹⁶. He never ceased to cry for a week. As for the pain, it was as if the god—whoever he may be—who likes little children to suffer, sat beside him, and with a blunt shears⁸⁹⁷ sliced off the top of each breath.

There is a sword, a fatal blade,

Unthwarted, subtle as the air,

And I could meet it unafraid

If I might only meet it fair.

But how I wonder why the smith

Who wrought⁸⁹⁸ that steel of subtle grain

Should also be contented⁸⁹⁹ with

So blunt and mean a thing as pain....

Albert clung to the suffragette, the straw in his sea of troubles. His constant wail rose an octave if she ventured from the room.

175The only holiday she had during that first week was half an hour on the second evening of the ordeal, half an hour spent in carrying the lady novelist’s majestic⁹⁰⁰ suit-case to the hotel.

John the coachman could not do it, as the road to the hotel was infested⁹⁰¹ with “duppies” after dark. The probability of meeting a “rolling calf” with a human head and green eyes, or the duppy of some regrettable ancestor, robbed even a tip of its splendour.

The carrying of the suit-case was a physical impossibility to one of the suffragette’s lack of muscle. But to her impossibility was only an additional “Anti” to fight, a rather worthier enemy than the rest. She believed in the power of the thought over the deed, that was her religion, and one is tempted⁹⁰² to wonder whether any more complex belief is needed. Has it ever been proved that the human will, if reverently⁹⁰³ approached, is not omnipotent⁹⁰⁴?

At any rate the suit-case, borne by a thing that looked like the suffragette, but was in reality a super-suffragette created for the occasion, travelled to the hotel, unmolested by duppies, but followed by a literary lady poisoned by injured pride.

At the hotel were many Americans who said, “I guess” and “Bully” and “I should worry,” and all the things that make a second-rate copy collector swell⁹⁰⁵ with copy and feel exquisitely cosmopolitan. This collector’s diary began to overflow⁹⁰⁶ to three or four foolscap sheets a day, closely covered with dialogues 176on trivial subjects by very ordinary American husbands and fathers; all Americanisms underlined and spattered with liberal exclamation marks.

At the end of the second week of the lady novelist’s stay at the hotel arrived a millionaire, who immediately became the gem¹⁹⁸ of the collection. He was exactly modelled on the stock millionaire to be met with in the pages of the comic papers. He was lean, self-made, and marvellously dressed; he wore eyeglasses and a little stitched-linen hat tilted⁹⁰⁷ over them. Also the beard of a goat. At the very outset he expressed himself, “Vurry happy to meet you, madam, always happy to meet any of our neighbours from across the duck-pond.” It was almost too good to be true. The novelist followed him about, so to speak, with fountain pen poised⁹⁰⁸.

His conversation was almost entirely financial. Neither the lady novelist nor I understand such matters well enough to write them down, but only I am wise enough not to try.

“Do you mind if I say you are a treasure?” asked the lady novelist, after listening for an hour to a dissertation⁹⁰⁹ on Wall Street.

“Not at all, ma’am,” replied the millionaire politely, and drew breath to continue his discourse⁹¹⁰. But he rewarded her by descending to the level of her intelligence.

“Say, talking of money, I guess there’ve been more fine opportunities lorst in union Town this last fortnight, than ever I missed since I commenced 177collecting the dollars. Would you believe me—there’s a fellow, by name Dallas Tring, who’s inherited the only flour dee-pot in union Town. Uncle’s orfice crumpled⁹¹¹ in on Uncle during the quake, and left Tring his fill of dollars right there for the picking up, so to speak. union Town wants flour at this crisis, and if it was mine I’d say that union Town, or the British Government, had darn well got to pay for it. We don’t calc’late in hearts, this side of heaven, but in hard dollars. Philanthropy’s a fool-game.”

“You are simply priceless,” said the lady novelist. “Please go on.”

“I’m going right on, ma’am,” said the treasure. “Would you believe me, this Tring e-volves a system (save the mark) by which he gives away this flour—gives it away, mind you, gratis⁹¹², free, for nothing, with a kiss thrown in if required, to any nigger cute enough to rub his little tummy and say he’s feeling empty. You may reckon I just couldn’t quit union Town without a call to see if the man was an imbecile or what. I found a young cub¹⁷² with a curly smile playing around in the orfice. Say, what do you suppose he answered me when I told him ‘Good-morning, and what’s this sentimental⁸²² money-chucking, anyway?’”

“I am dying to know,” said the lady novelist.

“Said it was the foyrst time he’d ever been led to think there might be something in sentiment after all. I was fair rattled⁹¹³.”

178The young cub with the curly smile, as you may, with your customary astuteness⁹¹⁴, have guessed, was the gardener. He had assumed the pose of philanthropist, which, when conducted at some one else’s expense, is one of the most delightful poses conceivable. The pleasure to be found in helping the dirty destitute⁹¹⁵ seems to need an explanation beyond the plea of altruism⁹¹⁶. There is a real charm in domineering to good purpose. To say unto one man Go and he goeth, and to another Come and he cometh, is at all times pleasant, but when such a luxury as autocracy⁹¹⁷ becomes a virtue, there are few who disregard its glamour⁹¹⁸.

The gardener’s broken leg recovered as quickly as any leg could have done. He had an enthusiastic and healthy attitude towards suffering and illness, an attitude which he took instinctively, and which mental scientists and faith-healers try to produce artificially. He was always serenely⁹¹⁹ convinced that he would be better next day. He lived in a state of secret disappointment in to-day’s progress, and unforced confidence in to-morrow’s. He might be described as a discontented optimist⁴¹⁴; though often convinced that the worst had happened, he was always sure that the best was going to happen. Conversely, of course, you can be a contented pessimist⁹²⁰, happy in to-day, but entirely distrustful of to-morrow.

To the gardener’s methods may perhaps be ascribed the fact that in a fortnight he was able with 179the help of a stick, and with the encouragement of Aitch and Zed, to walk about his room. His first excursion was to the window.

The houses opposite had fallen in on their own foundations. One complete wall was standing starkly⁹²¹ amid the mass. Portraits of the King and Queen and a text or two still clung to their positions against the stained and florid wall-paper.

“Do you see that house that you just can’t see, the other side of that wall?” asked Aitch.

“Yes, I see,” said the gardener. “I mean I just can’t see.”

“That’s where dead Uncle Jonathan lives,” said Aitch. “He’s left Father the flour in his will.”

“How good of him. I hope it was a pretty one.”

“Father said, ‘There’s a fortune there.’ And Mother said, ‘Oh, Dally, it’s as if it was left in trust for poor union Town.’”

When the gardener next met Mr. Tring, he discovered how entirely sufficient for two are the opinions of one.

“Of course I’m awfully⁹²² lucky, in a way,” said Mr. Tring. “It’s a big inheritance, and hardly damaged at all by the earthquake. But at present, of course, it’s all responsibility and no returns. I feel as if it’s sort of left me in trust for union Town.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Courtesy—surely the least witty⁹²³ comment ever invented.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” said Mrs. Rust, 180who now made this remark mechanically in any pause in the conversation.

“You consider that Mr. Tring should pile up a big bill against the British Government?” suggested the gardener.

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “I consider the niggers can eat—mangoes.”

“I sometimes wonder,” said the gardener, “whether one has a duty to oneself. One feels as if one has, but I always—in theory—distrust a duty that pays.”

“Certainly one has a duty to oneself,” said Courtesy. “Duty begins at home. That’s in the Bible, isn’t it?”

“Most of the texts tell you your only duty is to the man next door,” said Mr. Tring, blushing.

“I entirely disagree with you,” said Mrs. Rust.

Soon after this discussion Mr. Tring, inspired by his wife, produced a plan for the benefit of the gardener.

“When this business is over we shall—I mean I shall be a rich man and a busy man. I need somebody young around. I’d like fine to buy your youth (his wife’s words). What about being my secretary for the present? It might give you a start in Island business.”

“This is not a time for paid work,” said the gardener, “with half the money on the Island gone to dust.”

“I take your meaning,” said Mr. Tring. “But 181in my opinion the time’s all right. Good work’s good work, whether it’s honorary or not. I never liked the idea that there’s something heroic in refusing money, making out that there’s something mean in accepting it. If you help you help, and the help’s none the worse if it makes you self-supporting.”

The word “self-supporting” was a sharp and accusing word to the gardener. Most of us privately possess certain words that search out the tender parts in our spiritual anatomy. The words “absolute impossibility,” for instance, angered the suffragette to militant protest; the mention of “narrow-mindedness” ruffled⁹²⁴ the priest’s sensibilities; as for me, the expression “physical disability” hurts me like a knife. It may or may not be out of place to add that the effect on Courtesy—that practical girl—of an allusion⁹²⁵ to “banana fritters” was to make her feel sick. You may know people better by their weaknesses than by their strength.

The word self-supporting, therefore, goaded⁹²⁶ the gardener into accepting Mr. Tring’s offer.

His stock of poses, though very wide in range, had not as yet extended as far as practical business, in black and white, hours ten to five daily. He had—I report it with disgust—a contempt for the pen as a business implement⁹²⁷. He was himself an artist without expression, a poet caged; a musician in desire, he suffered from a mute worship of all art. And he believed that the pen was as sacred an instrument 182as the violin, or the palette. To make money by the pen in business was equal to fiddling⁹²⁸ on a kerb-stone, or designing picture post cards. These theories are pose-theories, of course, and untenable by the practical man. But some of the gardener’s poses had crystallised into belief. He was, as you may have noticed, anything but a practical man.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Tring, “you might be what my wife calls an ‘out-of-doors secretary.’ I have been officially asked to organise the distributing of the flour. Enquiries will have to be made. The niggers are awfully sly, you know; you’d have thought they’d be too silly to be sly.”

“I have noticed that the silly seem to be protected by Providence. Slyness seems to be given as a sort of compensation. Otherwise, of course, we should stamp out the silly, and a lot of valuable human curiosities would become extinct.”

“I take your meaning,” said Mr. Tring. “That being so, if we found you a horse to ride about on, would you undertake the notification and examination of the necessitous cases, the pruning⁹²⁹ away—as my wife would say—of the dishonest applicants⁹³⁰.”

“I am a gardener,” said the gardener. “I love interfering⁹³¹ with nature. Mr. Tring, you are a most excellent friend to me. Thank you seems too little a word.”

There are only a few people to be met with who can do justice to such a thankless task as the expression 183of thanks. Man under an obligation is always convinced that the conventional words are not enough, and tries to improve on them. This must always be a failure, however, as improving on convention is a work that only genius can undertake with success.

A horse was found for the gardener. He was what might be called an anxious rider, and Courtesy, after watching his first equestrian⁹³² exhibition, went to some trouble to find him an elderly mare⁹³³ of sober propensities. Mounted upon this excellent creature, the gardener one morning threaded the little passes that had been made in and out of the crags of ruined union Town. It was early. The Olympians had not yet begun to compound that horrible broth⁴²⁴ of sun and steam and dust which they brew⁹³⁴ daily upon the plains of the Island. The sun’s eyes had not yet opened even on the most ambitious of the hills, but the sky was awake, and so clear that you might have thought you were looking through crystal at a blue Zion. The dew was laughing in the crushed gardens. Grey lizards with a purple bloom on them jumped from ruin to ruin over chasms⁹³⁵ of ruin. A humming-bird, looking as though its tail and beak⁹³⁶ had been added hurriedly out of the wrong box, stood in the air glaring into the open eye of a passion flower. The air was shining cool. The songs of the birds were like little fountains of cold water.

There is always a pessimistic gloom about the woods of the Island. The cotton tree, with its ashen⁹³⁷ 184blasted trunk, looks as if it had known a bitter past. Logwood gives the impression of firewood left standing by mistake. And the cocoanut palms, which are unstable⁹³⁸ souls, lean this way and that, as though glancing over their shoulders for their enemy the wind, against whom they have no defence. Only the great creepers throw cables of hope from tree to tree, and the orchids nestle blood-red against the colourless hearts of the cotton trees.

The huts for the homeless had been built in a wide clearing in the woods, only divided from the sea by the road, a belt of palms, and a frill of sand so white that the word white sounded dirty as you looked at it. The rocks leant out of opal water into pearl air. A pensive⁷⁶¹ pelican⁹³⁹, resting its double chin upon its breast, stood waiting on a low rock.

The gardener dismounted with great care. A person of three summers or so came to watch him do it. The only thing she wore that nature had not from the first provided her with was a hair-ribbon. Her head looked like a phrenologist’s chart. It was mapped out in squares by multiplied partings at right angles to each other. From every square plot of wool sprang a rigid plait of perhaps one inch in length. On the highest plait was a scarlet hair-ribbon. The effect was not really beautiful, but suggested a beautiful maternal⁹⁴⁰ patience. The person thus decorated was gnawing a piece of bread.

“That bread,” thought the gardener, who in flashes posed as Sherlock Holmes, “must have been 185made with flour. That flour probably came from Tring’s. Where did you get that bit of bread, Miss?” he added.

The person, determined not to appear to overlook a joke for want of an effort, gave a high fat chuckle⁹⁴¹, and danced the opening steps of a natural tango. The gardener, unwilling to shatter the illusion of his own humour, did not repeat the question. He gave the elderly mare in charge of not more than a dozen little boys. It was an insult to the mare, a creature with a deep sense of responsibility, who could much more reasonably have taken charge of the little boys.

“Dat Mrs. Morra’s pickney,” said one of the older boys, with a polite desire to effect an introduction between the gardener and the dancing person. On hearing herself thus described, Mrs. Morra’s pickney at once led the way at great speed to Mrs. Morra. Now Mrs. Morra’s was the first name on the gardener’s list of applications.

She was discovered outside the door of her hut, submitting the head of an elder daughter to that process of which the coiffure of the younger was a finished example. The conversation was punctured⁹⁴² by wails⁹⁴³ from the victim. Wool does not adapt itself to painless combing.

“Good morning, Mrs. Morra,” said the gardener, with his confiding smile. Mrs. Morra screamed with amusement.

“I hear the earthquake knocked down your home 186and didn’t leave you anything to live on. You asked for some of the free bread, didn’t you? The police gave us your name.”

“P’leece?” questioned Mrs. Morra, who seemed amused by the mention of her necessity. “Whe’ dat, please?”

“The police—the big man in blue,” said the gardener, before he remembered that on the Island the police was always a little man in white.

“P’leece?” persisted Mrs. Morra.

“The policeman—the law,” said the gardener desperately.

Every nigger is familiar with the law. Going to law is a vice that on the Island takes the place of drink. The nigger’s idea of heaven is a vast courthouse, with the Almighty sitting at a desk awarding him damages and costs.

“Oh, de law—de polizman, please sah,” said Mrs. Morra.

“Right. Now how did your little girl get this bread?”

“Beg a quattie from a lady, please,” said the mother.

“Yes, but where did she buy the bread when she had the quattie. Bread is free now, you can’t buy it.”

“Bought it fim Daddy Hamilton, please, old man who live alone by himself across opposite. But he ha’n’t got no more, please!”

“I’ll go and see Daddy Hamilton,” said the 187gardener. “How many children have you got, Mrs. Morra?”

“Please?”

“How many children?”

“Please?”

“How many pickneys?” said the gardener, inspired.

“Pickneys please thank you,” said Mrs. Morra. “I got Dacia Maree Blanche Rosabel Benjum Teodor Lionel.”

“Seven,” panted the gardener, who had kept careful count.

“Tree, please sah,” corrected the lady.

“Me Dacia Maree,” explained the victim of maternal pride.

“Have you a husband?” continued the gardener.

“O la, no please sah.”

“A widow?” he suggested.

Mrs. Morra shrieked with laughter.

“Nebber had no man mo’ dan tree monts,” she said. “Dacia Maree’s fader—he on’y stop a week. Benjum’s dad bin¹¹⁴ in gaol two yahs. Blanche Rosabel—her fader was a brown man, her grand-dad was a buckra.”

The gardener blushed into his notebook.

The police had certified⁹⁴⁴ that the family’s means of subsistence had been swept away by the earthquake, and the gardener, by one glance into an unsavoury hut, satisfied himself that no luxuries had been saved from the wreck⁷³⁶. He therefore noted the 188case as needy⁹⁴⁵, and asked his way to Daddy Hamilton.

This gentleman, seated upon an upturned bucket, was studying a hymn⁷⁶⁵-book through a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.

“God bless you, sah,” he said in the loud unmistakable voice of a joyous⁹⁴⁶ Christian.

The gardener thanked him.

“I see, Mr. Hamilton, that you told the police you had two married daughters whose husbands had been killed by the earthquake, and seven grandchildren dependent on you.”

“Yessah. De Lawd giveth, an’ de Lawd taketh away.”

“Certainly. And you had an emergency grant of several loaves of bread on Monday.”

“Praise be to God, sah, I did. De Lawd giveth——”

“On the contrary, in this case it was Mr. Tring that gave. Now, are either of your married daughters or any of your grandchildren at home?”

“No, sah. Dey all gone to chapel.”

“Really? Now there seems to be an idea among your neighbours that you live by yourself. How is it they have never noticed your two daughters and seven grandchildren?”

“Dunno, sah. Deir eyes dey hab closed, lest at any time dey should see wid deir eyes, and hear wid deir ears——”

“Do the whole ten of you sleep in that little hut?”

189“No, sah, I sleep on de graound aoutside. Foxes hab holes——”

“Now, Mr. Hamilton, can you look me in the face and tell me that the bread that was given you was really eaten by yourself, and two daughters, and seven grandchildren?”

“Yes, sah. To tell you de troot, sah, dey wasn’t ezackly blood-grandchildren. All men are brudders, we are told, sah, and derefore grandchildren, an’ daughters, an’ nieces too, sah. All de pickneys call me Daddy Hamilton. Suffer de little children to come unto me, saith de Lawd, so I suffer dem gladly.”

“Yes, but do you ever charge anything for suffering them? Have you ever sold any of the bread that was given you?”

“Well, sah, a man mus’ live.”

“Yes, but the bread was given you to live on.”

“Well, sah, money is better dan bread. You ask for bread and dey give you a stone.”

“Not in this case. The bread was excellent. Do you know, Mr. Hamilton, I believe you are liable to be prosecuted⁹⁴⁷ for obtaining Mr. Tring’s gift under false pretences.”

“No, sah, not false. I am a faitful sojer in de Lawd’s army, sah, faitful an’ joyful³⁴. Old Joybells dey call me.”

“Still, this time I’m afraid you stepped aside. I will ask Mr. Tring what he would like done about it. At any rate, you won’t get any more 190bread given you for the present. I’ll see to that.”

“God bless you, sah. De Lawd giveth, an’ de Lawd taketh away.”

All novelties are interesting to One Who is Seeing Life, but novelty is unfortunately an elusive⁹⁴⁸ phantom⁹⁴⁹ to pursue. After a fortnight spent in inquiry⁹⁵⁰, the gardener began to feel his heart sink at the mention of flour. He suffered from the gift of enthusiasm, in place of the gift of interest, and enthusiasm is like the seed that fell upon stony⁹⁵¹ ground, the suns of monotony scorch⁸¹⁴ it quickly. To do the gardener justice, it must be admitted that there was very little left to do. union Town was not very long in adjusting itself to the emergency. Nigger huts are quickly built, and even the villas⁹⁵² of the coffee-coloured aristocracy, the most serious sufferers from the disaster, are not the work of ages. The Post Office continued to lie upon its face in the High Street, but the bare feet of the people soon trod a path around it. Government House remained huddled⁹⁵³ in a heap upon its own cellars, but Governors, after all, are not human, and it makes but little difference to the population to hear of its viceroy sleeping under canvas.

In the gardener’s mind, during the past fortnight, the suffragette had had union Town as a serious rival. His vanity was a little hurt by her continued lack of appreciation of a great man. He would have liked, while still on crutches⁹⁵⁴, to have met her searching among the ruins for him. So for a little 191while he posed as being in love with his work. But when union Town began to retire into the background, the suffragette stepped forward into insistent⁹⁵⁵ prominence. She triumphed finally one night in the verandah of the St. Maurice Hotel, after dinner. It was a night without a flaw, every star spoke the right word, and the moon was a poem unspeakable. Fireflies starred the garden.

The stars and fireflies dance in rings,

The fireflies set my heart alight,

Like fingers, writing magic things

In flame upon the wall of night.

There is high meaning in the skies

(The stars and fireflies—high and low),

And all the spangled world is wise

With knowledge that I almost know ...

“I’ll have to return to the search,” said the gardener.

“What for?” asked Courtesy, who always liked everything explained.

“For the suffragette,” he replied. “I’m tired of being respectable and in doubt.”

Luckily the priest had changed his table since Courtesy had changed her company. He sat at the far end of the verandah, with his back to every one. His righteousness had subsided⁹⁵⁶ to some extent since the earthquake, but he still looked on the gardener as a hopelessly lost lamb. Such a shepherd as the priest may yearn²⁷⁹ towards the lost lamb, but would rather not sit at the same table with it.

“If you start that silly game again, gardener,” 192said Courtesy, “you’ll have to throw over Mr. Twing’s job. Why can’t you leave the girl alone? She can’t have been killed, because there are no white people left unidentified. Why can’t you stick to one thing?”

“I have no glue in me,” replied the gardener. “I’m glad of it; there could be nothing duller than sticking to one thing. Besides, there’s nothing left to stick to. There was only half an hour’s work to do yesterday, although I spent three hours over it.”

Mrs. Rust shot a fountain of tobacco smoke into the air as a sign that she intended to speak. The priest liked Mrs. Rust, because his own tolerance of her vagaries⁹⁵⁷ made him feel so broad-minded. He liked to smile at her roguishly when she took a small whisky and soda; he liked to hand her the matches when she smoked; he liked to write to his sister at home: “One comes in contact with a worldly set out here, but if one is careful to keep one’s mind open, one finds points of contact undreamt of at home in one’s own more thoughtful set.” If the gardener had been a drunkard instead of being in love, the priest would have liked him better. But the gardener posed as being a non-drinker and a non-smoker on principle. Really the taste of spirits or of tobacco smoke made him feel sick.

“I am going to leave union Town myself,” said Mrs. Rust. “I know of a car I could hire to-morrow. I will help you in your search, gardener, although 193she strikes me as being a totally unattractive young woman.”

“We had arranged to go to the hotel in Spanish City next Wednesday by the nine train,” said Courtesy in a reproachful voice; “and from there to Alligator Bay, and then in a car round the Island. I daresay other plans might be made, but you should have let me know sooner.”

“No plans need be made,” said the gardener rebelliously⁹⁵⁸. “We might just get the car, and start now in the cool.”

“Ass!” observed Courtesy simply. “Mrs. Rust’s lace scarf won’t be dry enough to iron till to-morrow. I will see whether we can start the next day.”

To disobey Courtesy was unthinkable. The gardener gritted⁹⁵⁹ his teeth at the stars, because he would have to see them again before he could start on his search. Now was the only time for the gardener; then hardly counted; and presently was a word he failed to acknowledge.

“Anyway, you don’t either of you know where to look for her,” said Courtesy, that practical girl.

“She’ll be at Alligator Bay,” said Mrs. Rust. “They’ve got a picture gallery there.”

“She’ll be somewhere in the hills,” said the gardener. “She would always go up.”

“I entirely disagree with you,” retorted Mrs. Rust.

“Anyway, it seems hot on sea-level,” said 194Courtesy. “We’d better go up to where it’s supposed to be cool. I’m told the Ridge⁵⁷⁰ Pension, High Valley, has a good cook, but the New Hotel, at Greyville, is also well spoken of.”

Fortunately thirty-six hours, though they may stretch half-way to eternity, never succeed in covering the whole distance. A moment arrived when the three, bristling with travellers’ trifles, met the waiting car at the nearest spot in the ruined High Street to which cars could penetrate⁹⁶¹. And then followed a long series of dancing moments. Little village ports strung like beads⁹⁶² along the coast; thatched huts thrown together by a playful fate; waterfalls like torn shreds⁹⁶³ of gauze draped on the nakedness of the hills; logwood plantations, banana plantations, sugar plantations, yam plantations.... Then as the approaching hills began to usurp³²¹ more and more of the sky, the road cut through a high and low land; hand in hand with a very blue river, it threaded a great grey crack in the island; high cliffs yearned⁹⁶⁴ towards each other on either side; a belt of pale sky followed the course from above. Then out into the sun and wild woods, with ferns and flowering trees beckoning beautifully from all sides. And then long hills, a road that doubled back at every hundred yards, with a great changing view, growing bigger, on the right hand or the left, as the course of the road decided. Little brown villages clung desperately to the hill-side; gardens of absurd size balanced themselves 195on almost perpendicular⁹⁶⁵ slopes; paths of red mud, disdaining⁹⁶⁶ the winding⁸⁷⁹ subterfuges⁹⁶⁷ of the road, sprang from angle to angle, like children playing at independence beside a plodding⁹⁶⁸ mother.

Towards the afternoon a blue-black cloud crept suddenly over a summit, and emptied itself with passion upon the travellers. In a minute the waterproof⁹⁶⁹ hood of the car was proved unworthy of its name; the screen in front became less transparent⁹⁷⁰ than a whirlpool; the road went mad and believed itself to be a mountain torrent⁹⁷¹. The wet wrath⁵⁴⁶ of heaven began to make itself felt even down Mrs. Rust’s neck.

“This is disgraceful,” said Mrs. Rust. “Courtesy, do something at once.”

No doubt Courtesy would have risen to the occasion, but for once Heaven was quicker. The sun suddenly shouldered its way round the intruding⁹⁷² cloud, and made one great shining jewel of the world. Park View, that forward house, residence of the retiring Miss Brown, stood bold upon the sky-line.

The gardener’s heart did not leap within him when he saw Park View. Only in books does Fate disguised stir the heart to such activity. In real life, when I stumble on the little thing that is to change my life, I merely kick it aside, and hurry on.

In case you should think that by bringing my travellers to Greyville I make the long arm of coincidence unduly⁹⁷³ attenuated, I must add that there 196are only two tourist centres on the hills of the Island—Greyville and High Valley—and that almost everybody visits both.

The gardener was now posing as a Seeker, and instinctively his eyes took on the haggard look that belongs to the pose. As he mounted the steps of the New Hotel verandah, the lady novelist thought, “What an interesting young man!” When, however, she saw Mrs. Rust’s hair, her notebook trembled in her pocket. The Treasure had left, and as to the other Americans, she had practically drunk their cup of copy dry.

“Charles,” she said to the woolly black waiter when he brought her tea, “will you put those new people at my table?”

“No, please, missis,” replied Charles, who, being a head waiter at seventeen, was suffering from the glamour of power. “Shall sit dem wid Mistah Van Biene.”

A fraction of the proceeds of the lady novelist’s last novel, however, soon silenced the authority of Charles.

And after all it was Mrs. Rust who sought acquaintance first, at breakfast in the cool verandah next morning.

“There was a lizard⁸⁵⁴ in my bath,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful! Why can’t you exterminate⁹⁷⁴ your vermin?”

This was hard on the lady novelist, who screamed for Charles whenever she saw anything moving anywhere, 197but she bore the injustice⁹⁷⁵ with a beautiful patience.

“What do you think of the Island in general?” she asked. “I can tell by your face that your opinion would be worth having.”

She might have added that she could tell this, not so much by Mrs. Rust’s face as by her hair.

“I don’t think of the Island if I can help it,” retorted Mrs. Rust after some thought, during which she sought in vain for some adequately startling reply. “That earthquake—on my first day—a revolting exhibition.”

“Oh, were you in union for the earthquake? I am collecting the reports of intelligent people who were there. I am sure your adventures must have been worth recording⁹⁷⁶.”

“On the contrary,” replied Mrs. Rust, “the whole thing was absurdly overrated. My nerves remained perfectly steady throughout.”

The gardener, the only person who might have cast a doubt upon this statement, was not present. Still posing as the strenuous⁹⁷⁷ seeker, he had gone for a walk before breakfast.

There is a great glitter about morning in the hills which drags the optimist for long walks in the small hours upon an empty stomach, and causes even the pessimist to attack his grape fruit at breakfast with a jovial trill. The little tables on the verandah of the New Hotel have a glamour of heaped bright fruit upon white linen. In the garden the tangerines 198grow radiantly among their shining sober green, the butterflies blow across the pale young grass. There is a salmon-pink azalea, whose smile attracts the humming-birds, and a riotous⁹⁷⁸ clump⁹⁷⁹ of salvia. There is a benevolent⁹⁸⁰ John Crow, who strikes attitudes upon the roof of the annex⁹⁸¹, and stands for hours with his ragged²⁵⁷ wings spread open to the sun, as he surveys the diamond world. Really he is hoping that you will fall dead over your breakfast, but you lose this thought in the glitter of a hill morning. For the sake of your own peace of mind, never get close enough to a John Crow to see his gargoyle⁹⁸² face. Content yourself with admiring his barbaric grace from a distance, and forget why he is there.

Courtesy was characteristically still in bed. She never was one to hear the call of a singing world.

The gardener came in with eyes crinkled by the sun, and his hair standing up in a spirited way all over the top of his head. Did you know that it is possible to be a specialist in posing without giving thought to the appearance?

“You look as if you had been fighting,” snapped Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful state of hair.”

“I wish I had,” replied the gardener. “I could fight beautifully at this moment. I never knew what it was to breathe until this morning.”

“Air is indeed a blessing” said the lady novelist. “I have a passion for air. I sometimes think I should die without it. How interesting to meet any one who loves fighting. You ought to be a soldier. 199I myself am a peace-loving woman, but I often have quarrels forced upon me.”

“Let me conduct them for you,” suggested the gardener, wrestling with his grape fruit. “Show me the enemy.”

“I wish I could. I think I will,” said the lady. “I came to Greyville to stay with a dear friend, and a young woman, of no standing whatever, picked up anyhow and anywhere, not only turned me out of my friend’s house, but now insists on my moving two of my trunks from the sick-room.”

“Oh, there is a sick-room, is there?”

“Yes, my friend’s little nephew is ill.”

“But didn’t your friend protest? Has the young woman a hypnotic power over her?”

“My friend is very weak. The young woman is only a sort of second-rate children’s nurse, apparently.”

“And do you want to go back there?”

“No, I prefer to be here. But it is so undignified not to be consulted.”

“That’s very true,” said the gardener, whose interest was beginning to wane⁹⁸³.

“That road below is as crowded and as noisy as Piccadilly,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful.”

“Market day,” replied the novelist rapturously. “Such a blaze of colour. Such a babel of tongues....”

“And so smelly, I am sure,” said Mrs. Rust. “I am going to market.”

200“Let’s all go to market,” added the gardener.

An hour had to be allowed for Courtesy to have her breakfast, and for Mrs. Rust to don her panama. Mrs. Rust, though not averse²⁴⁷ to startling any one of her own colour, had a secret distaste for the na?ve criticisms of the niggers on her strange hair. The Islanders were not aware that dyed hair was the apex of modern fashion; they looked upon it, poor things, as a deformity, and a most amusing one. Mrs. Rust had been obliged to invest in a perfect beehive of a hat for wear in such ignorant parts.

So four more units joined the stream of marketers along the red road. In spite of Mrs. Rust’s panama, the niggers laughed. Niggers always laugh unless they cry, and the lunatic ways of white women provide a source of amusement that never fails, although white women have been on the Island for three hundred years. Some of the marketers actually had to remove their baskets of fruit—crowned with boots—from their heads, to give free play to their sense of humour. Every nigger wears his boots upon his head. It is, I suppose, as much a disgrace not to own them as it is a discomfort⁹⁸⁴ to wear them.

The appearance of the market was like a maniac⁹⁸⁵ garden, and the sound of it was like a maniac rookery. By way of compensation to the niggers for their individual ugliness, Providence has granted to them an unconscious beauty in the matter of grouping themselves. A nigger by herself looks like a 201comic picture post card, a lot of niggers together look like the picture that many master-hands have tried to paint.

My senses tingle even now with the welter of sun and sound and smell and colour, that constitutes an Island market.

“You meet every one in Greyville here,” said the lady novelist to the gardener. “I will introduce you to the enemy.”

The gardener agreed absent-mindedly. He was helping Courtesy to buy baskets. The Island is the paradise of basket lovers. Those hearts are rare which do not thrill at the sight of a plaited basket in many colours, and I believe that nobody ever left the Island without succumbing⁹⁸⁶ to the charm. I suppose the reason why Island baskets never get on to the market at home is that everybody loves them so much, they never part with them. Courtesy, who always loved the popular thing, had been very busy buying baskets since the first moment of her arrival.

Mrs. Rust was busily occupied in refusing to buy anything. “Buy a pine? Why should I? I loathe pines. Lace? No, I won’t buy lace, my underclothes are already overcrowded with it. What’s that? A basket to keep my letters in. I keep my letters behind the fire. Why, gardener—look—here’s——”

“Mr. Gardener,” tittered the novelist, “here is the enemy behind you.”

202“You dream,” said the gardener, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

With an amiable⁹⁸⁷ smile the suffragette allowed her hand to be shaken an enormous number of times. She was looking plainer than the gardener had expected. With the pretty obtuseness⁹⁸⁸ of men, he had in his dreams forgotten that brown hat with the weary flowers in it. He had imagined her dressed in blue, he had thought her eyes were blue to match, he had created a little curl in her hair. Yet somehow he was not disappointed. For he had also forgotten in his dreams the comfort that lies in lack of ornament. It isn’t love that makes the world go round, it’s the optimism of men.

“Why, it’s quite nice to see you again,” said the suffragette in a voice of surprise.

“Courtesy,” shouted the gardener, “from this moment I’m not a fit companion for Mrs. Rust. Courtesy says I’m not respectable when I’m with you,” he added to the suffragette.

“I don’t see anything very disreputable in your behaviour with me,” she replied. “But it’s only for a little while, Courtesy.”

“Oh, Lor’, no,” said Courtesy. “He’s come to stop.”

“I haven’t,” said the suffragette.

The gardener would never have put into words the appeal that came into his eyes.

“Yes,” said the suffragette, “you are thinking 203that I am growing more and more militant every time you see me.”

“I was not,” he answered, “I was wondering how I could manage to see you apart from all this noise.”

“Quite easily. You can walk back to Park View with me now. I have got the oranges for Albert.”

So they squeezed out of the market-place, and side by side paced the avenue of donkeys which on market days lines the village street.

“What are you waiting for?” asked the gardener. “What’s wrong with me? When will you want me?”

“It isn’t you I don’t want. It’s what you stand for. Possibly I haven’t mentioned to you that I am a suffragette of a special kind. A cat that walks by itself.... Or rather perhaps it is presumptuous⁹⁸⁹ of me to lay claim to cathood. I have only walked such a little way. I am an elderly kitten, say, walking by itself.”

“But if all suffragettes were like you, it would certainly be an argument against the franchise⁹⁹⁰. For what would become of England?”

“God forbid that all suffragettes should be like me. I am a fanatic⁹⁹¹, a rather silly thing to be.”

“I know what you are waiting for,” said the gardener. “Heaven! you want so much beside the Vote, and you’ll never get what you want this side of heaven.”

“God forbid that I should want heaven,” said the 204suffragette. “Heaven is not made for women. Why, the very archangels are men.”

“Why won’t you have me? We could get married to-morrow. Why not?”

“Because I am too busy. Because there is a superfluity of women, and as I am not a real woman—only an idea—I’d better sit out. Because I am conceited and couldn’t bear my pride to have a fall—at your expense. Because you don’t know me and I don’t know you. Because it’s better to live alone with an ideal than coupled with a fact. Now I’m sick of talking about myself, it makes me feel sugary, as though I’d been swallowing golden syrup⁹⁹² neat.”

“But before you retire into your militancy, tell me,” said the gardener, “do you think you will ever recognise this bond between us?”

“There is no bond between us.”

“There is love between us.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not mutual.”

“Love is an automatically mutual thing.”

“Then I’m afraid that proves that whatever may be between us is not love. Here is Park View.”

“Damn Park View!”

Words are supposed to be a woman’s luxury, but it always seems to me that men put a more touching faith in argument than ever women did. I believe the gardener thought that if Park View had been five miles farther on, he might have made a woman of the suffragette.

205“And what do you expect me to do now?” he asked pathetically.

“Get busy,” advised the suffragette, “somewhere else. Dear little gardener, remember that this road has been trodden before. Being young is a devastating⁹⁹³ time, anyway. It always comforts me to think that there are crowds before and behind me, and that even a cow has had a delirious⁹⁹⁴ calfhood. After all, the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a drop. And the future is so big.”

“That’s what I complain of—the size of the future.”

“Oh, no, don’t. Size is space and space is growth. Good gracious, what a prig I am becoming!”

“For God’s sake, come and fill up a little corner of my big future, then. You little thing, I could hold you in my hand.... And you can hold me with no hand at all, but only with your heart.”

“Good-bye.”

“But why? Why?”

She was climbing the steep drive. She never looked round. She always looked up.

With excellent intentions the suffragette had, I think, succeeded in killing her heart. She was so heartless that even the hole where her heart should have been was a very shallow one. Some rudimentary emotion turned in her breast as she walked up the drive, and if she could have had the gardener 206as a friend, she would have turned even then and tendered him the friendly mailed fist of the independent woman. But if one is a fanatic, one cannot also be a lover. She suffered from the cold humility⁹⁹⁵ that sometimes attacks women. Every morning she occupied three minutes in the thankless task of pinning her hair into a shape conformable with convention’s barest requirements, and was then confronted with her own thin short face, white—but not white like a flower as the face of a beloved woman should be; her small eyes, grey—but not grey like the sea; her straight and drooping hair, made out of the ashes of the flame that burns in real women’s hair; her thin pressed lips, her hard set chin, the little defiant wrinkles over her brows.... It was impossible for her to believe that such a thing could be indispensable to any eyes. Her attitude towards the paradox was always sceptical, and the idea that there is nothing a woman can offer as a substitute for such a small gift as herself was beyond her. The little ordinary fiery things of youth had been shorn out of her life, she had been crushed by the responsibility of being a woman and a devotee.

No man would believe that such a woman exists. The pathetic vanity of man would never be convinced that any woman could prefer her own independence to his kisses.

By the time the suffragette had reached the front door of Park View, the interview with the gardener was but a pulse beating at the back of her mind.

207Miss Brown, looking as nearly dishevelled as a persistently⁹⁹⁷ Real Lady could possibly look, was standing in the hall, ankle-deep in her own prostrate property. Trunks yawned on every side, highly respectable dresses, like limp ghosts of Miss Brown herself, embellished⁹⁹⁸ every chair.

“And I haven’t even begun on Albert’s books yet.”

“The more of Albert’s books we leave behind the better,” replied the suffragette. “I have got him Treasure Island to read on the boat, and he might take that one on Chemistry for Sundays.”

“I’m sure I don’t know how you manage Albert,” said Miss Brown. “I could never even get him to read the Bible. It really looks as if Providence had sent you to us at this crisis.”

“Providence would never have chosen a militant suffragette.”

“Well, but really one wouldn’t notice your opinions,” said Miss Brown in an encouraging voice.

“What about Scottie?” asked the suffragette. “Has anybody thought what is going to happen to him?”

“I haven’t thought of any details,” answered Miss Brown. “The doctor’s orders were so sudden, they altogether upset me. I suppose Scottie can be left with John.”

“I hope he won’t,” said the suffragette. “I caught John using Scottie as a target yesterday. He scored two bull’s-eyes before I got there.”

208“I can’t think what to do with him. There is nobody but Mr. Wise, and he already has a fierce bulldog. Have you any ideas?”

“Yes, one. I have a sort of friend on the Island. If I left Scottie with him, he would act as a brake in the pursuit, because of the difficulties of quarantine.”

“I don’t quite follow your meaning,” said Miss Brown, not unnaturally. “I didn’t know you had a gentleman friend on the Island.”

“I haven’t. But I’m sure he will be kind to Scottie.”

Very late that night, when Courtesy, Mrs. Rust, the gardener, and an unknown young man picked up at the club by the gardener, were playing Bridge in the verandah, a very young boy with a very fat dog appeared, asking for Mr. Gardener. The boy was too well educated to be afraid of duppies. The solid Scottie, too, was felt to be a sound defence against the supernatural.

“What is this?” asked the gardener, who had assumed the melancholy pose of the Rejected One, and had unconsciously acquired a sad sweet smile to correspond. Even on his death-bed the gardener will pose as a dying man.

The young boy put a note into his hand, and dragged Scottie from the shadow where he had modestly seated himself.

“By Jove,” said the unknown young man, who happened to be Mr. Wise. “It’s Scottie, the Park View dog.”

209The gardener literally burst the envelope open. The enclosure said: “Dear Gardener—Will you please keep Scottie until I ask you for him again.—Your fairly sincere suffragette.”

The note went round the Bridge Table.

“I have always wondered,” said Mrs. Rust, “whether politics were really good for women. Now I am sure that they have an unhinging tendency. What does it mean?”

“It means that they are going on an expedition,” said Courtesy. “They want the dog looked after for a day or two.”

“Why, but Park View is a regular palace in Greyville,” said Mr. Wise. “There are three servants in it, all competent to look after Scottie for a day or two.”

“I shall have to do what she says,” said the gardener. “The suffragette’s only fault is that she leaves almost too much to the imagination.”

The boy had vanished.

“Better go round and ask for an explanation,” said Courtesy.

“He must play out these doubled lilies,” said Mrs. Rust.

“It must be nearly twelve,” said Mr. Wise. “The cocks have been crowing for an hour.”

The Island cock proclaims the night rather than the day. Not even a cock can feel much enthusiasm for such a tyrant⁹⁹⁹ as the Trinity Island sun.

“I can’t go now,” said the gardener.

210But next morning at breakfast he said, “I daren’t go now.” He had hardly slept at all, and looked white. The light of the Seeker had gone out of his eyes, there had been no wish in him for a wild walk in the early sun. He was not even posing. He had been pathetically late for breakfast, and Mrs. Rust and the lady novelist had disappeared to read the English Review and the Lady’s Pictorial¹⁰⁰⁰ respectively on the front verandah.

“Why daren’t you?” asked Courtesy.

“Oh, Courtesy—she’s beaten me. She’s left me without hope.”

Courtesy took several mouthfuls of porridge before she replied, “You’re young yet, gardener. And she isn’t so extra unique, after all. If you like, I’ll go round and ask for an explanation of the dog.”

“You don’t know the way,” said the gardener tragically¹⁰⁰².

It was lucky that Mr. Wise at that moment arrived in his buggy to invite Courtesy and Mrs. Rust (if she wasn’t too tired) for a drive. The buggy was a single one, and held two only, so there was a transparency about his motives which did him credit. Courtesy never even passed on the invitation to Mrs. Rust, and the owner of the vehicle failed to repeat it.

Armed with her inevitable box of sweets, Courtesy set forth on her romance.

“Ripping woods,” she said, as the sun winked through the delicate lace of the forest.

211“Ripping,” agreed Mr. Wise. “But full of ticks.”

Courtesy suffered that beautiful shock that attacks a woman when she first realises that the man by her side is an uncommon¹⁰⁰³ person, and that he holds the same view about herself. She offered him a chocolate cream.

They went to Park View by the longest way possible, but I think the nearest approach to romance that they reached was when Courtesy said, “Oh, Lor’, I am enjoying myself!”

And Mr. Wise replied, “So am I. I hope you’ll come again.”

When they reached Park View they were neither of them observant enough to notice the forsaken look of the house.

“I’ll just go and tackle that funny little suffragette,” said Courtesy. “I won’t be half a mo.”

She looked back and smiled at him as she climbed the drive.

“Dey all gone, missis,” said John, who was sitting in the hall, reading the letters out of the waste-paper basket.

“Gone? Where to?”

“Gone to Lunnon Town to see a doctah man, please, missis.”

“union Town, you mean.”

“No, please thank you, missis. Gone lars’ night to catch a big steamboat.”

212“How many of them went?”

“Missis Brown, and Mars’ Albert, an’ de visitor-missis.”

“Do you know their address? Where are you forwarding their letters to?”

John laughed shrilly¹⁰⁰⁵ at this joke.

“Carn’t say, please, missis. Post-missis wouldn’t send me de letters, now de fambly gone.”

The Island is the home of elusive information.

“What’s the matter with the woman, anyway?” said Courtesy, as she remounted the buggy. “I never can understand a woman that doesn’t know her vocation.”

“What is her vocation?” asked Mr. Wise.

“Ou, I don’t know,” giggled Courtesy.

“I think all women ought to marry,” said Mr. Wise. “Somehow it keeps them softer.”

“It wouldn’t make a hard woman soft,” said Courtesy. “Only all the soft women do marry.”

“Do you consider——”

“Ou, Lor’, this is a killing conversation!” interrupted the lady. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“All right. That’s a very pretty dress you’ve got on.”

They found the gardener sitting on tenterhooks¹⁰⁰⁶ on the verandah, pulling Scottie’s ears.

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t. She’s gone to London.”

“I hope they’ll take care of Westminster Abbey,” said Mrs. Rust.

213The gardener said nothing.

By this time the suffragette was putting romance behind her by means of a little boat limping across a heavy sea. Compared to the Caribbeania, this boat was like my suffragette compared with Mr. Shakespeare’s Desdemona. There was rust on the little boat’s metal, and her paint still bore memories of London smuts. The purser was occasionally to be seen in his shirt sleeves, and the Captain had a button off his coat.

The priest was on board, returning to his flock, overflowing¹⁰⁰⁷ with material for sermons. By mutual consent he and the suffragette ignored each other. He made an attempt to approach Albert, with his special children’s manner, but that cultured youth quickly silenced him. So he occupied himself in trying to save the soul of the second officer, a docile¹⁰⁰⁸ youth, of humble and virtuous tendency.

Within two days the little boat reached the Isthmus which has lately been converted into one of the wonders of the world.

“My poor Albert,” said the suffragette. “I’m afraid the doctor says you mustn’t go to see the Canal. It’s so dusty. And you know such a lot about it, don’t you? It is disappointing.”

“I dow quite edough about it,” replied Albert. “I have do wish whatever to see it. I dow every detail of its codstructiod.”

“That’s all right, then. The doctor says when it’s cool after dark, you may walk as far as the 214gardens behind the quay¹⁰⁰⁹, and listen to the band.”

“I do dot wish to hear the badd. I wish you ad Ah-Bargaret to go away for the whole day, ad let the youggest stewardess cob ad sit with be. She is a charbig persod, ad it would be very good for you to see the Cadal.”

In Albert’s eyes the halo of the suffragette was to some extent evaporating. Her attitude towards science alienated¹⁰¹⁰ him in his capacity as an educated man, although as a child in pain he still clung to her. And she had that morning offended him by buying him a bottle of sweets from the barber’s shop.

“I really thigk you sobetibes forget I ab do logger a baby,” he observed, and forthwith began to lay great stress on the charm of the youngest stewardess.

Miss Brown was delighted at the fall of her nephew’s latest idol¹⁰¹¹.

“You’d better come away,” she said. “Let’s go and see the Canal. If you stay with Albert when he is displeased¹⁰¹², you get on his nerves.”

So they landed on the quay of one of the two terrible towns that guard the entrances of the Canal. They paid a great price and manned a train that cost humanity a very great price indeed to create. That train is built of dead men, the embankment on which it runs has largely peopled purgatory¹⁰¹³, the very sleepers¹⁰¹⁴ might as well be coffins¹⁰¹⁵, yet the train moves with the same callous¹⁰¹⁶ rhythm as the train from Surbiton to Waterloo. In it you may see the calm inheritors 215of the fatal past sit upon spread handkerchiefs upon the smutty seats, and stick their tickets in their hats that the passing of the conductor may not disturb their train of thought; and all as if there were no ghosts to keep them company. Only outside the windows you can see the haunted land, white water enveloping¹⁰¹⁷ a dead forest, ashen trees suffering slow drowning, tall grey birds standing amid floating desolation, and the Canal, a strip of successful tragedy, creeping between its treacherous¹⁰¹⁸ red banks. The train leaves the Canal for a while, and returns to find it in a different mood. The First Lock is the crown of that great endeavour. I am assured that much more genius has been spent on the Cuts than on the Locks, but to you and me, ignorantly seeking copy, the First Lock triumphantly¹⁰¹⁹ dominating the weary water-way, seems like the seal of success, as if Man had built this stupendous thing as a barrier between him and failure.

When you see the Lock you feel like an ant seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The suffragette, as she stood on the iron way that goes along the top edge of one of the gates, had to think of all the biggest things she had ever imagined to keep herself from dwindling¹⁰²⁰ out of existence. Even Women’s Rights grew small in the light of this man-made immensity. She was standing on the highest gate, and she could look across a perspective of three empty cube-worlds, at the white Canal and the white sea beyond it.

216“Really,” she said, “there is very little to choose between God and Man.”

“Good gracious me, what a thing to say!” said Miss Brown, bridling¹⁰²¹. “God could knock all this down with one stroke.”

“He couldn’t knock down the spirit that would make man build it up again. Why do we pray to a Creator, if we can ourselves create?”

“I think you had better come out of the sun,” said Miss Brown coldly. “I am feeling a little sick myself.”

But on their way across the gate back to the white paving that borders the Lock, they found their way blocked by the priest, who was advancing in the opposite direction.

It is impossible for a stout¹⁰²² Miss Brown and a stout priest to pass each other on this route. Two suffragettes might have passed, but fortunately for the Isthmus there was only one present.

“I will retire,” said the priest. “Place aux dames¹⁰²³, yerce, yerce.”

“Oh, how good of you!” said Miss Brown, bridling. “I am sorry to put you to such inconvenience.”

With a jocular reference or two to goods trains at a shunting station the priest retired from the dilemma¹⁰²⁴. But when they had all reached the safety of the broad paving again he seemed to have shed his desire to cross the gate. He was by himself, which he detested¹⁰²⁵; there were countless¹⁰²⁶ morals to be 217humorously drawn⁵⁹⁵ from the Canal, and nobody to point them out to.

“This is a marvel⁸¹⁶ of workmanship, is it not?” he said to Miss Brown, pointedly¹⁰²⁷ excluding the suffragette.

Miss Brown agreed, and asked whether he had felt pretty well on the voyage so far. Thus the Canal introduced them, and when the acquaintance was safely formed, Miss Brown strove to introduce the suffragette.

“Yerce, yerce,” said the priest hurriedly. “We have met before. An introduction is unnecessary.”

Fortunately for the suffragette she saw a dog at a little distance, and hurried to speak to it. The dog is blessedly cosmopolitan. Wherever you may meet him he speaks your home tongue to you, and his eyes are the eyes of a friend in a strange land.

The suffragette and the dog walked along the side of the Lock some twenty yards behind their elders and betters, and the suffragette watched her character falling in shreds between them. Some people like safe hunting, and there is no prey so defenceless as prey that is not there. The priest’s conscience had been for some time accumulating reasons why the modest Miss Brown should be warned of the true character of her immodest companion.

The suffragette allowed them half an hour to finish the destruction, and joined them at the train, when the dog reluctantly remembered another engagement.

The party returned to the town in dead silence. 218At the station the priest left them, with promises to come and read to Albert. The suffragette and Miss Brown made their way across the gardens to the quay. Under a great palm, Miss Brown stopped tragically, and spoke to her companion for the first time since leaving the Lock.

“I trusted you,” she said, rather dramatically, though, of course, she was too ladylike for melodrama¹⁰²⁸. “I gave you my hospitality, I succoured you when you needed help (this was an echo of the priest), and all the while you deceived me, you took advantage of my kindness.”

“Certainly you were all that to me,” said the suffragette mildly, “and certainly I am very grateful for all your kindness. But I don’t remember deceiving you.”

“You are an immoral⁴ woman,” said Miss Brown, with a great effort, “and you never told me.”

“It is hardly expected that I should have told you that. Partly because it would have been silly, and partly because it would have been quite untrue.”

“No one could dislike gossip more than I do,” said Miss Brown, who loved it. “But a priest is a priest, and this one is such a truly nice man, so good-hearted, never said a word yesterday when the steward upset the soup into his lap. Why did you never tell me that you travelled from England in company with a man who was not your husband?”

Now the suffragette, though she was distrustful of the reasoning of men, seldom failed to see the point 219of view of a woman, even though that woman was an anti. She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to be a woman was in itself a good argument.

“Of course I ought to have told you, Miss Brown,” she said in a warmer voice than was usual with her. “As a matter of fact it never occurred to me that the thing was worth telling, but that, I admit, is no excuse. I do see that I have been accepting your kindness under false pretences. It is perhaps useless to say I am sorry, and worse than useless to tell you that I would rather die than be married, and that I would rather be hanged than live unmarried with a man. Still I admit I allowed all the fools on the Caribbeania to think I was also such a fool as to be married. I will not bother you again, Miss Brown, I will keep out of your way as much as possible on the boat. It’s only a fortnight.”

Miss Brown was mollified, and when she spoke again it was like the angel Gabriel sympathising with the difficulties of a beetle. “Of course if you are penitent,” she said, “I should like to help you to retrace¹⁰²⁹ as far as possible the false step you have taken. I believe there are Homes.... But perhaps you had better not come near Albert.”

The little boat was indulging in a two days’ rest at the Isthmus. It is a problem worthy of the superwoman to avoid a fellow-passenger on a small boat in port. The bearable space on board becomes limited to inches. The side nearest the quay affords nothing but coal-dust to breathe, the other side allows a small 220percentage of air to dilute¹⁰³⁰ the coal-dust. There is no scope for choice.

After-dinner, however, Miss Brown settled down to play chess with Albert. Chess with Miss Brown is a most satisfactory game, a crescendo¹⁰³¹ of “Checks” leading to a triumphant “Mate” in a delightfully short time.

So the suffragette went on shore to listen to the band.

The Isthmus band is as gaudy in attire⁶⁹⁵ as it is sombre in complexion, and it plays to a stratum¹⁰³² of society as striking to the eye as any in the world. The Isthmus is the centre of nigger fashion. Here, under the glare and the flare¹⁰³³ of a hot night in the season, you may see the effect of a layer of civilisation on an aboriginal¹⁰³⁴ worship of colour. Crimson, gold, and silver are the prevailing¹⁰³⁵ motifs¹⁰³⁶. As to the coiffure of the ladies, for every plait to be found on a Trinity Island head there are half a dozen on the Isthmus. There is something uniquely wicked in the appearance of rouge¹⁰³⁷ and powder on a mahogany ground. The look of vice which the Parisian or London lady strives to attain³⁸⁹ by means of a shopful of cosmetics¹⁰³⁸ can be acquired by the lady-nigger with one dab⁸⁷¹ of the flour-dredger. Once more I pause to ask when we may expect the decree that we must further conceal²⁴³ our incurable virtue by means of a complexion dyed copper colour.

There was a moon, and there were stars standing aloof in the sky; and there were many lights about 221the garden. There were shrill¹⁰⁰⁴ brass voices everywhere, and the band was playing that tune of resigned sentimentality, “My Old Kentucky Home.”

The suffragette felt slightly drunk. She had had a day of emotions, and it was an unusual and intoxicating¹⁰³⁹ experience for her to find her emotions escaping from the iron bound cask in which she kept them. She felt totally irresponsible, and when the priest came along, looking as conceited as the moon, and as sentimentally⁸²¹ benign¹⁰⁴⁰ as the stars, she discovered a lunatic longing to tear the hat from his head and stamp upon it, to make him look a fool, to prick his pride; not because of any personal enmity—or so she thought—but because he seemed eternally on the side of sanity²⁵¹ and of yesterday, and barred the path of young and mad modernity. She approached him.

The priest suddenly perceived in front of him a soul dangerously in need of salvation.

“My dear young lady, I have been seeking an opportunity for a quiet chat with you, yerce, yerce. Whatever you may think of me, I assure you that I am not the hard and inhuman man you think me. I should be only too thankful to be of service to you. Let us sit on that quiet seat, away from the crowd.”

“It is good of you to risk contamination,” said the suffragette.

“My calling leads me among the publicans and sinners,” said the priest. “It is not my business to divide the sheep from the goats.”

222“Not your business, but your pleasure,” suggested the suffragette.

The priest stiffened.

“I wish you had not hardened your heart against my help,” he said. “Believe me, I have every sympathy with a young and unprotected woman in your position. I think sometimes life seems hard on the weaker sex, yerce, yerce.”

“It is a great honour to be a woman,” said the suffragette. “Your God certainly turns his back on the individual, but he is very just to the mass. The day of women is just dawning.”

“There may be something in what you say,” observed the priest, feeling that she was somehow erasing¹⁰⁴¹ all that he had meant to say. “I am sure we shall all be glad to see Woman come into her own. But....”

“Men may possess the past, but women have the future,” continued the suffragette, who was certainly very much excited. “We have suddenly found what you have lost—the courage of our convictions. The art of being a fanatic seems to me to be the pivot¹⁰⁴² of progress; but men have lost, and women have caught that blessed disease.”

“I do not see how all this applies to the matter in hand,” said the priest. “Unless you are trying to convey to me, by way of an excuse, the craving which I am told possesses most women of your persuasion—the craving for fame, the morbid wish to be talked about.”

223“I did not hope to convey anything at all to you. And certainly not fame, for there is no such thing. I have seen pigeons sitting on the heads of statues of great men in London, and I have seen little critics sitting on their fame. This is a world of isolated people, and there can be no fame where there is no mutual understanding.”

“You are oddly pessimistic, and you are also wilfully¹⁰⁴³ evading¹⁰⁴⁴ the point. When I saw you just now, I hoped that you had repented¹⁰⁴⁵ of your sin and needed my help.”

“I have committed no sin that would appeal to you,” said the suffragette. “But that is, of course, beside the point. What you want is that I should repent²²² of being myself, and become a sort of inferior female you.”

“Indeed you have come to hasty and mistaken conclusions about my intentions,” said the priest, whose principal virtue was perseverance. “Regarding your political opinions, I have every sympathy with your cause, though none for your methods. There is something so very coarse about militancy.”

“Have you ever tried denying a creature the food it needs? I think you would find that even a white mouse would be coarse if you starved it.”

“You may be right. My sister is a member of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage. Perhaps you also belong to that sisterhood?”

“No,” she answered. “I belong to the Shrieking Sisterhood.”

224“It seems useless for me to try and help you in this mood,” sighed the priest. “I can only pray that I may be shown the way to your heart....”

“I have none,” she said.

In a garden not five hundred miles away from the garden in which she sat was the Fact which she had Forgotten, set in a silver light among the silver trees. The gardener stood among the pale grape-fruit trees, with his head back in his usual conceited way, with his hands in his pockets and his feet in the wet grass.

“This is nonsense,” he thought.

“She is only half human.”

“Love for a thing only half human is only half love.”

“You can’t build a world out of words, as she tries to do.”

“In a thing like love, there is fact and there is theory. Theory is only falsehood disguised as fact.”

“She is not a bit pretty.”

“I believe she would rather make an enemy than make a friend.”

“Something has gone wrong with the woman of to-day. She has left the man behind, but she has not gone forward.”

“What have I been about to allow such a woman to disturb me? I came to this island a king, and I have made myself a slave.”

“It is youth that has burnt me. I am done with youth. It is fine to have reached age in theory, and 225yet in practice still to have one’s life ahead. My youth has been a fire in my path, and she has stamped it out.”

The moon explored the spangled sky. The fireless interwove with the pale purring noises of the night. The mad still shadows of the palms blotted¹⁰⁴⁶ the grass.

The gardener went into the verandah firmly posed as He Who has Passed through Fire, and has emerged, cured of the silly disease of youth, into a pale silver light.

For the gardener made his theories, while the suffragette’s theories made her.

The gardener was awakened¹⁰⁴⁷ next morning by the loud noise of Scottie chasing lizards across the room. Scottie was a bristly Northerner, and never became really used to the conditions of tropical life. To this day he labours under the delusion that lizards are only bald or naked mice, that have deceitfully changed their smell and their taste.

The gardener thought that he awoke perfectly light-hearted. He did not recognise the curious thing that throbbed in the back of his consciousness as his heart.

He whistled in his bath. He whistled as he came out on to the verandah for breakfast.

Courtesy had risen for early breakfast by mistake.

“Stopped brooding?” she asked. “Brave boy.”

“Two and two is such a poor formation after all,” 226said the gardener. “One and one is much more comfortable.”

Courtesy giggled. “There are times,” she said, “when two and two is ripping. Mr. Wise is coming up to lunch.”

“He came up to lunch yesterday. And he’s coming up to tea to-morrow.”

“Yesterday and to-morrow are not to-day,” said Courtesy, that practical girl.

The gardener had not time to ponder, for Mrs. Rust then appeared. Her complexion was even more of a contrast to her hair than usual.

“I had a letter last night,” she said. “I didn’t tell you at once, because it’s such a vulgar habit to blurt¹⁰⁴⁸ out news. I don’t know whether I have mentioned my son Samuel to you?”

“You have,” said Courtesy.

“So have I,” added the gardener.

“His house has played him false—I knew it would. One of the ceilings gave way—on to Samuel. Him and his house—he always was a fool. I believe he thought the Almighty built his house for him.”

“Yes, but what happened to Samuel?”

“I told you—the ceiling fell on him.”

“Yes, but what is the result?”

“Oh, the rest of the house is still standing. It was only one of the ceilings. He put the billiard table upstairs, and probably had his rafters made of bamboo.”

227“Yes, but I mean what was the result as far as Samuel was concerned?”

“He was concussion¹⁰⁴⁹. There have been one or two people staying in the house since he started the atrocious practice of advertising, and they had him taken to a hospital. My letter is from the matron.”

“Poor Mrs. Rust,” said Courtesy, “you must be terribly worried. I suppose you’ll be wantin’ to get home by the next boat.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” snapped the mother. “Haven’t you noticed by now that I have iron nerves. Next boat—indeed.”

“But I should have thought——” began Courtesy, and the gardener kicked her under the table.

“There is only one perfectly obvious thing to do,” said the gardener, “and that is wait till the next mail, a fortnight hence. Knowing Mrs. Rust as I do, Courtesy, I am sure she will follow this obvious course.”

“Obvious course—indeed,” said Mrs. Rust, much relieved. “Stuff and nonsense. I shall do exactly as I please, whether it’s obvious or not. Suppose I decide to go home by Wednesday’s boat, what then, young man?”

The gardener shook his head. “You won’t, I know,” he said. “You are too reasonable.”

“Reason be blowed,” said Mrs. Rust with spirit. “You don’t know me very well, young man, if you think I’m like all the other old cats, to be persuaded by that sort of argument.”

228The gardener was now an expert at saving Mrs. Rust from herself. Although she entangled⁴⁵⁸ herself habitually¹⁰⁵⁰ in contradictions, her real mind was not subtle enough to be well hidden, and to guide her action into the path of her desire was a matter that only required a little delicacy¹⁰⁵¹. The gardener, being a gardener, was always ready with tactful guidance and unseen support in such matters. In this case, he would have been surprised if you had told him that his secret desire pointed the same way as Mrs. Rust’s. He thought he had killed desire. But he was tired of the Island, and he had by that mail received a quarterly instalment of his income.

“Courtesy,” said Mrs. Rust, “we sail for home next Wednesday. Unreasonable—indeed. And none the worse for that.”

“We have engaged the car for a week from Friday,” said Courtesy. “Mr. Wise is lunching with us on Thursday. And the hotel insists on a week’s notice.”

“I am paying you two hundred a year,” said Mrs. Rust brutally¹⁰⁵², “to save me from these vulgar details.”

“Oh, Lor’,” said Courtesy.

“But what about Scottie?” asked the gardener.

“Scottie’s your affair, not mine. I’m not paying you ￡200 a year to follow me about.”

The gardener is a very difficult person to snub.

“Scottie and I are coming gratis.”

And Mrs. Rust said, “Good.”

229But the little boat, with the suffragette on board of her, fled across the Atlantic, as if aware of the projected pursuit of the great mail steamer.

The suffragette, a morose¹⁰⁵³ unit on a desert island of her own making, stood separated from the world by a gulf¹⁰⁵⁴ of gossip. She used to sit on the poop, where nobody else would sit, with the wind in her hair and the sun in her eyes, building theories.

There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth. Whenever the suffragette thought of the gardener, she broke the thought with a theory. It is sad to be burdened with a brain that must always track illusion to disillusionment. She had one consolation, one persistent⁹⁹⁶ and glorious contradiction, one shining truth in a welter of self-questioning:—“I’m alone—I’m alone—I’m alone....”

It was not until they had passed the Azores that a voice from the outer world spoke to her. They had reached those islands late one moonlit night. The little square houses, climbing up the hill-side in orderly ranks, looked like silver bricks in a castle of dreams. There was a white fringe of breaking waves threaded between the black sea and the black land. From the boats that hurried between the shore and the steamer, little lamps swung and thin voices cut the darkness. Thundering silence seemed 230to invade the emptiness left by the ceasing of the propeller¹⁰⁵⁵. The ceaseless loom that always sang behind the turmoil of the suffragette’s consciousness spun the moon into a quiet melody. The still lap of the sea against the ship’s stern struck the ear like a word never spoken before. You could hear the gods creating new things. You could hear the tread of the stars across the sky.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” said Miss Brown; “it’s Albert. I knew something would come of his going to the fancy-dress dance as Galileo, with such a thin tunic¹⁰⁵⁶ on; but he is so wilful. And now he has a high temperature, and a worse pain in his side than ever. He is crying for you.”

It was a strange sensation for the suffragette, after all these days of loneliness, to be cried for. Tears, like all things that belong to women, appealed to her beyond words.

She found Albert beating on the wall of his cabin. When he cried—it hurt. When he breathed—it hurt. When he moved—it hurt. And yet he had to cry and pant and struggle. There was something in the suffragette’s plain and ordinary face that acted as an antidote¹⁰⁵⁷ to Albert’s hectic personality. She was a poor nurse; her only experience of the sick-room had been from her own sick-bed. But she had a cold hand, an imagination which she only allowed to escape at a crisis, and nerves very difficult to excite. All that night, while the ship climbed the steep seas of the Bay, she and the doctor kept something 231that was very big from invading the little cabin. The battle was, of course, a losing one. There is something almost funny in the futility¹⁰⁵⁸ of fighting Heaven on an issue like this.

I said there should be no death-bed scenes in this book, so I will only add that after much battling Albert managed at last to get to sleep, and he died before he woke.

The suffragette was there, but she was not needed. She went away and cried because no one would ever cry for her again.

She marconied for Miss Brown’s brother to meet the bereaved aunt at Southampton. And when the boat reached home, she carried her mustard-coloured portmanteau up the gangway, and, by disappearing, closed the incident.

In this wonderful age we do our disappearing by machinery¹⁰⁵⁹. Fairy godmothers prefer Rolls-Royce cars to broomsticks, the pirate employs a submarine instead of a gallant¹⁰⁶⁰ three-decker, the black sheep of the piece, instead of donning a mask and confining the rest of his career to Maidenhead Thicket, books his passage to a Transatlantic sheepfold on a thirty-knot liner.

The suffragette disappeared by the London train. By travelling third, she hoped to escape the majority of her fellow-passengers, and it was not until the train began to leave the station that she identified a hitherto unnoticed person opposite to her as the priest.

232The priest was always overcome by a feeling of virtue when he travelled third.

“So our modesty is mutual,” he said jovially¹⁰⁶¹ to the suffragette. “Yerce, yerce, in England I travel third on principle. My parish, you know, is in a poor part of London, and I think a shepherd should as far as possible share the circumstances of his flock.”

The suffragette hovered for a moment over a very crude flower of repartee¹⁰⁶² dealing with cattle-trucks, but discarded the idea. She was always cautious, when she allowed herself time for caution. Her principle in conversation was, “When in doubt—don’t.” But being a militant suffragette, she was seldom in doubt.

The priest was aggrieved with the suffragette, partly because he felt obliged to speak to her. He would have preferred to ignore her, but she had behaved too well during the last few days. She had tried as hard to save a life as ever he had tried to save a soul, and had failed with equal dignity. Inconsistency annoyed him very much. You must be one of two things, a sheep or a goat, preferably the latter until the priest himself had had time to lead you to the fold. For a confessed goat suddenly to don wool without any help from him looked very much like deliberate prevarication¹⁰⁶³. He did not now know how to classify the suffragette, and not knowing how to do a thing in which he had specialised was naturally exasperating.

233“You were asking for my advice about the problem of your future,” he said, leaning confidentially towards her. “I have been thinking much about you, and I believe I have solved the problem.”

I need hardly say that the suffragette never asked for advice. When circumstances obliged her to follow the advisable course, she hid her docility¹⁰⁶⁴ like a sin.

“My future always looks after itself, thank you,” she said in a polite voice, “and so does my past. It’s old enough.”

The priest stiffened for a moment, but when on the track of a goat he was hard to check. Besides, the suffragette’s voice was so low and calm that her words seemed like a mistake, not to be taken seriously.

“My idea is that you should join in the glorious campaign against poverty and sin in the slums,” he continued. “I assure you that peace lies that way. My sister once had a love affair with a freethinker; she lost a great deal of weight at the time, and became almost hysterical. But she followed my advice, and now runs several social clubs in connection with my Church in the Brown Borough¹⁰⁶⁵, North London, where the poor may buy cocoa and cake and listen to discourses¹⁰⁶⁶ by earnest Christian workers.”

“And what does she weigh now?” asked the suffragette, after a pause.

“She is a splendid example of a Christian 234woman,” said the priest, “a woman of unwavering faith, indefatigable¹⁰⁶⁷ in charitable works.”

“I think I shall come down to your parish as an antidote,” said the suffragette, “the only sort of Anti I ever could tolerate.”

Certainly my suffragette is not worthy to be the heroine of a book. I must apologise for presenting a nature so undiluted by any of the qualities that go to make good fiction. A pun, I admit, is the last straw, but it is unfortunately a straw occasionally clutched at by erring¹⁰⁶⁸ humanity, though rarely admitted by the novelist.

“I should not advise you to choose the Brown Borough for the scene of your endeavour,” said the priest hurriedly. “There is little scope for workers unconnected with a church there. I had in my mind for you the neighbourhood of Southwark, or Walworth, South London. Much more suitable, yerce, yerce. The Brown Borough is very unhealthy for those unaccustomed to London slums.”

“Yet your sister gained weight and lost hysteria there,” said the suffragette maliciously¹⁰⁶⁹. “I myself might be said to have room for improvement on both these points.”

“I strongly advise you to choose another parish,” said the priest, bitterly repenting¹⁰⁷⁰ of his zeal¹⁰⁷¹. “So much excellent work has been done in the Brown Borough that the majority of the people ought by now to be on the way to find salvation, both in body and soul.”

235“That’s why I propose to come as an antidote,” said the suffragette.

The conversation closed itself. They opened the Spectator and Votes for Women simultaneously.

London provided the sort of weather it reserves for those who return from sun-blessed lands. It was a day with rain in the past and rain in the future, but never rain in the present. The sort of day that makes you feel glad you thought of bringing your umbrella, and then sorry to find you left it in the last bus. The streets looked like wet slates⁸⁷⁷ splashed with tears.

The suffragette kept a lonely flat not far from Covent Garden, apparently with the object of ensuring herself the right to exercise a vote when she should have procured¹⁰⁷³ that luxury. For she very seldom put the flat to the ordinary uses of flats. It contained a table and two chairs, as a provision against the unlikely event of its owner’s succumbing to social weaknesses. It also contained a bed. Curtains and carpets, and any cooking arrangement more elaborate than a gas-ring, are not included in the Theory of the Hair Shirt, the motto of which is, “I can very well do without.”

The suffragette deposited the mustard-coloured portmanteau at this Spartan abode¹⁰⁷⁴, and went to report herself to her Society. She was not a famous suffragette. If I told you her name, you would not raise your eyebrows and laugh facetiously¹⁰⁷⁵ and say, 236“Oh—that maniac....” She was nominally¹⁰⁷⁶ one of the rank and file, although, being rebellious even against co-rebels, she seldom acted under orders.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never has time to be busy.

The Chief Militant Suffragette, who believed that she held feminism in the hollow of her hand, was a born leader of women. She was familiar with the knack of wringing¹⁰⁷⁷ sacrifices from other people. She was a little lady in a minor¹⁰⁷⁸ key, pale and plaintive¹⁰⁷⁹, with short hair, like spun sand. She dressed as nearly as possible like a man, and affected an eyeglass. She probably thought that in doing this she sacrificed enough for the cause of women. She had safely found a husband before she cut her hair. I suppose she had sent more women to prison than any one magistrate¹⁰⁸⁰ in London, but she had never been to prison herself.

The cause of the Suffrage, while attracting the finest women in the country, also attracts those who consider themselves to be the finest. It has an equal fascination for those who can work but can never lead and for those who can lead but never work.

“I have written to you three times,” said the Chief M.S. pathetically to the suffragette. “I do think you might have answered.”

237“So do I,” admitted the suffragette, “only that I have been abroad. What did you write to me about?”

“Abroad?” said the Chief M.S., and raised her eyebrows. She had none really, but she raised the place where they should have been. “Abroad? Enjoying yourself at such a time as this?”

“What do you mean?” asked the suffragette. “What has happened? Have we got the Vote?”

The eyeglass of the Chief M.S. fell out with annoyance¹⁰⁸¹. “Of course not,” she said, “but it’s the great massed procession and deputation to-morrow, and I wanted you to help with the North London section.”

The suffragette loathed processions. She loathed working or walking with a herd. She would rather have blown up Westminster Abbey than stewarded at a meeting. A less honest woman would have flattered herself that these are the signs of a great and lonely mind, but the suffragette knew them as the signs of vanity. And to cure vanity is, of course, the business of a hair shirt.

“When have I got to be there? And where?” she asked.

In the eyes of the Chief M.S. punctuality in other people was the ideal virtue. The moment she named to her assistants was always an hour before the correct time, and two hours before the one she chose for her own appearance.

The suffragette had long been a servant of the 238Society. By an instinctive⁴⁰³ calculation she managed to arrive at Little South Lane next day punctually at the moment when help began to be needed. She collected some of the native enthusiasts¹⁰⁸² who were adding fuel to their ardour on the door-steps of neighbouring public-houses. She quelled¹⁰⁸³ the political antagonism¹⁰⁸⁴ of a bevy¹⁰⁸⁵ of little boys who were vocally¹⁰⁸⁶ competing with a Great Woman’s preliminary address. She soothed¹⁰⁸⁷ the objections of the paid banner-bearers, who had not been led to expect the additional opposition¹⁰⁸⁸ of a high wind. She eliminated from the procession as far as possible all suffragists below the age of four. She lent a moment’s friendly attention to the reasons why Woman’s Sphere is the Home, expounded¹⁰⁸⁹ by a hoarse spinster from an upper window. She courageously¹⁰⁹⁰ approached an enormous dock-hand, who had snatched a banner from its rightful bearer, and was waving it with many oaths.

“Might I trouble you for that banner?” said the suffragette.

The gentleman’s reply was simple but obscene.

“Might I trouble you at once to move out of my way, and let the procession join up?” said the suffragette in a red voice.

“Gaw-love yer, me gal, I’m comin’ along,” said the gentleman. “Wot price me for a ... suffragette? You’ll need a few fists, if you git as fur as the Delta¹⁰⁹¹ way.”

How very rare it is to mistake the staff for the 239broken reed. The suffragette recovered herself quickly.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought to have known from your face that you were a sensible man. How good of you to carry a banner!”

The procession, like a snake, reared its head and moved. In the van a marching song was begun, in the rear—a ragtime. The police, looking dignified, but feeling silly, marched in single file on either flank, and kept an eye on the interests of the traffic. The one mounted policeman obviously regretted the prominence of his position, his horse was an anti, and showed a man-like tendency to argue with its hoofs¹⁰⁹².

The suffragette walked between a little woman in a plush coat with a baby and a person who might have been a poetess, or a philosopher, or a Low Church missionary¹⁰⁹³, but was certainly very earnest. The long brown streets swung by. The flares¹⁰⁹⁴ on the coster’s barrows anchored to the kerb, danced in the yellow air. A hum of barbaric voices, and the large firm pulse of many feet marching, made a background to the few clear curses and the fewer clearer blessings from the pavement.

“I wish to Gawd my kiddie ’ed been a gel,” said the little mother beside the suffragette. “Bein’ a woman—mikes yer proud-like....”

The suffragette put her chin up and laughed. “As a man, your kiddie’ll make you proud. There’s sure to be something splendid about a man whose mother was proud to be a woman.”

240“Men ...” said the little mother, with more alliteration¹⁰⁹⁵ than refinement, “are ... brute beasts.”

“’Ere, draw it mild,” said the dock-hand, who was just in front.

“There’s men, wytin’ for us, somewhere down the Delta wy now. Wytin’ to mike us yell an’ run, wytin’ to ’urt us—jus’ becos we was proud to be women.”

“Waiting for us?” gasped the poetess. “Why—how dreadful.... I wasn’t told there would be any fighting.”

“You might have known there would be,” said the suffragette. “You can’t assert facts without fighting for them.”

The poetess, obviously wishing she had left such dangerous weapons as facts to themselves, gave a hoarse giggle⁶⁰⁵, and said, “I declare, I’m quite frightened....”

“It is frightening,” agreed the suffragette. “Not the bruises, but the stone-wallness of men. I’m always frightened by opposition that I can’t see through at all. I am frightened of Delta Street hooligans. I am also frightened in exactly the same way by a polite enemy. You go into the law courts, for instance, and watch those men wearing their wigs¹⁰⁹⁷ like haloes and their robes like saints’ armour——”

“You do talk nice, miss,” said the little mother. “I wish you’d come down to the Brown Borough, an’ jaw my young man.”

241The suffragette, though a trifle damped, continued, “It isn’t that their arguments are strong, nobody minds that, but it’s that they don’t bother to have any arguments. Just like the hooligans, only in different words. It’s no more an argument than it is one between God and Satan. One side is established, the other doesn’t exist. It makes you see that to-morrow is never strong enough to fight to-day. It would take an angel to admit to-morrow as a fact at all, and unfortunately it’s men we’re up against.”

“Then what’s the good of all this?” asked the poetess, who was naturally becoming more and more depressed.

“Oh, a losing battle’s fine,” said the suffragette. “I’d rather wear a black eye than a wig¹⁰⁹⁶, or a crown, any day.”

“’Ear, ’ear,” said the dock-hand.

“Wiv Parliament, for instance,” said the little mother, who was evidently accustomed to fill her sphere with her voice. “They sits an’ argoos about Welsh Establishment, an’ all the while I ’ed my little gel die of underfeeding, becos I wuz carryin’ this one, and couldn’t get work.”

“Thet’s all very well,” said the dock-hand; “but wot do you expec’? You carn’t expec’ the lawyers to frow up their wig an’ say the Law’s a Liar. (Not but wot it ain’t.) You carn’t expec’ the Prime Minister to tell ’isself ‘There’s Mrs. Smiff’s biby dyin’, I mus’ go dahn an’ see abaht it.’ (Not but wot it ain’t ’ard.”)

242“There are lots of things you can’t kill,” said the suffragette. “But you can always try. Men don’t try, because impossibility is one of the things they believe in.”

“You carn’t kill Votes fer Women,” shouted the little mother, with a burst of enthusiasm. She waved her baby instead of a banner.

At that moment a yelling horror dropped like a bomb upon the level street. The suffragette saw the mounted policeman, complete with his horse, fall sideways, like a toy. She saw a chequered crowd of perspiring¹⁰⁹⁸ faces come upon her like a breaking wave. She saw the banners ahead stagger like flowers before a wind. She saw the poetess fall, and some one stamp on her shoulder. She saw a man with a fierce-coloured handkerchief knotted round his throat seize the little mother’s chin and wrench⁵³⁶ it up and down, as he cursed in her face. The suffragette, who never could be angry in a dignified way, gave a hoarse croak¹⁰⁹⁹ and snatched his arm. Possibly she felt like the child Hercules during his interview with the serpents, but she did not look like that at all. The man jerked his arm up, the suffragette’s seven stone went up too. She was waved like a flag. The tears were shaken out of her eyes. Her feet kicked the air. And then she alighted against a wall. She saw a chinless and unshaven face heave into her upper vision, and a great hand, like black lightning, cleft¹¹⁰⁰ the fog. The knuckles of the hand cut like a blunt knife. In North London we always repeat our arguments, 243when we consider them good ones. The suffragette, who was a person of no muscular ability at all, gave up hoping for the chance of a retort in kind, after the third repetition. So the argument went on undisputed, until the dock-hand perceived it, when it was successfully overborne.

The suffragette picked up her hat. She hated it because it looked so dirty. She hated her heart because it felt so sick. She picked up the poetess and hated her because she was crying. She was crying herself, but she thought she looked courageously wrathful.

“What do we do now?” sobbed the poetess.

“We walk on,” said the suffragette, and took her, not very gently, by the arm.

“But I can’t, I can’t. It may happen again,” wailed¹¹⁰¹ the poetess. “Policeman, can’t I go home?”

“Yes, miss,” said the policeman, wiping his brow.

“But there are no taxis.”

“No, miss,” said the policeman.

You never can tell what strange thing you may do at a crisis. The poetess slipped a confiding hand into that of the policeman, and walked meekly¹¹⁰² by his side.

“Murderers ...” exclaimed the little mother. “They might ’ev done biby in. Your ’ead’s bleedin’, miss. So’s my gum, but I kin²⁶ swaller that.”

The suffragette felt as if she had been divided in two. Her militant spirit, clothed in its hair shirt, seemed to be moving at a height, undaunted, monopolised 244as usual by the splendour of its cause. And below, very near the dust, a terribly tired woman, a unit among several hundreds of other terribly tired women, put one foot before the other along an endless road.

You must stride over a gap here, as the procession did mentally. For a very long time I don’t think anybody thought anything except—“How long, O Lord, how long?”

When I am very tired and see the high and friendly smile of St. Paul’s curved across the sky, I feel as if I am near home. I always think St. Paul’s is like a mother to all London, while Westminster Abbey is like a nun¹¹⁰³, the bride of heaven, with an infinite scorn of you and me. St. Paul’s stands at the top of the hill of difficulty, and after that your feet walk by themselves down Ludgate Hill.

There was a burst of song from all parts of the procession as it passed that friendly doomed milestone¹¹⁰⁴. The burst was simultaneous, but the song was too various to be really effective.

“Votes for Women,” shouted the little mother. “I sy, miss, when are you comin’ dahn to the Brown Borough to ’elp wiv votes for women? We ain’t got nobody there as kin talk like you.”

“Am I coming down?” asked the suffragette, who had a vague idea that she had said many things, now forgotten. “I never speak at meetings now. My brain is always wanting to say the next thing but one, and my tongue is always saying the thing before last. 245There’s too much to be said about Votes for Women.”

“Meetin’s...” said the little mother in a voice of scorn. “Tain’t meetin’s we want. It’s somebody jus’ to talk ornery, as if they was a friend-like. Somebody to live up the street—if you unnerstan’ me—an’ drop in, an’ be interested. When my little gel died, lars’ October, an’ ’ole lot of lidies made enquiries, an’ got me a few ’alfpence a week to git on wiv till I could get back to the box-miking. I useter ’ave to go to an orfice an’ answer questions, an’ the lidy useter sy she was sorry to seem ’quisitive, but she ses—If some on yer cheat, you mus’ all on yer suffer.... Bless you, I didn’ mind answering questions, but I was very low then, an’ I useter tike it ’ard that none o’ them lidies never seemed interested. Nobody never as’t wot was the nime o’ my little gel that died, nor ’ow old she was, nor nothink about ’er pretty wys that she useter ’ave.... ’Tisn’t that they ain’t kind, but it’s being treated in a crowd-like as comes ’ard, an’ there’s many feels the sime....”

“What do you expect?” asked the poetess, who was now detached from the policeman. “I am myself a C.O.S. secretary, so I know something about it. None of us have time to do more than is really necessary. And when there’s public money in question—well, it’s all very well, but one can’t be too careful.”

“When there’s money in question you may be right, miss,” said the little mother. “But it ain’t 246allus a question of money, an’ it seems to me as ’ow, wiv votes fer women, if some on them suffragettes ’ud stop talking about women’s wiges at meetin’s, an’ come an’ look at wiges at ’ome, they’d ’it a lot of women wot thinks now as ’ow votes for women is only a public thing an’ don’t matter outside Trafalgar Square. It seems to ’it you ’arder if a person’s friendly than if they’re heloquent....”

“Something is happening in front,” said the poetess, looking wildly round for her policeman.

“The police have turned on us,” said the suffragette. “They always do in the Strand. Downing Street gets nervous when we get as near as this.”

It was too true. The police, relieved to be at last freed from the burden of their false position, were characteristic of their profession.

“But I was told I was to walk to the Houses of Parliament,” said the poetess, finding her quondam protector’s hand on her shoulder.

“You may walk to Jericho, miss,” replied the policeman with a wit as heavy as his hand. “Only not more than three in a group, if you please.”

A great crowd of little groups trickled¹¹⁰⁵ on to the Embankment and followed the tide of the river towards Westminster. There was a moon. I think the moon is really the heroine of this unheroic book. Half the blessing of London belongs to the river, and half the blessing of the river belongs to the moon. Do you know how beautifully a full moon bends out of her sky to trail her fingers in the river? 247Do you know how faerily she shoots shavings of her silver under the bridges, and how she makes tender the blackness of the barges¹¹⁰⁶ and the shadows of the little wharves? I always think the moon has in her quiver of charms a special shaft for the river of London. She never smiles like that elsewhere.

It was no surprise to Westminster to see the deputation and procession arrive, albeit in a less neat form than that in which it started. The police force has moments of wonderful insight into the psychology of law-breakers, and in this case it seemed aware that a procession of women disbanded and told to go home in the Strand is nevertheless likely to appear sooner or later in Parliament Square. The great space resounded¹¹⁰⁷ to the tramp of the feet of the law. A detachment of mounted police strove to look unconcerned in the Whitehall direction. I always think it is unjust to drag dumb animals into these political questions. I wonder the S.P.C.A. doesn’t step in. Imagine the feelings of a grey mare, for instance, on being called upon to charge into the ranks of a female deputation to Downing Street.

Neither the suffragette nor I are familiar with the great ways of deputations. We are of the humble ranks which suffer physical buffetings in the shadow of St. Stephen’s, while our superiors suffer moral buffetings in the shadow of the English Constitution. There is very little sport in being a shuttlecock anyway, but while the head gets the straight hit, the feathers feel most the stress of adverse¹¹⁰⁸ winds.

248The object of the police in a crowd is to keep it moving. The direction in which it is to move is never explained to it. Whether you move to the right or the left you are sure to be wrong in the eyes of the law. If you weigh seven stone, your tendency is to move either upwards¹¹⁰⁹ or downwards. Correctly speaking, the suffragette never set foot in Parliament Square for some time after she arrived there. She was caught in a gust¹⁰⁴ of crowd, and borne in an unexpected direction. She did not mind which way she went, but she was human enough to mind whether her ribs got broken. Even in a good cause, matters like these touch you personally. The shoulders of partisans¹¹¹⁰ and martyrs¹¹¹¹, packed closely against your ribs, feel just as hard as the shoulders of the less enlightened. The suffragette began to feel a cold whiteness creeping up from her boots to her heart. She began to take a series of last looks at the moon and the spires of the Abbey. She reached the earth just when she had decided that she had reached the door-step of Heaven, and found herself cast by an eddy¹¹¹² into a tiny peace. There, in an alcove¹¹¹³, was the Chief M.S., protected by a stout husband. The Chief M.S., whose hair was too short to have been dragged down, and whose eyeglass was trembling on her breast with pleasurable excitement, was looking cool and peaceful.

“You do look a wreck,” she said brightly to the suffragette. “I have been wanting to talk to you about something I want you to do for me.”

249This was such a frequent remark on the lips of the Chief M.S. that, as a rule, it made no impression on her followers¹¹¹⁴ and acquaintances. But the suffragette was incredibly tired, and the power of kicking against pricks¹¹¹⁶ was taken from her. She had no spirit in her except the ghost of her hair shirt theory, that fiend which croaks—“Go on, go on....” She made a great effort. She pulled her hat down on her head, she put her chin up, she wrapped her cloak of endurance more closely round her. “Talk on,” she said.

“Oh, not now, child,” said the Chief M.S. “Come and see me next Wednesday. I shall be away for a long week-end after this.”

It seemed like making an appointment for a hundred years hence. The suffragette agreed, because it seemed impossible that she could live so long as next Wednesday.

At that moment the mounted police charged. The careful husband of the Chief M.S. whisked her away. The forelegs of a horse entered the suffragette’s alcove. The safest place in a police charge is under the noses of the horses. These animals, usually anxious to preserve neutrality, have mastered the art of playing upon the fleeing backs of agitators¹¹¹⁷ as gently as the pianist plays upon the keys. I have had a horse’s hoofs fanning my shoulder-blades for minutes on end, and yet only suffered from the elbows of my fellow-fugitives.

The suffragette, alone on the strip of pavement between 250the rearing horses and the recoiling¹¹¹⁸ crowd, conceived the sensational idea of charging the chargers. This is the sort of idea that comes to one after a five-hour march and a series of street fights. I have never been drunk with liquor, but I know what it is to be drunk all the same. The suffragette determined that those horses should never see her coattails. She heard a voice shouting, “Women ... women ... women ...” and on finding it was her own, added, “Don’t run back—run forward.” And she flung herself on the breast of the nearest horse.

A foot-policeman caught her on the rebound. She was not in the least hurt, but he picked her up and carried her across his shoulder. She hit her fists against his helmet; it sounded like a drum. It seems hard to believe, but I assure you that even on that high though humble perch⁶²³, she was revelling¹¹¹⁹ in the thought that it concerned nobody but herself that she was going to prison.

My poor heroine, I am afraid, has stepped beyond the limits of your toleration, but if you look, you will find I never asked you to admire her.

The policeman lowered her, and stood her like a doll on the steps of the Metropolitan¹¹²⁰ Railway. That excellent institution, shocked at the doings outside, had drawn its grill¹¹²¹ modestly across its entrance, and its employés, like good lions at the Zoo watching the rampant¹¹²² behaviour of the public, were gazing through the bars.

251“You’re not the right size for this job, young woman,” said the policeman.

The suffragette’s reply was a further struggle. The policeman held both her arms.

“You go ’ome,” he said. “The deputation’s goin’ ’ome now, like a good gel. What’s your station?”

A terrible exhaustion¹¹²³ drooped¹¹²⁴ like a weight released upon the suffragette. The only retort that came to her mind was, “Leicester Square, please.”

“Change at the Embankment,” said a railway official, and opened eighteen inches of the gate. The policeman pushed her in. She took her ticket, and went home as meekly as any Anti.

You may be surprised to hear that the suffragette spent the next day in bed. A day in bed is not, of course, part of the Hair Shirt Theory, but this was a Sunday, and Sunday is a day of weakness, though it seems politer to the Old Testament¹¹²⁵ to call it a day of relaxation¹¹²⁶. The suffragette always spent Sunday as she liked, with the hair shirt doffed¹¹²⁷ and neatly folded on a chair beside her. She smoked as many cigarettes as she pleased, instead of the strict two of ordinary life, she occasionally ate as many as three large meals, she had been known to invest in nougat. Sundays were the oases¹¹²⁸ in her desert, and if the gardener had chanced on one for the scene of one of his luckless spasms, this story might have been much prettier. It is very tiring to be yourself with such ardour as the suffragette employed, and to be somebody 252else for twenty-four hours once a week becomes almost a necessity.

Besides, she had court plaster on her forehead, and the publicly court-plastered pose was one that the suffragette loathed.

If the Chief M.S. had had the luck to catch a painless black eye in the Cause of the Vote, she would have flaunted it like a flag up and down Piccadilly. But the husband had been almost too effective. She had not even broken her eyeglass.

One of the most striking differences between the suffragette and the gardener was that the gardener told himself: “When I die, they will be sorry, and they will perhaps understand.” But the suffragette thought: “When I die, nobody except the charwoman will know.”

The suffragette went to see the Chief M.S. on Wednesday.

“How curious you should come this afternoon,” said the Chief M.S. “Some one was here asking for you only this morning.”

The suffragette hardly ever explained herself. She did not remind the Chief M.S. that she was there by appointment. Nor did she ask who had been inquiring for her. Perhaps she knew.

“He asked for your address,” said the Chief M.S. “But as he was a man, I didn’t give it to him. He didn’t leave his name, but he asked me to tell you that your dog was now in the hands of the quarantine 253officials. I attacked him on the suffrage question, as I always do strange men.”

“What did he say?”

“He had nothing to say. I pointed out to him how ludicrous was the argument that just because a person wore two tubes on his legs instead of one, he was competent to rule.”

“I have never heard that argument used,” said the suffragette soberly. “I didn’t know that even men——”

“Why, you’re as dense as he was,” snapped the Chief M.S. “Of course they don’t put it like that. He asked me which M.P. was responsible for the tubular argument. I saw it was no use going on. He left his address for me to give you.”

“What was it you wanted to see me about?” asked the suffragette.

“Did I want—Oh, yes.... Well, I have been thinking you have done nothing for the Cause lately, have you?”

The suffragette fingered a sore dint¹¹²⁹ under the shadow of her hat. “Hardly anything,” she admitted.

“I think the slum districts want working up,” said the Chief M.S. “Somebody who walked behind you in the procession said you hobnobbed wonderfully with the North London women. How would it be if you were to undertake a series of informal meetings——”

254“It isn’t meetings they want, they told me so themselves,” said the suffragette.

“It’s meetings everybody wants,” retorted the Chief M.S. “I thought also that you might start a soup kitchen or a turkey club, or one of those things that one does start in the slums. You can’t educate the poor without feeding them, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense!” said the suffragette, who was certainly no more accommodating as a follower¹¹¹⁵ than as a woman. “I don’t believe the anatomy of the poor is one bit different from the anatomy of the rich. And I don’t believe the way to anybody’s soul lies through their stomach. Only if one is hungry, one naturally pretends that blind alley⁹⁶⁰ is a thoroughfare.”

“How do you suggest that the slums should be worked up, then, may I ask?” said the Chief M.S. coldly. There is no point in being a born leader, if the rank and file refuses to behave suitably.

The suffragette loathed the wording of this remark, but kindly refrained from further criticism. “If you like ...” she said, “I’ll try an experiment on the Brown Borough. I’ll give no meetings and I’ll give no membership cards, but if you leave me time I’ll bring as many women to the Cause as ever did a dozen meetings in Trafalgar Square.”

To hear of other people busy always cheered the Chief M.S.

“You will have done a good work,” she said warmly.

The suffragette went out with those words singing 255in her head. A thing that very seldom happened to other people’s words in the ears of this self-absorbed young woman.

“To have done a good work ...” she said, on the top of a west-bound ’bus.

“To have done a good work.... But if it were a good work it could never be done. The way of good work goes on for ever. And that’s why I swear I’ll do this work till I die....”

It was fine to feel busy again. The suffragette had always liked to have the measure of her day pressed down and running over, but she had never yet known the luxury of having enough of what she liked. In the home—which is Woman’s Sphere—there is always time to think how little time there is. Even the career of an incendiary, though hectic, often fails to give the illusion of persistent industry. The suffragette was so lost in enthusiasm over the discovery of a good long road under her feet at last, that she presently found herself at Kew.

If you must drift, there are few places better to drift to than Kew Gardens. Only if you go there just when the months have reached the bleak curve of the hill that runs down into spring, you must know where to find the best and most secret snowdrops. The suffragette knew. She was very familiar with the art of being alone in London.

You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that never once in her life had her leisure meant some one else’s pleasure. There had never been any one who 256would have been in the least interested to know that the suffragette had a few hours unbooked. She never regretted this fact, because she never noticed it. With the exception of Excursion Agents, I should think no one ever knew the holiday resorts around London better than she did. She could enjoy herself very much indeed sitting seriously on grass, watching a world dotted with sentimental cockneyism. It gave her no pang¹⁷³ to be one among many twos.

To-day she found the seat that sits forever looking at the place where the snowdrops should be, and only really lives when they come out. And when she got there, it was most annoying, she thought of the gardener, to the exclusion¹¹³⁰ of everything else. After several minutes she found that she had been occupied in committing the address she had been given to memory.

“Number Twenty-one Penny Street. Twenty-one Penny Street.”

I cannot account for the occasional inconsistency of this woman except by reminding you of a certain well-known natural phenomenon. Just as a man whose arm has been amputated may still suffer from a phantom finger-ache, so a woman who has killed her heart must, at certain points in her life, feel the pain of a heart, as if the dead thing turned in its grave. One of the most tragic¹⁰⁰¹ things about loss is that it is never annihilation.

“This is absurd,” thought the suffragette, pulling 257herself together. “I must make a plan of campaign, as the M.S. Society would say. How am I going to start?”

Brown Borough popularity is a slippery thing to seize. You must have a handle to grasp it by.

A robin¹¹³¹ appeared, like a fairy, between two snowdrops. He did not notice the suffragette, nevertheless he looked self-conscious. He re-arranged a perfectly neat feather, and glanced at his waistcoat to see whether its curve was correct. He even tried to glance over his waistcoat at his feet, but this was physically impossible. The suffragette loved him until she realised that he was in love, on which she wearied of him. A chirrup behind her drew her attention to the lady in the case.

“I believe I’ll have to get hold of the priest,” said the suffragette. I have told you that she was devoid of tact. She never took enough notice of the world to sulk when the world was unkind, she was not human enough to quarrel. I have seen her give great offence to the Chief M.S. by borrowing a cigarette in the middle of a tempestuous¹¹³² scene of mutual reproach. She never reviewed the past when arranging for the future, and this, in human relations, is a fatal mistake.

She had an apple and an oatmeal biscuit in her bag. In spite of the robin’s sentimental drawbacks, she shared the biscuit with him and gave him the apple core. He finished the biscuit, and when about three-quarters through with the apple core, he remembered 258his affair of the heart. With the laboured altruism of the man in love, he tore himself away, and embodied the apple core theme in a little song, by way of informing the lady. She came, she began. Looking up with her third mouthful, she noticed the suffragette. With a hoarse chirp¹¹³³, she shot over the horizon.

“He forgot to warn her,” sighed the suffragette. “Men are so unimaginative.”

The gentleman came back and finished the apple core.

The suffragette’s mind, which was rather sleepy, turned to the occasion when she too had shot away from destiny, over a blue horizon.

“But I left Courtesy as an apple core,” she said. “Men ought to be as good philosophers as robins¹¹³⁴, any day.”

You and I are getting tired of this scene. And so was the suffragette. She shook herself.

“I must wake up,” she said. “The incident is closed. I’m glad it’s closed. But I’m very glad it was once open. By mistake I came alive for a little while. I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in love. But I thank God I have met love—in a dream.”

She might possibly have been referring to the robin drama. But I don’t think she was.

She put her chin up, and buttoned up the hair shirt, and exchanged the snowdrops for a ’bus.

259It was the day after this that the priest was addressing his sister’s Girls’ Club in the Brown Borough. He was supplying food for the soul while his sister prepared food for the body. The girls were listening with the polite though precarious⁶⁰¹ attention which Brown Borough girls always bring to bear on the first three hundred words of any address, especially if the addresser be a man. Factory girls are amiable creatures with something inborn¹¹³⁵ that very closely resembles good manners. Unless you are so unfortunate as to stumble upon their sense of humour, they will always give you a hearing. Their sense of humour is broad, but only touched by certain restricted means. If you have a smut on your nose, or if your hat is on one side, or if you stammer¹¹³⁶ in your speech, or if it is obvious that you have just sat in a puddle¹¹³⁷ on alighting from your ’bus, you need cherish no hopes, but be sure that every word you say is only adding to the comedy of the situation.

The priest was extremely neat, as usual. His piercing eyes under his grey hair looked dignified, and he was concealing moral quack¹¹³⁸ remedies in gilded¹¹³⁹ anecdotes¹¹⁴⁰ with marked success. He had reached the critical point in a comic story about his recent adventures in the tropics, and was just preparing to lead the roar of amusement, when, over the heads of his audience, he saw a face that seemed terribly familiar. He finished the story with such gravity that nobody dared to smile.

260“How unwise I was to put the idea into her head,” he told himself, and, descending from his eminence¹¹⁴¹, went to meet her.

“This is indeed a surprise, yerce, yerce,” he said, shaking her coldly by the hand. He thought that she would be cut to the heart by the fact that he failed to qualify the surprise as pleasant. She did not notice the omission¹¹⁴². She was not accustomed to being made very welcome.

“I have followed your advice,” she said. “I have come down to ask you for work.”

“How very well-timed,” said the priest’s sister just behind him. “Christopher, introduce the young lady.”

“We will talk of that later,” said the priest. “I have not finished my address.”

But he virtually had. For he could find nothing else to say, although he continued speaking. The girls lost interest, and began passing each other letters and photographs from their chaps. A little plain girl, beside whom the suffragette had taken her seat, handed her one of these documents.

I have said that the suffragette had a hard face—it is worth noting that no beggar ever begged of her unless he was blind. But I suppose she had loved women so long and so fiercely that there was something in her look that established confidence in the women she met. Nobody would have handed a love-letter to Mrs. Rust to read, within five minutes of her first appearance.

261“The cocoa is ready, Christopher,” said the priest’s sister audibly, from an inner room.

A remark like this, though trivial, will throw almost any orator³⁸³ off his track. The priest stopped, with the resigned sigh of Christian irritation¹¹⁴³.

The suffragette handed the letter back to her neighbour. “What a nice chap yours must be,” she said.

“Are you the young woman wot’s come to ply⁶⁵ the pianner?” asked the girl.

“I’m not sure,” replied the suffragette, with a guarded look at the priest. “I rather think I am.”

This was luckily considered amusing, and over the cocoa the comments on the new young woman were favourable.

The priest’s sister came out from the inner room, whence proceeded the loud bubbling squeaks¹¹⁴⁴ of cocoa-drinkers.

“Now, Christopher,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me you had found a new helper?”

“I do not know that I have, my dear,” replied the priest. “This young lady has misinterpreted something I said to her.”

“It’s very lucky that she did, then,” said the priest’s sister. “We are so badly in need of a new voluntary helper.”

“You oblige me to put the matter baldly, my dear,” said the priest, keeping his temper with a creditable effort. “This is the young lady I mentioned to you last night in the course of conversation. 262All our helpers hitherto have been of the highest moral character.”

“From your face...” said the priest’s sister to the suffragette. “I am sure you mean well. I am sure you are not wicked. And if you have slipped, there is nothing like hard work in the Brown Borough to make you forget.”

The suffragette was so much startled to hear herself addressed in this unusual vein¹¹⁴⁵ that she very nearly cried. It is rare to have tears so near so horny a surface as hers.

“My dear ...” said the priest. “I think you forget my position of authority in this parish. You also forget the pure young souls committed to your care in this club. Yerce, yerce.”

He actually imagined the factory girls to be as innocent as himself. To him the words youth and innocence were indivisible.

“Oh, nonsense, Christopher,” said his sister. “She doesn’t necessarily want to help with this club, and even if she did she can’t convey infection to the girls by playing the piano to them.”

“I do not expect she does play the piano,” said the priest lamely.

“You do play, don’t you? You have such pretty hands.”

After that, of course, the suffragette felt as though she could have played Strauss to please her. As a matter of fact she had little real articulate gift for music, but she never forgot a tune she had heard, 263and found no difficulty in rendering¹¹⁴⁶ the songs that always sang in her head, outwardly instead of inwardly.

The priest’s sister was not musical. Nor was she critical. She considered that the Brown Borough had in this newcomer found something it had lacked. The suffragette, who possessed certain secret springs of conceit, was to some extent of the same opinion. And by the end of the evening the majority of the girls shared this view.

“Do you know a Mrs. Smith?” asked the suffragette, as she said good-bye.

“I know perhaps five hundred Mrs. Smiths,” said the priest’s sister.

“She wears a plush coat, and a baby, and a little girl of hers died in October.”

“About two hundred and fifty out of the five hundred wear plush coats, and babies, and little girls that die.”

“I wonder what surnames are for,” said the suffragette pettishly¹¹⁴⁷, “since they have ceased to distinguish one person from another?”

“If you come to me to-morrow,” said the priest’s sister, “I will give you the names of various women who want visiting. If your Mrs. Smith needs you, you will soon find her, if you live in the Brown Borough.”

The suffragette was a rash woman. She always abode by her own first choice. Before she went to see the priest’s sister in the morning, she found herself 264a Brown Borough lodging¹¹⁴⁸. She did this by the simple device of knocking on the door of the first house she saw that displayed a notice, “Apartment.”

“Now then, wot’s the matter?” asked the lady who opened the door.

The suffragette, though impossible to silence, was easy to abash¹¹⁴⁹. And there is certainly something disheartening in such a salutation. However, she suggested that the notice in the window might excuse an intrusion.

She was very lucky; one always is when one doesn’t deserve to be so. She might have found a room with a brown wet ceiling curtseying floorward under the stress of many rains. She might have found a room peopled by a smell incredible, with rags stuffed into panes¹¹⁵⁰ that had been broken by a merciful accident. She might have found walls discoloured by dark patches that looked like old blood. All these things are apt to decorate Woman’s Sphere in the Brown Borough.

But the suffragette had, by mistake, knocked on the door of the most respectable house in the most respectable street in the district. She found a clean, though dark room, with a window blinking against the sun at a back yard filled with snowdrops. The wall-paper talked in a loud voice of tulips: wine-coloured tulips trampled¹¹⁵¹ on each other and wrestled for supremacy over every inch of it. The tablecloth¹¹⁵² and carpet were the colour of terra-cotta, and firmly disagreed with every word the wall-paper said. 265Two horse-hair chairs, in sullen¹¹⁵³ brown, looked moodily¹¹⁵⁴ at each other across the table.

The suffragette never asked more than that her body might live in a clean place. She kept her mind detachable from colour schemes. After all, what is my body for but to enclose me?

“I’ll have the room,” said the suffragette, as if it had been a cake of soap.

It was like a dream to the landlady, a dream she had never been sufficiently feverish to indulge in.

“You’ll have it?” she gasped.

“Yes. Why not? What’s the rent, by the way?”

The landlady, by means of a rapid mental process of multiplication¹¹⁵⁵, rose manfully to the occasion.

“All right, fifteen shillings,” said the suffragette. “I’ll come in to-morrow.”

She went to see the priest’s sister, but to her mild annoyance found the priest instead.

“My sister suggested that you should visit the Wigskys,” said the priest, who never bore malice¹¹⁵⁶, as far as one could see. He never allowed you for a moment to forget that he was a Christian. “Mrs. Wigsky’s latest baby hasn’t been christened. Also I think the eldest¹¹⁵⁷ girl must be getting into bad ways; she has left the excellent place I found for her.”

“And must I persuade the baby to be christened?”

“Not the child itself. You had better do your best to persuade the mother.”

266“But supposing she refuses on principle?”

The priest fixed her with his piercing eye. “There can be no principle contrary to the Right,” he said. “The opposite to Right is Wrong.”

“How simple!” said the suffragette. “But won’t Hell be terribly overcrowded?”

The priest sighed, and certainly with reason. But he remembered that he was very broad-minded, and that he had often said that everybody had a right to their own opinion. He remembered that the soft answer that turneth away the fatuity¹¹⁵⁸ of women had found a place even in the New Testament.

“No one would be more loth than I ...” he said, “to classify as condemned¹¹⁵⁹ all whose views do not coincide with the dictates¹¹⁶⁰ of the Church. Let us rather call them mistaken.”

The suffragette shut in a renewed protest with a snap of her jaws. Although she badly needed a handle by which to seize the Brown Borough, surely there must be other handles than the Church. She determined secretly on determination as her unaided weapon.

But she went to see the Wigskys. She found them—a large family, red and mutually wrathful in an atmosphere of hot smells ancient and modern.

When she got inside the door she wondered why she had come. The baby screaming on its mother’s breast looked incorrigibly¹¹⁶¹ heathen, the eldest girl looked wholly unsuited to any “excellent place” discovered by the priest.

267“Wooder you want?” asked the harassed mother, a drab and dusty creature, with the used look of cold ashes.

“I’ve come from Father Christopher ...” began the suffragette, wishing she had come from some one else.

“’N you can go back to Farver Christopher,” said Mrs. Wigsky. “Becos I ain’t goin’ to ’ave no more bibies christened. It’s ’eaven ’ere, an’ ’eaven there, this biby’s goin’ ter grow up ’eeven fer a chinge. It carn’t get us into worse trouble nor wot we’ve ’ad.”

“I haven’t come to bother you,” said the suffragette. “After all, it’s your baby, not Father Christopher’s.”

“That’s wot I ses,” said the mother, slightly mollified. “Well, if you ’aven’t come abaht Biby, wot ’ave you come for?”

“I’ve come because I want to find friends in the Brown Borough. If you don’t want me, please tell me to go.”

The Brown Borough never protests if you surprise it; and in any case, Mrs. Wigsky’s soul was too dead for consistent protest. Also it was certainly a change to be visited by one who lacked the visitor’s apprising¹¹⁶² eye, who seemed unaware of an unswept floor and an unmade bed.

“As Father Christopher talked about the Brown Borough women ...” said the suffragette, “I wanted more and more to know them, because it 268seems to me so splendid to keep going at all in the Brown Borough. I must tell you I always love women. So you must forgive me for coming.”

“’Tain’t often as lidies come to admire us,” said Mrs. Wigsky. “They allus comes to show us ’ow wrong we are.”

“I’m not a lady,” said the suffragette.

“Ow, yus you are,” said the eldest girl, speaking for the first time.

“Are you the girl that’s out of a job?” asked the suffragette.

“Yus. Farver Christopher got me a job as general to the lidy oo keeps the post orfice. She give me three-an’-six a week an’ no food, an’ mother ain’t earnin’ now, an’ Tom’s in ’orsbital, so it weren’t good enough. I run awiy. She ’it me too, an’ mide me cerry up the coals. But ’er bein’ a lidy, I couldn’t siy much—I jus’ run awiy.”

“I wish you’d hit her back,” said the suffragette. “And I wish the word ‘lady’ had never been invented.”

“Lidies is lidies, an’ generals is generals,” said Mrs. Wigsky. “Gawd mide it so, an’ you carn’t get over it.”

“I’m sure God never made it so,” said the suffragette. “He made men and women, and nothing else. He made man in His own image, and left woman to make herself. And she’s doing it. That’s what makes us all so proud to be women.”

“I’m not proud of bein’ a woman. I’m sick of 269it,” said Mrs. Wigsky; but the girl said, “You do talk beautiful, miss. I b’leeve I’m a little bit proud. Anywiy, I wouldn’t be a man for somefink.”

“Men,” sniffed Mrs. Wigsky. “It’s men wot does all the ’arm. An’ yet you carn’ get along wivout ’em altogether. They’re so ’elpless.”

(I hope you notice this truth, one of the few unposed truths in this book. Man is potentially a son, and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends on the dependence³¹⁵ of man. The spinster, if pathetic at all, is pathetic because she has no one to look after, not because there is no one to look after her. Bear in mind that the conventional spinster keeps a canary as a substitute for a husband.)

“All the same,” said the suffragette, “men are proud of being men, and that is one of the greatest virtues. I don’t suppose there is a man in London who would be general to a Post Office lady at three-and-six a week and no food.”

This was thought to be supremely witty, and the suffragette rose to depart on the crest⁸²⁶ of a ripple⁴⁰⁵ of popularity. The girl followed her half-way downstairs.

“You fink that I was roight then to chuck that job, miss?”

The suffragette at that moment parted company with Father Christopher.

“Certainly I think you were right. It’s very wrong to take less money than you’re worth. I’d rather lend your mother money to get on with until 270you can get a worth-while job than let a friend of mine go so cheap as three-and-six a week. You can give your mother this address, and tell her I’ll come to see her again very soon.”

As she reached the first landing, she became aware of a fresh twist in the maze. I think drama of a rather sombre variety is the very life of the Brown Borough, and I defy you to thread its streets or climb its stairways for half a day without meeting some Thing you never met before.

The doorway¹¹⁶³ on the first landing was practically filled by a woman, whose most surprising characteristic was that her right eye was filled with blood. The blood was running down on to the breast of her dress.

“I’m feelin’ that queer,” said the woman. “It’s the sight o’ blood allus mikes me queer.”

“You must let me help you,” said the suffragette. “You must let me put you on your bed.”

The woman laughed and remained swaying in the doorway.

“Bedder standen’ ...” she mumbled¹¹⁶⁴ hysterically¹¹⁶⁵.

She was an enormous woman, and effectually blocked the doorway. For one mad moment the suffragette meditated⁴⁵¹ climbing over her. An obstacle always had an irresistible¹¹⁶⁶ fascination for her.

“Don’t be so silly,” said the suffragette. “Let me come in at once. I am here to help. Stand aside.”

The woman laughed again, and her head suddenly 271lolled down upon her breast. A little drip of blood ran down upon the floor.

“You are making a mess on the floor,” said the suffragette.

There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility. The woman stood aside.

“Now let me get you to bed,” said the suffragette as she entered. But there was no bed.

There were a dresser, a small table, and a chair. There was also a man, noisily asleep upon the chair.

“Ran me eye agin the corner of the tible,” said the woman.

“How very unlucky,” said the suffragette, “considering the table’s practically the only thing in the room. Except the man.”

She took the back of the chair and tipped it forward. She tilted it to such an angle that nobody in their senses could have remained seated in it. But a guardian¹¹⁶⁷ angel seems to look after the drunk at the expense of the sober. When because she was not a professional weight-lifter, the suffragette had to let the chair revert¹¹⁶⁸ to its natural position, the man was still comfortably asleep.

The woman fainted in the corner.

“Wake up, you damned pig!” said the suffragette, with the utmost strength of her soft voice, and she struck his shoulder with all the weight of a perfectly useless fist.

272“Shall I fetch a policeman?” asked Miss Wigsky.

“The Law’s no good,” said the suffragette frowning. “I don’t believe there is a law against a man being drunk in the only chair. Do you think you could borrow a cushion or two from your mother, so that we could make the woman comfy on the floor?”

By the time Miss Wigsky returned with the relic⁶⁷² of a pillow, the suffragette had bathed the blood from the eye.

“Woz this?” inquired the woman, opening the surviving eye upon the appearance of Miss Wigsky. “Woz this? Pillers? Tike ’em awiy. I ’aven’t bin to bed in the diytime for twenty years, nor I ain’t goin’ to begin now....”

“You must lie down,” said the suffragette. “And I will fetch the doctor to sew up your eye.”

“Bless yer ...” crowed the invalid. “S’long as I’ve got legs to walk to the doctor on, you kin bet yer life ’e won’t walk to me. I’ll go’n see ’im, soon’s as I stop bein’ all of a tremble.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“As you please.”

Miss Wigsky escaped.

“Why do you allow that man to be drunk in here?” asked the suffragette after a pause.

“’E don’t arsk my leave.”

“Is he your husband?”

273“No. ’E is in a manner of speakin’. But I wouldn’t really marry a soppy bloke like thet.”

“Then why do you have soppy blokes crowding you out of your own furniture?”

“Ow, one must ’ave a man about the plice. Feels more ’omely-like.”

“Does he work for you?”

“I don’t fink.”

“Is he very good to you?”

The woman, not unnaturally, began to get restive¹¹⁶⁹. “’Oo ye’re gettin’ at? Nat’rally a man ain’t soothin’ syrup when ’e come ’ome as my young man come ’ome an hour ago. ’E’s better’n some.”

There was a long silence. Then the suffragette said, “Women seem to be extraordinarily cheap in the market. They hire themselves out to the man who hits the hardest. It makes one almost tired of being a woman.”

“Look ’ere ...” said the patient wrathfully, but she stopped there. Presently she sat up and said, “I’m goin’ to doctor’s now. And if you ain’t still too tired, miss, perhaps you’ll see me as fur as the ’orspital....”

So the suffragette laid hold of the Closed Door of the Brown Borough, by the handle of her fanatic determination. She never saw the impossibility of victory. It was the earliest of the early spring, and there was hope in the air. For many weeks hope was her only luxury. With it she sweetened her 274bread and margarine when she rose, to the tune of it she munched¹¹⁷⁰ her nightly tripe¹¹⁷¹ and onions. She saw the mirage¹¹⁷² of the end in sight, and with her great faith she almost made it real. She was a blind optimist where women were concerned.

On the initiative of the priest’s sister, she attended the Church Girls’ Club three evenings a week. On her own initiative she played the Church false, and established in its own field of labour, behind its back, the foundation of her task.

It was originally Miss Wigsky’s fault. Miss Wigsky was a girl of practical energy, a warring spirit, a potential suffragette. She had long been a militant resister of the Church Club ideal, but when the suffragette became one of its regular adherents¹¹⁷³, Miss Wigsky joined it at once. Hers was the active responsibility for what followed, and ’Tilda’s the passive. I think I have mentioned ’Tilda before, though not by name. She was a small white creature who had committed the absurdity¹¹⁷⁴ of losing her heart to the suffragette at first sight, and had sealed her admiration¹¹⁷⁵ by laying bare the letter of her chap at their first meeting.

The moment of cocoa-drinking was always the moment of confidences. It was during this comparatively peaceful time that the suffragette made friends, and it was at this point that ’Tilda one evening approached her.

“Jenny Wigsky’s a funny gel,” said ’Tilda. “She’s bin talkin’ about you, miss. I got a new 275job the other day, very little money—piece-work—on’y shillin’ a diy if I work ever so ’ard. I ses to Jenny, ‘I’m a good gel I am, to tike less money than I’m worth just to ’elp my muvver.’ But Jenny ses I’m a very bad gel—she ses you ses as it’s wicked to tike bad money.”

“I didn’t say it was wicked—I wouldn’t use the word,” said the suffragette. “But I do think it’s selfish. Every time a girl takes too little money, she may be forcing another girl to take less. You know it’s partly your fault that women’s wages are so bad. You can feel now that you’ve had a share in the work of sweating women, ’Tilda.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Miss Wigsky. “Why don’t you do as I do, an’ stick out for ten?”

“But you’re not gettin’ it,” objected ’Tilda.

“I’m goin’ to get it, I am. I’m goin’ back to my ol’ tride—box-miking. I left it becos the work was so ’ard, but the money’s better.”

“I don’t mind how hard people work, as long as they get paid for it,” said the suffragette. “Of course, you have to do good work for good money. What I mean is that I think it’s just as dishonest to take too little money as it is to do too little work.”

“But wot’s the good of one standin’ out?”

“Very little good. But more good in a dozen standing out and more still in a hundred.”

“Le’s start a sassiety,” suggested the strenuous Miss Wigsky. “You could be the Preserdink, miss, 276an’ I’ll ’elp yer. We’ll call ourselves the ‘Suffragette Gels,’ an’ we won’t allow none of us to tike less money than ten shillin’.”

“Garn ...” said ’Tilda. “Thet’s a Tride union, thet is. A man’s gime. If I chuck my job, ’oo’s goin’ to keep me til I get a better one. Muvver? I don’t fink....”

“I will,” said the suffragette. “If there’s anybody here earning less than ten shillings a week, I’ll give them seven-and-six a week for a fortnight if they have to chuck their job, and I’ll also give a prize of seven-and-six at the end of the fortnight to the girl who’s increased her wages the most.”

No plan could ever have been less planned. She thought of it as she spoke of it, a most rash method. But Miss Wigsky immediately set to work to hew³²⁰ it into shape.

“You’ll ’ave to arringe for piece-work, miss,” she said. “Anybody on piece-work could increase their wiges by working for twenty-four hours a diy, but it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Nobody must work after eight at night,” said the suffragette.

“An’ if two or three gets the sime rise?” suggested Miss Wigsky.

“I’ll give them each seven-and-six,” said the suffragette.

Of the twenty girls present, three were earning over ten shillings and entered a different class of the competition, working for the prize without the maintenance, 277if a rise should be found possible without loss of employment. Of the remaining seventeen, two refused to compete, and one was too small to be worth more than her present earnings¹¹⁷⁶. The other fourteen determined on an immediate attack on their employers. Chances were discussed instead of dances for the rest of the evening.

“My boss’ll siy—the money’s there—you kin tike it or leave it. ’E’s said that before.”

“My boss’ll smile—’e allus calls me ’Tip-a-wink, becos I’m the smallest gel there. ’E’s never cross—my boss ain’t.”

“I think I’ll win the prize easy—don’t know why I never thought of it before. Buster—my boss—ses I’ve got the ’andiest ’ands wiv the bristles¹¹⁷⁷ as ever ’e see.”

“My missus’ll siy—there’s ’undreds of sluts in the Borough twice as good as you, an’ I like yer imperence, an’ you kin tike the sack wivout notice. She allus calls me a slut—we won’t be sorry to part.”

“I shall stick to the fevver work, an’ tike up curlin’ an’ sewin’, as well as the knotting. I bin too lizy up to now, but I’ve got an aunt in the tride as ’ud learn me in no time.”

At closing time the priest drew the suffragette aside.

“I heard Jane Wigsky’s voice constantly raised in the dining-room this evening. I want your opinion of that girl. Yerce, yerce. She seems to me 278rough and coarse, and I am tempted to think she is a disturbing influence in the Club.”

“She’s not so disturbing as I am,” said the suffragette, with a spasm of conscience.

“Oh, don’t say that,” said the priest, whose sister had been readjusting his manners. “Don’t be disheartened, you will soon get into our ways, yerce, yerce. But to return to Jane Wigsky, I do not like the girl. She is impertinent and self-assured. I feel sure she puts ideas into the girls’ heads.”

“I shouldn’t think an idea more or less would make much difference.”

The priest sighed. I am not surprised. I quite admit that the suffragette was an infuriating person. I yield to none in my admiration for any one who could manage to keep their temper with her.

“You know I mean harmful ideas. She has no staying power. She left excellent employment, apparently simply through a whim¹¹⁷⁸. Her mistress, the postmistress, is a great friend of mine. In short, I consider the girl undesirable¹¹⁷⁹, and we are thinking of asking her to leave the Club.”

The suffragette became red.

“I’m sorry the postmistress is a friend of yours,” she said. “Because she can’t be a very admirable friend. She herself admits that she only paid the girl three-and-six a week, with no food except a cup of tea at mid-day.”

“Poor wages, yerce, yerce. But far better than idleness.”

279“Infinitely worse,” said the suffragette.

A rather feverish silence fell for a moment. I think the priest said a prayer. At any rate he thought he did.

“Surely you have some sympathy with our aims in this Club. Surely you agree that it is a worthy ideal to try to raise the level of the young womanhood of the Borough. Surely you see that we cannot do this unless we keep the girls in good uplifting company. Jane Wigsky is a bad girl. One must draw the line between good and bad.”

“One may draw a line, but one needn’t build a barrier. And even to draw a line, one should have very good sight.”

“I think I hardly need your advice on the management of a parish I have served for twenty-two years. If this were my Club I should request you to find some other outlet¹¹⁸⁰ for your energies. But my sister is very obstinate. Good evening.”

A certain amount of success attended the efforts of the Suffragette Girls. By the end of that week, three girls had been given a rise for the asking, the extent of it varying from sixpence to two shillings. Several had got a promise of a rise when work should be less slack, only three had taken the drastic step of leaving their employment. The piece-workers with few exceptions were working for a wage which seemed unalterable. An envelope-folder raised her earnings from three halfpence a thousand 280to twopence. But as a rule there is no labour groove¹¹⁸¹ so deep as the piece-worker’s.

It was on the Thursday night before Good Friday that the suffragette, dressed in a dressing-gown, sat before her fire remembering the simplest character in this simple book—Scottie Brown.

“It’s dog-stealing,” she thought, “no less. Miss Brown may return to the Island any time crying out for Scottie to come and comfort her. And Scottie will be languishing¹¹⁸² in England, undergoing quarantine. We are dog-thieves.”

The “we” sent a little heat-wave over the place where her heart should have been.

She had been working very hard all day, walking about the Brown Borough collecting its worries. She was so tired that she could not rest, could not go to bed, could not do anything except sit on her hearthrug and think feverishly of things that did not matter.

Outwardly the suffragette, when in her dressing-gown, and with her hair drawn into a small smooth plait, approached more nearly her vocation than under any other circumstances. She was a nun, dedicated¹¹⁸³ to an unknown God.

“A person to see you,” said the landlady, and flung open the door. The suffragette shot to her feet, with a momentary terrible suspicion that the landlady had said “parson.” Visions of a bashful curate brought face to face with a militant suffragette 281in her dressing-gown, were, however, swept away by the entrance of Miss Wigsky.

“It’s a —— shime,” remarked the visitor loudly, discarding the convention of greeting.

“Sure to be,” said the suffragette, sinking down upon the hearthrug again. “Nearly everything’s that kind of shame. Sit down and tell me.”

“I tol’ you I’d got a job, you know, at Smiff’s—boot-uppers. A lucky find it were, I thought, ten shillin’ a week an’ I was to be learnt ’ow to work a machine. ’E ses ’e thought I was a likely sort on Monday when I went, but ’e ses as ’e was goin’ to learn me somethink, an’ ’e wanted a special sort of gel, like, ’e ars’t for references. Knowin’ as ’e was a religious sort of gentleman, an’ give ’eaps of money to the Church, I tol’ ’im Farver Christopher for my reference, because Farver Christopher’s known Muvver sence she married, an’ allus said ’e would ’elp ’er whenever ’e could. So when I went agine yesterday, to Smiff’s, ’e ses as ’ow Farver Christopher ’adn’t spoke well of me—said I was unreliable, an’ never stuck to one job. So Mr. Smiff ses in thet cise I wouldn’t suit, but ’e ses as I looked likely ’e’d give me a job as packer at six shillin’. I ses as I couldn’ afford to tike so little money, an’ I tol’ ’im about you an’ the Suffragette Gels. ’E ses you oughter be ashimed of yoursel’, an’ ’e’d write an’ tell Farver Christopher as ’ow ’is Club was an ’otbed of somethink or other. I ’ites Farver Christopher—curse ’im—an’ ’e miking belief to be so ’elpful. 282I was in my first job free years, an’ jus’ because I chucked the —— job ’e found for me, ’e does me dirty like this. Curse ’im.”

“Don’t,” said the suffragette. “Suffragettes don’t waste breath in cursing—even when there seems to be nothing to do but curse.”

“This evenin’ ...” continued Miss Wigsky, “I went to the Club to see if you was there, though it wasn’t your night. Farver Christopher turned me out, ’e did. ’E’s turned out fifteen of the gels, an’ tol’ them never to come back no more. ’E found out from the others which was the suffragette gels, an’ turned ’em out. I stood up to ’im, and arsk’ ’im wotever we’ve done that’s wrong, there ain’t no ’arm, I ses, in tryin’ to get a livin’ wige. I arsk’ ’im ’ow ’e’d like to live under seven shillin’ a week. ’E ses as ’ow God ’ad called us to this stite of life, an’ it was wicked to try an’ alter it. ’E ses as women are pide what they’re worth, an’ God mide rich an’ poor an’ men an’ women, an’ never meant the poor to be rich, or women to be pretending they was as good as men ... I spit at ’im, miss, I ’ope you’ll excuse me.”

“I’ll excuse you,” said the suffragette, “though I don’t think it was a very artistic²¹⁹ protest. I am most awfully sorry for you, Jenny, but I’m not surprised. For you know when you became a suffragette you agreed to fight, and now you’ve found out what you’re fighting, that’s all. Suffragettes are just soldiers—only more sober—and when they meet 283the enemy, they just get more determined, not more excited. If you were a soldier and got wounded, we should be sorry for you, but also rather proud of you. We must collect the suffragette girls somewhere else, and make the army grow.”

“I don’t believe you can, miss. I went to see ’Tilda, an’ she was pretty near soppy about it. She’s piece-work, an’ carn’ get ’er boss to rise ’er, so she ain’t done nothink to be turned out of the Club for, she ses. She ses as ’ow she won’t never ’ave nuffink more to do wiv them suffragettes. Then I met Lil, the tow-’aired gel—she was drunk—at the corner of the Delta. She puts it all on you, miss.”

“Do you feel like that?” asked the suffragette.

“Ow well, in a manner o’ speakin’, it wouldn’ ’ave ’appened if it ’adn’t bin for you, miss. But I don’t feel sore against you, not really. You did it for the best. You miy be right about fightin’ the enemy, on’y the enemy’s too strong. P’r’aps Farver Christopher’s right, an’ God mide women to starve till they marry, an’ get beaten till they die....”

“If there is a God,” said the suffragette in a low voice, “the only possible conclusion is that he is an Anti. Still, even a God can be fought.”

“Ow, I’m sick o’ fightin’,” said Miss Wigsky. “I shall go orf wiv my chap, though ’e is out of work....”

The gardener was at 21 Penny Street, waiting for an answer to his message. To pass the time he had 284found work, or rather work had found him, for he was a man of luck. Eventually, instead of an answer, Mrs. Paul Rust called on him.

“How’s your son?” asked the gardener, who was pleased to meet some one who had met the suffragette.

Beneath his superficial “unscathed” pose, there was a layer of deep faithfulness. He knew by now that the suffragette was not worthy of the love of a sober Assistant Secretary to a Society Which Believed Itself of Great Importance (one of his latest practical poses). But the thing one knows makes no difference to the thing one feels, if one is young. The gardener was under the impression that his wisdom had dethroned the suffragette from her eminence, but his heart, with the obstinacy peculiar to hearts, continued to look up.

“My son is bad. He gets no stronger. There is no reason why he shouldn’t get up, except that he isn’t strong enough to walk.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” said Mrs. Rust automatically, and stood checked by such a decided lie.

“What annoys me is Courtesy,” she said after a pause. “Courtesy indeed, she hasn’t treated me fairly. She had the impertinence to tell me last week that she was engaged to that ridiculous young Wise she picked up at Greyville. Engaged indeed, it’s stuff and nonsense, pure defiance. She’s treated me 285as a sort of matrimonial agent. I wasn’t paying her ￡200 a year to look for a husband.”

“No,” agreed the gardener. “Then why don’t you forbid the banns?”

Poor Mrs. Rust’s helplessness in the hands of Courtesy rose vaguely¹¹⁸⁴ to her memory. “Stuff and nonsense,” she said. “I haven’t yet decided what steps I shall take in the matter. There is no immediate hurry. She has suggested letting the matter drop until Samuel is better. She has many failings, but I think she is fond of me.”

“That’s a very attractive failing,” admitted the gardener.

“I didn’t come here to discuss Courtesy with you,” snapped Mrs. Rust, suddenly remembering her temper. “I came because Samuel wanted me to come. He seems to be under delusions about you, he thinks he owes you gratitude¹¹⁸⁵. In fact—probably under the influence of delirium—he once said you financed his hotel. As a matter of fact I financed it myself, it owes its present success to me.”

“It’s awfully good of you to come all this way to bring me misdirected gratitude,” said the gardener.

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “I wouldn’t stir an inch out of my way to make you more conceited than you are. But that is the worst of having a son, you have to pay occasional attention to his wishes. Besides, Courtesy brought me up to town and gave the address to the chauffeur, so I really wasn’t consulted. Samuel wishes to see you. 286All the time he was ill he was asking for the Tra-la-la young man, and now I find he means you. I might have said that right at the beginning, and not have wasted all this time listening to your chatter¹¹⁸⁶.”

“I’m very glad you didn’t,” said the gardener. “I couldn’t bear a caller who came straight to the point in five words and then left.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “Are you coming?”

It was half-past three on Good Friday afternoon. There is something about that little Easter cluster of Sundays that weighs your heart down, if you are in postless London, and expecting a letter.

“Where is your son?” he asked.

“In Hampshire, in the Cottage Hospital, near the Red Place. You could put up at the Red Place. Samuel, being a fool, said you might have the big black and white room on the first floor. He might have let it for five guineas over Bank Holiday.”

“What time is the train?” asked the gardener.

“My car is at the door. The chauffeur is a dangerous lunatic, and there seems to me to be every likelihood that the back wheel will come off before we get out of London. But—are you coming?”

So the gardener came. Seated behind the dangerous lunatic, over the dangerous back wheel, and beside a hostess in a musical comedy motor bonnet¹¹⁸⁷, he followed once more the road that led to the gods.

He had left his address with Miss Shakespeare for the forwarding of letters.

287The great surprise of spring awaited them outside London. There were lambs under a pale sky, and violets under pale green hedges. Gnarled trees, like strong men’s muscles, curved out of roadside copses, lit with a green radiance. There was lilac smiling across the cottage gardens, there were wallflowers blotted dark against whitewashed walls. But when they reached the pines and heath they left the spring behind. Only the larches¹¹⁸⁸ preached its gospel.

“You had better come and see Samuel first,” said Mrs. Rust. “He is anxious to see you. He always was a fool.”

So they passed the Red Place. It flared¹¹⁸⁹ out at them along a sombre ride that cut the woods in two.

“Samuel says his gods look after the place as well as any manager, while he is away. But of course he has a chef now, and a competent bureau clerk.”

“I suppose you couldn’t ask the gods to dish up the dinner, or make out the bills,” admitted the gardener regretfully. “But I wonder if there’s room for the gods as well as the chef and the competent bureau clerk.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “A good dinner’s worth all the gods in mythology¹¹⁹⁰.”

They drove up to their destination.

The cottage hospital had only recruited to the service of the sick in later life. For a hundred years or so it had been the haunt of the wicked landowner. Worldly squires’ wives had given tea in its paved pergola to curates’ wives in their best hats. But 288as the house grew older it reformed. Its walls, steeped in the purple village gossip of a century, now echoed only to the innocent if technical prattle¹¹⁹¹ of nurses. The only person who walked in its garden was Sister: she threw crumbs¹¹⁹² to the goldfish as severely as though the crumbs were for their good. For the blessing which the house inherited from its past was its garden. A small garden, like a cut emerald, but reflecting all other jewels. It was a garden that tried to enshrine sombre peace amid the vivid riot of spring. Its high clipped hedges drew decorously angular reflections in the pools. Brown wallflowers hid the feet of the hedges. The lilacs seemed somehow turned to half mourning by the proximity¹¹⁹³ of a copper beech¹³⁵. A veil of tree seeds spinning down the wind fell diagonally across the garden. The pink horse chestnut¹¹⁹⁴ was very symmetrical. Only the little saxifrages protested against the geometrical correctness of the paving-stones, and forget-me-nots sang a shrill song in blue from the restraining chaperonage of red pottery tubs. A little cupid with a dislocated hip²⁰⁵ played a noiseless flute¹¹⁹⁵ from a pedestal. The garden was a prig, but it was the sort of prig that makes you wonder whether after all it is worth while to be so exquisitely sinful.

They found Samuel Rust, who was the only patient in the hospital, the centre of a mist of nurses. He was lying in the shade of a great smooth yew¹¹⁹⁶ pyramid with a military-looking bird fashioned on the top of it. Samuel Rust, that unusual young man, 289could never be much paler than he had been when in health, but he was grey now, rather than white, and his round sequins of eyes were set in a deeper setting.

“The Tra-la-la young man,” he said as the gardener approached. “I have been wondering why I wanted to see you.”

“So have I,” said Mrs. Rust, who, after a momentary lapse into a maternal expression, had turned her back on the invalid.

“Let’s pretend I’m just an ordinary sick-bed visitor, then,” suggested the gardener. “One never knows why—or whether—one wants to see that sort of visitor. In that case I have to begin:—Dear Mr. Rust, I hope you are much better.”

“Still posing,” said Samuel. “What is your latest attitude?”

“I never pose,” said the gardener. “I have a horror of the pose. My mind’s eye sometimes changes the spectacles it wears, but that’s all. I now find that all along the gods were intending me to be a business man.”

“Hard luck,” said Samuel.

The nurses had melted away, and Mrs. Rust followed them into the house. The sun was making ready for his triumph in the west and a diffident moon perched on the peak of the pink horse chestnut.

“Perhaps one ought to have foreseen the gods’ intention of making you a business man,” said Samuel, 290“for you certainly carried out the unscrupulous deceiver part with wonderful success—That is—jolly well—what? My Red Place now sings a hymn of praise to you, to the tune of ten pounds a week—clear.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the gardener. “It didn’t need much unscrupulous deceiving to persuade your mother to get her heart to work. And, to tell you the truth, the end was rather drowned in the means on that journey. I got so busy living—I only thought of you when absolutely necessary.”

“I didn’t expect you to wear my image graven on your heart, what?” said Samuel. “You are young, and living should certainly be your business. Is that why you said you were a business man? I have often thought that being young and only lately set up in business, you had no business to saddle yourself with a wife.”

“No business whatever,” admitted the gardener.

“Then why did you?”

“I didn’t.”

“Good heavens,” said Samuel fretfully, “why was I born in such a cryptic¹¹⁹⁷ age?”

“The truth is—I spoke in a futurist sense when I called her my wife.”

“In other words, you lied,” suggested Samuel. “You just took a little tame woman on a string for a trip, as many better men have done before you?”

“I dragged a woman by force across the Atlantic, and then she ran away. She ran back home.”

291“The silly ass,” said Mr. Rust irritably¹¹⁹⁸. “Why did she do that?”

“The attitude of women towards force ...” said the gardener sententiously, “is not what psychologists make it out to be. By some of the books I’ve read, I would have thought that women worshipped brute force; I would have thought that they kept their hair long specially²²³ in order to be dragged about by it.”

“I have known very few women really well,” said Samuel; “and the ones I knew didn’t wear hair that they could be dragged about by. I should think the final disappearance¹¹⁹⁹ of your post-impressionist wife was rather a good riddance.”

“It was neither good nor a riddance. In the same futurist sense I still call her my wife. It’s an effort, I admit, to continue to be fond of a militant suffragette, and yet somehow it’s an effort I can’t help making.”

Courtesy appeared, her hair an impudent¹²⁰⁰ rival to the sunset.

“I’ve brought your book from the library,” she said. “I couldn’t get any books by Somethingevsky, as you asked, so I brought The Rosary.

“I ought to congratulate you on your engagement,” said the gardener. “In fact—Mrs. Rust being out of earshot—I do.”

“Thank you,” said Courtesy, looking wonderfully pretty. “I wish everybody in the world was as happy as I am, though of course marriage is an 292awful risk. How’s your young woman, gardener?”

“As militant as ever,” said the gardener. “I’m expecting a letter from her any day, or a telegram any minute.”

“Why, is she coming down here?”

“Probably,” said the gardener. He had absolutely no grounds for his confidence except the ground of youth, and that, of course, is only a quicksand.

But the funny thing was she came.

For she cried all her current stock of militancy away on Thursday night, and by three o’clock on Good Friday afternoon she was on the door-step of 21 Penny Street.

“Even if slavery and polygamy become the fashion,” she argued characteristically, “Scottie Brown will still be wrongfully detained in quarantine.”

It was not to Scottie Brown that her thoughts turned when the maid told her that Mr. Gardener had gone to the country for Easter.

“But I must see him,” said the suffragette, who was a little drunk with the bitter beverage¹²⁰¹ of tears.

“It’s impossible,” said the maid. “I tell you—he’s away.”

The word “impossible” as usual acted as a challenge.

“Might I have his address?” said the caller.

After consultation¹²⁰² with Miss Shakespeare the address was produced, and the suffragette’s decision made.

293“The Red Place.... His friend lives there—Mrs. Rust’s son. Anyway there’s no harm in going to a country hotel for Easter.”

It was quite an advance for the suffragette to be human enough to consider whether there was any harm or not.

So she went home and had a ten minutes’ interview with the mustard-coloured portmanteau, and then she put it and herself into a third-class carriage marked Girton Magna.

At sunset she arrived at the Red Place, and by luck extraordinary managed to procure¹⁰⁷² a small attic¹²⁰³ which the tide of holiday-makers had passed by.

She saw the gardener first at dinner-time, and he looked almost as incredible to her as she did to him. It always surprises me to see a person looking exactly like themselves after absence.

When the gardener first saw the suffragette, he swallowed a spoonful of soup which was very much too hot, and rose. Courtesy was in the middle of a remark, and looked surprised to see him go.

“I knew I should hear or see something of you soon,” said the gardener, shaking the suffragette’s hand as usual an excessive number of times. “And yet I’m awfully surprised too,” admitted the suffragette.

“Just an Easter holiday?” suggested the gardener carelessly. “But what luck you chose the Red Place.”

“It wasn’t exactly luck. I knew you were here.”

294Tears had been trembling in the gardener’s eyes since the swallowing of the soup, he very nearly shed them now.

“Waiter,” he called, “move that lady’s place to our table.”

The suffragette was excited and flushed. She looked almost pretty.

“I can’t imagine why I came,” she said when the change was effected and greetings had been exchanged. “I think I must have come in delirium. The woman I used to be never comes into the country except on business, and, in the case of friends, makes a principle of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”

“I hope you left that woman behind—permanently,” said the gardener.

“No. That’s the worst of it. They’re both here. Each acts as conscience while the other one’s in power. Why wasn’t one brought into the world by oneself?”

“Why, weren’t you?” asked Courtesy; “were you twins?”

“I still am. One of me is quite a good sort, really, almost an ‘Oh, my dear’ girl. She is the one who was described in the paper as ‘Boadicea Smith, a young woman of prepossessing appearance.’ The reporter went on to say that the name was probably assumed—(which it was)—and that he knew who I really was—(which he didn’t). He hinted that I was a deluded¹²⁰⁴ patrician¹²⁰⁵ incog. Do you know, 295I treasure that paragraph as if it were a love-letter. It’s the only compliment I ever had.”

“I should like to shake the hand of that reporter,” said the gardener.

“But after that he referred to me all through as ‘Smith,’ without prefix¹²⁰⁶, which is the sign of a criminal.”

“The puppy!” exclaimed the gardener.

“What were you doing to get into the paper?” asked Courtesy sternly. “I never get into the paper.”

“It’s inconceivable that you should get into the paper, Courtesy dear,” said the gardener, “except when you get born or married or dead.”

“It’d be like a sultana in a seed-cake,” said the suffragette, “or like a sunrise at tea-time. Or as if a Forty-nine ’bus went to the Bank.”

I really think she was a little delirious, and perhaps she felt it herself, for she added apologetically, “I always think Forty-nine is such an innocent ’bus, it never knows the City.”

Next morning it was raining in the persistently militant sort of way reserved by the weather for public holidays.

“A pity,” said the gardener at breakfast. “I meant to take you over to the village to introduce you to Mr. Rust. And there are no ’buses or taxis here.”

“Let’s dispense³⁹³ with the ’buses and taxis,” suggested 296the suffragette. “Let’s forget London and get country-wet.”

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” said the gardener delightedly, and presently they started.

“I don’t really want to be introduced to your friend,” said the suffragette. “Only I wanted a chance to speak to you alone. Do you know, beneath a militant exterior I am horribly shy?”

“It’s obvious,” retorted the gardener.

“Is it?” asked the suffragette, annoyed, and relapsed into silence for a moment.

“I wanted to tell you ...” she began again presently, “that I beg your pardon for coming here. It’s unforgivable of me. You know, as regards men, I’m not a woman at all; I haven’t the unselfish instincts that other women have. I came because I had—reached the limit—and I wanted a friend....”

“Well, you didn’t come far wrong,” said the gardener. “I love you.”

“I didn’t think of your feelings at all, which is only another proof that it is no good your loving me.”

“May I take the risk?”

The suffragette stopped, and stood leaning against the rain-whipped wind. Rain was trapped in the mesh¹²⁰⁷ of her soft hair. She clenched her fists upon her breast.

“Won’t you believe me ...” she said, “when I tell you it would be best to break up that poor little 297dream of yours—as I have broken mine. I told you once that I had somehow been born the wrong side of the ropes in the race. One can’t love across a barrier.”

“Love is not a dream,” said the gardener. “It’s your barrier that’s a dream. Why don’t you try breaking that?”

“You are a man, little gardener, and I am a thing. Not a bad thing, really, but certainly not a woman. And even a thing can reach the point which I have reached, the point at which there seems nothing to do but grope and cry....”

They walked a little way in silence.

“I seem to have come to the edge of the world by myself,” she went on. “And I can’t go on—by myself. Oh, gardener, couldn’t we be friends without being lovers?”

“That has been suggested before,” said the gardener slowly. “And it has never succeeded. But—we—might—try....”

All the rest of the way to the village I suppose they were practising being friends and not lovers. For neither spoke a word.

“So this is the militant suffragette,” said Samuel Rust, who was sitting in the hospital sitting-room. “I am most interested to meet you. I have long wished to meet a suffragette to ask her why she wanted the vote.”

“Why do men want it?”

“Personally I don’t.”

298“Personally I do,” said the suffragette. “And mine is as good an answer as yours.”

“Both answers are very poor,” admitted Samuel. “You want the vote so badly that you think it worth while to become hysterical over it.”

“There is not much hysteria in the movement, only hysteria is the thing that strikes a hysterical press as most worthy of note. What hysteria there is, is a result—not a cause. Women never invented hysteria. How should we be anything but irresponsible, since you have taken responsibility from us? If we are bitter, you must remember that somebody mixed the dose. If the womanliness you admire is dead, bear in mind that nothing can be dead without being killed.”

“But who is your enemy? Who are your murderers? I have never noticed that the majority of men are fiends incarnate¹²⁰⁸. You may not believe me, but I do assure you that at frequent intervals in my life I have met honest, just, and moral men. Have you met none?”

“In the Brown Borough I meet excellent men. Older and wiser men, who sit on committees and behave like one conglomerate¹²⁰⁹ uncle to the poor; young lovers too hopelessly out of work to marry, and yet always gay and good-hearted; large tired fathers who come in after a day’s work and sit under dripping washing and never slap the children.... But that such just men are not in a majority is proved by the fact that women continue to suffer.”

299“Yes, but perhaps they suffer at the hands—not of men—but of circumstances.”

“Circumstances always favour people with a public voice.”

“And do militant suffragettes really think that by smashing windows they will attain to a public voice?”

“In what we do, we’re a poor argument for the Franchise. In what we are, we’re the very best. It’s not possible for the community to be hit without deserving it. It must look round and find out why it is hit—not how. Punishment is no good to a smasher of windows. Any woman can see if she’s wrong without punishment. If she thinks she’s right, punishment can never alter her opinion.”

“Smashers must be punished. It would be impossible to allow even the righteous to take the law into their own hands.”

“In whose hands should we leave it? In the hands of those who declare themselves to be our enemies? A fair question from a woman never gets a fair answer. Windows are smashed—not as an argument, but as a protest.”

“A protest strikes me as a futile¹²¹⁰ thing. No one ever does anything that looks unfair or tyrannical without being perfectly sure that was the thing they meant to do. If a protest is successful it creates discord without altering what is done. If it’s unsuccessful, it leaves you with a high temperature and bruised¹²¹¹ hands, and what is gained by that?”

“Protest isn’t a thing you argue about,” said the 300suffragette. “It’s a thing you do when you see red. You seem to think that men have the monopoly of the last straw.”

“It is hard to believe that you have reached the last straw,” said Samuel. “It is very hard for men to picture women as an oppressed race. We are miles and miles away from each other. I can still think of a lot of things to say, but I can’t say them without a moral megaphone. Shall we call a draw?”

“Let’s,” said the suffragette, relaxing her militant expression. “Only let me have the last word—a rather long one. Of one thing I am certain—when we have the vote, men will see what a small gift it was, and future generations will ask why it was grudged¹²¹² so bitterly. Only to us who have fought for it and suffered for it, it will always seem high and splendid—like a flag captured in battle....”

“The country is looking pretty just now, isn’t it?” said Mr. Samuel Rust.

The gardener was standing at the window, watching the clipped yew bird outside curtseying to the wind. He had been pathetically silent, like a snubbed child, ever since he had consented to be a friend and not a lover. His white keen face was a striking illustration of enthusiasm damped. His jaw looked as if he were clenching¹²¹³ his teeth on something bitter. I think he was regretting the days when gold hair with a ripple in it as laboured as the ripples¹²¹⁴ in an old Master’s seascape, wide blue eyes 301alight with matrimonial instinct, and the very red lips of a very small mouth, were all that his heart needed.

And I wonder what the suffragette saw in his face that made her say in a very non-militant voice, “Come, gardener.”

They both shook hands in rather an absent-minded way with Mr. Samuel Rust. They started from the door with the wind behind them. It was with her hair blowing forward along her cheeks that the gardener always remembered the suffragette most vividly. It brought a brave idea to his mind, connected vaguely with a picture of Grace Darling with which he had been in love fifteen years ago.

“Gardener,” said the suffragette hurriedly. “Can you imagine me sitting by the fire bathing a baby?”

“Easily,” he replied. “I can imagine how the firelight would dance upon your hair.”

“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “Can you imagine me, looking sleepy and cross, giving you early breakfast before you went to work?”

“I can imagine you with the sun behind you, saying good-morning, so that the word seemed like a blessing through the day.”

“It’s a lie—you poet,” she said. “Why don’t you open your eyes and see me as I am?”

“I’ve had my eyes open all along. It’s you who are blind.”

302“Then—suppose we become both lovers and friends.... Suppose we get married on Tuesday....”

303To-morrow I will don my cloak

Of opal-grey, and I will stand

Where the palm shadows stride like smoke

Across the dazzle of the sand.

To-morrow I will throw this blind

Blind whiteness from my soul away,

And pluck this blackness from my mind,

And only leave the medium—grey.

To-morrow I will cry for gains

Upon the blue and brazen sky:

The precious venom¹²¹⁵ in my veins¹²¹⁶

To-morrow will be parched¹²¹⁷ and dry.

To-morrow it shall be my goal

To throw myself away from me,

To lose the outline of my soul

Against the greyness of the sea.

1 graceful   

adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的

参考例句：

• His movements on the parallel bars were very graceful.他的双杠动作可帅了!
• The ballet dancer is so graceful.芭蕾舞演员的姿态是如此的优美。

2 climax   

n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点

参考例句：

• The fifth scene was the climax of the play.第五场是全剧的高潮。
• His quarrel with his father brought matters to a climax.他与他父亲的争吵使得事态发展到了顶点。

3 immorality   

n. 不道德, 无道义

参考例句：

• All the churchmen have preached against immorality. 所有牧师都讲道反对不道德的行为。
• Where the European sees immorality and lawlessness, strict law rules in reality. 在欧洲人视为不道德和无规则的地方，事实上都盛行着一种严格的规则。 来自英汉非文学 - 家庭、私有制和国家的起源

4 immoral   

adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的

参考例句：

• She was questioned about his immoral conduct toward her.她被询问过有关他对她的不道德行为的情况。
• It is my belief that nuclear weapons are immoral.我相信使核武器是不邪恶的。

5 vent   

n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄

参考例句：

• He gave vent to his anger by swearing loudly.他高声咒骂以发泄他的愤怒。
• When the vent became plugged,the engine would stop.当通风口被堵塞时，发动机就会停转。

6 mediocre   

adj.平常的，普通的

参考例句：

• The student tried hard,but his work is mediocre. 该生学习刻苦，但学业平庸。
• Only lazybones and mediocre persons could hanker after the days of messing together.只有懒汉庸才才会留恋那大锅饭的年代。

7 lamentably   

adv.哀伤地，拙劣地

参考例句：

• Aviation was lamentably weak and primitive. 航空设施极其薄弱简陋。 来自辞典例句
• Poor Tom lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirable's table, by premature inebriation. 可怜的汤姆在查尔斯·米拉贝尔爵士的宴会上，终于入席不久就酩酊大醉，弄得出丑露乖，丢尽了脸皮。 来自辞典例句

8 dignified   

a.可敬的，高贵的

参考例句：

• Throughout his trial he maintained a dignified silence. 在整个审讯过程中，他始终沉默以保持尊严。
• He always strikes such a dignified pose before his girlfriend. 他总是在女友面前摆出这种庄严的姿态。

9 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

10 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

11 dangled   

悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口

参考例句：

• Gold charms dangled from her bracelet. 她的手镯上挂着许多金饰物。
• It's the biggest financial incentive ever dangled before British footballers. 这是历来对英国足球运动员的最大经济诱惑。

12 dangle   

v.(使)悬荡，(使)悬垂

参考例句：

• At Christmas,we dangle colored lights around the room.圣诞节时，我们在房间里挂上彩灯。
• He sits on the edge of the table and dangles his legs.他坐在桌子边上，摆动著双腿。

13 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

14 sardonic   

adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的

参考例句：

• She gave him a sardonic smile.她朝他讥讽地笑了一笑。
• There was a sardonic expression on her face.她脸上有一种嘲讽的表情。

15 bereft   

adj.被剥夺的

参考例句：

• The place seemed to be utterly bereft of human life.这个地方似乎根本没有人烟。
• She was bereft of happiness.她失去了幸福。

16 ass   

n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人

参考例句：

• He is not an ass as they make him.他不象大家猜想的那样笨。
• An ass endures his burden but not more than his burden.驴能负重但不能超过它能力所负担的。

17 averted   

防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移

参考例句：

• A disaster was narrowly averted. 及时防止了一场灾难。
• Thanks to her skilful handling of the affair, the problem was averted. 多亏她对事情处理得巧妙，才避免了麻烦。

18 corpse   

n.尸体，死尸

参考例句：

• What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
• The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。

19 manly   

adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地

参考例句：

• The boy walked with a confident manly stride.这男孩以自信的男人步伐行走。
• He set himself manly tasks and expected others to follow his example.他给自己定下了男子汉的任务，并希望别人效之。

20 bristling   

a.竖立的

参考例句：

• "Don't you question Miz Wilkes' word,'said Archie, his beard bristling. "威尔克斯太太的话，你就不必怀疑了。 "阿尔奇说。他的胡子也翘了起来。
• You were bristling just now. 你刚才在发毛。

21 rebuke   

v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise

参考例句：

• He had to put up with a smart rebuke from the teacher.他不得不忍受老师的严厉指责。
• Even one minute's lateness would earn a stern rebuke.哪怕迟到一分钟也将受到严厉的斥责。

22 obtuse   

adj.钝的；愚钝的

参考例句：

• You were too obtuse to take the hint.你太迟钝了，没有理解这种暗示。
• "Sometimes it looks more like an obtuse triangle,"Winter said.“有时候它看起来更像一个钝角三角形。”温特说。

23 impetus   

n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力

参考例句：

• This is the primary impetus behind the economic recovery.这是促使经济复苏的主要动力。
• Her speech gave an impetus to my ideas.她的讲话激发了我的思绪。

24 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：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

25 rosy   

adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的

参考例句：

• She got a new job and her life looks rosy.她找到一份新工作，生活看上去很美好。
• She always takes a rosy view of life.她总是对生活持乐观态度。

26 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

27 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。

28 tangible   

adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的

参考例句：

• The policy has not yet brought any tangible benefits.这项政策还没有带来任何实质性的好处。
• There is no tangible proof.没有确凿的证据。

29 hem   

n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制

参考例句：

• The hem on her skirt needs sewing.她裙子上的褶边需要缝一缝。
• The hem of your dress needs to be let down an inch.你衣服的折边有必要放长1英寸。

30 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

31 consistency   

n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度

参考例句：

• Your behaviour lacks consistency.你的行为缺乏一贯性。
• We appreciate the consistency and stability in China and in Chinese politics.我们赞赏中国及其政策的连续性和稳定性。

32 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

33 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

34 joyful   

adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的

参考例句：

• She was joyful of her good result of the scientific experiments.她为自己的科学实验取得好成果而高兴。
• They were singing and dancing to celebrate this joyful occasion.他们唱着、跳着庆祝这令人欢乐的时刻。

35 joyfully   

adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地

参考例句：

• She tripped along joyfully as if treading on air. 她高兴地走着，脚底下轻飘飘的。
• During these first weeks she slaved joyfully. 在最初的几周里，她干得很高兴。

36 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

37 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

38 blessing   

n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿

参考例句：

• The blessing was said in Hebrew.祷告用了希伯来语。
• A double blessing has descended upon the house.双喜临门。

39 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

40 prick   

v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛

参考例句：

• He felt a sharp prick when he stepped on an upturned nail.当他踩在一个尖朝上的钉子上时，他感到剧烈的疼痛。
• He burst the balloon with a prick of the pin.他用针一戳，气球就爆了。

41 pricked   

刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛

参考例句：

• The cook pricked a few holes in the pastry. 厨师在馅饼上戳了几个洞。
• He was pricked by his conscience. 他受到良心的谴责。

42 strand   

vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地）

参考例句：

• She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.她把一缕散发夹到了耳后。
• The climbers had been stranded by a storm.登山者被暴风雨困住了。

43 bestowed   

赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It was a title bestowed upon him by the king. 那是国王赐给他的头衔。
• He considered himself unworthy of the honour they had bestowed on him. 他认为自己不配得到大家赋予他的荣誉。

44 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

45 spasms   

n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作

参考例句：

• After the patient received acupuncture treatment,his spasms eased off somewhat. 病人接受针刺治疗后，痉挛稍微减轻了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. 一阵阵预测和焦虑把她脸上的微笑挤掉了。 来自辞典例句

46 spasm   

n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作

参考例句：

• When the spasm passed,it left him weak and sweating.一阵痉挛之后，他虚弱无力，一直冒汗。
• He kicked the chair in a spasm of impatience.他突然变得不耐烦，一脚踢向椅子。

47 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

48 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

49 gaping   

adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大

参考例句：

• Ahead of them was a gaping abyss. 他们前面是一个巨大的深渊。
• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

50 jaws   

n.口部；嘴

参考例句：

• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。
• The scored jaws of a vise help it bite the work. 台钳上有刻痕的虎钳牙帮助它紧咬住工件。

51 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

52 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

53 poke   

n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• We never thought she would poke her nose into this.想不到她会插上一手。
• Don't poke fun at me.别拿我凑趣儿。

54 scent   

n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉

参考例句：

• The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
• The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。

55 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

56 numb   

adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木

参考例句：

• His fingers were numb with cold.他的手冻得发麻。
• Numb with cold,we urged the weary horses forward.我们冻得发僵，催着疲惫的马继续往前走。

57 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

58 generosity   

n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为

参考例句：

• We should match their generosity with our own.我们应该像他们一样慷慨大方。
• We adore them for their generosity.我们钦佩他们的慷慨。

59 rein   

n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治

参考例句：

• The horse answered to the slightest pull on the rein.只要缰绳轻轻一拉,马就作出反应。
• He never drew rein for a moment till he reached the river.他一刻不停地一直跑到河边。

60 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

61 luncheon   

n.午宴，午餐，便宴

参考例句：

• We have luncheon at twelve o'clock.我们十二点钟用午餐。
• I have a luncheon engagement.我午饭有约。

62 unaware   

a.不知道的，未意识到的

参考例句：

• They were unaware that war was near. 他们不知道战争即将爆发。
• I was unaware of the man's presence. 我没有察觉到那人在场。

63 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

64 ram   

(random access memory)随机存取存储器

参考例句：

• 512k RAM is recommended and 640k RAM is preferred.推荐配置为512K内存，640K内存则更佳。

65 ply   

v.(搬运工等)等候顾客，弯曲

参考例句：

• Taxis licensed to ply for hire at the railway station.许可计程车在火车站候客。
• Ferryboats ply across the English Channel.渡船定期往返于英吉利海峡。

66 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

67 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

68 impromptu   

adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地)

参考例句：

• The announcement was made in an impromptu press conference at the airport.这一宣布是在机场举行的临时新闻发布会上作出的。
• The children put on an impromptu concert for the visitors.孩子们为来访者即兴献上了一场音乐会。

69 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

70 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

71 lamentable   

adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的

参考例句：

• This lamentable state of affairs lasted until 1947.这一令人遗憾的事态一直持续至1947年。
• His practice of inebriation was lamentable.他的酗酒常闹得别人束手无策。

72 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

73 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

74 vices   

缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳

参考例句：

• In spite of his vices, he was loved by all. 尽管他有缺点，还是受到大家的爱戴。
• He vituperated from the pulpit the vices of the court. 他在教堂的讲坛上责骂宫廷的罪恶。

75 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

76 akin   

adj.同族的，类似的

参考例句：

• She painted flowers and birds pictures akin to those of earlier feminine painters.她画一些同早期女画家类似的花鸟画。
• Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.听他的人生故事犹如阅读一本精彩的冒险小说。

77 eventual   

adj.最后的，结局的，最终的

参考例句：

• Several schools face eventual closure.几所学校面临最终关闭。
• Both parties expressed optimism about an eventual solution.双方对问题的最终解决都表示乐观。

78 dummy   

n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头

参考例句：

• The police suspect that the device is not a real bomb but a dummy.警方怀疑那个装置不是真炸弹，只是一个假货。
• The boys played soldier with dummy swords made of wood.男孩们用木头做的假木剑玩打仗游戏。

79 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

80 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

81 funnels   

漏斗( funnel的名词复数 )； （轮船，火车等的）烟囱

参考例句：

• Conventional equipment such as mixing funnels, pumps, solids eductors and the like can be employed. 常用的设备，例如混合漏斗、泵、固体引射器等，都可使用。
• A jet of smoke sprang out of the funnels. 喷射的烟雾从烟囱里冒了出来。

82 ingenuity   

n.别出心裁；善于发明创造

参考例句：

• The boy showed ingenuity in making toys.那个小男孩做玩具很有创造力。
• I admire your ingenuity and perseverance.我钦佩你的别出心裁和毅力。

83 truant   

n.懒惰鬼，旷课者；adj.偷懒的，旷课的，游荡的；v.偷懒，旷课

参考例句：

• I found the truant throwing stones in the river.我发现那个逃课的学生在往河里扔石子。
• Children who play truant from school are unimaginative.逃学的孩子们都缺乏想像力。

84 vitality   

n.活力，生命力，效力

参考例句：

• He came back from his holiday bursting with vitality and good health.他度假归来之后，身强体壮，充满活力。
• He is an ambitious young man full of enthusiasm and vitality.他是个充满热情与活力的有远大抱负的青年。

85 prettily   

adv.优美地；可爱地

参考例句：

• It was prettily engraved with flowers on the back.此件雕刻精美，背面有花饰图案。
• She pouted prettily at him.她冲他撅着嘴，样子很可爱。

86 complexion   

n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格

参考例句：

• Red does not suit with her complexion.红色与她的肤色不协调。
• Her resignation puts a different complexion on things.她一辞职局面就全变了。

87 redeem   

v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等）

参考例句：

• He had no way to redeem his furniture out of pawn.他无法赎回典当的家具。
• The eyes redeem the face from ugliness.这双眼睛弥补了他其貌不扬之缺陷。

88 suffrage   

n.投票，选举权，参政权

参考例句：

• The question of woman suffrage sets them at variance.妇女参政的问题使他们发生争执。
• The voters gave their suffrage to him.投票人都投票选他。

89 eyebrow   

n.眉毛，眉

参考例句：

• Her eyebrow is well penciled.她的眉毛画得很好。
• With an eyebrow raised,he seemed divided between surprise and amusement.他一只眉毛扬了扬，似乎既感到吃惊，又觉有趣。

90 eyebrows   

眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Eyebrows stop sweat from coming down into the eyes. 眉毛挡住汗水使其不能流进眼睛。
• His eyebrows project noticeably. 他的眉毛特别突出。

91 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

92 wittily   

机智地，机敏地

参考例句：

• They have just been pulling our legs very wittily. 他们不过是跟我们开个非常诙谐的玩笑罢了。
• The tale wittily explores the interaction and tension between reality and imagination. 这篇故事机智地探讨了现实和想象之间的联系和对立。

93 virtuously   

合乎道德地，善良地

参考例句：

• Pro31:29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. 箴31:29说，才德的女子很多，惟独你超过一切。

94 virtuous   

adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的

参考例句：

• She was such a virtuous woman that everybody respected her.她是个有道德的女性，人人都尊敬她。
• My uncle is always proud of having a virtuous wife.叔叔一直为娶到一位贤德的妻子而骄傲。

95 heinous   

adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的

参考例句：

• They admitted to the most heinous crimes.他们承认了极其恶劣的罪行。
• I do not want to meet that heinous person.我不想见那个十恶不赦的人。

96 motive   

n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的

参考例句：

• The police could not find a motive for the murder.警察不能找到谋杀的动机。
• He had some motive in telling this fable.他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

97 grassy   

adj.盖满草的；长满草的

参考例句：

• They sat and had their lunch on a grassy hillside.他们坐在长满草的山坡上吃午饭。
• Cattle move freely across the grassy plain.牛群自由自在地走过草原。

98 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

99 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

100 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

101 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

102 chauffeur   

n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车

参考例句：

• The chauffeur handed the old lady from the car.这个司机搀扶这个老太太下汽车。
• She went out herself and spoke to the chauffeur.她亲自走出去跟汽车司机说话。

103 organise   

vt.组织，安排，筹办

参考例句：

• He has the ability to organise.他很有组织才能。
• It's my job to organise all the ceremonial events.由我来组织所有的仪式。

104 gust   

n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发

参考例句：

• A gust of wind blew the front door shut.一阵大风吹来，把前门关上了。
• A gust of happiness swept through her.一股幸福的暖流流遍她的全身。

105 gasped   

v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要

参考例句：

• She gasped at the wonderful view. 如此美景使她惊讶得屏住了呼吸。
• People gasped with admiration at the superb skill of the gymnasts. 体操运动员的高超技艺令人赞叹。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

106 appalled   

v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的

参考例句：

• The brutality of the crime has appalled the public. 罪行之残暴使公众大为震惊。
• They were appalled by the reports of the nuclear war. 他们被核战争的报道吓坏了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

107 pall   

v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕

参考例句：

• Already the allure of meals in restaurants had begun to pall.饭店里的饭菜已经不像以前那样诱人。
• I find his books begin to pall on me after a while.我发觉他的书读过一阵子就开始对我失去吸引力。

108 banal   

adj.陈腐的，平庸的

参考例句：

• Making banal remarks was one of his bad habits.他的坏习惯之一就是喜欢说些陈词滥调。
• The allegations ranged from the banal to the bizarre.从平淡无奇到离奇百怪的各种说法都有。

109 banality   

n.陈腐；平庸；陈词滥调

参考例句：

• Neil's ability to utter banalities never ceased to amaze me.每次我都很惊讶，尼尔怎么能讲出这么索然无味的东西。
• He couldn't believe the banality of the question.他无法相信那问题竟如此陈腐。

110 hysterical   

adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的

参考例句：

• He is hysterical at the sight of the photo.他一看到那张照片就异常激动。
• His hysterical laughter made everybody stunned.他那歇斯底里的笑声使所有的人不知所措。

111 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

112 scion   

n.嫩芽，子孙

参考例句：

• A place is cut in the root stock to accept the scion.砧木上切开一个小口,来接受接穗。
• Nabokov was the scion of an aristocratic family.纳博科夫是一个贵族家庭的阔少。

113 plantations   

n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Soon great plantations, supported by slave labor, made some families very wealthy. 不久之后出现了依靠奴隶劳动的大庄园，使一些家庭成了富豪。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were deserted. 维恩特波恩的合同完成后，那片林地变得荒废了。 来自辞典例句

114 bin   

n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件

参考例句：

• He emptied several bags of rice into a bin.他把几袋米倒进大箱里。
• He threw the empty bottles in the bin.他把空瓶子扔进垃圾箱。

115 conceitedly   

自满地

参考例句：

• He always acts so conceitedly! 他行事总是那么自以为是。

116 conceit   

n.自负，自高自大

参考例句：

• As conceit makes one lag behind,so modesty helps one make progress.骄傲使人落后，谦虚使人进步。
• She seems to be eaten up with her own conceit.她仿佛已经被骄傲冲昏了头脑。

117 conceited   

adj.自负的，骄傲自满的

参考例句：

• He could not bear that they should be so conceited.他们这样自高自大他受不了。
• I'm not as conceited as so many people seem to think.我不像很多人认为的那么自负。

118 beetle   

n.甲虫，近视眼的人

参考例句：

• A firefly is a type of beetle.萤火虫是一种甲虫。
• He saw a shiny green beetle on a leaf.我看见树叶上有一只闪闪发光的绿色甲虫。

119 blessings   

n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福

参考例句：

• Afflictions are sometimes blessings in disguise. 塞翁失马，焉知非福。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We don't rely on blessings from Heaven. 我们不靠老天保佑。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

120 relinquished   

交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃

参考例句：

• She has relinquished the post to her cousin, Sir Edward. 她把职位让给了表弟爱德华爵士。
• The small dog relinquished his bone to the big dog. 小狗把它的骨头让给那只大狗。

121 crave   

vt.渴望得到，迫切需要，恳求，请求

参考例句：

• Many young children crave attention.许多小孩子渴望得到关心。
• You may be craving for some fresh air.你可能很想呼吸呼吸新鲜空气。

122 muse   

n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感

参考例句：

• His muse had deserted him,and he could no longer write.他已无灵感，不能再写作了。
• Many of the papers muse on the fate of the President.很多报纸都在揣测总统的命运。

123 herd   

n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• He had no opinions of his own but simply follow the herd.他从无主见，只是人云亦云。

124 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

125 gaol   

n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢

参考例句：

• He was released from the gaol.他被释放出狱。
• The man spent several years in gaol for robbery.这男人因犯抢劫罪而坐了几年牢。

126 bribed   

v.贿赂( bribe的过去式和过去分词 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂

参考例句：

• They bribed him with costly presents. 他们用贵重的礼物贿赂他。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He bribed himself onto the committee. 他暗通关节，钻营投机挤进了委员会。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

127 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

128 militant   

adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士

参考例句：

• Some militant leaders want to merge with white radicals.一些好斗的领导人要和白人中的激进派联合。
• He is a militant in the movement.他在那次运动中是个激进人物。

129 wink   

n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁

参考例句：

• He tipped me the wink not to buy at that price.他眨眼暗示我按那个价格就不要买。
• The satellite disappeared in a wink.瞬息之间，那颗卫星就消失了。

130 lesser   

adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地

参考例句：

• Kept some of the lesser players out.不让那些次要的球员参加联赛。
• She has also been affected,but to a lesser degree.她也受到波及，但程度较轻。

131 countenance   

n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同

参考例句：

• At the sight of this photograph he changed his countenance.他一看见这张照片脸色就变了。
• I made a fierce countenance as if I would eat him alive.我脸色恶狠狠地，仿佛要把他活生生地吞下去。

132 eludes   

v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的第三人称单数 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到

参考例句：

• His name eludes me for the moment. 他的名字我一时想不起来了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• But philosophers seek a special sort of knowledge that eludes exact definition. 但是，哲学家所追求的是一种难以精确定义的特殊知识。 来自哲学部分

133 abrupt   

adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的

参考例句：

• The river takes an abrupt bend to the west.这河突然向西转弯。
• His abrupt reply hurt our feelings.他粗鲁的回答伤了我们的感情。

134 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

135 beech   

n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的

参考例句：

• Autumn is the time to see the beech woods in all their glory.秋天是观赏山毛榉林的最佳时期。
• Exasperated,he leaped the stream,and strode towards beech clump.他满腔恼怒，跳过小河，大踏步向毛榉林子走去。

136 beeches   

n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材

参考例句：

• The beeches, oaks and chestnuts all belong to the same family. 山毛榉树、橡树和栗子树属于同科树种。 来自互联网
• There are many beeches in this wood. 这片树林里有许多山毛榉。 来自互联网

137 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

138 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

139 virgin   

n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的

参考例句：

• Have you ever been to a virgin forest?你去过原始森林吗？
• There are vast expanses of virgin land in the remote regions.在边远地区有大片大片未开垦的土地。

140 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

141 lash   

v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛

参考例句：

• He received a lash of her hand on his cheek.他突然被她打了一记耳光。
• With a lash of its tail the tiger leaped at her.老虎把尾巴一甩朝她扑过来。

142 lashes   

n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥

参考例句：

• Mother always lashes out food for the children's party. 孩子们聚会时，母亲总是给他们许多吃的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Never walk behind a horse in case it lashes out. 绝对不要跟在马后面，以防它突然猛踢。 来自《简明英汉词典》

143 rust   

n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退

参考例句：

• She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
• The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。

144 tangerine   

n.橘子，橘子树

参考例句：

• Hand me of a the ripest tangerine please.请递给我一个最熟的橘子。
• These tangerine are transported here by air from Fuzhou.这些福橘是刚刚从福州空运过来的。

145 exquisite   

adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的

参考例句：

• I was admiring the exquisite workmanship in the mosaic.我当时正在欣赏镶嵌画的精致做工。
• I still remember the exquisite pleasure I experienced in Bali.我依然记得在巴厘岛所经历的那种剧烈的快感。

146 eloquence   

n.雄辩；口才，修辞

参考例句：

• I am afraid my eloquence did not avail against the facts.恐怕我的雄辩也无补于事实了。
• The people were charmed by his eloquence.人们被他的口才迷住了。

147 rapture   

n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜

参考例句：

• His speech was received with rapture by his supporters.他的演说受到支持者们的热烈欢迎。
• In the midst of his rapture,he was interrupted by his father.他正欢天喜地，被他父亲打断了。

148 intentionally   

ad.故意地，有意地

参考例句：

• I didn't say it intentionally. 我是无心说的。
• The local authority ruled that he had made himself intentionally homeless and was therefore not entitled to be rehoused. 当地政府裁定他是有意居无定所，因此没有资格再获得提供住房。

149 prehistoric   

adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的

参考例句：

• They have found prehistoric remains.他们发现了史前遗迹。
• It was rather like an exhibition of prehistoric electronic equipment.这儿倒像是在展览古老的电子设备。

150 downwards   

adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地）

参考例句：

• He lay face downwards on his bed.他脸向下伏在床上。
• As the river flows downwards,it widens.这条河愈到下游愈宽。

151 delusion   

n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑

参考例句：

• He is under the delusion that he is Napoleon.他患了妄想症，认为自己是拿破仑。
• I was under the delusion that he intended to marry me.我误认为他要娶我。

152 citadel   

n.城堡；堡垒；避难所

参考例句：

• The citadel was solid.城堡是坚固的。
• This citadel is built on high ground for protecting the city.这座城堡建于高处是为保护城市。

153 insouciant   

adj.不在意的

参考例句：

• But not all central bankers are so insouciant.然而，不是所有的央行人士都对此高枕无忧。
• Americans are remarkably insouciant about this development.美国人对这个数字漫无关心。

154 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

155 insufficient   

adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的

参考例句：

• There was insufficient evidence to convict him.没有足够证据给他定罪。
• In their day scientific knowledge was insufficient to settle the matter.在他们的时代，科学知识还不能足以解决这些问题。

156 boredom   

n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊

参考例句：

• Unemployment can drive you mad with boredom.失业会让你无聊得发疯。
• A walkman can relieve the boredom of running.跑步时带着随身听就不那么乏味了。

157 sinister   

adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的

参考例句：

• There is something sinister at the back of that series of crimes.在这一系列罪行背后有险恶的阴谋。
• Their proposals are all worthless and designed out of sinister motives.他们的建议不仅一钱不值，而且包藏祸心。

158 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

159 blistered   

adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂

参考例句：

• He had a blistered heel. 他的脚后跟起了泡。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Their hands blistered, but no one complained. 他们手起了泡，可是没有一个人有怨言。 来自《简明英汉词典》

160 beseeching   

adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She clung to her father, beseeching him for consent. 她紧紧挨着父亲，恳求他答应。 来自辞典例句
• He casts a beseeching glance at his son. 他用恳求的眼光望着儿子。 来自辞典例句

161 prelude   

n.序言，前兆，序曲

参考例句：

• The prelude to the musical composition is very long.这首乐曲的序曲很长。
• The German invasion of Poland was a prelude to World War II.德国入侵波兰是第二次世界大战的序幕。

162 proprietor   

n.所有人；业主；经营者

参考例句：

• The proprietor was an old acquaintance of his.业主是他的一位旧相识。
• The proprietor of the corner grocery was a strange thing in my life.拐角杂货店店主是我生活中的一个怪物。

163 sensational   

adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的

参考例句：

• Papers of this kind are full of sensational news reports.这类报纸满是耸人听闻的新闻报道。
• Their performance was sensational.他们的演出妙极了。

164 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

165 tout   

v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱

参考例句：

• They say it will let them tout progress in the war.他们称这将有助于鼓吹他们在战争中的成果。
• If your case studies just tout results,don't bother requiring registration to view them.如果你的案例研究只是吹捧结果，就别烦扰别人来注册访问了。

166 tingle   

vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动

参考例句：

• The music made my blood tingle.那音乐使我热血沸腾。
• The cold caused a tingle in my fingers.严寒使我的手指有刺痛感。

167 tingled   

v.有刺痛感( tingle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My cheeks tingled with the cold. 我的脸颊冻得有点刺痛。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The crowd tingled with excitement. 群众大为兴奋。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

168 lurked   

vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The murderers lurked behind the trees. 谋杀者埋伏在树后。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Treachery lurked behind his smooth manners. 他圆滑姿态的后面潜伏着奸计。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

169 pottery   

n.陶器，陶器场

参考例句：

• My sister likes to learn art pottery in her spare time.我妹妹喜欢在空余时间学习陶艺。
• The pottery was left to bake in the hot sun.陶器放在外面让炎热的太阳烘晒焙干。

170 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

171 velvet   

n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的

参考例句：

• This material feels like velvet.这料子摸起来像丝绒。
• The new settlers wore the finest silk and velvet clothing.新来的移民穿着最华丽的丝绸和天鹅绒衣服。

172 cub   

n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人

参考例句：

• The lion cub's mother was hunting for what she needs. 这只幼师的母亲正在捕猎。
• The cub licked the milk from its mother's breast. 这头幼兽吸吮着它妈妈的奶水。

173 pang   

n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷

参考例句：

• She experienced a sharp pang of disappointment.她经历了失望的巨大痛苦。
• She was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love.她开始尝到了失恋的痛苦。

174 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

175 lark   

n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏

参考例句：

• He thinks it cruel to confine a lark in a cage.他认为把云雀关在笼子里太残忍了。
• She lived in the village with her grandparents as cheerful as a lark.她同祖父母一起住在乡间非常快活。

176 scarlet   

n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的

参考例句：

• The scarlet leaves of the maples contrast well with the dark green of the pines.深红的枫叶和暗绿的松树形成了明显的对比。
• The glowing clouds are growing slowly pale,scarlet,bright red,and then light red.天空的霞光渐渐地淡下去了，深红的颜色变成了绯红，绯红又变为浅红。

177 straightforwardly   

adv.正直地

参考例句：

• He hated her straightforwardly, making no effort to conceal it. 他十分坦率地恨她，从不设法加以掩饰。 来自辞典例句
• Mardi, which followed hard on its heels, was another matter. Mardi begins straightforwardly. 紧跟着出版的《玛地》，却是另一回事。《玛地》开始时平铺直叙。 来自辞典例句

178 fidelity   

n.忠诚，忠实；精确

参考例句：

• There is nothing like a dog's fidelity.没有什么能比得上狗的忠诚。
• His fidelity and industry brought him speedy promotion.他的尽职及勤奋使他很快地得到晋升。

179 devoid   

adj.全无的，缺乏的

参考例句：

• He is completely devoid of humour.他十分缺乏幽默。
• The house is totally devoid of furniture.这所房子里什么家具都没有。

180 withers   

马肩隆

参考例句：

• The girl's pitiful history would wring one's withers. 这女孩子的经历令人心碎。
• "I will be there to show you," and so Mr. Withers withdrew. “我会等在那里，领你去看房间的，"威瑟斯先生这样说着，退了出去。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

181 tentacles   

n.触手( tentacle的名词复数 )；触角；触须；触毛

参考例句：

• Tentacles of fear closed around her body. 恐惧的阴影笼罩着她。
• Many molluscs have tentacles. 很多软体动物有触角。 来自《简明英汉词典》

182 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

183 pallid   

adj.苍白的，呆板的

参考例句：

• The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.月亮从云朵后面钻出来，照着尸体那张苍白的脸。
• His dry pallid face often looked gaunt.他那张干瘪苍白的脸常常显得憔悴。

184 thicket   

n.灌木丛，树林

参考例句：

• A thicket makes good cover for animals to hide in.丛林是动物的良好隐蔽处。
• We were now at the margin of the thicket.我们现在已经来到了丛林的边缘。

185 liar   

n.说谎的人

参考例句：

• I know you for a thief and a liar!我算认识你了，一个又偷又骗的家伙！
• She was wrongly labelled a liar.她被错误地扣上说谎者的帽子。

186 incurable   

adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人

参考例句：

• All three babies were born with an incurable heart condition.三个婴儿都有不可治瘉的先天性心脏病。
• He has an incurable and widespread nepotism.他们有不可救药的，到处蔓延的裙带主义。

187 tiresome   

adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的

参考例句：

• His doubts and hesitations were tiresome.他的疑惑和犹豫令人厌烦。
• He was tiresome in contending for the value of his own labors.他老为他自己劳动的价值而争强斗胜，令人生厌。

188 witticisms   

n.妙语，俏皮话( witticism的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We do appreciate our own witticisms. 我们非常欣赏自己的小聪明。 来自辞典例句
• The interpreter at this dinner even managed to translate jokes and witticisms without losing the point. 这次宴会的翻译甚至能设法把笑话和俏皮话不失其妙意地翻译出来。 来自辞典例句

189 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

190 cramping   

图像压缩

参考例句：

• The bleeding may keep my left hand from cramping. 淌血会叫我的左手不抽筋。
• This loss of sodium can cause dehydration and cramping. 钠流失会造成脱水和抽筋。

191 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

192 propensities   

n.倾向，习性( propensity的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This paper regarded AFT as a criterion to estimate slagging propensities. 文中以灰熔点作为判断煤灰结渣倾向的标准。 来自互联网
• Our results demonstrate that different types of authoritarian regime face different propensities to develop toward democracy. 本文研究结果显示，不同的威权主义政体所面对的民主发展倾向是不同的。 来自互联网

193 sieve   

n.筛，滤器，漏勺

参考例句：

• We often shake flour through a sieve.我们经常用筛子筛面粉。
• Finally,it is like drawing water with a sieve.到头来，竹篮打水一场空。

194 radius   

n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限

参考例句：

• He has visited every shop within a radius of two miles.周围两英里以内的店铺他都去过。
• We are measuring the radius of the circle.我们正在测量圆的半径。

195 patronage   

n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场

参考例句：

• Though it was not yet noon,there was considerable patronage.虽然时间未到中午，店中已有许多顾客惠顾。
• I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this.很抱歉，我的赞助只能到此为止。

196 facet   

n.(问题等的)一个方面；(多面体的)面

参考例句：

• He has perfected himself in every facet of his job.他已使自己对工作的各个方面都得心应手。
• Every facet of college life is fascinating.大学生活的每个方面都令人兴奋。

197 inaccessible   

adj.达不到的，难接近的

参考例句：

• This novel seems to me among the most inaccessible.这本书对我来说是最难懂的小说之一。
• The top of Mount Everest is the most inaccessible place in the world.珠穆朗玛峰是世界上最难到达的地方。

198 gem   

n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel

参考例句：

• The gem is beyond my pocket.这颗宝石我可买不起。
• The little gem is worth two thousand dollars.这块小宝石价值两千美元。

199 paramount   

a.最重要的，最高权力的

参考例句：

• My paramount object is to save the Union and destroy slavery.我的最高目标是拯救美国，摧毁奴隶制度。
• Nitrogen is of paramount importance to life on earth.氮对地球上的生命至关重要。

200 rogue   

n.流氓；v.游手好闲

参考例句：

• The little rogue had his grandpa's glasses on.这淘气鬼带上了他祖父的眼镜。
• They defined him as a rogue.他们确定他为骗子。

201 scruples   

n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• I overcame my moral scruples. 我抛开了道德方面的顾虑。
• I'm not ashamed of my scruples about your family. They were natural. 我并未因为对你家人的顾虑而感到羞耻。这种感觉是自然而然的。 来自疯狂英语突破英语语调

202 exasperate   

v.激怒，使（疾病）加剧，使恶化

参考例句：

• He shouted in an exasperate voice.他以愤怒的声音嚷着。
• The sheer futility of it all exasperates her.它毫无用处，这让她很生气。

203 exasperates   

n.激怒，触怒( exasperate的名词复数 )v.激怒，触怒( exasperate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The sheer futility of it all exasperates her. 它毫无用处，这让她很生气。 来自辞典例句
• That child exasperates me. 那孩子真让我生气。 来自互联网

204 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

205 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

206 neatly   

adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地

参考例句：

• Sailors know how to wind up a long rope neatly.水手们知道怎样把一条大绳利落地缠好。
• The child's dress is neatly gathered at the neck.那孩子的衣服在领口处打着整齐的皱褶。

207 crate   

vt.(up)把…装入箱中；n.板条箱，装货箱

参考例句：

• We broke open the crate with a blow from the chopper.我们用斧头一敲就打开了板条箱。
• The workers tightly packed the goods in the crate.工人们把货物严紧地包装在箱子里。

208 champagne   

n.香槟酒；微黄色

参考例句：

• There were two glasses of champagne on the tray.托盘里有两杯香槟酒。
• They sat there swilling champagne.他们坐在那里大喝香槟酒。

209 smuggled   

水货

参考例句：

• The customs officer confiscated the smuggled goods. 海关官员没收了走私品。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Those smuggled goods have been detained by the port office. 那些走私货物被港务局扣押了。 来自互联网

210 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

211 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。

212 serene   

adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的

参考例句：

• He has entered the serene autumn of his life.他已进入了美好的中年时期。
• He didn't speak much,he just smiled with that serene smile of his.他话不多，只是脸上露出他招牌式的淡定的微笑。

213 pranced   

v.（马）腾跃( prance的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Their horses pranced and whinnied. 他们的马奔腾着、嘶鸣着。 来自辞典例句
• The little girl pranced about the room in her new clothes. 小女孩穿着新衣在屋里雀跃。 来自辞典例句

214 engrossed   

adj.全神贯注的

参考例句：

• The student is engrossed in his book.这名学生正在专心致志地看书。
• No one had ever been quite so engrossed in an evening paper.没人会对一份晚报如此全神贯注。

215 promiscuous   

adj.杂乱的，随便的

参考例句：

• They were taking a promiscuous stroll when it began to rain.他们正在那漫无目的地散步，突然下起雨来。
• Alec know that she was promiscuous and superficial.亚历克知道她是乱七八糟和浅薄的。

216 descending   

n. 下行 adj. 下降的

参考例句：

• The results are expressed in descending numerical order . 结果按数字降序列出。
• The climbers stopped to orient themselves before descending the mountain. 登山者先停下来确定所在的位置，然后再下山。

217 sincerity   

n.真诚，诚意；真实

参考例句：

• His sincerity added much more authority to the story.他的真诚更增加了故事的说服力。
• He tried hard to satisfy me of his sincerity.他竭力让我了解他的诚意。

218 gracefully   

ad.大大方方地；优美地

参考例句：

• She sank gracefully down onto a cushion at his feet. 她优雅地坐到他脚旁的垫子上。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line. 新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

219 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

220 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

221 repentance   

n.懊悔

参考例句：

• He shows no repentance for what he has done.他对他的所作所为一点也不懊悔。
• Christ is inviting sinners to repentance.基督正在敦请有罪的人悔悟。

222 repent   

v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔

参考例句：

• He has nothing to repent of.他没有什么要懊悔的。
• Remission of sins is promised to those who repent.悔罪者可得到赦免。

223 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

224 rebellious   

adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的

参考例句：

• They will be in danger if they are rebellious.如果他们造反，他们就要发生危险。
• Her reply was mild enough,but her thoughts were rebellious.她的回答虽然很温和，但她的心里十分反感。

225 refreshing   

adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的

参考例句：

• I find it'so refreshing to work with young people in this department.我发现和这一部门的青年一起工作令人精神振奋。
• The water was cold and wonderfully refreshing.水很涼，特别解乏提神。

226 delightful   

adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的

参考例句：

• We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
• Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。

227 delightfully   

大喜，欣然

参考例句：

• The room is delightfully appointed. 这房子的设备令人舒适愉快。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The evening is delightfully cool. 晚间凉爽宜人。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

228 shrugged   

vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀，什么也没说。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

229 immorally   

adv.淫荡地；不正经地；不道德地；品行不良地

参考例句：

• He is quite without principle, ie behaves immorally. 他完全没有道德观念（做的事不道德）。 来自辞典例句
• He acted immorally when his own interests were at stake. 当他自己的利益受到威胁的时候，他的行动就不合乎道德了。 来自互联网

230 eternity   

n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷

参考例句：

• The dull play seemed to last an eternity.这场乏味的剧似乎演个没完没了。
• Finally,Ying Tai and Shan Bo could be together for all of eternity.英台和山伯终能双宿双飞，永世相随。

231 exalted   

adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的

参考例句：

• Their loveliness and holiness in accordance with their exalted station.他们的美丽和圣洁也与他们的崇高地位相称。
• He received respect because he was a person of exalted rank.他因为是个地位崇高的人而受到尊敬。

232 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

233 unnaturally   

adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地

参考例句：

• Her voice sounded unnaturally loud. 她的嗓音很响亮，但是有点反常。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Her eyes were unnaturally bright. 她的眼睛亮得不自然。 来自《简明英汉词典》

234 astonishment   

n.惊奇，惊异

参考例句：

• They heard him give a loud shout of astonishment.他们听见他惊奇地大叫一声。
• I was filled with astonishment at her strange action.我对她的奇怪举动不胜惊异。

235 plunged   

v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• The train derailed and plunged into the river. 火车脱轨栽进了河里。
• She lost her balance and plunged 100 feet to her death. 她没有站稳，从100英尺的高处跌下摔死了。

236 defiance   

n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗

参考例句：

• He climbed the ladder in defiance of the warning.他无视警告爬上了那架梯子。
• He slammed the door in a spirit of defiance.他以挑衅性的态度把门砰地一下关上。

237 anatomy   

n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织

参考例句：

• He found out a great deal about the anatomy of animals.在动物解剖学方面，他有过许多发现。
• The hurricane's anatomy was powerful and complex.对飓风的剖析是一项庞大而复杂的工作。

238 rhythmically   

adv.有节奏地

参考例句：

• A pigeon strutted along the roof, cooing rhythmically. 一只鸽子沿着屋顶大摇大摆地走，有节奏地咕咕叫。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Exposures of rhythmically banded protore are common in the workings. 在工作面中常见有韵律条带“原矿石”。 来自辞典例句

239 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

240 warrior   

n.勇士，武士，斗士

参考例句：

• The young man is a bold warrior.这个年轻人是个很英勇的武士。
• A true warrior values glory and honor above life.一个真正的勇士珍视荣誉胜过生命。

241 tilt   

v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜

参考例句：

• She wore her hat at a tilt over her left eye.她歪戴着帽子遮住左眼。
• The table is at a slight tilt.这张桌子没放平，有点儿歪.

242 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

243 conceal   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽

参考例句：

• He had to conceal his identity to escape the police.为了躲避警方，他只好隐瞒身份。
• He could hardly conceal his joy at his departure.他几乎掩饰不住临行时的喜悦。

244 concealing   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Despite his outward display of friendliness, I sensed he was concealing something. 尽管他表现得友善，我还是感觉到他有所隐瞒。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• SHE WAS BREAKING THE COMPACT, AND CONCEALING IT FROM HIM. 她违反了他们之间的约定，还把他蒙在鼓里。 来自英汉文学 - 三万元遗产

245 supremacy   

n.至上；至高权力

参考例句：

• No one could challenge her supremacy in gymnastics.她是最优秀的体操运动员，无人能胜过她。
• Theoretically,she holds supremacy as the head of the state.从理论上说，她作为国家的最高元首拥有至高无上的权力。

246 lessen   

vt.减少，减轻；缩小

参考例句：

• Regular exercise can help to lessen the pain.经常运动有助于减轻痛感。
• They've made great effort to lessen the noise of planes.他们尽力减小飞机的噪音。

247 averse   

adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的

参考例句：

• I don't smoke cigarettes,but I'm not averse to the occasional cigar.我不吸烟，但我不反对偶尔抽一支雪茄。
• We are averse to such noisy surroundings.我们不喜欢这么吵闹的环境。

248 exertions   

n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使

参考例句：

• As long as they lived, exertions would not be necessary to her. 只要他们活着，是不需要她吃苦的。 来自辞典例句
• She failed to unlock the safe in spite of all her exertions. 她虽然费尽力气，仍未能将那保险箱的锁打开。 来自辞典例句

249 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

250 insanity   

n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐

参考例句：

• In his defense he alleged temporary insanity.他伪称一时精神错乱，为自己辩解。
• He remained in his cell,and this visit only increased the belief in his insanity.他依旧还是住在他的地牢里，这次视察只是更加使人相信他是个疯子了。

251 sanity   

n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确

参考例句：

• I doubt the sanity of such a plan.我怀疑这个计划是否明智。
• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。

252 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。

253 almighty   

adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的

参考例句：

• Those rebels did not really challenge Gods almighty power.这些叛徒没有对上帝的全能力量表示怀疑。
• It's almighty cold outside.外面冷得要命。

254 pitfall   

n.隐患，易犯的错误；陷阱，圈套

参考例句：

• The wolf was caught in a pitfall.那只狼是利用陷阱捉到的。
• The biggest potential pitfall may not be technical but budgetary.最大的潜在陷阱可能不是技术问题，而是预算。

255 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

256 repudiated   

v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务）

参考例句：

• All slanders and libels should be repudiated. 一切诬蔑不实之词，应予推倒。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The Prime Minister has repudiated racist remarks made by a member of the Conservative Party. 首相已经驳斥了一个保守党成员的种族主义言论。 来自辞典例句

257 ragged   

adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的

参考例句：

• A ragged shout went up from the small crowd.这一小群人发出了刺耳的喊叫。
• Ragged clothing infers poverty.破衣烂衫意味着贫穷。

258 aspiring   

adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求

参考例句：

• Aspiring musicians need hours of practice every day. 想当音乐家就要每天练许多小时。
• He came from an aspiring working-class background. 他出身于有抱负的工人阶级家庭。 来自辞典例句

259 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

260 vista   

n.远景，深景，展望，回想

参考例句：

• From my bedroom window I looked out on a crowded vista of hills and rooftops.我从卧室窗口望去，远处尽是连绵的山峦和屋顶。
• These uprisings come from desperation and a vista of a future without hope.发生这些暴动是因为人们被逼上了绝路，未来看不到一点儿希望。

261 writhing   

（因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She was writhing around on the floor in agony. 她痛得在地板上直打滚。
• He was writhing on the ground in agony. 他痛苦地在地上打滚。

262 vouchsafed   

v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺

参考例句：

• He vouchsafed to me certain family secrets. 他让我知道了某些家庭秘密。
• The significance of the event does, indeed, seem vouchsafed. 这个事件看起来确实具有重大意义。 来自辞典例句

263 levitated   

v.（使）升空，（使）漂浮( levitate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The magician levitated the woman. 魔术师把那名妇女浮在空中。 来自互联网
• Lastly, the maglev planar motor was levitated stably. 最后，实现了磁悬浮平面电机悬浮系统的稳定悬浮。 来自互联网

264 aloof   

adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的

参考例句：

• Never stand aloof from the masses.千万不可脱离群众。
• On the evening the girl kept herself timidly aloof from the crowd.这小女孩在晚会上一直胆怯地远离人群。

265 aloofness   

超然态度

参考例句：

• Why should I have treated him with such sharp aloofness? 但我为什么要给人一些严厉，一些端庄呢？ 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说
• He had an air of haughty aloofness. 他有一种高傲的神情。 来自辞典例句

266 armour   

（=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队

参考例句：

• His body was encased in shining armour.他全身披着明晃晃的甲胄。
• Bulletproof cars sheathed in armour.防弹车护有装甲。

267 smothering   

（使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的现在分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制

参考例句：

• He laughed triumphantly, and silenced her by manly smothering. 他胜利地微笑着，以男人咄咄逼人的气势使她哑口无言。
• He wrapped the coat around her head, smothering the flames. 他用上衣包住她的头，熄灭了火。

268 mused   

v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事）

参考例句：

• \"I wonder if I shall ever see them again, \"he mused. “我不知道是否还可以再见到他们，”他沉思自问。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• \"Where are we going from here?\" mused one of Rutherford's guests. 卢瑟福的一位客人忍不住说道：‘我们这是在干什么？” 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史

269 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

270 perseverance   

n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
• Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。

271 agog   

adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地

参考例句：

• The children were all agog to hear the story.孩子们都渴望着要听这个故事。
• The city was agog with rumors last night that the two had been executed.那两人已被处决的传言昨晚搞得全城沸沸扬扬。

272 hovering   

鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• The helicopter was hovering about 100 metres above the pad. 直升机在离发射台一百米的上空盘旋。
• I'm hovering between the concert and the play tonight. 我犹豫不决今晚是听音乐会还是看戏。

273 exasperating   

adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• Our team's failure is very exasperating. 我们队失败了，真是气死人。
• It is really exasperating that he has not turned up when the train is about to leave. 火车快开了， 他还不来，实在急人。

274 laborious   

adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅

参考例句：

• They had the laborious task of cutting down the huge tree.他们接受了伐大树的艰苦工作。
• Ants and bees are laborious insects.蚂蚁与蜜蜂是勤劳的昆虫。

275 laboriously   

adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地

参考例句：

• She is tracing laboriously now. 她正在费力地写。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She is laboriously copying out an old manuscript. 她正在费劲地抄出一份旧的手稿。 来自辞典例句

276 ruminating   

v.沉思( ruminate的现在分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth. 他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is ruminating on what had happened the day before. 他在沉思前一天发生的事情。 来自《简明英汉词典》

277 promenade   

n./v.散步

参考例句：

• People came out in smarter clothes to promenade along the front.人们穿上更加时髦漂亮的衣服，沿着海滨散步。
• We took a promenade along the canal after Sunday dinner.星期天晚饭后我们沿着运河散步。

278 ivy   

n.常青藤，常春藤

参考例句：

• Her wedding bouquet consisted of roses and ivy.她的婚礼花篮包括玫瑰和长春藤。
• The wall is covered all over with ivy.墙上爬满了常春藤。

279 yearn   

v.想念；怀念；渴望

参考例句：

• We yearn to surrender our entire being.我们渴望着放纵我们整个的生命。
• Many people living in big cities yearn for an idyllic country life.现在的很多都市人向往那种田园化的生活。

280 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

281 tenor   

n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意

参考例句：

• The tenor of his speech was that war would come.他讲话的大意是战争将要发生。
• The four parts in singing are soprano,alto,tenor and bass.唱歌的四个声部是女高音、女低音、男高音和男低音。

282 steward   

n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员

参考例句：

• He's the steward of the club.他是这家俱乐部的管理员。
• He went around the world as a ship's steward.他当客船服务员，到过世界各地。

283 stewardess   

n.空中小姐，女乘务员

参考例句：

• Please show your ticket to the stewardess when you board the plane.登机时请向空中小姐出示机票。
• The stewardess hurried the passengers onto the plane.空中小姐催乘客赶快登机。

284 virtues   

美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处

参考例句：

• Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
• She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。

285 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

286 stewardesses   

（飞机上的）女服务员，空中小姐( stewardess的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• If you need help, stewardesses will be pleased to help you. 如果你需要帮忙的话，空中小姐会很高兴为你效劳。
• Stewardesses on planes should be employed for their ability, not for their looks. 应该根据能力而不是容貌来录用飞机上的女服务员。

287 elastic   

n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的

参考例句：

• Rubber is an elastic material.橡胶是一种弹性材料。
• These regulations are elastic.这些规定是有弹性的。

288 implored   

恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She implored him to stay. 她恳求他留下。
• She implored him with tears in her eyes to forgive her. 她含泪哀求他原谅她。

289 berth   

n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊

参考例句：

• She booked a berth on the train from London to Aberdeen.她订了一张由伦敦开往阿伯丁的火车卧铺票。
• They took up a berth near the harbor.他们在港口附近找了个位置下锚。

290 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：

• A hawk hovered over the hill. 一只鹰在小山的上空翱翔。
• A hawk hovered in the blue sky. 一只老鹰在蓝色的天空中翱翔。

291 conscientious   

adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的

参考例句：

• He is a conscientious man and knows his job.他很认真负责，也很懂行。
• He is very conscientious in the performance of his duties.他非常认真地履行职责。

292 sitting-room   

n.（BrE）客厅，起居室

参考例句：

• The sitting-room is clean.起居室很清洁。
• Each villa has a separate sitting-room.每栋别墅都有一间独立的起居室。

293 insignificant   

adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的

参考例句：

• In winter the effect was found to be insignificant.在冬季，这种作用是不明显的。
• This problem was insignificant compared to others she faced.这一问题与她面临的其他问题比较起来算不得什么。

294 strands   

n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Twist a length of rope from strands of hemp. 用几股麻搓成了一段绳子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She laced strands into a braid. 她把几股线编织成一根穗带。 来自《简明英汉词典》

295 fortress   

n.堡垒，防御工事

参考例句：

• They made an attempt on a fortress.他们试图夺取这一要塞。
• The soldier scaled the wall of the fortress by turret.士兵通过塔车攀登上了要塞的城墙。

296 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

297 juncture   

n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头

参考例句：

• The project is situated at the juncture of the new and old urban districts.该项目位于新老城区交界处。
• It is very difficult at this juncture to predict the company's future.此时很难预料公司的前景。

298 recoiled   

v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回

参考例句：

• She recoiled from his touch. 她躲开他的触摸。
• Howard recoiled a little at the sharpness in my voice. 听到我的尖声，霍华德往后缩了一下。 来自《简明英汉词典》

299 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

300 ornament   

v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物

参考例句：

• The flowers were put on the table for ornament.花放在桌子上做装饰用。
• She wears a crystal ornament on her chest.她的前胸戴了一个水晶饰品。

301 refinement   

n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼

参考例句：

• Sally is a woman of great refinement and beauty. 莎莉是个温文尔雅又很漂亮的女士。
• Good manners and correct speech are marks of refinement.彬彬有礼和谈吐得体是文雅的标志。

302 mutual   

adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的

参考例句：

• We must pull together for mutual interest.我们必须为相互的利益而通力合作。
• Mutual interests tied us together.相互的利害关系把我们联系在一起。

303 wrestled   

v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤

参考例句：

• As a boy he had boxed and wrestled. 他小的时候又是打拳又是摔跤。
• Armed guards wrestled with the intruder. 武装警卫和闯入者扭打起来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

304 conqueror   

n.征服者，胜利者

参考例句：

• We shall never yield to a conqueror.我们永远不会向征服者低头。
• They abandoned the city to the conqueror.他们把那个城市丢弃给征服者。

305 amethyst   

n.紫水晶

参考例句：

• She pinned a large amethyst brooch to her lapel.她在翻领上别了一枚大大的紫水晶饰针。
• The exquisite flowers come alive in shades of amethyst.那些漂亮的花儿在紫水晶的映衬下显得格外夺目。

306 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

307 receding   

v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题

参考例句：

• Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht. 游艇的灯光渐去渐远，他拼命划水追赶。 来自辞典例句
• Sounds produced by vehicles receding from us seem lower-pitched than usual. 渐渐远离我们的运载工具发出的声似乎比平常的音调低。 来自辞典例句

308 withdrawal   

n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销

参考例句：

• The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
• They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。

309 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

310 preamble   

n.前言；序文

参考例句：

• He spoke without preamble.他没有开场白地讲起来。
• The controversy has arisen over the text of the preamble to the unification treaty.针对统一条约的序文出现了争论。

311 conspicuous   

adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的

参考例句：

• It is conspicuous that smoking is harmful to health.很明显，抽烟对健康有害。
• Its colouring makes it highly conspicuous.它的色彩使它非常惹人注目。

312 wharf   

n.码头，停泊处

参考例句：

• We fetch up at the wharf exactly on time.我们准时到达码头。
• We reached the wharf gasping for breath.我们气喘吁吁地抵达了码头。

313 bleakly   

无望地，阴郁地，苍凉地

参考例句：

• The windows of the house stared bleakly down at her. 那座房子的窗户居高临下阴森森地对着她。
• He stared at me bleakly and said nothing. 他阴郁地盯着我，什么也没说。

314 bleak   

adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的

参考例句：

• They showed me into a bleak waiting room.他们引我来到一间阴冷的会客室。
• The company's prospects look pretty bleak.这家公司的前景异常暗淡。

315 dependence   

n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属

参考例句：

• Doctors keep trying to break her dependence of the drug.医生们尽力使她戒除毒瘾。
• He was freed from financial dependence on his parents.他在经济上摆脱了对父母的依赖。

316 spire   

n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点

参考例句：

• The church spire was struck by lightning.教堂的尖顶遭到了雷击。
• They could just make out the spire of the church in the distance.他们只能辨认出远处教堂的尖塔。

317 leisurely   

adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的

参考例句：

• We walked in a leisurely manner,looking in all the windows.我们慢悠悠地走着，看遍所有的橱窗。
• He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.他从容的吃了早餐，高兴的开车去工作。

318 tug   

v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船

参考例句：

• We need to tug the car round to the front.我们需要把那辆车拉到前面。
• The tug is towing three barges.那只拖船正拖着三只驳船。

319 scowling   

怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• There she was, grey-suited, sweet-faced, demure, but scowling. 她就在那里，穿着灰色的衣服，漂亮的脸上显得严肃而忧郁。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Scowling, Chueh-hui bit his lips. 他马上把眉毛竖起来。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

320 hew   

v.砍；伐；削

参考例句：

• Hew a path through the underbrush.在灌木丛中砍出一条小路。
• Plant a sapling as tall as yourself and hew it off when it is two times high of you.种一棵与自己身高一样的树苗，长到比自己高两倍时砍掉它。

321 usurp   

vt.篡夺，霸占；vi.篡位

参考例句：

• Their position enabled them to usurp power.他们所处的地位使其得以篡权。
• You must not allow it to usurp a disproportionate share of your interest.你不应让它过多地占据你的兴趣。

322 usurped   

篡夺，霸占( usurp的过去式和过去分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权

参考例句：

• That magazine usurped copyrighted material. 那杂志盗用了版权为他人所有的素材。
• The expression'social engineering'has been usurped by the Utopianist without a shadow of light. “社会工程”这个词已被乌托邦主义者毫无理由地盗用了。

323 winked   

v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮

参考例句：

• He winked at her and she knew he was thinking the same thing that she was. 他冲她眨了眨眼，她便知道他的想法和她一样。
• He winked his eyes at her and left the classroom. 他向她眨巴一下眼睛走出了教室。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

324 blurred   

v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离

参考例句：

• She suffered from dizziness and blurred vision. 她饱受头晕目眩之苦。
• Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears. 他们那种慢吞吞、含糊不清的声音在他听起来却很悦耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

325 furrows   

n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 )；（脸上的）皱纹v.犁田，开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• I could tell from the deep furrows in her forehead that she was very disturbed by the news. 从她额头深深的皱纹上，我可以看出她听了这个消息非常不安。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Dirt bike trails crisscrossed the grassy furrows. 越野摩托车的轮迹纵横交错地布满条条草沟。 来自辞典例句

326 beckoning   

adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• An even more beautiful future is beckoning us on. 一个更加美好的未来在召唤我们继续前进。 来自辞典例句
• He saw a youth of great radiance beckoning to him. 他看见一个丰神飘逸的少年向他招手。 来自辞典例句

327 Forsaken   

adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词

参考例句：

• He was forsaken by his friends. 他被朋友们背弃了。
• He has forsaken his wife and children. 他遗弃了他的妻子和孩子。

328 tact   

n.机敏，圆滑，得体

参考例句：

• She showed great tact in dealing with a tricky situation.她处理棘手的局面表现得十分老练。
• Tact is a valuable commodity.圆滑老练是很有用处的。

329 glide   

n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝

参考例句：

• We stood in silence watching the snake glide effortlessly.我们噤若寒蝉地站着，眼看那条蛇逍遥自在地游来游去。
• So graceful was the ballerina that she just seemed to glide.那芭蕾舞女演员翩跹起舞，宛如滑翔。

330 conclusive   

adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的

参考例句：

• They produced some fairly conclusive evidence.他们提供了一些相当确凿的证据。
• Franklin did not believe that the French tests were conclusive.富兰克林不相信这个法国人的实验是结论性的。

331 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

332 digestion   

n.消化，吸收

参考例句：

• This kind of tea acts as an aid to digestion.这种茶可助消化。
• This food is easy of digestion.这食物容易消化。

333 citizenship   

n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份)

参考例句：

• He was born in Sweden,but he doesn't have Swedish citizenship.他在瑞典出生，但没有瑞典公民身分。
• Ten years later,she chose to take Australian citizenship.十年后，她选择了澳大利亚国籍。

334 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

335 supremely   

adv.无上地，崇高地

参考例句：

• They managed it all supremely well. 这件事他们干得极其出色。
• I consider a supremely beautiful gesture. 我觉得这是非常优雅的姿态。

336 immunity   

n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权

参考例句：

• The law gives public schools immunity from taxation.法律免除公立学校的纳税义务。
• He claims diplomatic immunity to avoid being arrested.他要求外交豁免以便避免被捕。

337 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

338 casually   

adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地

参考例句：

• She remarked casually that she was changing her job.她当时漫不经心地说要换工作。
• I casually mentioned that I might be interested in working abroad.我不经意地提到我可能会对出国工作感兴趣。

339 disastrous   

adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的

参考例句：

• The heavy rainstorm caused a disastrous flood.暴雨成灾。
• Her investment had disastrous consequences.She lost everything she owned.她的投资结果很惨，血本无归。

340 besiege   

vt.包围，围攻，拥在...周围

参考例句：

• The Afghan air force was using helicopters to supply the besieged town.阿富汗空军正用直升机向被围城镇提供补给。
• She was besieged by the press and the public.她被媒体和公众纠缠不休。

341 crimson   

n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色

参考例句：

• She went crimson with embarrassment.她羞得满脸通红。
• Maple leaves have turned crimson.枫叶已经红了。

342 redeemed   

adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She has redeemed her pawned jewellery. 她赎回了当掉的珠宝。
• He redeemed his watch from the pawnbroker's. 他从当铺赎回手表。

343 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

344 embedded   

a.扎牢的

参考例句：

• an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
• He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。

345 bruise   

n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤

参考例句：

• The bruise was caused by a kick.这伤痕是脚踢的。
• Jack fell down yesterday and got a big bruise on his face.杰克昨天摔了一跤，脸上摔出老大一块淤斑。

346 bruises   

n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was covered with bruises after falling off his bicycle. 他从自行车上摔了下来，摔得浑身伤痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The pear had bruises of dark spots. 这个梨子有碰伤的黑斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

347 knuckles   

n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝

参考例句：

• He gripped the wheel until his knuckles whitened. 他紧紧握住方向盘，握得指关节都变白了。
• Her thin hands were twisted by swollen knuckles. 她那双纤手因肿大的指关节而变了形。 来自《简明英汉词典》

348 providence   

n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝

参考例句：

• It is tempting Providence to go in that old boat.乘那艘旧船前往是冒大险。
• To act as you have done is to fly in the face of Providence.照你的所作所为那样去行事，是违背上帝的意志的。

349 fatiguing   

a.使人劳累的

参考例句：

• He was fatiguing himself with his writing, no doubt. 想必他是拼命写作，写得精疲力尽了。
• Machines are much less fatiguing to your hands, arms, and back. 使用机器时，手、膊和后背不会感到太累。

350 heliotrope   

n.天芥菜；淡紫色

参考例句：

• So Laurie played and Jo listened,with her nose luxuriously buried in heliotrope and tea roses.这样劳瑞便弹了起来，裘把自己的鼻子惬意地埋在无芥菜和庚申蔷薇花簇中倾听着。
• The dragon of eternity sustains the faceted heliotrope crystal of life.永恒不朽的飞龙支撑着寓意着生命的淡紫色多面水晶。

351 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

352 quail   

n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖

参考例句：

• Cowards always quail before the enemy.在敌人面前，胆小鬼们总是畏缩不前的。
• Quail eggs are very high in cholesterol.鹌鹑蛋胆固醇含量高。

353 streaked   

adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹

参考例句：

• The children streaked off as fast as they could. 孩子们拔脚飞跑 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• His face was pale and streaked with dirt. 他脸色苍白，脸上有一道道的污痕。 来自辞典例句

354 obstinacy   

n.顽固；（病痛等）难治

参考例句：

• It is a very accountable obstinacy.这是一种完全可以理解的固执态度。
• Cindy's anger usually made him stand firm to the point of obstinacy.辛迪一发怒，常常使他坚持自见，并达到执拗的地步。

355 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

356 pier   

n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱

参考例句：

• The pier of the bridge has been so badly damaged that experts worry it is unable to bear weight.这座桥的桥桩破损厉害，专家担心它已不能负重。
• The ship was making towards the pier.船正驶向码头。

357 indifference   

n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎

参考例句：

• I was disappointed by his indifference more than somewhat.他的漠不关心使我很失望。
• He feigned indifference to criticism of his work.他假装毫不在意别人批评他的作品。

358 wilful   

adj.任性的，故意的

参考例句：

• A wilful fault has no excuse and deserves no pardon.不能宽恕故意犯下的错误。
• He later accused reporters of wilful distortion and bias.他后来指责记者有意歪曲事实并带有偏见。

359 pricking   

刺，刺痕，刺痛感

参考例句：

• She felt a pricking on her scalp. 她感到头皮上被扎了一下。
• Intercostal neuralgia causes paroxysmal burning pain or pricking pain. 肋间神经痛呈阵发性的灼痛或刺痛。

360 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

361 craving   

n.渴望,热望

参考例句：

• a craving for chocolate 非常想吃巧克力
• She skipped normal meals to satisfy her craving for chocolate and crisps. 她不吃正餐，以便满足自己吃巧克力和炸薯片的渴望。

362 exasperated   

adj.恼怒的

参考例句：

• We were exasperated at his ill behaviour. 我们对他的恶劣行为感到非常恼怒。
• Constant interruption of his work exasperated him. 对他工作不断的干扰使他恼怒。

363 unlimited   

adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的

参考例句：

• They flew over the unlimited reaches of the Arctic.他们飞过了茫茫无边的北极上空。
• There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.在技术方面自以为是会很危险。

364 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

365 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

366 blot   

vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍

参考例句：

• That new factory is a blot on the landscape.那新建的工厂破坏了此地的景色。
• The crime he committed is a blot on his record.他犯的罪是他的履历中的一个污点。

367 albeit   

conj.即使；纵使；虽然

参考例句：

• Albeit fictional,she seemed to have resolved the problem.虽然是虚构的，但是在她看来好象是解决了问题。
• Albeit he has failed twice,he is not discouraged.虽然失败了两次，但他并没有气馁。

368 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

369 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：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• Make a small incision below the ribs. 在肋骨下方切开一个小口。

370 constrained   

adj.束缚的,节制的

参考例句：

• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。
• I feel constrained to write and ask for your forgiveness. 我不得不写信请你原谅。

371 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

372 undue   

adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的

参考例句：

• Don't treat the matter with undue haste.不要过急地处理此事。
• It would be wise not to give undue importance to his criticisms.最好不要过分看重他的批评。

373 prominence   

n.突出；显著；杰出；重要

参考例句：

• He came to prominence during the World Cup in Italy.他在意大利的世界杯赛中声名鹊起。
• This young fashion designer is rising to prominence.这位年轻的时装设计师的声望越来越高。

374 apex   

n.顶点，最高点

参考例句：

• He reached the apex of power in the early 1930s.他在三十年代初达到了权力的顶峰。
• His election to the presidency was the apex of his career.当选总统是他一生事业的顶峰。

375 awe   

n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧

参考例句：

• The sight filled us with awe.这景色使我们大为惊叹。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

376 incompetently   

adv.无能力地

参考例句：

• He did the job rather incompetently. 这项工作他做的相当不好。 来自互联网
• When the Republicans have stuck by their principles, they have done so incompetently. 当共和党忠于其原则时，他们是如此无能。 来自互联网

377 repelled   

v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开

参考例句：

• They repelled the enemy. 他们击退了敌军。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. 而丁梅斯代尔牧师却哆里哆嗦地断然推开了那老人的胳臂。 来自英汉文学 - 红字

378 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

379 defensive   

adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的

参考例句：

• Their questions about the money put her on the defensive.他们问到钱的问题，使她警觉起来。
• The Government hastily organized defensive measures against the raids.政府急忙布置了防卫措施抵御空袭。

380 tortuous   

adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的

参考例句：

• We have travelled a tortuous road.我们走过了曲折的道路。
• They walked through the tortuous streets of the old city.他们步行穿过老城区中心弯弯曲曲的街道。

381 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

382 firmament   

n.苍穹；最高层

参考例句：

• There are no stars in the firmament.天空没有一颗星星。
• He was rich,and a rising star in the political firmament.他十分富有，并且是政治高层一颗冉冉升起的新星。

383 orator   

n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• The orator gestured vigorously while speaking.这位演讲者讲话时用力地做手势。

384 oratory   

n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞

参考例句：

• I admire the oratory of some politicians.我佩服某些政治家的辩才。
• He dazzled the crowd with his oratory.他的雄辩口才使听众赞叹不已。

385 delirium   

n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋

参考例句：

• In her delirium, she had fallen to the floor several times. 她在神志不清的状态下几次摔倒在地上。
• For the next nine months, Job was in constant delirium.接下来的九个月，约伯处于持续精神错乱的状态。

386 curiously   

adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地

参考例句：

• He looked curiously at the people.他好奇地看着那些人。
• He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.他迈着悄没声息的大步。他的双手出奇地冷。

387 blatant   

adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的

参考例句：

• I cannot believe that so blatant a comedy can hoodwink anybody.我无法相信这么显眼的一出喜剧能够欺骗谁。
• His treatment of his secretary was a blatant example of managerial arrogance.他管理的傲慢作风在他对待秘书的态度上表露无遗。

388 originality   

n.创造力，独创性；新颖

参考例句：

• The name of the game in pop music is originality.流行音乐的本质是独创性。
• He displayed an originality amounting almost to genius.他显示出近乎天才的创造性。

389 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

390 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

391 repertoire   

n.(准备好演出的)节目，保留剧目；(计算机的)指令表，指令系统， <美>(某个人的)全部技能；清单，指令表

参考例句：

• There is an extensive repertoire of music written for the flute.有很多供长笛演奏的曲目。
• He has added considerably to his piano repertoire.他的钢琴演奏曲目大大增加了。

392 conversational   

adj.对话的，会话的

参考例句：

• The article is written in a conversational style.该文是以对话的形式写成的。
• She values herself on her conversational powers.她常夸耀自己的能言善辩。

393 dispense   

vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施

参考例句：

• Let us dispense the food.咱们来分发这食物。
• The charity has been given a large sum of money to dispense as it sees fit.这个慈善机构获得一大笔钱，可自行适当分配。

394 dispensed   

v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药）

参考例句：

• Not a single one of these conditions can be dispensed with. 这些条件缺一不可。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• They dispensed new clothes to the children in the orphanage. 他们把新衣服发给孤儿院的小孩们。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

395 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。

396 grunted   

（猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说

参考例句：

• She just grunted, not deigning to look up from the page. 她只咕哝了一声，继续看书，不屑抬起头来看一眼。
• She grunted some incomprehensible reply. 她咕噜着回答了些令人费解的话。

397 pretences   

n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称

参考例句：

• You've brought your old friends out here under false pretences. 你用虚假的名义把你的那些狐朋狗党带到这里来。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• There are no pretences about him. 他一点不虚伪。 来自辞典例句

398 genial   

adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的

参考例句：

• Orlando is a genial man.奥兰多是一位和蔼可亲的人。
• He was a warm-hearted friend and genial host.他是个热心的朋友，也是友善待客的主人。

399 genially   

adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地

参考例句：

• The white church peeps out genially from behind the huts scattered on the river bank. 一座白色教堂从散布在岸上的那些小木房后面殷勤地探出头来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "Well, It'seems strange to see you way up here,'said Mr. Kenny genially. “咳，真没想到会在这么远的地方见到你，"肯尼先生亲切地说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

400 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

401 fleeting   

adj.短暂的，飞逝的

参考例句：

• The girls caught only a fleeting glimpse of the driver.女孩们只匆匆瞥了一眼司机。
• Knowing the life fleeting,she set herself to enjoy if as best as she could.她知道这种日子转瞬即逝，于是让自已尽情地享受。

402 instinctively   

adv.本能地

参考例句：

• As he leaned towards her she instinctively recoiled. 他向她靠近，她本能地往后缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He knew instinctively where he would find her. 他本能地知道在哪儿能找到她。 来自《简明英汉词典》

403 instinctive   

adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的

参考例句：

• He tried to conceal his instinctive revulsion at the idea.他试图饰盖自己对这一想法本能的厌恶。
• Animals have an instinctive fear of fire.动物本能地怕火。

404 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

• I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
• The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。

405 ripple   

n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进

参考例句：

• The pebble made a ripple on the surface of the lake.石子在湖面上激起一个涟漪。
• The small ripple split upon the beach.小小的涟漪卷来，碎在沙滩上。

406 rippled   

使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The lake rippled gently. 湖面轻轻地泛起涟漪。
• The wind rippled the surface of the cornfield. 微风吹过麦田，泛起一片麦浪。

407 nautical   

adj.海上的，航海的，船员的

参考例句：

• A nautical mile is 1,852 meters.一海里等于1852米。
• It is 206 nautical miles from our present location.距离我们现在的位置有206海里。

408 spun   

v.纺，杜撰，急转身

参考例句：

• His grandmother spun him a yarn at the fire.他奶奶在火炉边给他讲故事。
• Her skilful fingers spun the wool out to a fine thread.她那灵巧的手指把羊毛纺成了细毛线。

409 recess   

n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处）

参考例句：

• The chairman of the meeting announced a ten-minute recess.会议主席宣布休会10分钟。
• Parliament was hastily recalled from recess.休会的议员被匆匆召回开会。

410 conflagration   

n.建筑物或森林大火

参考例句：

• A conflagration in 1947 reduced 90 percent of the houses to ashes.1947年的一场大火，使90%的房屋化为灰烬。
• The light of that conflagration will fade away.这熊熊烈火会渐渐熄灭。

411 artistically   

adv.艺术性地

参考例句：

• The book is beautifully printed and artistically bound. 这本书印刷精美，装帧高雅。
• The room is artistically decorated. 房间布置得很美观。

412 incessant   

adj.不停的，连续的

参考例句：

• We have had incessant snowfall since yesterday afternoon.从昨天下午开始就持续不断地下雪。
• She is tired of his incessant demands for affection.她厌倦了他对感情的不断索取。

413 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

414 optimist   

n.乐观的人，乐观主义者

参考例句：

• We are optimist and realist.我们是乐观主义者，又是现实主义者。
• Peter,ever the optimist,said things were bound to improve.一向乐观的皮特说，事情必定是会好转的。

415 optimists   

n.乐观主义者( optimist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Even optimists admit the outlook to be poor. 甚至乐观的人都认为前景不好。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Optimists reckon house prices will move up with inflation this year. 乐观人士认为今年的房价将会随通货膨胀而上涨。 来自辞典例句

416 stewards   

（轮船、飞机等的）乘务员( steward的名词复数 )； （俱乐部、旅馆、工会等的）管理员； （大型活动的）组织者； （私人家中的）管家

参考例句：

• The stewards all wore armbands. 乘务员都戴了臂章。
• The stewards will inspect the course to see if racing is possible. 那些干事将检视赛马场看是否适宜比赛。

417 stuffy   

adj.不透气的，闷热的

参考例句：

• It's really hot and stuffy in here.这里实在太热太闷了。
• It was so stuffy in the tent that we could sense the air was heavy with moisture.帐篷里很闷热，我们感到空气都是潮的。

418 geniality   

n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快

参考例句：

• They said he is a pitiless,cold-blooded fellow,with no geniality in him.他们说他是个毫无怜悯心、一点也不和蔼的冷血动物。
• Not a shade was there of anything save geniality and kindness.他的眼神里只显出愉快与和气，看不出一丝邪意。

419 reigning   

adj.统治的，起支配作用的

参考例句：

• The sky was dark, stars were twinkling high above, night was reigning, and everything was sunk in silken silence. 天很黑，星很繁，夜阑人静。
• Led by Huang Chao, they brought down the reigning house after 300 years' rule. 在黄巢的带领下，他们推翻了统治了三百年的王朝。

420 condescension   

n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人)

参考例句：

• His politeness smacks of condescension. 他的客气带有屈尊俯就的意味。
• Despite its condescension toward the Bennet family, the letter begins to allay Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy. 尽管这封信对班纳特家的态度很高傲，但它开始消除伊丽莎白对达西的偏见。

421 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

422 leash   

n.牵狗的皮带，束缚；v.用皮带系住

参考例句：

• I reached for the leash,but the dog got in between.我伸手去拿系狗绳，但被狗挡住了路。
• The dog strains at the leash,eager to be off.狗拼命地扯拉皮带，想挣脱开去。

423 usurping   

篡夺，霸占( usurp的现在分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权

参考例句：

• Earlier the Ukrainian President dissolved Parliament because it claimed it was usurping power. 之前乌克兰总统解散国会因为国会声称要夺权。

424 broth   

n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等)

参考例句：

• Every cook praises his own broth.厨子总是称赞自己做的汤。
• Just a bit of a mouse's dropping will spoil a whole saucepan of broth.一粒老鼠屎败坏一锅汤。

425 maze   

n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑

参考例句：

• He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
• She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时，她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。

426 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

427 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

428 inflated   

adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨

参考例句：

• He has an inflated sense of his own importance. 他自视过高。
• They all seem to take an inflated view of their collective identity. 他们对自己的集体身份似乎都持有一种夸大的看法。 来自《简明英汉词典》

429 rebound   

v.弹回；n.弹回，跳回

参考例句：

• The vibrations accompanying the rebound are the earth quake.伴随这种回弹的振动就是地震。
• Our evil example will rebound upon ourselves.我们的坏榜样会回到我们自己头上的。

430 innate   

adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的

参考例句：

• You obviously have an innate talent for music.你显然有天生的音乐才能。
• Correct ideas are not innate in the mind.人的正确思想不是自己头脑中固有的。

431 bugle   

n.军号，号角，喇叭；v.吹号，吹号召集

参考例句：

• When he heard the bugle call, he caught up his gun and dashed out.他一听到军号声就抓起枪冲了出去。
• As the bugle sounded we ran to the sports ground and fell in.军号一响，我们就跑到运动场集合站队。

432 punctuated   

v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 )；不时打断某事物

参考例句：

• Her speech was punctuated by bursts of applause. 她的讲演不时被阵阵掌声打断。
• The audience punctuated his speech by outbursts of applause. 听众不时以阵阵掌声打断他的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

433 systematically   

adv.有系统地

参考例句：

• This government has systematically run down public services since it took office.这一屆政府自上台以来系统地削减了公共服务。
• The rainforest is being systematically destroyed.雨林正被系统地毀灭。

434 wheedled   

v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The children wheedled me into letting them go to the film. 孩子们把我哄得同意让他们去看电影了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She wheedled her husband into buying a lottery ticket. 她用甜言蜜语诱使她的丈夫买彩券。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

435 exodus   

v.大批离去，成群外出

参考例句：

• The medical system is facing collapse because of an exodus of doctors.由于医生大批离去，医疗系统面临崩溃。
• Man's great challenge at this moment is to prevent his exodus from this planet.人在当前所遇到的最大挑战，就是要防止人从这个星球上消失。

436 prosaic   

adj.单调的，无趣的

参考例句：

• The truth is more prosaic.真相更加乏味。
• It was a prosaic description of the scene.这是对场景没有想象力的一个描述。

437 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

438 dart   

v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲

参考例句：

• The child made a sudden dart across the road.那小孩突然冲过马路。
• Markov died after being struck by a poison dart.马尔科夫身中毒镖而亡。

439 revolve   

vi.(使)旋转；循环出现

参考例句：

• The planets revolve around the sun.行星绕着太阳运转。
• The wheels began to revolve slowly.车轮开始慢慢转动。

440 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

441 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

442 jovial   

adj.快乐的，好交际的

参考例句：

• He seemed jovial,but his eyes avoided ours.他显得很高兴，但他的眼光却避开了我们的眼光。
• Grandma was plump and jovial.祖母身材圆胖，整天乐呵呵的。

443 luxuriously   

adv.奢侈地，豪华地

参考例句：

• She put her nose luxuriously buried in heliotrope and tea roses. 她把自己的鼻子惬意地埋在天芥菜和庚申蔷薇花簇中。 来自辞典例句
• To be well dressed doesn't mean to be luxuriously dressed. 穿得好不一定衣着豪华。 来自辞典例句

444 enigma   

n.谜，谜一样的人或事

参考例句：

• I've known him for many years,but he remains something of an enigma to me.我与他相识多年，他仍然难以捉摸。
• Even after all the testimonies,the murder remained a enigma.即使听完了所有的证词，这件谋杀案仍然是一个谜。

445 lamentation   

n.悲叹，哀悼

参考例句：

• This ingredient does not invite or generally produce lugubrious lamentation. 这一要素并不引起，或者说通常不产生故作悲伤的叹息。 来自哲学部分
• Much lamentation followed the death of the old king. 老国王晏驾，人们悲恸不已。 来自辞典例句

446 ragtime   

n.拉格泰姆音乐

参考例句：

• The most popular music back then was called ragtime.那时最流行的音乐叫拉格泰姆音乐。
• African-American piano player Scott Joplin wrote many ragtime songs.非裔美国钢琴家ScottJoplin写了许多拉格泰姆歌曲。

447 willows   

n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木

参考例句：

• The willows along the river bank look very beautiful. 河岸边的柳树很美。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Willows are planted on both sides of the streets. 街道两侧种着柳树。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

448 ornaments   

n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The shelves were chock-a-block with ornaments. 架子上堆满了装饰品。
• Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments. 一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。 来自《简明英汉词典》

449 stationary   

adj.固定的，静止不动的

参考例句：

• A stationary object is easy to be aimed at.一个静止不动的物体是容易瞄准的。
• Wait until the bus is stationary before you get off.你要等公共汽车停稳了再下车。

450 ballroom   

n.舞厅

参考例句：

• The boss of the ballroom excused them the fee.舞厅老板给他们免费。
• I go ballroom dancing twice a week.我一个星期跳两次交际舞。

451 meditated   

深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑

参考例句：

• He meditated for two days before giving his answer. 他在作出答复之前考虑了两天。
• She meditated for 2 days before giving her answer. 她考虑了两天才答复。

452 lapse   

n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效

参考例句：

• The incident was being seen as a serious security lapse.这一事故被看作是一次严重的安全疏忽。
• I had a lapse of memory.我记错了。

453 glided   

v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔

参考例句：

• The President's motorcade glided by. 总统的车队一溜烟开了过去。
• They glided along the wall until they were out of sight. 他们沿着墙壁溜得无影无踪。 来自《简明英汉词典》

454 turmoil   

n.骚乱，混乱，动乱

参考例句：

• His mind was in such a turmoil that he couldn't get to sleep.内心的纷扰使他无法入睡。
• The robbery put the village in a turmoil.抢劫使全村陷入混乱。

455 lashed   

adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥

参考例句：

• The rain lashed at the windows. 雨点猛烈地打在窗户上。
• The cleverly designed speech lashed the audience into a frenzy. 这篇精心设计的演说煽动听众使他们发狂。 来自《简明英汉词典》

456 triumphant   

adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的

参考例句：

• The army made a triumphant entry into the enemy's capital.部队胜利地进入了敌方首都。
• There was a positively triumphant note in her voice.她的声音里带有一种极为得意的语气。

457 survivor   

n.生存者，残存者，幸存者

参考例句：

• The sole survivor of the crash was an infant.这次撞车的惟一幸存者是一个婴儿。
• There was only one survivor of the plane crash.这次飞机失事中只有一名幸存者。

458 entangled   

adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The bird had become entangled in the wire netting. 那只小鸟被铁丝网缠住了。
• Some military observers fear the US could get entangled in another war. 一些军事观察家担心美国会卷入另一场战争。 来自《简明英汉词典》

459 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

460 maritime   

adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的

参考例句：

• Many maritime people are fishermen.许多居于海滨的人是渔夫。
• The temperature change in winter is less in maritime areas.冬季沿海的温差较小。

461 inhuman   

adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的

参考例句：

• We must unite the workers in fighting against inhuman conditions.我们必须使工人们团结起来反对那些难以忍受的工作条件。
• It was inhuman to refuse him permission to see his wife.不容许他去看自己的妻子是太不近人情了。

462 tardy   

adj.缓慢的，迟缓的

参考例句：

• It's impolite to make a tardy appearance.晚到是不礼貌的。
• The boss is unsatisfied with the tardy tempo.老板不满于这种缓慢的进度。

463 measles   

n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子

参考例句：

• The doctor is quite definite about Tom having measles.医生十分肯定汤姆得了麻疹。
• The doctor told her to watch out for symptoms of measles.医生叫她注意麻疹出现的症状。

464 extricated   

v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The meeting seemed to be endless, but I extricated myself by saying I had to catch a plane. 会议好象没完没了，不过我说我得赶飞机，才得以脱身。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She extricated herself from her mingled impulse to deny and guestion. 她约束了自己想否认并追问的不可明状的冲动。 来自辞典例句

465 hesitation   

n.犹豫，踌躇

参考例句：

• After a long hesitation, he told the truth at last.踌躇了半天，他终于直说了。
• There was a certain hesitation in her manner.她的态度有些犹豫不决。

466 quaint   

adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的

参考例句：

• There were many small lanes in the quaint village.在这古香古色的村庄里，有很多小巷。
• They still keep some quaint old customs.他们仍然保留着一些稀奇古怪的旧风俗。

467 eminently   

adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地

参考例句：

• She seems eminently suitable for the job. 她看来非常适合这个工作。
• It was an eminently respectable boarding school. 这是所非常好的寄宿学校。 来自《简明英汉词典》

468 hatchets   

n.短柄小斧( hatchet的名词复数 )；恶毒攻击；诽谤；休战

参考例句：

• Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. 他们带来磨利的战斧、短刀、刺刀、战刀也全都有殷红的血。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• They smashed all the carved paneling with their axes and hatchets. 圣所中一切雕刻的、们现在用斧子锤子打坏了。 来自互联网

469 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

470 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

471 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

472 deflected   

偏离的

参考例句：

• The ball deflected off Reid's body into the goal. 球打在里德身上反弹进球门。
• Most of its particles are deflected. 此物质的料子大多是偏斜的。

473 confession   

n.自白，供认，承认

参考例句：

• Her confession was simply tantamount to a casual explanation.她的自白简直等于一篇即席说明。
• The police used torture to extort a confession from him.警察对他用刑逼供。

474 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

475 steering   

n.操舵装置

参考例句：

• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration. 他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。
• Steering according to the wind, he also framed his words more amicably. 他真会看风使舵，口吻也马上变得温和了。

476 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

477 specimen   

n.样本，标本

参考例句：

• You'll need tweezers to hold up the specimen.你要用镊子来夹这标本。
• This specimen is richly variegated in colour.这件标本上有很多颜色。

478 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

479 similes   

（使用like或as等词语的）明喻( simile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Similes usually start with "like" or "as". 明喻通常以like或as开头。
• All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. 要比仿她，要模拟她，总得以鸟类始，还得以鸟类终。

480 jig   

n.快步舞（曲）；v.上下晃动；用夹具辅助加工；蹦蹦跳跳

参考例句：

• I went mad with joy and danced a little jig.我欣喜若狂，跳了几步吉格舞。
• He piped a jig so that we could dance.他用笛子吹奏格舞曲好让我们跳舞。

481 teaspoon   

n.茶匙

参考例句：

• Add one teaspoon of sugar.加一小茶匙糖。
• I need a teaspoon to stir my tea.我需要一把茶匙搅一搅茶。

482 rumours   

n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传

参考例句：

• The rumours were completely baseless. 那些谣传毫无根据。
• Rumours of job losses were later confirmed. 裁员的传言后来得到了证实。

483 bunk   

n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话

参考例句：

• He left his bunk and went up on deck again.他离开自己的铺位再次走到甲板上。
• Most economists think his theories are sheer bunk.大多数经济学家认为他的理论纯属胡说。

484 vocation   

n.职业，行业

参考例句：

• She struggled for years to find her true vocation.她多年来苦苦寻找真正适合自己的职业。
• She felt it was her vocation to minister to the sick.她觉得照料病人是她的天职。

485 buck   

n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃

参考例句：

• The boy bent curiously to the skeleton of the buck.这个男孩好奇地弯下身去看鹿的骸骨。
• The female deer attracts the buck with high-pitched sounds.雌鹿以尖声吸引雄鹿。

486 homely   

adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的

参考例句：

• We had a homely meal of bread and cheese.我们吃了一顿面包加乳酪的家常便餐。
• Come and have a homely meal with us,will you?来和我们一起吃顿家常便饭，好吗？

487 bolsters   

n.长枕( bolster的名词复数 )；垫子；衬垫；支持物v.支持( bolster的第三人称单数 )；支撑；给予必要的支持；援助

参考例句：

• He used a couple of bolsters to elevate his head. 他用两个垫枕垫头。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The double-row piles with both inclined and horizontal bolsters also analyzed in consideration of staged excavation. 本文亦分析了考虑开挖过程的安置斜撑与带支撑的双排桩支护结构。 来自互联网

488 proficiency   

n.精通，熟练，精练

参考例句：

• He plied his trade and gained proficiency in it.他勤习手艺，技术渐渐达到了十分娴熟的地步。
• How do you think of your proficiency in written and spoken English?你认为你的书面英语和口语熟练程度如何？

489 shuffling   

adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• Don't go shuffling along as if you were dead. 别像个死人似地拖着脚走。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Some one was shuffling by on the sidewalk. 外面的人行道上有人拖着脚走过。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

490 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

491 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

492 soda   

n.苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
• I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。

493 aggrieved   

adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• He felt aggrieved at not being chosen for the team. 他因没被选到队里感到愤愤不平。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She is the aggrieved person whose fiance&1& did not show up for their wedding. 她很委屈，她的未婚夫未出现在他们的婚礼上。 来自《简明英汉词典》

494 corruption   

n.腐败，堕落，贪污

参考例句：

• The people asked the government to hit out against corruption and theft.人民要求政府严惩贪污盗窃。
• The old man reviled against corruption.那老人痛斥了贪污舞弊。

495 trot   

n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧

参考例句：

• They passed me at a trot.他们从我身边快步走过。
• The horse broke into a brisk trot.马突然快步小跑起来。

496 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

497 bluff   

v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗

参考例句：

• His threats are merely bluff.他的威胁仅仅是虚张声势。
• John is a deep card.No one can bluff him easily.约翰是个机灵鬼。谁也不容易欺骗他。

498 assented   

同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The judge assented to allow the prisoner to speak. 法官同意允许犯人申辩。
• "No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women -- they're too noble. “对，”汤姆表示赞同地说，“他们不杀女人——真伟大！

499 provocation   

n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因

参考例句：

• He's got a fiery temper and flares up at the slightest provocation.他是火爆性子，一点就着。
• They did not react to this provocation.他们对这一挑衅未作反应。

500 saviour   

n.拯救者，救星

参考例句：

• I saw myself as the saviour of my country.我幻想自己为国家的救星。
• The people clearly saw her as their saviour.人们显然把她看成了救星。

501 condemn   

vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑

参考例句：

• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。
• We mustn't condemn him on mere suppositions.我们不可全凭臆测来指责他。

502 entreaty   

n.恳求，哀求

参考例句：

• Mrs. Quilp durst only make a gesture of entreaty.奎尔普太太仅做出一种哀求的姿势。
• Her gaze clung to him in entreaty.她的眼光带着恳求的神色停留在他身上。

503 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

504 preposterous   

adj.荒谬的，可笑的

参考例句：

• The whole idea was preposterous.整个想法都荒唐透顶。
• It would be preposterous to shovel coal with a teaspoon.用茶匙铲煤是荒谬的。

505 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

506 shrieking   

v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They were all shrieking with laughter. 他们都发出了尖锐的笑声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

507 gnawing   

a.痛苦的，折磨人的

参考例句：

• The dog was gnawing a bone. 那狗在啃骨头。
• These doubts had been gnawing at him for some time. 这些疑虑已经折磨他一段时间了。

508 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

509 alas   

int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)

参考例句：

• Alas!The window is broken!哎呀！窗子破了！
• Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而，真理很少带有浪漫色彩。

510 writhed   

（因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He writhed at the memory, revolted with himself for that temporary weakness. 他一想起来就痛悔不已，只恨自己当一时糊涂。
• The insect, writhed, and lay prostrate again. 昆虫折腾了几下，重又直挺挺地倒了下去。

511 brass   

n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器

参考例句：

• Many of the workers play in the factory's brass band.许多工人都在工厂铜管乐队中演奏。
• Brass is formed by the fusion of copper and zinc.黄铜是通过铜和锌的熔合而成的。

512 sobbed   

哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说

参考例句：

• She sobbed out the story of her son's death. 她哭诉着她儿子的死。
• She sobbed out the sad story of her son's death. 她哽咽着诉说她儿子死去的悲惨经过。

513 peculiarity   

n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖

参考例句：

• Each country has its own peculiarity.每个国家都有自己的独特之处。
• The peculiarity of this shop is its day and nigth service.这家商店的特点是昼夜服务。

514 sparsely   

adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地

参考例句：

• Relative to the size, the city is sparsely populated. 与其面积相比，这个城市的人口是稀少的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The ground was sparsely covered with grass. 地面上稀疏地覆盖草丛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

515 disapproved   

v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My parents disapproved of my marriage. 我父母不赞成我的婚事。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She disapproved of her son's indiscriminate television viewing. 她不赞成儿子不加选择地收看电视。 来自《简明英汉词典》

516 hoarsely   

adv.嘶哑地

参考例句：

• "Excuse me," he said hoarsely. “对不起。”他用嘶哑的嗓子说。
• Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's service. 杰瑞嘶声嘶气地表示愿为普洛丝小姐效劳。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

517 hoarse   

adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的

参考例句：

• He asked me a question in a hoarse voice.他用嘶哑的声音问了我一个问题。
• He was too excited and roared himself hoarse.他过于激动，嗓子都喊哑了。

518 shrieked   

v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She shrieked in fright. 她吓得尖叫起来。
• Li Mei-t'ing gave a shout, and Lu Tzu-hsiao shrieked, "Tell what? 李梅亭大声叫，陆子潇尖声叫：“告诉什么？ 来自汉英文学 - 围城

519 abased   

使谦卑( abase的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到羞耻； 使降低（地位、身份等）； 降下

参考例句：

• His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. 他的精神力量已经衰颓，低得不如孩子。 来自英汉文学 - 红字
• He is self-abased because of unluck he meets with. 他因遭不幸而自卑。

520 nether   

adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会

参考例句：

• This terracotta army well represents his ambition yet to be realized in the nether-world.这一批兵马俑很可能代表他死后也要去实现的雄心。
• He was escorted back to the nether regions of Main Street.他被护送回中央大道南面的地方。

521 consecutive   

adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的

参考例句：

• It has rained for four consecutive days.已连续下了四天雨。
• The policy of our Party is consecutive.我党的政策始终如一。

522 sockets   

n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴

参考例句：

• All new PCs now have USB sockets. 新的个人计算机现在都有通用串行总线插孔。
• Make sure the sockets in your house are fingerproof. 确保你房中的插座是防触电的。 来自超越目标英语 第4册

523 testily   

adv. 易怒地, 暴躁地

参考例句：

• He reacted testily to reports that he'd opposed military involvement. 有报道称他反对军队参与，对此他很是恼火。 来自柯林斯例句

524 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。

525 regaining   

复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地

参考例句：

• She was regaining consciousness now, but the fear was coming with her. 现在她正在恢发她的知觉，但是恐怖也就伴随着来了。
• She said briefly, regaining her will with a click. 她干脆地答道，又马上重新振作起精神来。

526 confided   

v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等）

参考例句：

• She confided all her secrets to her best friend. 她向她最要好的朋友倾吐了自己所有的秘密。
• He confided to me that he had spent five years in prison. 他私下向我透露，他蹲过五年监狱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

527 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

528 unearthed   

出土的（考古）

参考例句：

• Many unearthed cultural relics are set forth in the exhibition hall. 展览馆里陈列着许多出土文物。
• Some utensils were in a state of decay when they were unearthed. 有些器皿在出土时已经残破。

529 motives   

n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to impeach sb's motives 怀疑某人的动机
• His motives are unclear. 他的用意不明。

530 heresy   

n.异端邪说；异教

参考例句：

• We should denounce a heresy.我们应该公开指责异端邪说。
• It might be considered heresy to suggest such a notion.提出这样一个观点可能会被视为异端邪说。

531 profanely   

adv.渎神地，凡俗地

参考例句：

• He kept wondering profanely why everything bad happened to him. 他骂骂咧咧，一直在嘀咕为什么所有的坏事总是落在他头上。 来自互联网

532 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

533 exterior   

adj.外部的，外在的；表面的

参考例句：

• The seed has a hard exterior covering.这种子外壳很硬。
• We are painting the exterior wall of the house.我们正在给房子的外墙涂漆。

534 gal   

n.姑娘，少女

参考例句：

• We decided to go with the gal from Merrill.我们决定和那个从梅里尔来的女孩合作。
• What's the name of the gal? 这个妞叫什么？

535 industriously   

参考例句：

• She paces the whole class in studying English industriously. 她在刻苦学习英语上给全班同学树立了榜样。
• He industriously engages in unostentatious hard work. 他勤勤恳恳，埋头苦干。

536 wrench   

v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受

参考例句：

• He gave a wrench to his ankle when he jumped down.他跳下去的时候扭伤了足踝。
• It was a wrench to leave the old home.离开这个老家非常痛苦。

537 wrenched   

v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛

参考例句：

• The bag was wrenched from her grasp. 那只包从她紧握的手里被夺了出来。
• He wrenched the book from her hands. 他从她的手中把书拧抢了过来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

538 corking   

adj.很好的adv.非常地v.用瓶塞塞住( cork的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I've often thought you'd make a corking good actress." 我经常在想你会成为很了不起的女演员。” 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

539 stamina   

n.体力；精力；耐力

参考例句：

• I lacked the stamina to run the whole length of the race.我没有跑完全程的耐力。
• Giving up smoking had a magical effect on his stamina.戒烟神奇地增强了他的体力。

540 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：

• He beckoned to the waiter to bring the bill. 他招手示意服务生把账单送过来。
• The seated figure in the corner beckoned me over. 那个坐在角落里的人向我招手让我过去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

541 idiotic   

adj.白痴的

参考例句：

• It is idiotic to go shopping with no money.去买东西而不带钱是很蠢的。
• The child's idiotic deeds caused his family much trouble.那小孩愚蠢的行为给家庭带来许多麻烦。

542 interrogating   

n.询问技术v.询问( interrogate的现在分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询

参考例句：

• She was no longer interrogating but lecturing. 她已经不是在审问而是在教训人了。 来自辞典例句
• His face remained blank, interrogating, slightly helpless. 他的面部仍然没有表情，只带有询问的意思，还有点无可奈何。 来自辞典例句

543 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

544 unwilling   

adj.不情愿的

参考例句：

• The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
• His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。

545 suffocating   

a.使人窒息的

参考例句：

• After a few weeks with her parents, she felt she was suffocating.和父母呆了几个星期后，她感到自己毫无自由。
• That's better. I was suffocating in that cell of a room.这样好些了，我刚才在那个小房间里快闷死了。

546 wrath   

n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒

参考例句：

• His silence marked his wrath. 他的沉默表明了他的愤怒。
• The wrath of the people is now aroused. 人们被激怒了。

547 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。

548 proficient   

adj.熟练的，精通的；n.能手，专家

参考例句：

• She is proficient at swimming.她精通游泳。
• I think I'm quite proficient in both written and spoken English.我认为我在英语读写方面相当熟练。

549 vicissitudes   

n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废

参考例句：

• He experienced several great social vicissitudes in his life. 他一生中经历了几次大的社会变迁。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. 饱经沧桑，不易沮丧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

550 invalid   

n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的

参考例句：

• He will visit an invalid.他将要去看望一个病人。
• A passport that is out of date is invalid.护照过期是无效的。

551 loathe   

v.厌恶，嫌恶

参考例句：

• I loathe the smell of burning rubber.我厌恶燃着的橡胶散发的气味。
• You loathe the smell of greasy food when you are seasick.当你晕船时，你会厌恶油腻的气味。

552 loathed   

v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢

参考例句：

• Baker loathed going to this red-haired young pup for supplies. 面包师傅不喜欢去这个红头发的自负的傻小子那里拿原料。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! 因此，他厌恶不幸的自我尤胜其它！ 来自英汉文学 - 红字

553 nervously   

adv.神情激动地，不安地

参考例句：

• He bit his lip nervously,trying not to cry.他紧张地咬着唇，努力忍着不哭出来。
• He paced nervously up and down on the platform.他在站台上情绪不安地走来走去。

554 aspirations   

强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音

参考例句：

• I didn't realize you had political aspirations. 我没有意识到你有政治上的抱负。
• The new treaty embodies the aspirations of most nonaligned countries. 新条约体现了大多数不结盟国家的愿望。

555 dismantled   

拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消

参考例句：

• The plant was dismantled of all its equipment and furniture. 这家工厂的设备和家具全被拆除了。
• The Japanese empire was quickly dismantled. 日本帝国很快被打垮了。

556 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

557 corroborated   

v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的过去式 )

参考例句：

• The evidence was corroborated by two independent witnesses. 此证据由两名独立证人提供。
• Experiments have corroborated her predictions. 实验证实了她的预言。 来自《简明英汉词典》

558 militantly   

激进地，好斗地

参考例句：

• Militantly resentful of slavery, he joined the Union Army. 由于对奴隶制度极为不满，他加入了联邦军队。
• They have fought militantly through the two periods of underground work and of open activity. 从秘密时期到公开时期，贫农都在那里积极奋斗。

559 villain   

n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因

参考例句：

• He was cast as the villain in the play.他在戏里扮演反面角色。
• The man who played the villain acted very well.扮演恶棍的那个男演员演得很好。

560 ardent   

adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的

参考例句：

• He's an ardent supporter of the local football team.他是本地足球队的热情支持者。
• Ardent expectations were held by his parents for his college career.他父母对他的大学学习抱着殷切的期望。

561 fortresses   

堡垒，要塞( fortress的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They will establish impregnable fortresses. 他们将建造坚不可摧的城堡。
• Indra smashed through Vritra ninety-nine fortresses, and then came upon the dragon. 因陀罗摧毁了维他的九十九座城堡，然后与维他交手。 来自神话部分

562 shutter   

n.百叶窗；(照相机)快门；关闭装置

参考例句：

• The camera has a shutter speed of one-sixtieth of a second.这架照像机的快门速度达六十分之一秒。
• The shutter rattled in the wind.百叶窗在风中发出嘎嘎声。

563 shutters   

百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门

参考例句：

• The shop-front is fitted with rolling shutters. 那商店的店门装有卷门。
• The shutters thumped the wall in the wind. 在风中百叶窗砰砰地碰在墙上。

564 monastery   

n.修道院，僧院，寺院

参考例句：

• They found an icon in the monastery.他们在修道院中发现了一个圣像。
• She was appointed the superior of the monastery two years ago.两年前她被任命为这个修道院的院长。

565 emanated   

v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的过去式和过去分词 )；产生，表现，显示

参考例句：

• Do you know where these rumours emanated from? 你知道谣言出自何处吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The rumor emanated from Chicago. 谣言来自芝加哥。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

566 gregarious   

adj.群居的，喜好群居的

参考例句：

• These animals are highly gregarious.这些动物非常喜欢群居。
• They are gregarious birds and feed in flocks.它们是群居鸟类，会集群觅食。

567 penances   

n.（赎罪的）苦行，苦修( penance的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Brahman! O my child! Cease from practising further penances. 婆罗门！我的孩子！请停止练习进一步的苦行。 来自互联网

568 tickled   

（使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐

参考例句：

• We were tickled pink to see our friends on television. 在电视中看到我们的一些朋友，我们高兴极了。
• I tickled the baby's feet and made her laugh. 我胳肢孩子的脚，使她发笑。

569 pyjamas   

n.（宽大的）睡衣裤

参考例句：

• This pyjamas has many repairs.这件睡衣有许多修补过的地方。
• Martin was in his pyjamas.马丁穿着睡衣。

570 ridge   

n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭

参考例句：

• We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
• The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。

571 awaken   

vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起

参考例句：

• Old people awaken early in the morning.老年人早晨醒得早。
• Please awaken me at six.请于六点叫醒我。

572 faltering   

犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的

参考例句：

• The economy shows no signs of faltering. 经济没有衰退的迹象。
• I canfeel my legs faltering. 我感到我的腿在颤抖。

573 deflecting   

（使）偏斜， （使）偏离， （使）转向( deflect的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• A variety of mechanical surfaces have been employed for deflecting the exhaust jets of solid-propellant rockets. 人们已经用过各种类型的机械控制面来偏转固体推进剂火箭的排气流。
• If she made a leading statement, he was expert deflecting her into more impersonal channels. 只要她一开口，他就会巧妙地把她的话题转到与个人无关的问题上去。

574 petrified   

adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• I'm petrified of snakes. 我特别怕蛇。
• The poor child was petrified with fear. 这可怜的孩子被吓呆了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

575 grotesque   

adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物）

参考例句：

• His face has a grotesque appearance.他的面部表情十分怪。
• Her account of the incident was a grotesque distortion of the truth.她对这件事的陈述是荒诞地歪曲了事实。

576 contortion   

n.扭弯，扭歪，曲解

参考例句：

• I had to admire the contortions of the gymnasts.我不得不为这些体操运动员们高难度的扭体动作而赞叹。
• This sentence was spoken with the bitterness of self-upbraiding,and a contortion of visage absolutely demoniacal.这话是用辛辣的自我谴责的口吻说出来的，说话时他的面孔也歪扭得象个地道的魔鬼。

577 confidentially   

ad.秘密地，悄悄地

参考例句：

• She was leaning confidentially across the table. 她神神秘秘地从桌子上靠过来。
• Kao Sung-nien and Wang Ch'u-hou talked confidentially in low tones. 高松年汪处厚两人低声密谈。

578 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

579 tugs   

n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 )；猛拖；拖船v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The raucous sirens of the tugs came in from the river. 河上传来拖轮发出的沙哑的汽笛声。 来自辞典例句
• As I near the North Tower, the wind tugs at my role. 当我接近北塔的时候，风牵动着我的平衡杆。 来自辞典例句

580 laden   

adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的

参考例句：

• He is laden with heavy responsibility.他肩负重任。
• Dragging the fully laden boat across the sand dunes was no mean feat.将满载货物的船拖过沙丘是一件了不起的事。

581 catfish   

n.鲶鱼

参考例句：

• Huge catfish are skinned and dressed by hand.用手剥去巨鲇的皮并剖洗干净。
• We gigged for catfish off the pier.我们在码头以鱼叉叉鲶鱼。

582 adoration   

n.爱慕，崇拜

参考例句：

• He gazed at her with pure adoration.他一往情深地注视着她。
• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。

583 avow   

v.承认，公开宣称

参考例句：

• I must avow that I am innocent.我要公开声明我是无罪的。
• The senator was forced to avow openly that he had received some money from that company.那个参议员被迫承认曾经收过那家公司的一些钱。

584 vividly   

adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地

参考例句：

• The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
• The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。

585 promontories   

n.岬，隆起，海角( promontory的名词复数 )

参考例句：

586 amber   

n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的

参考例句：

• Would you like an amber necklace for your birthday?你过生日想要一条琥珀项链吗？
• This is a piece of little amber stones.这是一块小小的琥珀化石。

587 sniffed   

v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• When Jenney had stopped crying she sniffed and dried her eyes. 珍妮停止了哭泣，吸了吸鼻子，擦干了眼泪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The dog sniffed suspiciously at the stranger. 狗疑惑地嗅着那个陌生人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

588 bazaars   

（东方国家的）市场( bazaar的名词复数 )； 义卖； 义卖市场； （出售花哨商品等的）小商品市场

参考例句：

• When the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Chandrapore bazaars. 如果天公有意，昌德拉卜的集市也会大放光彩。
• He visited the shops and bazaars. 他视察起各色铺子和市场来。

589 tickling   

反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法

参考例句：

• Was It'spring tickling her senses? 是不是春意撩人呢？
• Its origin is in tickling and rough-and-tumble play, he says. 他说，笑的起源来自于挠痒痒以及杂乱无章的游戏。

590 kindly   

adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地

参考例句：

• Her neighbours spoke of her as kindly and hospitable.她的邻居都说她和蔼可亲、热情好客。
• A shadow passed over the kindly face of the old woman.一道阴影掠过老太太慈祥的面孔。

591 brazen   

adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的

参考例句：

• The brazen woman laughed loudly at the judge who sentenced her.那无耻的女子冲着给她判刑的法官高声大笑。
• Some people prefer to brazen a thing out rather than admit defeat.有的人不愿承认失败，而是宁肯厚着脸皮干下去。

592 feigning   

假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等）

参考例句：

• He survived the massacre by feigning death. 他装死才在大屠杀中死里逃生。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。

593 modesty   

n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素

参考例句：

• Industry and modesty are the chief factors of his success.勤奋和谦虚是他成功的主要因素。
• As conceit makes one lag behind,so modesty helps one make progress.骄傲使人落后，谦虚使人进步。

594 withdrawn   

vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出

参考例句：

• Our force has been withdrawn from the danger area.我们的军队已从危险地区撤出。
• All foreign troops should be withdrawn to their own countries.一切外国军队都应撤回本国去。

595 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

596 wharves   

n.码头，停泊处( wharf的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They are seaworthy and can stand rough handling on the wharves? 适用于海运并能经受在码头上的粗暴装卸。 来自外贸英语口语25天快训
• Widely used in factories and mines, warehouses, wharves, and other industries. 广泛用于厂矿、仓库、码头、等各种行业。 来自互联网

597 trumpets   

喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花

参考例句：

• A wreath was laid on the monument to a fanfare of trumpets. 在响亮的号角声中花圈被献在纪念碑前。
• A fanfare of trumpets heralded the arrival of the King. 嘹亮的小号声宣告了国王驾到。

598 rattling   

adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词

参考例句：

• This book is a rattling good read. 这是一本非常好的读物。
• At that same instant,a deafening explosion set the windows rattling. 正在这时，一声震耳欲聋的爆炸突然袭来，把窗玻璃震得当当地响。

599 cavalry   

n.骑兵；轻装甲部队

参考例句：

• We were taken in flank by a troop of cavalry. 我们翼侧受到一队骑兵的袭击。
• The enemy cavalry rode our men down. 敌人的骑兵撞倒了我们的人。

600 precariously   

adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地

参考例句：

• The hotel was perched precariously on a steep hillside. 旅馆危险地坐落在陡峭的山坡上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The phone was perched precariously on the window ledge. 电话放在窗台上，摇摇欲坠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

601 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

602 slung   

抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往

参考例句：

• He slung the bag over his shoulder. 他把包一甩，挎在肩上。
• He stood up and slung his gun over his shoulder. 他站起来把枪往肩上一背。

603 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

604 wrung   

绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水）

参考例句：

• He has wrung the words from their true meaning. 他曲解这些字的真正意义。
• He wrung my hand warmly. 他热情地紧握我的手。

605 giggle   

n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说

参考例句：

• Both girls began to giggle.两个女孩都咯咯地笑了起来。
• All that giggle and whisper is too much for me.我受不了那些咯咯的笑声和交头接耳的样子。

606 giggled   

v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The girls giggled at the joke. 女孩子们让这笑话逗得咯咯笑。
• The children giggled hysterically. 孩子们歇斯底里地傻笑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

607 prone   

adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的

参考例句：

• Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
• He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。

608 breach   

n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破

参考例句：

• We won't have any breach of discipline.我们不允许任何破坏纪律的现象。
• He was sued for breach of contract.他因不履行合同而被起诉。

609 oozing   

v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出

参考例句：

• Blood was oozing out of the wound on his leg. 血正从他腿上的伤口渗出来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The wound had not healed properly and was oozing pus. 伤口未真正痊瘉，还在流脓。 来自《简明英汉词典》

610 inverted   

adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Only direct speech should go inside inverted commas. 只有直接引语应放在引号内。
• Inverted flight is an acrobatic manoeuvre of the plane. 倒飞是飞机的一种特技动作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

611 second-hand   

adj.用过的，旧的，二手的

参考例句：

• I got this book by chance at a second-hand bookshop.我赶巧在一家旧书店里买到这本书。
• They will put all these second-hand goods up for sale.他们将把这些旧货全部公开出售。

612 drooping   

adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词

参考例句：

• The drooping willows are waving gently in the morning breeze. 晨风中垂柳袅袅。
• The branches of the drooping willows were swaying lightly. 垂柳轻飘飘地摆动。

613 delusions   

n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想

参考例句：

• the delusions of the mentally ill 精神病患者的妄想
• She wants to travel first-class: she must have delusions of grandeur. 她想坐头等舱旅行，她一定自以为很了不起。 来自辞典例句

614 alligator   

n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼)

参考例句：

• She wandered off to play with her toy alligator.她开始玩鳄鱼玩具。
• Alligator skin is five times more costlier than leather.鳄鱼皮比通常的皮革要贵5倍。

615 linen   

n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的

参考例句：

• The worker is starching the linen.这名工人正在给亚麻布上浆。
• Fine linen and cotton fabrics were known as well as wool.精细的亚麻织品和棉织品像羊毛一样闻名遐迩。

616 ambled   

v.（马）缓行( amble的过去式和过去分词 )；从容地走，漫步

参考例句：

• We ambled down to the beach. 我们漫步向海滩走去。
• The old man ambled home through the garden every evening. 那位老人每天晚上经过花园漫步回家。 来自《简明英汉词典》

617 humanely   

adv.仁慈地；人道地；富人情地；慈悲地

参考例句：

• Is the primary persona being treated humanely by the product? 该产品对待首要人物角色时是否有人情味？ 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• In any event, China's interest in treating criminals more humanely has limits. 无论如何，中国对更人道地对待罪犯的兴趣有限。 来自互联网

618 sodas   

n.苏打( soda的名词复数 )；碱；苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• There are plenty of sodas in the refrigerator. 冰箱里有很多碳酸饮料。 来自辞典例句
• Two whisky and sodas, please. 请来两杯威士忌苏打。 来自辞典例句

619 enlisted   

adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持）

参考例句：

• enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
• He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

620 torpor   

n.迟钝；麻木；（动物的）冬眠

参考例句：

• The sick person gradually falls into a torpor.病人逐渐变得迟钝。
• He fell into a deep torpor.他一下子进入了深度麻痹状态。

621 partially   

adv.部分地，从某些方面讲

参考例句：

• The door was partially concealed by the drapes.门有一部分被门帘遮住了。
• The police managed to restore calm and the curfew was partially lifted.警方设法恢复了平静，宵禁部分解除。

622 dispelled   

v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• His speech dispelled any fears about his health. 他的发言消除了人们对他身体健康的担心。
• The sun soon dispelled the thick fog. 太阳很快驱散了浓雾。 来自《简明英汉词典》

623 perch   

n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于

参考例句：

• The bird took its perch.鸟停歇在栖木上。
• Little birds perch themselves on the branches.小鸟儿栖歇在树枝上。

624 regained   

复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地

参考例句：

• The majority of the people in the world have regained their liberty. 世界上大多数人已重获自由。
• She hesitated briefly but quickly regained her poise. 她犹豫片刻，但很快恢复了镇静。

625 contradictory   

adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立

参考例句：

• The argument is internally contradictory.论据本身自相矛盾。
• What he said was self-contradictory.他讲话前后不符。

626 conveyance   

n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具

参考例句：

• Bicycles have become the most popular conveyance for Chinese people.自行车已成为中国人最流行的代步工具。
• Its another,older,usage is a synonym for conveyance.它的另一个更古老的习惯用法是作为财产转让的同义词使用。

627 dispersed   

adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的

参考例句：

• The clouds dispersed themselves. 云散了。
• After school the children dispersed to their homes. 放学后，孩子们四散回家了。

628 fussily   

adv.无事空扰地，大惊小怪地，小题大做地

参考例句：

• She adjusted her head scarf fussily. 她小题大做地整了整头巾。 来自辞典例句
• He spoke to her fussily. 他大惊小怪地对她说。 来自互联网

629 mariners   

海员，水手（mariner的复数形式）

参考例句：

• Mariners were also able to fix their latitude by using an instrument called astrolabe. 海员们还可使用星盘这种仪器确定纬度。
• The ancient mariners traversed the sea. 古代的海员漂洋过海。

630 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

631 brink   

n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿

参考例句：

• The tree grew on the brink of the cliff.那棵树生长在峭壁的边缘。
• The two countries were poised on the brink of war.这两个国家处于交战的边缘。

632 dodging   

n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避

参考例句：

• He ran across the road, dodging the traffic. 他躲开来往的车辆跑过马路。
• I crossed the highway, dodging the traffic. 我避开车流穿过了公路。 来自辞典例句

633 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

634 fiery   

adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的

参考例句：

• She has fiery red hair.她有一头火红的头发。
• His fiery speech agitated the crowd.他热情洋溢的讲话激动了群众。

635 dwarf   

n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小

参考例句：

• The dwarf's long arms were not proportional to his height.那侏儒的长臂与他的身高不成比例。
• The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 矮子耸耸肩膀，摇摇头。

636 surmounted   

战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上

参考例句：

• She was well aware of the difficulties that had to be surmounted. 她很清楚必须克服哪些困难。
• I think most of these obstacles can be surmounted. 我认为这些障碍大多数都是可以克服的。

637 banyan   

n.菩提树，榕树

参考例句：

• This huge banyan tree has a history of more than 400 years.这棵大榕树已经有四百多年的历史了。
• A large banyan tree may look like a forest.大型的榕树看起来象一片树林。

638 vaulted   

adj.拱状的

参考例句：

• She vaulted over the gate and ran up the path. 她用手一撑跃过栅栏门沿着小路跑去。
• The formal living room has a fireplace and vaulted ceilings. 正式的客厅有一个壁炉和拱形天花板。

639 appreciable   

adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的

参考例句：

• There is no appreciable distinction between the twins.在这对孪生子之间看不出有什么明显的差别。
• We bought an appreciable piece of property.我们买下的资产有增值的潜力。

640 relentless   

adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的

参考例句：

• The traffic noise is relentless.交通车辆的噪音一刻也不停止。
• Their training has to be relentless.他们的训练必须是无情的。

641 defender   

n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人

参考例句：

• He shouldered off a defender and shot at goal.他用肩膀挡开防守队员，然后射门。
• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。

642 intercourse   

n.性交；交流，交往，交际

参考例句：

• The magazine becomes a cultural medium of intercourse between the two peoples.该杂志成为两民族间文化交流的媒介。
• There was close intercourse between them.他们过往很密。

643 bullied   

adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My son is being bullied at school. 我儿子在学校里受欺负。
• The boy bullied the small girl into giving him all her money. 那男孩威逼那个小女孩把所有的钱都给他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

644 inquisitive   

adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的

参考例句：

• Children are usually inquisitive.小孩通常很好问。
• A pat answer is not going to satisfy an inquisitive audience.陈腔烂调的答案不能满足好奇的听众。

645 furrowed   

v.犁田，开沟( furrow的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rash of rockets. 头顶上的夏日夜空纵横着急疾而过的焰火。 来自辞典例句
• The car furrowed the loose sand as it crossed the desert. 车子横过沙漠，在松软的沙土上犁出了一道车辙。 来自辞典例句

646 frigid   

adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的

参考例句：

• The water was too frigid to allow him to remain submerged for long.水冰冷彻骨，他在下面呆不了太长时间。
• She returned his smile with a frigid glance.对他的微笑她报以冷冷的一瞥。

647 rigid   

adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的

参考例句：

• She became as rigid as adamant.她变得如顽石般的固执。
• The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out.考试很严，几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。

648 militancy   

n.warlike behavior or tendency

参考例句：

• Full of militancy and revolutionary ardour, the people of all nationalities in the country are working hard for the realization of the four modernizations. 全国各族人民意气风发， 斗志昂扬，为实现四个现代化而奋战。
• The seniority system is another factor that leads to union militancy. 排资论辈制度也是导致工会好斗争的另一因素。

649 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

650 arid   

adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的

参考例句：

• These trees will shield off arid winds and protect the fields.这些树能挡住旱风,保护农田。
• There are serious problems of land degradation in some arid zones.在一些干旱地带存在严重的土地退化问题。

651 marred   

adj. 被损毁, 污损的

参考例句：

• The game was marred by the behaviour of drunken fans. 喝醉了的球迷行为不轨，把比赛给搅了。
• Bad diction marred the effectiveness of his speech. 措词不当影响了他演说的效果。

652 saluted   

v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂

参考例句：

• The sergeant stood to attention and saluted. 中士立正敬礼。
• He saluted his friends with a wave of the hand. 他挥手向他的朋友致意。 来自《简明英汉词典》

653 insularity   

n.心胸狭窄；孤立；偏狭；岛国根性

参考例句：

• But at least they have started to break out of their old insularity.但是他们至少已经开始打破过去孤立保守的心态。
• It was a typical case of British chauvinism and insularity.这是典型的英国沙文主义和偏狭心理的事例。

654 throbbing   

a. 跳动的,悸动的

参考例句：

• My heart is throbbing and I'm shaking. 我的心在猛烈跳动，身子在不住颤抖。
• There was a throbbing in her temples. 她的太阳穴直跳。

655 cynical   

adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的

参考例句：

• The enormous difficulty makes him cynical about the feasibility of the idea.由于困难很大，他对这个主意是否可行持怀疑态度。
• He was cynical that any good could come of democracy.他不相信民主会带来什么好处。

656 simultaneously   

adv.同时发生地，同时进行地

参考例句：

• The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
• The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。

657 ignominiously   

adv.耻辱地，屈辱地，丢脸地

参考例句：

• Their attempt failed ignominiously. 他们的企图可耻地失败了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She would be scolded, abused, ignominiously discharged. 他们会说她，骂她，解雇她，让她丢尽脸面的。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

658 curtly   

adv.简短地

参考例句：

• He nodded curtly and walked away. 他匆忙点了一下头就走了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The request was curtly refused. 这个请求被毫不客气地拒绝了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

659 improvising   

即兴创作（improvise的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• I knew he was improvising, an old habit of his. 我知道他是在即兴发挥，这是他的老习惯。
• A few lecturers have been improvising to catch up. 部分讲师被临时抽调以救急。

660 crutch   

n.T字形拐杖；支持，依靠，精神支柱

参考例句：

• Her religion was a crutch to her when John died.约翰死后，她在精神上依靠宗教信仰支撑住自己。
• He uses his wife as a kind of crutch because of his lack of confidence.他缺乏自信心，总把妻子当作主心骨。

661 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

662 exclamation   

n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词

参考例句：

• He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.他禁不住喝一声采。
• The author used three exclamation marks at the end of the last sentence to wake up the readers.作者在文章的最后一句连用了三个惊叹号，以引起读者的注意。

663 whitewashed   

粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The wall had been whitewashed. 墙已粉过。
• The towers are in the shape of bottle gourds and whitewashed. 塔呈圆形，状近葫芦，外敷白色。 来自汉英文学 - 现代散文

664 scanty   

adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的

参考例句：

• There is scanty evidence to support their accusations.他们的指控证据不足。
• The rainfall was rather scanty this month.这个月的雨量不足。

665 defiant   

adj.无礼的，挑战的

参考例句：

• With a last defiant gesture,they sang a revolutionary song as they were led away to prison.他们被带走投入监狱时，仍以最后的反抗姿态唱起了一支革命歌曲。
• He assumed a defiant attitude toward his employer.他对雇主采取挑衅的态度。

666 antipathy   

n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物

参考例句：

• I feel an antipathy against their behaviour.我对他们的行为很反感。
• Some people have an antipathy to cats.有的人讨厌猫。

667 sojourn   

v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留

参考例句：

• It would be cruel to begrudge your sojourn among flowers and fields.如果嫉妒你逗留在鲜花与田野之间，那将是太不近人情的。
• I am already feeling better for my sojourn here.我在此逗留期间，觉得体力日渐恢复。

668 disarming   

adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒

参考例句：

• He flashed her a disarming smile. 他朝她笑了一下，让她消消气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We will agree to disarming troops and leaving their weapons at military positions. 我们将同意解除军队的武装并把武器留在军事阵地。 来自辞典例句

669 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

670 droll   

adj.古怪的，好笑的

参考例句：

• The band have a droll sense of humour.这个乐队有一种滑稽古怪的幽默感。
• He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening.他用一种古怪的如梦方醒的神情看着她.

671 transmuted   

v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It was once thought that lead could be transmuted into gold. 有人曾经认为铅可以变成黄金。
• They transmuted the raw materials into finished products. 他们把原料变为成品。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

672 relic   

n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物

参考例句：

• This stone axe is a relic of ancient times.这石斧是古代的遗物。
• He found himself thinking of the man as a relic from the past.他把这个男人看成是过去时代的人物。

673 relics   

[pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸

参考例句：

• The area is a treasure house of archaeological relics. 这个地区是古文物遗迹的宝库。
• Xi'an is an ancient city full of treasures and saintly relics. 西安是一个有很多宝藏和神圣的遗物的古老城市。

674 invincible   

adj.不可征服的，难以制服的

参考例句：

• This football team was once reputed to be invincible.这支足球队曾被誉为无敌的劲旅。
• The workers are invincible as long as they hold together.只要工人团结一致，他们就是不可战胜的。

675 evade   

vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避

参考例句：

• He tried to evade the embarrassing question.他企图回避这令人难堪的问题。
• You are in charge of the job.How could you evade the issue?你是负责人，你怎么能对这个问题不置可否？

676 intimacy   

n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行

参考例句：

• His claims to an intimacy with the President are somewhat exaggerated.他声称自己与总统关系密切，这有点言过其实。
• I wish there were a rule book for intimacy.我希望能有个关于亲密的规则。

677 seething   

沸腾的，火热的

参考例句：

• The stadium was a seething cauldron of emotion. 体育场内群情沸腾。
• The meeting hall was seething at once. 会场上顿时沸腾起来了。

678 gaudy   

adj.华而不实的；俗丽的

参考例句：

• She was tricked out in gaudy dress.她穿得华丽而俗气。
• The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.浮华的蝴蝶却相信花是应该向它道谢的。

679 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

680 varnished   

浸渍过的，涂漆的

参考例句：

• The doors are then stained and varnished. 这些门还要染色涂清漆。
• He varnished the wooden table. 他给那张木桌涂了清漆。

681 transpired   

（事实，秘密等）被人知道( transpire的过去式和过去分词 )； 泄露； 显露； 发生

参考例句：

• It transpired that the gang had had a contact inside the bank. 据报这伙歹徒在银行里有内应。
• It later transpired that he hadn't been telling the truth. 他当时没说真话，这在后来显露出来了。

682 prudence   

n.谨慎，精明，节俭

参考例句：

• A lack of prudence may lead to financial problems.不够谨慎可能会导致财政上出现问题。
• The happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.幸运者都把他们的成功归因于谨慎或功德。

683 proceeding   

n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报

参考例句：

• This train is now proceeding from Paris to London.这次列车从巴黎开往伦敦。
• The work is proceeding briskly.工作很有生气地进展着。

684 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

685 drearily   

沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地

参考例句：

• "Oh, God," thought Scarlett drearily, "that's just the trouble. "啊，上帝！" 思嘉沮丧地想，"难就难在这里呀。
• His voice was utterly and drearily expressionless. 他的声调，阴沉沉的，干巴巴的，完全没有感情。

686 linoleum   

n.油布，油毯

参考例句：

• They mislaid the linoleum.他们把油毡放错了地方。
• Who will lay the linoleum?谁将铺设地板油毡？

687 slaty   

石板一样的，石板色的

参考例句：

• A sudden gust of cool wind under the slaty sky, and rain drops will start patter-pattering. 在灰沉沉的天底下，忽而来一阵凉风，便息列索落地下起雨来了。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译
• A metamorphic rock intermediate between shale and slate, that does not possess true slaty cleavage. 一种细颗粒的变质岩，由泥质岩受热形成。

688 exult   

v.狂喜，欢腾；欢欣鼓舞

参考例句：

• Few people would not exult at the abolition of slavery.奴隶制被废除了，人们无不为之欢乐鼓舞。
• Let's exult with the children at the drawing near of Children's Day.六一儿童节到了，让我们陪着小朋友们一起欢腾。

689 clench   

vt.捏紧（拳头等），咬紧（牙齿等），紧紧握住

参考例句：

• I clenched the arms of my chair.我死死抓住椅子扶手。
• Slowly,he released his breath through clenched teeth.他从紧咬的牙缝间慢慢地舒了口气。

690 clenched   

v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He clenched his fists in anger. 他愤怒地攥紧了拳头。
• She clenched her hands in her lap to hide their trembling. 她攥紧双手放在腿上，以掩饰其颤抖。 来自《简明英汉词典》

691 landlady   

n.女房东，女地主

参考例句：

• I heard my landlady creeping stealthily up to my door.我听到我的女房东偷偷地来到我的门前。
• The landlady came over to serve me.女店主过来接待我。

692 misgiving   

n.疑虑，担忧，害怕

参考例句：

• She had some misgivings about what she was about to do.她对自己即将要做的事情存有一些顾虑。
• The first words of the text filled us with misgiving.正文开头的文字让我们颇为担心。

693 cactus   

n.仙人掌

参考例句：

• It was the first year that the cactus had produced flowers.这是这棵仙人掌第一年开花。
• The giant cactus is the vegetable skycraper.高大的仙人掌是植物界巨人。

694 attired   

adj.穿着整齐的v.使穿上衣服，使穿上盛装( attire的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The bride was attired in white. 新娘穿一身洁白的礼服。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• It is appropriate that everyone be suitably attired. 人人穿戴得体是恰当的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

695 attire   

v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装

参考例句：

• He had no intention of changing his mode of attire.他无意改变着装方式。
• Her attention was attracted by his peculiar attire.他那奇特的服装引起了她的注意。

696 disclaimed   

v.否认( disclaim的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She disclaimed any knowledge of her husband's whereabouts. 她否认知道丈夫的下落。
• He disclaimed any interest in the plan. 他否认对该计划有任何兴趣。 来自《简明英汉词典》

697 fretted   

焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的

参考例句：

• The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. 寒风穿过枯枝，有时把发脏的藏红花吹刮跑了。 来自英汉文学
• The lady's fame for hitting the mark fretted him. 这位太太看问题深刻的名声在折磨着他。

698 stiffened   

加强的

参考例句：

• He leaned towards her and she stiffened at this invasion of her personal space. 他向她俯过身去，这种侵犯她个人空间的举动让她绷紧了身子。
• She stiffened with fear. 她吓呆了。

699 orchid   

n.兰花，淡紫色

参考例句：

• The orchid is a class of plant which I have never tried to grow.兰花这类植物我从来没种过。
• There are over 35 000 species of orchid distributed throughout the world.有35,000多种兰花分布在世界各地。

700 orchids   

n.兰花( orchid的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Wild flowers such as orchids and primroses are becoming rare. 兰花和报春花这类野花越来越稀少了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She breeds orchids in her greenhouse. 她在温室里培育兰花。 来自《简明英汉词典》

701 contrived   

adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的

参考例句：

• There was nothing contrived or calculated about what he said.他说的话里没有任何蓄意捏造的成分。
• The plot seems contrived.情节看起来不真实。

702 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

703 plank   

n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目

参考例句：

• The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
• They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。

704 blindfolded   

v.（尤指用布）挡住（某人）的视线( blindfold的过去式 )；蒙住（某人）的眼睛；使不理解；蒙骗

参考例句：

• The hostages were tied up and blindfolded. 人质被捆绑起来并蒙上了眼睛。
• They were each blindfolded with big red handkerchiefs. 他们每个人的眼睛都被一块红色大手巾蒙住了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

705 pony   

adj.小型的；n.小马

参考例句：

• His father gave him a pony as a Christmas present.他父亲给了他一匹小马驹作为圣诞礼物。
• They made him pony up the money he owed.他们逼他还债。

706 trotted   

小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走

参考例句：

• She trotted her pony around the field. 她骑着小马绕场慢跑。
• Anne trotted obediently beside her mother. 安妮听话地跟在妈妈身边走。

707 inviolate   

adj.未亵渎的，未受侵犯的

参考例句：

• The constitution proclaims that public property shall be inviolate.宪法宣告公共财产不可侵犯。
• They considered themselves inviolate from attack.他们认为自己是不可侵犯的。

708 exquisitely   

adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地

参考例句：

• He found her exquisitely beautiful. 他觉得她异常美丽。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He wore an exquisitely tailored gray silk and accessories to match. 他穿的是做工非常考究的灰色绸缎衣服，还有各种配得很协调的装饰。 来自教父部分

709 fronds   

n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You can pleat palm fronds to make huts, umbrellas and baskets. 人们可以把棕榈叶折叠起来盖棚屋，制伞，编篮子。 来自百科语句
• When these breezes reached the platform the palm-fronds would whisper. 微风吹到平台时，棕榈叶片发出簌簌的低吟。 来自辞典例句

710 intersections   

n.横断( intersection的名词复数 )；交叉；交叉点；交集

参考例句：

• Traffic lights have been placed at all major intersections. 所有重要的交叉路口都安装了交通信号灯。
• Intersections are of the greatest importance in highway design. 在道路设计中，交叉口占有最重要的地位。 来自辞典例句

711 pawn   

n.典当，抵押，小人物，走卒；v.典当，抵押

参考例句：

• He is contemplating pawning his watch.他正在考虑抵押他的手表。
• It looks as though he is being used as a political pawn by the President.看起来他似乎被总统当作了政治卒子。

712 scorpion   

n.蝎子，心黑的人，蝎子鞭

参考例句：

• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。
• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。

713 epitome   

n.典型，梗概

参考例句：

• He is the epitome of goodness.他是善良的典范。
• This handbook is a neat epitome of everyday hygiene.这本手册概括了日常卫生的要点。

714 automaton   

n.自动机器，机器人

参考例句：

• This is a fully functional automaton.这是一个有全自动功能的机器人。
• I get sick of being thought of as a political automaton.我讨厌被看作政治机器。

715 gutter   

n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟

参考例句：

• There's a cigarette packet thrown into the gutter.阴沟里有个香烟盒。
• He picked her out of the gutter and made her a great lady.他使她脱离贫苦生活，并成为贵妇。

716 muffled   

adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己）

参考例句：

• muffled voices from the next room 从隔壁房间里传来的沉闷声音
• There was a muffled explosion somewhere on their right. 在他们的右面什么地方有一声沉闷的爆炸声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

717 rending   

v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破

参考例句：

• The cries of those imprisoned in the fallen buildings were heart-rending. 被困于倒塌大楼里的人们的哭喊声令人心碎。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She was rending her hair out in anger. 她气愤得直扯自己的头发。 来自《简明英汉词典》

718 wheeze   

n.喘息声，气喘声；v.喘息着说

参考例句：

• The old man managed to wheeze out a few words.老人勉强地喘息着说出了几句话。
• He has a slight wheeze in his chest.他呼吸时胸部发出轻微的响声。

719 trench   

n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕

参考例句：

• The soldiers recaptured their trench.兵士夺回了战壕。
• The troops received orders to trench the outpost.部队接到命令在前哨周围筑壕加强防卫。

720 gashed   

v.划伤，割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He gashed his hand on a sharp piece of rock. 他的手在一块尖石头上划了一个大口子。
• He gashed his arm on a piece of broken glass. 他的胳膊被玻璃碎片划了一个大口子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

721 throbbed   

抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动

参考例句：

• His head throbbed painfully. 他的头一抽一跳地痛。
• The pulse throbbed steadily. 脉搏跳得平稳。

722 throbs   

体内的跳动( throb的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• My finger throbs with the cut. 我的手指因切伤而阵阵抽痛。
• We should count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right. 我们应该在正确的目标下，以心跳的速度来计算时间。

723 pounce   

n.猛扑；v.猛扑，突然袭击，欣然同意

参考例句：

• Why do you pounce on every single thing I say?干吗我说的每句话你都要找麻烦？
• We saw the tiger about to pounce on the goat.我们看见老虎要向那只山羊扑过去。

724 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

725 crumb   

n.饼屑，面包屑，小量

参考例句：

• It was the only crumb of comfort he could salvage from the ordeal.这是他从这场磨难里能找到的唯一的少许安慰。
• Ruth nearly choked on the last crumb of her pastry.鲁斯几乎被糕点的最后一块碎屑所噎住。

726 insinuated   

v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入

参考例句：

• The article insinuated that he was having an affair with his friend's wife. 文章含沙射影地点出他和朋友的妻子有染。
• She cleverly insinuated herself into his family. 她巧妙地混进了他的家庭。 来自《简明英汉词典》

727 wail   

vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸

参考例句：

• Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里，一位老太太伤心地哭起来。
• One of the small children began to wail with terror.小孩中的一个吓得大哭起来。

728 wailing   

v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱

参考例句：

• A police car raced past with its siren wailing. 一辆警车鸣着警报器飞驰而过。
• The little girl was wailing miserably. 那小女孩难过得号啕大哭。

729 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

730 improvised   

a.即席而作的,即兴的

参考例句：

• He improvised a song about the football team's victory. 他即席创作了一首足球队胜利之歌。
• We improvised a tent out of two blankets and some long poles. 我们用两条毛毯和几根长竿搭成一个临时帐蓬。

731 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

732 hygiene   

n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic）

参考例句：

• Their course of study includes elementary hygiene and medical theory.他们的课程包括基础卫生学和医疗知识。
• He's going to give us a lecture on public hygiene.他要给我们作关于公共卫生方面的报告。

733 worthier   

应得某事物( worthy的比较级 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征

参考例句：

• I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself.' 我可以肯定你能非常非常值得自己骄傲。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• I should like the chance to fence with a worthier opponent. 我希望有机会跟实力相当的对手击剑。

734 animating   

v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命

参考例句：

• Nature has her animating spirit as well as man who is nature's child. 大自然就象它的孩子――人类一样，有活生生的灵魂。 来自辞典例句
• They were doubtlessly the animating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant. 在表面看来无所事事的许多时刻中，它们无疑是活跃的因素。 来自辞典例句

735 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

736 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

737 horrid   

adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的

参考例句：

• I'm not going to the horrid dinner party.我不打算去参加这次讨厌的宴会。
• The medicine is horrid and she couldn't get it down.这种药很难吃，她咽不下去。

738 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

739 mazes   

迷宫( maze的名词复数 )； 纷繁复杂的规则； 复杂难懂的细节； 迷宫图

参考例句：

• The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. 跳舞那种错综曲折，叫人快乐得如登九天。
• For two hours did this singlehearted and simpleminded girl toil through the mazes of the forest. 这位心地单纯的傻姑娘在林间曲径中艰难地走了两个来小时。

740 beacon   

n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔

参考例句：

• The blink of beacon could be seen for miles.灯塔的光亮在数英里之外都能看见。
• The only light over the deep black sea was the blink shone from the beacon.黑黢黢的海面上唯一的光明就只有灯塔上闪现的亮光了。

741 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

742 wedded   

adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She's wedded to her job. 她专心致志于工作。
• I was invited over by the newly wedded couple for a meal. 我被那对新婚夫妇请去吃饭。 来自《简明英汉词典》

743 obstinate   

adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的

参考例句：

• She's too obstinate to let anyone help her.她太倔强了，不会让任何人帮她的。
• The trader was obstinate in the negotiation.这个商人在谈判中拗强固执。

744 dally   

v.荒废(时日)，调情

参考例句：

• You should not dally away your time.你不应该浪费时间。
• One shouldn't dally with a girl's affection.一个人不该玩弄女孩子的感情。

745 shaft   

n.(工具的)柄，杆状物

参考例句：

• He was wounded by a shaft.他被箭击中受伤。
• This is the shaft of a steam engine.这是一个蒸汽机主轴。

746 intruded   

n.侵入的，推进的v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的过去式和过去分词 )；把…强加于

参考例句：

• One could believe that human creatures had never intruded there before. 你简直会以为那是从来没有人到过的地方。 来自辞典例句
• The speaker intruded a thin smile into his seriousness. 演说人严肃的脸上掠过一丝笑影。 来自辞典例句

747 jug   

n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂

参考例句：

• He walked along with a jug poised on his head.他头上顶着一个水罐，保持着平衡往前走。
• She filled the jug with fresh water.她将水壶注满了清水。

748 feverishly   

adv. 兴奋地

参考例句：

• Feverishly he collected his data. 他拼命收集资料。
• The company is having to cast around feverishly for ways to cut its costs. 公司迫切须要想出各种降低成本的办法。

749 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

750 bleached   

漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的

参考例句：

• His hair was bleached by the sun . 他的头发被太阳晒得发白。
• The sun has bleached her yellow skirt. 阳光把她的黄裙子晒得褪色了。

751 grumble   

vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another grumble from you.我不愿再听到你的抱怨。
• He could do nothing but grumble over the situation.他除了埋怨局势之外别无他法。

752 yelp   

vi.狗吠

参考例句：

• The dog gave a yelp of pain.狗疼得叫了一声。
• The puppy a yelp when John stepped on her tail.当约翰踩到小狗的尾巴，小狗发出尖叫。

753 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

754 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

755 dilate   

vt.使膨胀，使扩大

参考例句：

• At night,the pupils dilate to allow in more light.到了晚上，瞳孔就会扩大以接收更多光线。
• Exercise dilates blood vessels on the surface of the brain.运动会使大脑表层的血管扩张。

756 bereaved   

adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去（希望、生命等）( bereave的过去式和过去分词)；（尤指死亡）使丧失（亲人、朋友等）；使孤寂；抢走（财物）

参考例句：

• The ceremony was an ordeal for those who had been recently bereaved. 这个仪式对于那些新近丧失亲友的人来说是一种折磨。
• an organization offering counselling for the bereaved 为死者亲友提供辅导的组织

757 flaunted   

v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来

参考例句：

• She flaunted the school rules by not wearing the proper uniform. 她不穿规定的校服，以示对校规的藐视。 来自互联网
• Ember burning with reeds flaunted to the blue sky. 芦苇燃烧成灰烬，撒向蔚蓝的苍穹。 来自互联网

758 desultorily   

adv. 杂乱无章地, 散漫地

参考例句：

• The man continued talking. She answered him desultorily. 那个男人继续说着。她随口应答。 来自柯林斯例句

759 gaseous   

adj.气体的，气态的

参考例句：

• Air whether in the gaseous or liquid state is a fluid.空气，无论是气态的或是液态的，都是一种流体。
• Freon exists both in liquid and gaseous states.氟利昂有液态和气态两种形态。

760 salvation   

n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困

参考例句：

• Salvation lay in political reform.解救办法在于政治改革。
• Christians hope and pray for salvation.基督教徒希望并祈祷灵魂得救。

761 pensive   

a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的

参考例句：

• He looked suddenly sombre,pensive.他突然看起来很阴郁，一副忧虑的样子。
• He became so pensive that she didn't like to break into his thought.他陷入沉思之中,她不想打断他的思路。

762 fervent   

adj.热的，热烈的，热情的

参考例句：

• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。
• Austria was among the most fervent supporters of adolf hitler.奥地利是阿道夫希特勒最狂热的支持者之一。

763 throng   

n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集

参考例句：

• A patient throng was waiting in silence.一大群耐心的人在静静地等着。
• The crowds thronged into the mall.人群涌进大厅。

764 hymns   

n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• At first, they played the hymns and marches familiar to them. 起初他们只吹奏自己熟悉的赞美诗和进行曲。 来自英汉非文学 - 百科语料821
• I like singing hymns. 我喜欢唱圣歌。 来自辞典例句

765 hymn   

n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌

参考例句：

• They sang a hymn of praise to God.他们唱着圣歌，赞美上帝。
• The choir has sung only two verses of the last hymn.合唱团只唱了最后一首赞美诗的两个段落。

766 groaning   

adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• She's always groaning on about how much she has to do. 她总抱怨自己干很多活儿。
• The wounded man lay there groaning, with no one to help him. 受伤者躺在那里呻吟着，无人救助。

767 apron   

n.围裙；工作裙

参考例句：

• We were waited on by a pretty girl in a pink apron.招待我们的是一位穿粉红色围裙的漂亮姑娘。
• She stitched a pocket on the new apron.她在新围裙上缝上一只口袋。

768 heralds   

n.使者( herald的名词复数 )；预报者；预兆；传令官v.预示( herald的第三人称单数 )；宣布（好或重要）

参考例句：

• The song of birds heralds the approach of spring. 百鸟齐鸣报春到。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The wind sweeping through the tower heralds a rising storm in the mountain. 山雨欲来风满楼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

769 adaptable   

adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的

参考例句：

• He is an adaptable man and will soon learn the new work.他是个适应性很强的人，很快就将学会这种工作。
• The soil is adaptable to the growth of peanuts.这土壤适宜于花生的生长。

770 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

771 unreasonably   

adv. 不合理地

参考例句：

• He was also petty, unreasonably querulous, and mean. 他还是个气量狭窄，无事生非，平庸刻薄的人。
• Food in that restaurant is unreasonably priced. 那家饭店价格不公道。

772 prostrate   

v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的

参考例句：

• She was prostrate on the floor.她俯卧在地板上。
• The Yankees had the South prostrate and they intended to keep It'so.北方佬已经使南方屈服了,他们还打算继续下去。

773 heroism   

n.大无畏精神，英勇

参考例句：

• He received a medal for his heroism.他由于英勇而获得一枚奖章。
• Stories of his heroism resounded through the country.他的英雄故事传遍全国。

774 attained   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• She has attained the degree of Master of Arts. 她已获得文学硕士学位。
• Lu Hsun attained a high position in the republic of letters. 鲁迅在文坛上获得崇高的地位。

775 bridled   

给…套龙头( bridle的过去式和过去分词 )； 控制； 昂首表示轻蔑（或怨忿等）； 动怒，生气

参考例句：

• She bridled at the suggestion that she was lying. 她对暗示她在说谎的言论嗤之以鼻。
• He bridled his horse. 他给他的马套上笼头。

776 softening   

变软，软化

参考例句：

• Her eyes, softening, caressed his face. 她的眼光变得很温柔了。它们不住地爱抚他的脸。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• He might think my brain was softening or something of the kind. 他也许会觉得我婆婆妈妈的，已经成了个软心肠的人了。

777 maudlin   

adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的

参考例句：

• He always becomes maudlin after he's had a few drinks.他喝了几杯酒后总是变得多愁善感。
• She continued in the same rather maudlin tone.她继续用那种颇带几分伤感的语调说话。

778 succumbed   

不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死

参考例句：

• The town succumbed after a short siege. 该城被围困不久即告失守。
• After an artillery bombardment lasting several days the town finally succumbed. 在持续炮轰数日后，该城终于屈服了。

779 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

780 delectable   

adj.使人愉快的；美味的

参考例句：

• What delectable food you cook!你做的食品真好吃！
• But today the delectable seafood is no longer available in abundance.但是今天这种可口的海味已不再大量存在。

781 deformed   

adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的

参考例句：

• He was born with a deformed right leg.他出生时右腿畸形。
• His body was deformed by leprosy.他的身体因为麻风病变形了。

782 compartment   

n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间

参考例句：

• We were glad to have the whole compartment to ourselves.真高兴，整个客车隔间由我们独享。
• The batteries are safely enclosed in a watertight compartment.电池被安全地置于一个防水的隔间里。

783 migratory   

n.候鸟，迁移

参考例句：

• Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
• This does not negate the idea of migratory aptitude.这并没有否定迁移能力这一概念。

784 ascetic   

adj.禁欲的；严肃的

参考例句：

• The hermit followed an ascetic life-style.这个隐士过的是苦行生活。
• This is achieved by strict celibacy and ascetic practices.这要通过严厉的独身生活和禁欲修行而达到。

785 well-being   

n.安康，安乐，幸福

参考例句：

• He always has the well-being of the masses at heart.他总是把群众的疾苦挂在心上。
• My concern for their well-being was misunderstood as interference.我关心他们的幸福，却被误解为多管闲事。

786 promptly   

adv.及时地，敏捷地

参考例句：

• He paid the money back promptly.他立即还了钱。
• She promptly seized the opportunity his absence gave her.她立即抓住了因他不在场给她创造的机会。

787 fascination   

n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋

参考例句：

• He had a deep fascination with all forms of transport.他对所有的运输工具都很着迷。
• His letters have been a source of fascination to a wide audience.广大观众一直迷恋于他的来信。

788 tolled   

鸣钟（toll的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Bells were tolled all over the country at the King's death. 全国为国王之死而鸣钟。
• The church bell tolled the hour. 教堂的钟声报时。

789 knell   

n.丧钟声；v.敲丧钟

参考例句：

• That is the death knell of the British Empire.这是不列颠帝国的丧钟。
• At first he thought it was a death knell.起初，他以为是死亡的丧钟敲响了。

790 glazed   

adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神

参考例句：

• eyes glazed with boredom 厌倦无神的眼睛
• His eyes glazed over at the sight of her. 看到她时，他的目光就变得呆滞。 来自《简明英汉词典》

791 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

792 propitiate   

v.慰解，劝解

参考例句：

• They offer a sacrifice to propitiate the god.他们供奉祭品以慰诸神。
• I tried to propitiate gods and to dispel demons.我试著取悦神只，驱赶恶魔。

793 perspicacity   

n. 敏锐, 聪明, 洞察力

参考例句：

• Perspicacity includes selective code, selective comparing and selective combining. 洞察力包括选择性编码、选择性比较、选择性联合。
• He may own the perspicacity and persistence to catch and keep the most valuable thing. 他可能拥有洞察力和坚忍力，可以抓住和保有人生中最宝贵的东西。

794 concur   

v.同意，意见一致，互助，同时发生

参考例句：

• Wealth and happiness do not always concur.财富与幸福并非总是并存的。
• I concur with the speaker in condemning what has been done.我同意发言者对所做的事加以谴责。

795 confiding   

adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等）

参考例句：

• The girl is of a confiding nature. 这女孩具有轻信别人的性格。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Celia, though confiding her opinion only to Andrew, disagreed. 西莉亚却不这么看，尽管她只向安德鲁吐露过。 来自辞典例句

796 starched   

adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My clothes are not starched enough. 我的衣服浆得不够硬。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The ruffles on his white shirt were starched and clean. 白衬衫的褶边浆过了，很干净。 来自辞典例句

797 unbearably   

adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌

参考例句：

• It was unbearably hot in the car. 汽车里热得难以忍受。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She found it unbearably painful to speak. 她发现开口说话痛苦得令人难以承受。 来自《简明英汉词典》

798 loom   

n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近

参考例句：

• The old woman was weaving on her loom.那位老太太正在织布机上织布。
• The shuttle flies back and forth on the loom.织布机上梭子来回飞动。

799 malicious   

adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的

参考例句：

• You ought to kick back at such malicious slander. 你应当反击这种恶毒的污蔑。
• Their talk was slightly malicious.他们的谈话有点儿心怀不轨。

800 deity   

n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物)

参考例句：

• Many animals were seen as the manifestation of a deity.许多动物被看作神的化身。
• The deity was hidden in the deepest recesses of the temple.神藏在庙宇壁龛的最深处。

801 stockbroker   

n.股票（或证券），经纪人（或机构）

参考例句：

• The main business of stockbroker is to help clients buy and sell shares.股票经纪人的主要业务是帮客户买卖股票。
• My stockbroker manages my portfolio for me.我的证券经纪人替我管理投资组合。

802 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

803 rustled   

v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He rustled his papers. 他把试卷弄得沙沙地响。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Leaves rustled gently in the breeze. 树叶迎着微风沙沙作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

804 cosmopolitan   

adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的

参考例句：

• New York is a highly cosmopolitan city.纽约是一个高度世界性的城市。
• She has a very cosmopolitan outlook on life.她有四海一家的人生观。

805 fawn   

n.未满周岁的小鹿；v.巴结，奉承

参考例句：

• A fawn behind the tree looked at us curiously.树后面一只小鹿好奇地看着我们。
• He said you fawn on the manager in order to get a promotion.他说你为了获得提拔，拍经理的马屁。

806 bosom   

n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的

参考例句：

• She drew a little book from her bosom.她从怀里取出一本小册子。
• A dark jealousy stirred in his bosom.他内心生出一阵恶毒的嫉妒。

807 momentary   

adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的

参考例句：

• We are in momentary expectation of the arrival of you.我们无时无刻不在盼望你的到来。
• I caught a momentary glimpse of them.我瞥了他们一眼。

808 portrayal   

n.饰演；描画

参考例句：

• His novel is a vivid portrayal of life in a mining community.他的小说生动地描绘了矿区的生活。
• The portrayal of the characters in the novel is lifelike.该书中的人物写得有血有肉。

809 copiously   

adv.丰富地，充裕地

参考例句：

• She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor. 她向前一俯，哇的一声吐了一地。 来自英汉文学
• This well-organized, unified course copiously illustrated, amply cross-referenced, and fully indexed. 这条组织完善，统一的课程丰富地被说明，丰富地被相互参照和充分地被标注。 来自互联网

810 tremor   

n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震

参考例句：

• There was a slight tremor in his voice.他的声音有点颤抖。
• A slight earth tremor was felt in California.加利福尼亚发生了轻微的地震。

811 outgrown   

长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过

参考例句：

• She's already outgrown her school uniform. 她已经长得连校服都不能穿了。
• The boy has outgrown his clothes. 这男孩已长得穿不下他的衣服了。

812 silhouette   

n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓

参考例句：

• I could see its black silhouette against the evening sky.我能看到夜幕下它黑色的轮廓。
• I could see the silhouette of the woman in the pickup.我可以见到小卡车的女人黑色半身侧面影。

813 scorched   

烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦

参考例句：

• I scorched my dress when I was ironing it. 我把自己的连衣裙熨焦了。
• The hot iron scorched the tablecloth. 热熨斗把桌布烫焦了。

814 scorch   

v.烧焦，烤焦；高速疾驶；n.烧焦处，焦痕

参考例句：

• I could not wash away the mark of the scorch.我洗不掉这焦痕。
• This material will scorch easily if it is too near the fire.这种材料如果太靠近炉火很容易烤焦。

815 tattered   

adj.破旧的，衣衫破的

参考例句：

• Her tattered clothes in no way detracted from her beauty.她的破衣烂衫丝毫没有影响她的美貌。
• Their tattered clothing and broken furniture indicated their poverty.他们褴褛的衣服和破烂的家具显出他们的贫穷。

816 marvel   

vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事

参考例句：

• The robot is a marvel of modern engineering.机器人是现代工程技术的奇迹。
• The operation was a marvel of medical skill.这次手术是医术上的一个奇迹。

817 attenuated   

v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱

参考例句：

• an attenuated form of the virus 毒性已衰减的病毒
• You're a seraphic suggestion of attenuated thought . 你的思想是轻灵得如同天使一般的。 来自辞典例句

818 isthmus   

n.地峡

参考例句：

• North America is connected with South America by the Isthmus of Panama.巴拿马海峡把北美同南美连接起来。
• The north and south of the island are linked by a narrow isthmus.岛的北部和南部由一条狭窄的地峡相连。

819 spike   

n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效

参考例句：

• The spike pierced the receipts and held them in order.那个钉子穿过那些收据并使之按顺序排列。
• They'll do anything to spike the guns of the opposition.他们会使出各种手段来挫败对手。

820 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

821 sentimentally   

adv.富情感地

参考例句：

• I miss the good old days, ' she added sentimentally. ‘我怀念过去那些美好的日子，’她动情地补充道。 来自互联网
• I have an emotional heart, it is sentimentally attached to you unforgettable. 我心中有一份情感，那是对你刻骨铭心的眷恋。 来自互联网

822 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

823 fable   

n.寓言；童话；神话

参考例句：

• The fable is given on the next page. 这篇寓言登在下一页上。
• He had some motive in telling this fable. 他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

824 irreverence   

n.不尊敬

参考例句：

• True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.真正的大不敬是不尊重别人的神。
• Mark Twain said irreverence is the champion of liberty,if not its only defender.马克·吐温说过，不敬若不是自由唯一的捍卫者，也会是它的拥护者。

825 crests   

v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点

参考例句：

• The surfers were riding in towards the beach on the crests of the waves. 冲浪者们顺着浪头冲向岸边。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The correspondent aroused, heard the crash of the toppled crests. 记者醒了，他听见了浪头倒塌下来的轰隆轰隆声。 来自辞典例句

826 crest   

n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖

参考例句：

• The rooster bristled his crest.公鸡竖起了鸡冠。
• He reached the crest of the hill before dawn.他于黎明前到达山顶。

827 entrenched   

adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯)

参考例句：

• Television seems to be firmly entrenched as the number one medium for national advertising.电视看来要在全国广告媒介中牢固地占据头等位置。
• If the enemy dares to attack us in these entrenched positions,we will make short work of them.如果敌人胆敢进攻我们固守的阵地，我们就消灭他们。

828 anecdote   

n.轶事，趣闻，短故事

参考例句：

• He departed from the text to tell an anecdote.他偏离课文讲起了一则轶事。
• It had never been more than a family anecdote.那不过是个家庭趣谈罢了。

829 consolation   

n.安慰，慰问

参考例句：

• The children were a great consolation to me at that time.那时孩子们成了我的莫大安慰。
• This news was of little consolation to us.这个消息对我们来说没有什么安慰。

830 mania   

n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好

参考例句：

• Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
• Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。

831 intrudes   

v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的第三人称单数 )；把…强加于

参考例句：

• An outraged movie like Stone's intrudes upon a semipermanent mourning. 像斯通这种忿忿不平的电影侵犯到美国人近乎永恒的哀悼。 来自互联网
• He intrudes upon our hospitality. 他硬要我们款待他。 来自互联网

832 favourable   

adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的

参考例句：

• The company will lend you money on very favourable terms.这家公司将以非常优惠的条件借钱给你。
• We found that most people are favourable to the idea.我们发现大多数人同意这个意见。

833 posthumous   

adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的

参考例句：

• He received a posthumous award for bravery.他表现勇敢，死后受到了嘉奖。
• The legendary actor received a posthumous achievement award.这位传奇男星在过世后获得终身成就奖的肯定。

834 faltered   

（嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃

参考例句：

• He faltered out a few words. 他支吾地说出了几句。
• "Er - but he has such a longhead!" the man faltered. 他不好意思似的嚅嗫着：“这孩子脑袋真长。”

835 knack   

n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法

参考例句：

• He has a knack of teaching arithmetic.他教算术有诀窍。
• Making omelettes isn't difficult,but there's a knack to it.做煎蛋饼并不难，但有窍门。

836 languished   

长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐

参考例句：

• Our project languished during the holidays. 我们的计划在假期间推动得松懈了。
• He languished after his dog died. 他狗死之后，人憔悴了。

837 spires   

n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Her masts leveled with the spires of churches. 船的桅杆和教堂的塔尖一样高。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• White church spires lift above green valleys. 教堂的白色尖顶耸立在绿色山谷中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

838 awry   

adj.扭曲的，错的

参考例句：

• She was in a fury over a plan that had gone awry. 计划出了问题，她很愤怒。
• Something has gone awry in our plans.我们的计划出差错了。

839 joints   

接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语）

参考例句：

• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on gas mains. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在煤气的总管道上了。
• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on steam pipes. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在蒸气管道上了。

840 prostrated   

v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力

参考例句：

• He was prostrated by the loss of his wife. 他因丧妻而忧郁。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• They prostrated themselves before the emperor. 他们拜倒在皇帝的面前。 来自《简明英汉词典》

841 inspector   

n.检查员，监察员，视察员

参考例句：

• The inspector was interested in everything pertaining to the school.视察员对有关学校的一切都感兴趣。
• The inspector was shining a flashlight onto the tickets.查票员打着手电筒查看车票。

842 accusation   

n.控告，指责，谴责

参考例句：

• I was furious at his making such an accusation.我对他的这种责备非常气愤。
• She knew that no one would believe her accusation.她知道没人会相信她的指控。

843 flask   

n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱

参考例句：

• There is some deposit in the bottom of the flask.这只烧杯的底部有些沉淀物。
• He took out a metal flask from a canvas bag.他从帆布包里拿出一个金属瓶子。

844 agitator   

n.鼓动者；搅拌器

参考例句：

• Hitler's just a self-educated street agitator.希特勒无非是个自学出身的街头煽动家罢了。
• Mona had watched him grow into an arrogant political agitator.莫娜瞧着他成长为一个高傲的政治鼓动家。

845 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

846 chapel   

n.小教堂，殡仪馆

参考例句：

• The nimble hero,skipped into a chapel that stood near.敏捷的英雄跳进近旁的一座小教堂里。
• She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel.那个星期天的下午，她在小教堂的演出，可以说是登峰造极。

847 junction   

n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站

参考例句：

• There's a bridge at the junction of the two rivers.两河的汇合处有座桥。
• You must give way when you come to this junction.你到了这个路口必须让路。

848 acquiescent   

adj.默许的，默认的

参考例句：

• My brother is of the acquiescent rather than the militant type.我弟弟是属于服从型的而不是好斗型的。
• She is too acquiescent,too ready to comply.她太百依百顺了。

849 civilisation   

n.文明，文化，开化，教化

参考例句：

• Energy and ideas are the twin bases of our civilisation.能源和思想是我们文明的两大基石。
• This opera is one of the cultural totems of Western civilisation.这部歌剧是西方文明的文化标志物之一。

850 impersonal   

adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的

参考例句：

• Even his children found him strangely distant and impersonal.他的孩子们也认为他跟其他人很疏远，没有人情味。
• His manner seemed rather stiff and impersonal.他的态度似乎很生硬冷淡。

851 incognito   

adv.匿名地；n.隐姓埋名；adj.化装的，用假名的，隐匿姓名身份的

参考例句：

• He preferred to remain incognito.他更喜欢继续隐姓埋名下去。
• He didn't want to be recognized,so he travelled incognito.他不想被人认出，所以出行时隐瞒身分。

852 superfluous   

adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的

参考例句：

• She fined away superfluous matter in the design. 她删去了这图案中多余的东西。
• That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it.我这样写的时候觉得这个请求似乎是多此一举。

853 lavished   

v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I lavished all the warmth of my pent-up passion. 我把憋在心里那一股热烈的情感尽量地倾吐出来。 来自辞典例句
• An enormous amount of attention has been lavished on these problems. 在这些问题上，我们已经花费了大量的注意力。 来自辞典例句

854 lizard   

n.蜥蜴，壁虎

参考例句：

• A chameleon is a kind of lizard.变色龙是一种蜥蜴。
• The lizard darted out its tongue at the insect.蜥蜴伸出舌头去吃小昆虫。

855 lizards   

n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Nothing lives in Pompeii except crickets and beetles and lizards. 在庞培城里除了蟋蟀、甲壳虫和蜥蜴外，没有别的生物。 来自辞典例句
• Can lizards reproduce their tails? 蜥蜴的尾巴断了以后能再生吗？ 来自辞典例句

856 capered   

v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• While dressing, he capered and clowned like a schoolboy. 他一边穿，一边象个学生似的蹦蹦跳跳地扮演起小丑来。 来自辞典例句
• The lambs capered in the meadow. 小羊在草地上蹦蹦跳跳。 来自辞典例句

857 defiantly   

adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地

参考例句：

• Braving snow and frost, the plum trees blossomed defiantly. 红梅傲雪凌霜开。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。 来自《简明英汉词典》

858 brigands   

n.土匪，强盗( brigand的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They say there are brigands hiding along the way. 他们说沿路隐藏着土匪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The brigands demanded tribute from passing vehicles. 土匪向过往车辆勒索钱财。 来自辞典例句

859 impunity   

n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除

参考例句：

• You will not escape with impunity.你不可能逃脱惩罚。
• The impunity what compulsory insurance sets does not include escapement.交强险规定的免责范围不包括逃逸。

860 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

861 plebeian   

adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民

参考例句：

• He is a philosophy professor with a cockney accent and an alarmingly plebeian manner.他是个有一口伦敦土腔、举止粗俗不堪的哲学教授。
• He spent all day playing rackets on the beach,a plebeian sport if there ever was one.他一整天都在海滩玩壁球，再没有比这更不入流的运动了。

862 stature   

n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材

参考例句：

• He is five feet five inches in stature.他身高5英尺5英寸。
• The dress models are tall of stature.时装模特儿的身材都较高。

863 clogged   

（使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞

参考例句：

• The narrow streets were clogged with traffic. 狭窄的街道上交通堵塞。
• The intake of gasoline was stopped by a clogged fuel line. 汽油的注入由于管道阻塞而停止了。

864 hectic   

adj.肺病的；消耗热的；发热的；闹哄哄的

参考例句：

• I spent a very hectic Sunday.我度过了一个忙乱的星期天。
• The two days we spent there were enjoyable but hectic.我们在那里度过的两天愉快但闹哄哄的。

865 bungalow   

n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房

参考例句：

• A bungalow does not have an upstairs.平房没有上层。
• The old couple sold that large house and moved into a small bungalow.老两口卖掉了那幢大房子，搬进了小平房。

866 crouched   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He crouched down beside her. 他在她的旁边蹲了下来。
• The lion crouched ready to pounce. 狮子蹲下身，准备猛扑。

867 fatuities   

n.愚昧，昏庸( fatuity的名词复数 )；愚蠢的言行

参考例句：

868 emaciated   

adj.衰弱的，消瘦的

参考例句：

• A long time illness made him sallow and emaciated.长期患病使他面黄肌瘦。
• In the light of a single candle,she can see his emaciated face.借着烛光，她能看到他的被憔悴的面孔。

869 retailed   

vt.零售（retail的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• She retailed the neighbours' activities with relish. 她饶有兴趣地对邻居们的活动说三道四。
• The industrial secrets were retailed to a rival concern. 工业秘密被泄露给一家对立的公司。 来自《简明英汉词典》

870 reproof   

n.斥责，责备

参考例句：

• A smart reproof is better than smooth deceit.严厉的责难胜过温和的欺骗。
• He is impatient of reproof.他不能忍受指责。

871 dab   

v.轻触，轻拍，轻涂；n.(颜料等的)轻涂

参考例句：

• She returned wearing a dab of rouge on each cheekbone.她回来时，两边面颊上涂有一点淡淡的胭脂。
• She gave me a dab of potatoes with my supper.她给我晚饭时，还给了一点土豆。

872 lurid   

adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的

参考例句：

• The paper gave all the lurid details of the murder.这份报纸对这起凶杀案耸人听闻的细节描写得淋漓尽致。
• The lurid sunset puts a red light on their faces.血红一般的夕阳映红了他们的脸。

873 triangular   

adj.三角（形）的，三者间的

参考例句：

• It's more or less triangular plot of land.这块地略成三角形。
• One particular triangular relationship became the model of Simone's first novel.一段特殊的三角关系成了西蒙娜第一本小说的原型。

874 wrecked   

adj.失事的，遇难的

参考例句：

• the hulk of a wrecked ship 遇难轮船的残骸
• the salvage of the wrecked tanker 对失事油轮的打捞

875 propounds   

v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

876 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

877 slates   

（旧时学生用以写字的）石板( slate的名词复数 )； 板岩； 石板瓦； 石板色

参考例句：

• The contract specifies red tiles, not slates, for the roof. 合同规定屋顶用红瓦，并非石板瓦。
• They roofed the house with slates. 他们用石板瓦做屋顶。

878 wriggled   

v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）

参考例句：

• He wriggled uncomfortably on the chair. 他坐在椅子上不舒服地扭动着身体。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A snake wriggled across the road. 一条蛇蜿蜒爬过道路。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

879 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

880 windings   

（道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手）

参考例句：

• The time harmonics can be considered as voltages of higher frequencies applied to the windings. 时间谐波可以看作是施加在绕组上的较高频率的电压。
• All the vales in their manifold windings shaded by the most delightful forests. 所有的幽谷，都笼罩在繁茂的垂枝下。

881 expend   

vt.花费，消费，消耗

参考例句：

• Don't expend all your time on such a useless job.不要把时间消耗在这种无用的工作上。
• They expend all their strength in trying to climb out.他们费尽全力想爬出来。

882 superfluously   

过分地； 过剩地

参考例句：

• Superfluously, he added his silly comments to the discussion. 他多此一举地把自己愚蠢的观点加到了讨论之中。

883 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

884 purveyor   

n.承办商，伙食承办商

参考例句：

• Silence, purveyor of gossip, do not spread that report. 快别那样说，新闻记者阁下，别散布那个消息。 来自互联网
• Teaching purpose: To comprehensively understand the role function and consciousness composition of a news purveyor. 教学目的：全面深入的理解新闻传播者的角色功能和意识构成。 来自互联网

885 discord   

n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐

参考例句：

• These two answers are in discord.这两个答案不一样。
• The discord of his music was hard on the ear.他演奏的不和谐音很刺耳。

886 lamely   

一瘸一拐地，不完全地

参考例句：

• I replied lamely that I hope to justify his confidence. 我漫不经心地回答说，我希望我能不辜负他对我的信任。
• The wolf leaped lamely back, losing its footing and falling in its weakness. 那只狼一跛一跛地跳回去，它因为身体虚弱，一失足摔了一跤。

887 lurch   

n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行

参考例句：

• It has been suggested that the ground movements were a form of lurch movements.地震的地面运动曾被认为是一种突然倾斜的运动形式。
• He walked with a lurch.他步履蹒跚。

888 unbearable   

adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的

参考例句：

• It is unbearable to be always on thorns.老是处于焦虑不安的情况中是受不了的。
• The more he thought of it the more unbearable it became.他越想越觉得无法忍受。

889 yelping   

v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• In the middle of the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping. 在桌子中间有一只小狗坐在那儿，抖着它的爪子，汪汪地叫。 来自辞典例句
• He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. 他搭救了快要溺死的人们，你呢，听到一条野狗叫唤也瑟瑟发抖。 来自互联网

890 dough   

n.生面团；钱，现款

参考例句：

• She formed the dough into squares.她把生面团捏成四方块。
• The baker is kneading dough.那位面包师在揉面。

891 whined   

v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨

参考例句：

• The dog whined at the door, asking to be let out. 狗在门前嚎叫着要出去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He whined and pouted when he did not get what he wanted. 他要是没得到想要的东西就会发牢骚、撅嘴。 来自辞典例句

892 inconvenient   

adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的

参考例句：

• You have come at a very inconvenient time.你来得最不适时。
• Will it be inconvenient for him to attend that meeting?他参加那次会议会不方便吗？

893 harassed   

adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He has complained of being harassed by the police. 他投诉受到警方侵扰。
• harassed mothers with their children 带着孩子的疲惫不堪的母亲们

894 wrings   

绞( wring的第三人称单数 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水）

参考例句：

• And so that interview Between Lucie and Sydney Carton has a pathos that wrings our hearts. 因此，露西和西德尼·卡登之间的会晤带有一种使我们感到揪心的凄楚的气氛。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学
• The girl wrings her dress dry. 这个女孩子扭乾她的衣服。

895 temperament   

n.气质，性格，性情

参考例句：

• The analysis of what kind of temperament you possess is vital.分析一下你有什么样的气质是十分重要的。
• Success often depends on temperament.成功常常取决于一个人的性格。

896 spartan   

adj.简朴的，刻苦的；n.斯巴达；斯巴达式的人

参考例句：

• Their spartan lifestyle prohibits a fridge or a phone.他们不使用冰箱和电话，过着简朴的生活。
• The rooms were spartan and undecorated.房间没有装饰，极为简陋。

897 shears   

n.大剪刀

参考例句：

• These garden shears are lightweight and easy to use.这些园丁剪刀又轻又好用。
• With a few quick snips of the shears he pruned the bush.他用大剪刀几下子就把灌木给修剪好了。

898 wrought   

v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的

参考例句：

• Events in Paris wrought a change in British opinion towards France and Germany.巴黎发生的事件改变了英国对法国和德国的看法。
• It's a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a flower.那是一个金质花形包头的拐杖。

899 contented   

adj.满意的，安心的，知足的

参考例句：

• He won't be contented until he's upset everyone in the office.不把办公室里的每个人弄得心烦意乱他就不会满足。
• The people are making a good living and are contented,each in his station.人民安居乐业。

900 majestic   

adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的

参考例句：

• In the distance rose the majestic Alps.远处耸立着雄伟的阿尔卑斯山。
• He looks majestic in uniform.他穿上军装显得很威风。

901 infested   

adj.为患的，大批滋生的（常与with搭配）v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的过去式和过去分词 )；遍布于

参考例句：

• The kitchen was infested with ants. 厨房里到处是蚂蚁。
• The apartments were infested with rats and roaches. 公寓里面到处都是老鼠和蟑螂。

902 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：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

903 reverently   

adv.虔诚地

参考例句：

• He gazed reverently at the handiwork. 他满怀敬意地凝视着这件手工艺品。
• Pork gazed at it reverently and slowly delight spread over his face. 波克怀着愉快的心情看着这只表，脸上慢慢显出十分崇敬的神色。

904 omnipotent   

adj.全能的，万能的

参考例句：

• When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.我们达到万能以后就不需要科学了。
• Money is not omnipotent,but we can't survive without money.金钱不是万能的，但是没有金钱我们却无法生存。

905 swell   

vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强

参考例句：

• The waves had taken on a deep swell.海浪汹涌。
• His injured wrist began to swell.他那受伤的手腕开始肿了。

906 overflow   

v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出

参考例句：

• The overflow from the bath ran on to the floor.浴缸里的水溢到了地板上。
• After a long period of rain,the river may overflow its banks.长时间的下雨天后，河水可能溢出岸来。

907 tilted   

v. 倾斜的

参考例句：

• Suddenly the boat tilted to one side. 小船突然倾向一侧。
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。

908 poised   

a.摆好姿势不动的

参考例句：

• The hawk poised in mid-air ready to swoop. 老鹰在半空中盘旋，准备俯冲。
• Tina was tense, her hand poised over the telephone. 蒂娜心情紧张，手悬在电话机上。

909 dissertation   

n.（博士学位）论文，学术演讲，专题论文

参考例句：

• He is currently writing a dissertation on the Somali civil war.他目前正在写一篇关于索马里内战的论文。
• He was involved in writing his doctoral dissertation.他在聚精会神地写他的博士论文。

910 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

911 crumpled   

adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She crumpled the letter up into a ball and threw it on the fire. 她把那封信揉成一团扔进了火里。
• She flattened out the crumpled letter on the desk. 她在写字台上把皱巴巴的信展平。

912 gratis   

adj.免费的

参考例句：

• David gives the first consultation gratis.戴维免费提供初次咨询。
• The service was gratis to graduates.这项服务对毕业生是免费的。

913 rattled   

慌乱的，恼火的

参考例句：

• The truck jolted and rattled over the rough ground. 卡车嘎吱嘎吱地在凹凸不平的地面上颠簸而行。
• Every time a bus went past, the windows rattled. 每逢公共汽车经过这里，窗户都格格作响。

914 astuteness   

n.敏锐；精明；机敏

参考例句：

• His pleasant, somewhat ordinary face suggested amiability rather than astuteness. 他那讨人喜欢而近乎平庸的脸显得和蔼有余而机敏不足。 来自互联网
• Young Singaporeans seem to lack the astuteness and dynamism that they possess. 本地的一般年轻人似乎就缺少了那份机灵和朝气。 来自互联网

915 destitute   

adj.缺乏的；穷困的

参考例句：

• They were destitute of necessaries of life.他们缺少生活必需品。
• They are destitute of common sense.他们缺乏常识。

916 altruism   

n.利他主义，不自私

参考例句：

• An important feature of moral behaviour is altruism.道德行为一个重要特点就是利他主义。
• Altruism is crucial for social cohesion.利他主义对社会的凝聚是至关重要的。

917 autocracy   

n.独裁政治，独裁政府

参考例句：

• The revolution caused the overthrow of the autocracy.这场革命导致了独裁政体的结束。
• Many poor countries are abandoning autocracy.很多贫穷国家都在放弃独裁统治。

918 glamour   

n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住

参考例句：

• Foreign travel has lost its glamour for her.到国外旅行对她已失去吸引力了。
• The moonlight cast a glamour over the scene.月光给景色增添了魅力。

919 serenely   

adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地

参考例句：

• The boat sailed serenely on towards the horizon.小船平稳地向着天水交接处驶去。
• It was a serenely beautiful night.那是一个宁静美丽的夜晚。

920 pessimist   

n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世

参考例句：

• An optimist laughs to forget.A pessimist forgets to laugh.乐观者笑着忘却，悲观者忘记怎样笑。
• The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.悲观者在每个机会中都看到困难，乐观者在每个困难中都看到机会。

921 starkly   

adj. 变硬了的,完全的 adv. 完全,实在,简直

参考例句：

• The city of Befast remains starkly divided between Catholics and Protestants. 贝尔法斯特市完全被处在天主教徒和新教徒的纷争之中。
• The black rocks stood out starkly against the sky. 那些黑色的岩石在天空衬托下十分显眼。

922 awfully   

adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地

参考例句：

• Agriculture was awfully neglected in the past.过去农业遭到严重忽视。
• I've been feeling awfully bad about it.对这我一直感到很难受。

923 witty   

adj.机智的，风趣的

参考例句：

• Her witty remarks added a little salt to the conversation.她的妙语使谈话增添了一些风趣。
• He scored a bull's-eye in their argument with that witty retort.在他们的辩论中他那一句机智的反驳击中了要害。

924 ruffled   

adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• She ruffled his hair affectionately. 她情意绵绵地拨弄着他的头发。
• All this talk of a strike has clearly ruffled the management's feathers. 所有这些关于罢工的闲言碎语显然让管理层很不高兴。

925 allusion   

n.暗示，间接提示

参考例句：

• He made an allusion to a secret plan in his speech.在讲话中他暗示有一项秘密计划。
• She made no allusion to the incident.她没有提及那个事件。

926 goaded   

v.刺激( goad的过去式和过去分词 )；激励；（用尖棒）驱赶；驱使（或怂恿、刺激）某人

参考例句：

• Goaded beyond endurance, she turned on him and hit out. 她被气得忍无可忍，于是转身向他猛击。
• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

927 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

928 fiddling   

微小的

参考例句：

• He was fiddling with his keys while he talked to me. 和我谈话时他不停地摆弄钥匙。
• All you're going to see is a lot of fiddling around. 你今天要看到的只是大量的胡摆乱弄。 来自英汉文学 - 廊桥遗梦

929 pruning   

n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分

参考例句：

• In writing an essay one must do a lot of pruning. 写文章要下一番剪裁的工夫。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• A sapling needs pruning, a child discipline. 小树要砍，小孩要管。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

930 applicants   

申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were over 500 applicants for the job. 有500多人申请这份工作。
• He was impressed by the high calibre of applicants for the job. 求职人员出色的能力给他留下了深刻印象。

931 interfering   

adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词

参考例句：

• He's an interfering old busybody! 他老爱管闲事！
• I wish my mother would stop interfering and let me make my own decisions. 我希望我母亲不再干预，让我自己拿主意。

932 equestrian   

adj.骑马的；n.马术

参考例句：

• They all showed extraordinary equestrian skills.他们的骑术都很高超。
• I want to book two equestrian tickets.我想订两张马术比赛的票。

933 mare   

n.母马，母驴

参考例句：

• The mare has just thrown a foal in the stable.那匹母马刚刚在马厩里产下了一只小马驹。
• The mare foundered under the heavy load and collapsed in the road.那母马因负载过重而倒在路上。

934 brew   

v.酿造，调制

参考例句：

• Let's brew up some more tea.咱们沏些茶吧。
• The policeman dispelled the crowd lest they should brew trouble.警察驱散人群，因恐他们酿祸。

935 chasms   

裂缝( chasm的名词复数 )； 裂口； 分歧； 差别

参考例句：

• She found great chasms in her mathematics and physics. 她觉得她的数学课和物理课的知识还很欠缺。
• The sectarian chasms remain deep, the wounds of strife raw. 各派别的分歧巨大，旧恨新仇交织。

936 beak   

n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻

参考例句：

• The bird had a worm in its beak.鸟儿嘴里叼着一条虫。
• This bird employs its beak as a weapon.这种鸟用嘴作武器。

937 ashen   

adj.灰的

参考例句：

• His face was ashen and wet with sweat.他面如土色，汗如雨下。
• Her ashen face showed how much the news had shocked her.她灰白的脸显示出那消息使她多么震惊。

938 unstable   

adj.不稳定的，易变的

参考例句：

• This bookcase is too unstable to hold so many books.这书橱很不结实，装不了这么多书。
• The patient's condition was unstable.那患者的病情不稳定。

939 pelican   

n.鹈鹕，伽蓝鸟

参考例句：

• The pelican has a very useful beak.鹈鹕有一张非常有用的嘴。
• This pelican is expected to fully recover.这只鹈鹕不久就能痊愈。

940 maternal   

adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的

参考例句：

• He is my maternal uncle.他是我舅舅。
• The sight of the hopeless little boy aroused her maternal instincts.那个绝望的小男孩的模样唤起了她的母性。

941 chuckle   

vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑

参考例句：

• He shook his head with a soft chuckle.他轻轻地笑着摇了摇头。
• I couldn't suppress a soft chuckle at the thought of it.想到这个，我忍不住轻轻地笑起来。

942 punctured   

v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气

参考例句：

• Some glass on the road punctured my new tyre. 路上的玻璃刺破了我的新轮胎。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A nail on the road punctured the tyre. 路上的钉子把车胎戳穿了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

943 wails   

痛哭，哭声( wail的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The child burst into loud wails. 那个孩子突然大哭起来。
• Through this glaciated silence the white wails of the apartment fixed arbitrary planes. 在这冰封似的沉寂中，公寓的白色墙壁构成了一个个任意的平面。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

944 certified   

a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的

参考例句：

• Doctors certified him as insane. 医生证明他精神失常。
• The planes were certified airworthy. 飞机被证明适于航行。

945 needy   

adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的

参考例句：

• Although he was poor,he was quite generous to his needy friends.他虽穷，但对贫苦的朋友很慷慨。
• They awarded scholarships to needy students.他们给贫苦学生颁发奖学金。

946 joyous   

adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的

参考例句：

• The lively dance heightened the joyous atmosphere of the scene.轻快的舞蹈给这场戏渲染了欢乐气氛。
• They conveyed the joyous news to us soon.他们把这一佳音很快地传递给我们。

947 prosecuted   

a.被起诉的

参考例句：

• The editors are being prosecuted for obscenity. 编辑因刊载污秽文字而被起诉。
• The company was prosecuted for breaching the Health and Safety Act. 这家公司被控违反《卫生安全条例》。

948 elusive   

adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的

参考例句：

• Try to catch the elusive charm of the original in translation.翻译时设法把握住原文中难以捉摸的风韵。
• Interpol have searched all the corners of the earth for the elusive hijackers.国际刑警组织已在世界各地搜查在逃的飞机劫持者。

949 phantom   

n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的

参考例句：

• I found myself staring at her as if she were a phantom.我发现自己瞪大眼睛看着她，好像她是一个幽灵。
• He is only a phantom of a king.他只是有名无实的国王。

950 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

951 stony   

adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的

参考例句：

• The ground is too dry and stony.这块地太干，而且布满了石头。
• He listened to her story with a stony expression.他带着冷漠的表情听她讲经历。

952 villas   

别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅

参考例句：

• Magnificent villas are found throughout Italy. 在意大利到处可看到豪华的别墅。
• Rich men came down from wealthy Rome to build sea-side villas. 有钱人从富有的罗马来到这儿建造海滨别墅。

953 huddled   

挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
• We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。

954 crutches   

n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑

参考例句：

• After the accident I spent six months on crutches . 事故后我用了六个月的腋杖。
• When he broke his leg he had to walk on crutches. 他腿摔断了以后，不得不靠拐杖走路。

955 insistent   

adj.迫切的，坚持的

参考例句：

• There was an insistent knock on my door.我听到一阵急促的敲门声。
• He is most insistent on this point.他在这点上很坚持。

956 subsided   

v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上

参考例句：

• After the heavy rains part of the road subsided. 大雨过后，部分公路塌陷了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• By evening the storm had subsided and all was quiet again. 傍晚， 暴风雨已经过去，四周开始沉寂下来。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

957 vagaries   

n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况

参考例句：

• The vagaries of fortune are indeed curious.\" 命运的变化莫测真是不可思议。” 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• The vagaries of inclement weather conditions are avoided to a certain extent. 可以在一定程度上避免变化莫测的恶劣气候影响。 来自辞典例句

958 rebelliously   

adv.造反地，难以控制地

参考例句：

• He rejected her words rebelliously. 他极力反对她的观点。 来自互联网

959 gritted   

v.以沙砾覆盖（某物），撒沙砾于( grit的过去式和过去分词 )；咬紧牙关

参考例句：

• He gritted his teeth and plunged into the cold weather. 他咬咬牙，冲向寒冷的天气。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The young policeman gritted his teeth and walked slowly towards the armed criminal. 年轻警官强忍住怒火，朝武装歹徒慢慢走过去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

960 alley   

n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路

参考例句：

• We live in the same alley.我们住在同一条小巷里。
• The blind alley ended in a brick wall.这条死胡同的尽头是砖墙。

961 penetrate   

v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解

参考例句：

• Western ideas penetrate slowly through the East.西方观念逐渐传入东方。
• The sunshine could not penetrate where the trees were thickest.阳光不能透入树木最浓密的地方。

962 beads   

n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链

参考例句：

• a necklace of wooden beads 一条木珠项链
• Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. 他的前额上挂着汗珠。

963 shreds   

v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件）

参考例句：

• Peel the carrots and cut them into shreds. 将胡罗卜削皮，切成丝。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I want to take this diary and rip it into shreds. 我真想一赌气扯了这日记。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

964 yearned   

渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The people yearned for peace. 人民渴望和平。
• She yearned to go back to the south. 她渴望回到南方去。

965 perpendicular   

adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置

参考例句：

• The two lines of bones are set perpendicular to one another.这两排骨头相互垂直。
• The wall is out of the perpendicular.这墙有些倾斜。

966 disdaining   

鄙视( disdain的现在分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做

参考例句：

967 subterfuges   

n.（用说谎或欺骗以逃脱责备、困难等的）花招，遁词( subterfuge的名词复数 )

参考例句：

968 plodding   

a.proceeding in a slow or dull way

参考例句：

• They're still plodding along with their investigation. 他们仍然在不厌其烦地进行调查。
• He is plodding on with negotiations. 他正缓慢艰难地进行着谈判。

969 waterproof   

n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水

参考例句：

• My mother bought me a waterproof watch.我妈妈给我买了一块防水手表。
• All the electronics are housed in a waterproof box.所有电子设备都储放在一个防水盒中。

970 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

971 torrent   

n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发

参考例句：

• The torrent scoured a channel down the hillside. 急流沿着山坡冲出了一条沟。
• Her pent-up anger was released in a torrent of words.她压抑的愤怒以滔滔不绝的话爆发了出来。

972 intruding   

v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于

参考例句：

• Does he find his new celebrity intruding on his private life? 他是否感觉到他最近的成名侵扰了他的私生活？
• After a few hours of fierce fighting,we saw the intruding bandits off. 经过几小时的激烈战斗，我们赶走了入侵的匪徒。 来自《简明英汉词典》

973 unduly   

adv.过度地，不适当地

参考例句：

• He did not sound unduly worried at the prospect.他的口气听上去对前景并不十分担忧。
• He argued that the law was unduly restrictive.他辩称法律的约束性有些过分了。

974 exterminate   

v.扑灭，消灭，根绝

参考例句：

• Some people exterminate garden insects by spraying poison on the plants.有些人在植物上喷撒毒剂以杀死花园内的昆虫。
• Woodpeckers can exterminate insect pests hiding in trees.啄木鸟能消灭躲在树里的害虫。

975 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

976 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

977 strenuous   

adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的

参考例句：

• He made strenuous efforts to improve his reading. 他奋发努力提高阅读能力。
• You may run yourself down in this strenuous week.你可能会在这紧张的一周透支掉自己。

978 riotous   

adj.骚乱的；狂欢的

参考例句：

• Summer is in riotous profusion.盛夏的大地热闹纷繁。
• We spent a riotous night at Christmas.我们度过了一个狂欢之夜。

979 clump   

n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走

参考例句：

• A stream meandered gently through a clump of trees.一条小溪从树丛中蜿蜒穿过。
• It was as if he had hacked with his thick boots at a clump of bluebells.仿佛他用自己的厚靴子无情地践踏了一丛野风信子。

980 benevolent   

adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的

参考例句：

• His benevolent nature prevented him from refusing any beggar who accosted him.他乐善好施的本性使他不会拒绝走上前向他行乞的任何一个乞丐。
• He was a benevolent old man and he wouldn't hurt a fly.他是一个仁慈的老人，连只苍蝇都不愿伤害。

981 annex   

vt.兼并，吞并；n.附属建筑物

参考例句：

• It plans to annex an England company in order to enlarge the market.它计划兼并一家英国公司以扩大市场。
• The annex has been built on to the main building.主楼配建有附属的建筑物。

982 gargoyle   

n.笕嘴

参考例句：

• His face was the gargoyle of the devil,it was not human,it was not sane.他的脸简直就像魔鬼模样的屋檐滴水嘴。
• The little gargoyle is just a stuffed toy,but it looks so strange.小小的滴水嘴兽只是一个填充毛绒玩具，但它看起来这么奇怪的事。

983 wane   

n.衰微，亏缺，变弱；v.变小，亏缺，呈下弦

参考例句：

• The moon is on the wane.月亮渐亏。
• Her enthusiasm for him was beginning to wane.她对他的热情在开始减退。

984 discomfort   

n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便

参考例句：

• One has to bear a little discomfort while travelling.旅行中总要忍受一点不便。
• She turned red with discomfort when the teacher spoke.老师讲话时她不好意思地红着脸。

985 maniac   

n.精神癫狂的人；疯子

参考例句：

• Be careful!That man is driving like a maniac!注意！那个人开车像个疯子一样！
• You were acting like a maniac,and you threatened her with a bomb!你像一个疯子，你用炸弹恐吓她！

986 succumbing   

不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的现在分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死

参考例句：

• Mrs. Smith washed and ironed clothes for him, succumbing to him. 史密斯太太被他迷住了，愿意为他洗衣烫衣。
• They would not in the end abandon their vital interests by succumbing to Soviet blandishment. 他们最终决不会受苏联人的甜言蜜语的诱惑，从而抛弃自己的切身利益。

987 amiable   

adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的

参考例句：

• She was a very kind and amiable old woman.她是个善良和气的老太太。
• We have a very amiable companionship.我们之间存在一种友好的关系。

988 obtuseness   

感觉迟钝

参考例句：

• Much of the contentment of that time was based on moral obtuseness. 对那个年代的满意是基于道德上的一种惰性。 来自互联网

989 presumptuous   

adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的

参考例句：

• It would be presumptuous for anybody to offer such a view.任何人提出这种观点都是太放肆了。
• It was presumptuous of him to take charge.他自拿主张，太放肆了。

990 franchise   

n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权

参考例句：

• Catering in the schools is run on a franchise basis.学校餐饮服务以特许权经营。
• The United States granted the franchise to women in 1920.美国于1920年给妇女以参政权。

991 fanatic   

n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的

参考例句：

• Alexander is a football fanatic.亚历山大是个足球迷。
• I am not a religious fanatic but I am a Christian.我不是宗教狂热分子，但我是基督徒。

992 syrup   

n.糖浆，糖水

参考例句：

• I skimmed the foam from the boiling syrup.我撇去了煮沸糖浆上的泡沫。
• Tinned fruit usually has a lot of syrup with it.罐头水果通常都有许多糖浆。

993 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

994 delirious   

adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的

参考例句：

• He was delirious,murmuring about that matter.他精神恍惚，低声叨念着那件事。
• She knew that he had become delirious,and tried to pacify him.她知道他已经神志昏迷起来了，极力想使他镇静下来。

995 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

996 persistent   

adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的

参考例句：

• Albert had a persistent headache that lasted for three days.艾伯特连续头痛了三天。
• She felt embarrassed by his persistent attentions.他不时地向她大献殷勤，使她很难为情。

997 persistently   

ad.坚持地；固执地

参考例句：

• He persistently asserted his right to a share in the heritage. 他始终声称他有分享那笔遗产的权利。
• She persistently asserted her opinions. 她果断地说出了自己的意见。

998 embellished   

v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色

参考例句：

• The door of the old church was embellished with decorations. 老教堂的门是用雕饰美化的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The stern was embellished with carvings in red and blue. 船尾饰有红色和蓝色的雕刻图案。 来自辞典例句

999 tyrant   

n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人

参考例句：

• The country was ruled by a despotic tyrant.该国处在一个专制暴君的统治之下。
• The tyrant was deaf to the entreaties of the slaves.暴君听不到奴隶们的哀鸣。

1000 pictorial   

adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报

参考例句：

• The had insisted on a full pictorial coverage of the event.他们坚持要对那一事件做详尽的图片报道。
• China Pictorial usually sells out soon after it hits the stands.《人民画报》往往一到报摊就销售一空。

1001 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

1002 tragically   

adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地

参考例句：

• Their daughter was tragically killed in a road accident. 他们的女儿不幸死于车祸。
• Her father died tragically in a car crash. 她父亲在一场车祸中惨死。

1003 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

1004 shrill   

adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫

参考例句：

• Whistles began to shrill outside the barn.哨声开始在谷仓外面尖叫。
• The shrill ringing of a bell broke up the card game on the cutter.刺耳的铃声打散了小汽艇的牌局。

1005 shrilly   

尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的

参考例句：

• The librarian threw back his head and laughed shrilly. 图书管理员把头往后面一仰，尖着嗓子哈哈大笑。
• He half rose in his seat, whistling shrilly between his teeth, waving his hand. 他从车座上半欠起身子，低声打了一个尖锐的唿哨，一面挥挥手。

1006 tenterhooks   

n.坐立不安

参考例句：

• The students are on tenterhooks to hear the result of the examination.学生们烦躁不安地听考试结果。
• The mother was on tenterhooks until her little Laura came back.当小珞拉回来后，她母亲才放下心来。

1007 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

1008 docile   

adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的

参考例句：

• Circus monkeys are trained to be very docile and obedient.马戏团的猴子训练得服服贴贴的。
• He is a docile and well-behaved child.他是个温顺且彬彬有礼的孩子。

1009 quay   

n.码头，靠岸处

参考例句：

• There are all kinds of ships in a quay.码头停泊各式各样的船。
• The side of the boat hit the quay with a grinding jar.船舷撞到码头发出刺耳的声音。

1010 alienated   

adj.感到孤独的，不合群的v.使疏远( alienate的过去式和过去分词 )；使不友好；转让；让渡（财产等）

参考例句：

• His comments have alienated a lot of young voters. 他的言论使许多年轻选民离他而去。
• The Prime Minister's policy alienated many of her followers. 首相的政策使很多拥护她的人疏远了她。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1011 idol   

n.偶像，红人，宠儿

参考例句：

• As an only child he was the idol of his parents.作为独子，他是父母的宠儿。
• Blind worship of this idol must be ended.对这个偶像的盲目崇拜应该结束了。

1012 displeased   

a.不快的

参考例句：

• The old man was displeased and darted an angry look at me. 老人不高兴了，瞪了我一眼。
• He was displeased about the whole affair. 他对整个事情感到很不高兴。

1013 purgatory   

n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的

参考例句：

• Every step of the last three miles was purgatory.最后3英里时每一步都像是受罪。
• Marriage,with peace,is this world's paradise;with strife,this world's purgatory.和谐的婚姻是尘世的乐园，不和谐的婚姻则是人生的炼狱。

1014 sleepers   

n.卧铺（通常以复数形式出现）；卧车( sleeper的名词复数 )；轨枕；睡觉（呈某种状态）的人；小耳环

参考例句：

• He trod quietly so as not to disturb the sleepers. 他轻移脚步，以免吵醒睡着的人。 来自辞典例句
• The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. 保姆出去了，只剩下我们两个瞌睡虫。 来自辞典例句

1015 coffins   

n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物

参考例句：

• The shop was close and hot, and the atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins. 店堂里相当闷热，空气仿佛被棺木的味儿污染了。 来自辞典例句
• Donate some coffins to the temple, equal to the number of deaths. 到寺庙里，捐赠棺材盒给这些死者吧。 来自电影对白

1016 callous   

adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的

参考例句：

• He is callous about the safety of his workers.他对他工人的安全毫不关心。
• She was selfish,arrogant and often callous.她自私傲慢，而且往往冷酷无情。

1017 enveloping   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. 那眼睛总是死死盯着你，那声音总是紧紧围着你。 来自英汉文学
• The only barrier was a mosquito net, enveloping the entire bed. 唯一的障碍是那顶蚊帐罩住整个床。 来自辞典例句

1018 treacherous   

adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的

参考例句：

• The surface water made the road treacherous for drivers.路面的积水对驾车者构成危险。
• The frozen snow was treacherous to walk on.在冻雪上行走有潜在危险。

1019 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

1020 dwindling   

adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The number of wild animals on the earth is dwindling. 地球上野生动物的数量正日渐减少。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is struggling to come to terms with his dwindling authority. 他正努力适应自己权力被削弱这一局面。 来自辞典例句

1021 bridling   

给…套龙头( bridle的现在分词 )； 控制； 昂首表示轻蔑（或怨忿等）； 动怒，生气

参考例句：

• Suellen, bridling, always asked news of Mr. Kennedy. 苏伦也克制着经常探询肯尼迪先生的情况。
• We noticed sever al men loitering about the bridling last night. 昨天夜里我们看到有几个人在楼附近荡来荡去。

1023 dames   

n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人

参考例句：

• Dames would not comment any further. Dames将不再更多的评论。 来自互联网
• Flowers, candy, jewelry, seemed the principal things in which the elegant dames were interested. 鲜花、糖果和珠宝看来是那些贵妇人的主要兴趣所在。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

1024 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

1025 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

1026 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

1027 pointedly   

adv.尖地，明显地

参考例句：

• She yawned and looked pointedly at her watch. 她打了个哈欠，又刻意地看了看手表。
• The demand for an apology was pointedly refused. 让对方道歉的要求遭到了断然拒绝。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1028 melodrama   

n.音乐剧；情节剧

参考例句：

• We really don't need all this ridiculous melodrama!别跟我们来这套荒唐的情节剧表演！
• White Haired Woman was a melodrama,but in certain spots it was deliberately funny.《白毛女》是一出悲剧性的歌剧，但也有不少插科打诨。

1029 retrace   

v.折回；追溯，探源

参考例句：

• He retraced his steps to the spot where he'd left the case.他折回到他丢下箱子的地方。
• You must retrace your steps.你必须折回原来走过的路。

1030 dilute   

vt.稀释，冲淡；adj.稀释的，冲淡的

参考例句：

• The water will dilute the wine.水能使酒变淡。
• Zinc displaces the hydrogen of dilute acids.锌置换了稀酸中的氢。

1031 crescendo   

n.(音乐)渐强，高潮

参考例句：

• The gale reached its crescendo in the evening.狂风在晚上达到高潮。
• There was a crescendo of parliamentary and press criticism.来自议会和新闻界的批评越来越多。

1032 stratum   

n.地层，社会阶层

参考例句：

• The coal is a coal resource that reserves in old stratum.石煤是贮藏在古老地层中的一种煤炭资源。
• How does Chinese society define the class and stratum?中国社会如何界定阶级与阶层？

1033 flare   

v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发

参考例句：

• The match gave a flare.火柴发出闪光。
• You need not flare up merely because I mentioned your work.你大可不必因为我提到你的工作就动怒。

1034 aboriginal   

adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的

参考例句：

• They managed to wipe out the entire aboriginal population.他们终于把那些土著人全部消灭了。
• The lndians are the aboriginal Americans.印第安人是美国的土著人。

1035 prevailing   

adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的

参考例句：

• She wears a fashionable hair style prevailing in the city.她的发型是这个城市流行的款式。
• This reflects attitudes and values prevailing in society.这反映了社会上盛行的态度和价值观。

1036 motifs   

n. （文艺作品等的）主题( motif的名词复数 )；中心思想；基本模式；基本图案

参考例句：

• I try to develop beyond the old motifs. 我力求对传统的花纹图案做到推陈出新。 来自辞典例句
• American Dream is one of the most important motifs of American literature. “美国梦”是美国文学最重要的母题之一。 来自互联网

1037 rouge   

n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红

参考例句：

• Women put rouge on their cheeks to make their faces pretty.女人往面颊上涂胭脂，使脸更漂亮。
• She didn't need any powder or lip rouge to make her pretty.她天生漂亮，不需要任何脂粉唇膏打扮自己。

1038 cosmetics   

n.化妆品

参考例句：

• We sell a wide range of cosmetics at a very reasonable price. 我们以公道的价格出售各种化妆品。
• Cosmetics do not always cover up the deficiencies of nature. 化妆品未能掩饰天生的缺陷。

1039 intoxicating   

a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的

参考例句：

• Power can be intoxicating. 权力能让人得意忘形。
• On summer evenings the flowers gave forth an almost intoxicating scent. 夏日的傍晚，鲜花散发出醉人的芳香。

1040 benign   

adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的

参考例句：

• The benign weather brought North America a bumper crop.温和的气候给北美带来大丰收。
• Martha is a benign old lady.玛莎是个仁慈的老妇人。

1041 erasing   

v.擦掉( erase的现在分词 )；抹去；清除

参考例句：

• He was like a sponge, erasing the past, soaking up the future. 他象一块海绵，挤出过去，吸进未来。 来自辞典例句
• Suddenly, fear overtook longing, erasing memories. 突然，恐惧淹没了渴望，泯灭了回忆。 来自辞典例句

1042 pivot   

v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的

参考例句：

• She is the central pivot of creation and represents the feminine aspect in all things.她是创造的中心枢轴，表现出万物的女性面貌。
• If a spring is present,the hand wheel will pivot on the spring.如果有弹簧，手轮的枢轴会装在弹簧上。

1043 wilfully   

adv.任性固执地；蓄意地

参考例句：

• Don't wilfully cling to your reckless course. 不要一意孤行。 来自辞典例句
• These missionaries even wilfully extended the extraterritoriality to Chinese converts and interfered in Chinese judicial authority. 这些传教士还肆意将"治外法权"延伸至中国信徒，干涉司法。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书

1044 evading   

逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出

参考例句：

• Segmentation of a project is one means of evading NEPA. 把某一工程进行分割，是回避《国家环境政策法》的一种手段。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Too many companies, she says, are evading the issue. 她说太多公司都在回避这个问题。

1045 repented   

对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He repented his thoughtlessness. 他后悔自己的轻率。
• Darren repented having shot the bird. 达伦后悔射杀了那只鸟。

1046 blotted   

涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干

参考例句：

• She blotted water off the table with a towel. 她用毛巾擦干桌上的水。
• The blizzard blotted out the sky and the land. 暴风雪铺天盖地而来。

1047 awakened   

v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到

参考例句：

• She awakened to the sound of birds singing. 她醒来听到鸟的叫声。
• The public has been awakened to the full horror of the situation. 公众完全意识到了这一状况的可怕程度。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1048 blurt   

vt.突然说出，脱口说出

参考例句：

• If you can blurt out 300 sentences,you can make a living in America.如果你能脱口而出300句英语，你可以在美国工作。
• I will blurt out one passage every week.我每星期要脱口而出一篇短文！

1049 concussion   

n.脑震荡；震动

参考例句：

• He was carried off the field with slight concussion.他因轻微脑震荡给抬离了现场。
• She suffers from brain concussion.她得了脑震荡。

1050 habitually   

ad.习惯地，通常地

参考例句：

• The pain of the disease caused him habitually to furrow his brow. 病痛使他习惯性地紧皱眉头。
• Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair. 我已经习惯于服从约翰，我来到他的椅子跟前。

1051 delicacy   

n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴

参考例句：

• We admired the delicacy of the craftsmanship.我们佩服工艺师精巧的手艺。
• He sensed the delicacy of the situation.他感觉到了形势的微妙。

1052 brutally   

adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地

参考例句：

• The uprising was brutally put down.起义被残酷地镇压下去了。
• A pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed.一场争取民主的起义被残酷镇压了。

1053 morose   

adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的

参考例句：

• He was silent and morose.他沉默寡言、郁郁寡欢。
• The publicity didn't make him morose or unhappy?公开以后，没有让他郁闷或者不开心吗？

1054 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

1055 propeller   

n.螺旋桨，推进器

参考例句：

• The propeller started to spin around.螺旋桨开始飞快地旋转起来。
• A rope jammed the boat's propeller.一根绳子卡住了船的螺旋桨。

1056 tunic   

n.束腰外衣

参考例句：

• The light loose mantle was thrown over his tunic.一件轻质宽大的斗蓬披在上衣外面。
• Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel,young man.你的外套和裤子跟你那首饰可不相称呢，年轻人。

1057 antidote   

n.解毒药，解毒剂

参考例句：

• There is no known antidote for this poison.这种毒药没有解药。
• Chinese physicians used it as an antidote for snake poison.中医师用它来解蛇毒。

1058 futility   

n.无用

参考例句：

• She could see the utter futility of trying to protest. 她明白抗议是完全无用的。
• The sheer futility of it all exasperates her. 它毫无用处，这让她很生气。

1059 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

1060 gallant   

adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的

参考例句：

• Huang Jiguang's gallant deed is known by all men. 黄继光的英勇事迹尽人皆知。
• These gallant soldiers will protect our country.这些勇敢的士兵会保卫我们的国家的。

1061 jovially   

adv.愉快地，高兴地

参考例句：

• "Hello, Wilson, old man,'said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?" “哈罗，威尔逊，你这家伙，”汤姆说，一面嘻嘻哈哈地拍拍他的肩膀，“生意怎么样？” 来自英汉文学 - 盖茨比
• Hall greeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Walson scowled as they grunted curt "Good Mornings." 霍尔兴致十足地向他打招呼，戈曼和沃森却满脸不豫之色，敷衍地咕哝句“早安”。 来自辞典例句

1062 repartee   

n.机敏的应答

参考例句：

• This diplomat possessed an excellent gift for repartee.这位外交官具有卓越的应对才能。
• He was a brilliant debater and his gift of repartee was celebrated.他擅长辩论，以敏于应答著称。

1063 prevarication   

n.支吾；搪塞；说谎；有枝有叶

参考例句：

• The longer negotiations drag on, the greater the risk of permanent prevarication. 谈判拖延的时间越久，长期推诿责任的可能性就越大。 来自互联网
• The result can be a lot of needless prevarication. 结果就是带来一堆的借口。 来自互联网

1064 docility   

n.容易教，易驾驶，驯服

参考例句：

• He was trying to plant the seed of revolt, arouse that placid peasant docility. 他想撒下反叛的种子，唤醒这个安分驯良的农民的觉悟。 来自辞典例句
• With unusual docility, Nancy stood up and followed him as he left the newsroom. 南希以难得的顺从站起身来，尾随着他离开了新闻编辑室。 来自辞典例句

1065 borough   

n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇

参考例句：

• He was slated for borough president.他被提名做自治区主席。
• That's what happened to Harry Barritt of London's Bromley borough.住在伦敦的布罗姆利自治市的哈里.巴里特就经历了此事。

1066 discourses   

论文( discourse的名词复数 )； 演说； 讲道； 话语

参考例句：

• It is said that his discourses were very soul-moving. 据说他的讲道词是很能动人心灵的。
• I am not able to repeat the excellent discourses of this extraordinary man. 这位异人的高超言论我是无法重述的。

1067 indefatigable   

adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的

参考例句：

• His indefatigable spirit helped him to cope with his illness.他不屈不挠的精神帮助他对抗病魔。
• He was indefatigable in his lectures on the aesthetics of love.在讲授关于爱情的美学时，他是不知疲倦的。

1068 erring   

做错事的，错误的

参考例句：

• Instead of bludgeoning our erring comrades, we should help them with criticism. 对犯错误的同志， 要批评帮助，不能一棍子打死。
• She had too little faith in mankind not to know that they were erring. 她对男人们没有信心，知道他们总要犯错误的。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

1069 maliciously   

adv.有敌意地

参考例句：

• He was charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm. 他被控蓄意严重伤害他人身体。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His enemies maliciously conspired to ruin him. 他的敌人恶毒地密谋搞垮他。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

1070 repenting   

对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was repenting rapidly. 他很快就后悔了。
• Repenting of his crime the thief returned the jewels and confessed to the police. 那贼对自己的罪行痛悔不已；归还了珠宝并向警方坦白。

1071 zeal   

n.热心，热情，热忱

参考例句：

• Revolutionary zeal caught them up,and they joined the army.革命热情激励他们，于是他们从军了。
• They worked with great zeal to finish the project.他们热情高涨地工作，以期完成这个项目。

1072 procure   

vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条

参考例句：

• Can you procure some specimens for me?你能替我弄到一些标本吗？
• I'll try my best to procure you that original French novel.我将尽全力给你搞到那本原版法国小说。

1073 procured   

v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条

参考例句：

• These cars are to be procured through open tender. 这些汽车要用公开招标的办法购买。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• A friend procured a position in the bank for my big brother. 一位朋友为我哥哥谋得了一个银行的职位。 来自《用法词典》

1074 abode   

n.住处，住所

参考例句：

• It was ten months before my father discovered his abode.父亲花了十个月的功夫，才好不容易打听到他的住处。
• Welcome to our humble abode!欢迎光临寒舍！

1075 facetiously   

adv.爱开玩笑地；滑稽地，爱开玩笑地

参考例句：

• The house had been facetiously named by some waggish officer. 这房子是由某个机智幽默的军官命名的。 来自辞典例句
• I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit. 我有时候也曾将起因全部可笑地推在却利？福罗萨的身上。 来自辞典例句

1076 nominally   

在名义上，表面地； 应名儿

参考例句：

• Dad, nominally a Methodist, entered Churches only for weddings and funerals. 爸名义上是卫理公会教徒，可只去教堂参加婚礼和葬礼。
• The company could not indicate a person even nominally responsible for staff training. 该公司甚至不能指出一个名义上负责职员培训的人。

1077 wringing   

淋湿的，湿透的

参考例句：

• He was wringing wet after working in the field in the hot sun. 烈日下在田里干活使他汗流满面。
• He is wringing out the water from his swimming trunks. 他正在把游泳裤中的水绞出来。

1078 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

1079 plaintive   

adj.可怜的，伤心的

参考例句：

• Her voice was small and plaintive.她的声音微弱而哀伤。
• Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里，一位老太太伤心地哭起来。

1080 magistrate   

n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官

参考例句：

• The magistrate committed him to prison for a month.法官判处他一个月监禁。
• John was fined 1000 dollars by the magistrate.约翰被地方法官罚款1000美元。

1081 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

1082 enthusiasts   

n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A group of enthusiasts have undertaken the reconstruction of a steam locomotive. 一群火车迷已担负起重造蒸汽机车的任务。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Now a group of enthusiasts are going to have the plane restored. 一群热心人计划修复这架飞机。 来自新概念英语第二册

1083 quelled   

v.（用武力）制止，结束，镇压( quell的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Thanks to Kao Sung-nien's skill, the turmoil had been quelled. 亏高松年有本领，弹压下去。 来自汉英文学 - 围城
• Mr. Atkinson was duly quelled. 阿特金森先生被及时地将了一军。 来自辞典例句

1084 antagonism   

n.对抗，敌对，对立

参考例句：

• People did not feel a strong antagonism for established policy.人们没有对既定方针产生强烈反应。
• There is still much antagonism between trades unions and the oil companies.工会和石油公司之间仍然存在着相当大的敌意。

1085 bevy   

n.一群

参考例句：

• A bevy of bathing beauties appeared on the beach.沙滩上出现了一群游泳的美女。
• Look,there comes a bevy of ladies.看，一群女人来了。

1086 vocally   

adv. 用声音, 用口头, 藉著声音

参考例句：

• She is not SCREAMER or MOANER - She is VOCALLY APPRECIATIVE. 她并不乱叫或发牢骚，只是用声音表示喜怒。
• The left has been vocally against. 左派力量一直竭力声讨。

1087 soothed   

v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦

参考例句：

• The music soothed her for a while. 音乐让她稍微安静了一会儿。
• The soft modulation of her voice soothed the infant. 她柔和的声调使婴儿安静了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

1088 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

1089 expounded   

论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He expounded his views on the subject to me at great length. 他详细地向我阐述了他在这个问题上的观点。
• He warmed up as he expounded his views. 他在阐明自己的意见时激动起来了。

1090 courageously   

ad.勇敢地，无畏地

参考例句：

• Under the correct leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the army and civilians in flooded areas fought the floods courageously, reducing the losses to the minimum. 在中共中央、国务院的正确领导下，灾区广大军民奋勇抗洪，把灾害的损失减少到了最低限度。
• He fought death courageously though his life was draining away. 他虽然生命垂危，但仍然勇敢地与死亡作斗争。

1091 delta   

n.（流的）角洲

参考例句：

• He has been to the delta of the Nile.他曾去过尼罗河三角洲。
• The Nile divides at its mouth and forms a delta.尼罗河在河口分岔，形成了一个三角洲。

1092 hoofs   

n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The stamp of the horse's hoofs on the wooden floor was loud. 马蹄踏在木头地板上的声音很响。 来自辞典例句
• The noise of hoofs called him back to the other window. 马蹄声把他又唤回那扇窗子口。 来自辞典例句

1093 missionary   

adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士

参考例句：

• She taught in a missionary school for a couple of years.她在一所教会学校教了两年书。
• I hope every member understands the value of missionary work. 我希望教友都了解传教工作的价值。

1094 flares   

n.喇叭裤v.（使）闪耀( flare的第三人称单数 )；（使）（船舷）外倾；（使）鼻孔张大；（使）（衣裙、酒杯等）呈喇叭形展开

参考例句：

• The side of a ship flares from the keel to the deck. 船舷从龙骨向甲板外倾。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He's got a fiery temper and flares up at the slightest provocation. 他是火爆性子，一点就着。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

1095 alliteration   

n.（诗歌的）头韵

参考例句：

• We chose alliteration on the theory a little vulgarity enhances memory.在理论上我们选择有点儿粗俗的头韵来帮助记忆。
• It'seems to me that in prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason.依我看，在散文里，头韵只能在一定的场合使用。

1096 wig   

n.假发

参考例句：

• The actress wore a black wig over her blond hair.那个女演员戴一顶黑色假发罩住自己的金黄色头发。
• He disguised himself with a wig and false beard.他用假发和假胡须来乔装。

1097 wigs   

n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They say that wigs will be coming in again this year. 据说今年又要流行戴假发了。 来自辞典例句
• Frank, we needed more wigs than we thought, and we have to do some advertising. 弗兰克，因为我们需要更多的假发，而且我们还要做点广告。 来自电影对白

1098 perspiring   

v.出汗，流汗( perspire的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He had been working hard and was perspiring profusely. 他一直在努力干活，身上大汗淋漓的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. 于是他们就“痛痛快快地比一比”了，结果比得两个人气喘吁吁、汗流浃背。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

1099 croak   

vi.嘎嘎叫，发牢骚

参考例句：

• Everyone seemed rather out of sorts and inclined to croak.每个人似乎都有点不对劲，想发发牢骚。
• Frogs began to croak with the rainfall.蛙随着雨落开始哇哇叫。

1100 cleft   

n.裂缝；adj.裂开的

参考例句：

• I hid the message in a cleft in the rock.我把情报藏在石块的裂缝里。
• He was cleft from his brother during the war.在战争期间，他与他的哥哥分离。

1101 wailed   

v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She wailed over her father's remains. 她对着父亲的遗体嚎啕大哭。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The women of the town wailed over the war victims. 城里的妇女为战争的死难者们痛哭。 来自辞典例句

1102 meekly   

adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地

参考例句：

• He stood aside meekly when the new policy was proposed. 当有人提出新政策时，他唯唯诺诺地站 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He meekly accepted the rebuke. 他顺从地接受了批评。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1103 nun   

n.修女，尼姑

参考例句：

• I can't believe that the famous singer has become a nun.我无法相信那个著名的歌星已做了修女。
• She shaved her head and became a nun.她削发为尼。

1104 milestone   

n.里程碑；划时代的事件

参考例句：

• The film proved to be a milestone in the history of cinema.事实证明这部影片是电影史上的一个里程碑。
• I think this is a very important milestone in the relations between our two countries.我认为这是我们两国关系中一个十分重要的里程碑。

1105 trickled   

v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动

参考例句：

• Blood trickled down his face. 血从他脸上一滴滴流下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The tears trickled down her cheeks. 热泪一滴滴从她脸颊上滚下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1106 barges   

驳船( barge的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The tug is towing three barges. 那只拖船正拖着三只驳船。
• There were plenty of barges dropping down with the tide. 有不少驳船顺流而下。

1107 resounded   

v.（指声音等）回荡于某处( resound的过去式和过去分词 )；产生回响；（指某处）回荡着声音

参考例句：

• Laughter resounded through the house. 笑声在屋里回荡。
• The echo resounded back to us. 回声传回到我们的耳中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1108 adverse   

adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的

参考例句：

• He is adverse to going abroad.他反对出国。
• The improper use of medicine could lead to severe adverse reactions.用药不当会产生严重的不良反应。

1109 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

1110 partisans   

游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙

参考例句：

• Every movement has its partisans. 每一运动都有热情的支持者。
• He was rescued by some Italian partisans. 他被几名意大利游击队员所救。

1111 martyrs   

n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情）

参考例句：

• the early Christian martyrs 早期基督教殉道者
• They paid their respects to the revolutionary martyrs. 他们向革命烈士致哀。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

1112 eddy   

n.漩涡，涡流

参考例句：

• The motor car disappeared in eddy of dust.汽车在一片扬尘的涡流中不见了。
• In Taylor's picture,the eddy is the basic element of turbulence.在泰勒的描述里，旋涡是湍流的基本要素。

1113 alcove   

n.凹室

参考例句：

• The bookcase fits neatly into the alcove.书架正好放得进壁凹。
• In the alcoves on either side of the fire were bookshelves.火炉两边的凹室里是书架。

1114 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

1115 follower   

n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒

参考例句：

• He is a faithful follower of his home football team.他是他家乡足球队的忠实拥护者。
• Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。

1116 pricks   

刺痛( prick的名词复数 )； 刺孔； 刺痕； 植物的刺

参考例句：

• My skin pricks sometimes. 我的皮肤有时感到刺痛。
• You must obey the rule. It is useless for you to kick against the pricks. 你必须遵守规定，对抗对你是无益的。

1117 agitators   

n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机

参考例句：

• The mud is too viscous, you must have all the agitators run. 泥浆太稠，你们得让所有的搅拌机都开着。 来自辞典例句
• Agitators urged the peasants to revolt/revolution. 煽动者怂恿农民叛变（革命）。 来自辞典例句

1118 recoiling   

v.畏缩( recoil的现在分词 )；退缩；报应；返回

参考例句：

• Some of the energy intended for the photon is drained off by the recoiling atom. 原来给予光子的能量有一部分为反冲原子所消耗。 来自辞典例句
• A second method watches for another effect of the recoiling nucleus: ionization. 探测器使用的第二种方法，是观察反冲原子核的另一种效应：游离。 来自互联网

1119 revelling   

v.作乐( revel的现在分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉

参考例句：

• I think he's secretly revelling in all the attention. 我觉得他对于能够引起广泛的注意心里感到飘飘然。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They were drinking and revelling all night. 他们整夜喝酒作乐。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1120 metropolitan   

adj.大城市的，大都会的

参考例句：

• Metropolitan buildings become taller than ever.大城市的建筑变得比以前更高。
• Metropolitan residents are used to fast rhythm.大都市的居民习惯于快节奏。

1121 grill   

n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问

参考例句：

• Put it under the grill for a minute to brown the top.放在烤架下烤一分钟把上面烤成金黄色。
• I'll grill you some mutton.我来给你烤一些羊肉吃。

1122 rampant   

adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的

参考例句：

• Sickness was rampant in the area.该地区疾病蔓延。
• You cannot allow children to rampant through the museum.你不能任由小孩子在博物馆里乱跑。

1123 exhaustion   

n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述

参考例句：

• She slept the sleep of exhaustion.她因疲劳而酣睡。
• His exhaustion was obvious when he fell asleep standing.他站着睡着了，显然是太累了。

1124 drooped   

弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Her eyelids drooped as if she were on the verge of sleep. 她眼睑低垂好像快要睡着的样子。
• The flowers drooped in the heat of the sun. 花儿晒蔫了。

1125 testament   

n.遗嘱；证明

参考例句：

• This is his last will and testament.这是他的遗愿和遗嘱。
• It is a testament to the power of political mythology.这说明，编造政治神话可以产生多大的威力。

1126 relaxation   

n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐

参考例句：

• The minister has consistently opposed any relaxation in the law.部长一向反对法律上的任何放宽。
• She listens to classical music for relaxation.她听古典音乐放松。

1127 doffed   

v.脱去，（尤指）脱帽( doff的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He doffed his hat. 他脱掉帽子。 来自互联网
• The teacher is forced to help her pull next pulling again mouth, unlock button, doffed jacket. 老师只好再帮她拉下拉口，解开扣子，将外套脱了下来。 来自互联网

1128 oases   

n.（沙漠中的）绿洲( oasis的名词复数 )；（困苦中）令人快慰的地方（或时刻）；乐土；乐事

参考例句：

• There was a hundred miles between the two oases. 这两片绿洲间有一百英里。 来自辞典例句
• Where underground water comes to the surface, there are oases. 地下水流到地表的地方，就成为了绿洲。 来自互联网

1129 dint   

n.由于，靠；凹坑

参考例句：

• He succeeded by dint of hard work.他靠苦干获得成功。
• He reached the top by dint of great effort.他费了很大的劲终于爬到了顶。

1130 exclusion   

n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行

参考例句：

• Don't revise a few topics to the exclusion of all others.不要修改少数论题以致排除所有其他的。
• He plays golf to the exclusion of all other sports.他专打高尔夫球，其他运动一概不参加。

1131 robin   

n.知更鸟，红襟鸟

参考例句：

• The robin is the messenger of spring.知更鸟是报春的使者。
• We knew spring was coming as we had seen a robin.我们看见了一只知更鸟，知道春天要到了。

1132 tempestuous   

adj.狂暴的

参考例句：

• She burst into a tempestuous fit of anger.她勃然大怒。
• Dark and tempestuous was night.夜色深沉，狂风肆虐，暴雨倾盆。

1133 chirp   

v.(尤指鸟)唧唧喳喳的叫

参考例句：

• The birds chirp merrily at the top of tree.鸟儿在枝头欢快地啾啾鸣唱。
• The sparrows chirp outside the window every morning.麻雀每天清晨在窗外嘁嘁喳喳地叫。

1134 robins   

n.知更鸟，鸫( robin的名词复数 )；（签名者不分先后，以避免受责的）圆形签名抗议书（或请愿书）

参考例句：

• The robins occupied their former nest. 那些知更鸟占了它们的老窝。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Benjamin Robins then entered the fray with articles and a book. 而后，Benjamin Robins以他的几篇专论和一本书参加争论。 来自辞典例句

1135 inborn   

adj.天生的，生来的，先天的

参考例句：

• He is a man with an inborn love of joke.他是一个生来就喜欢开玩笑的人。
• He had an inborn talent for languages.他有语言天分。

1136 stammer   

n.结巴，口吃；v.结结巴巴地说

参考例句：

• He's got a bad stammer.他口吃非常严重。
• We must not try to play off the boy troubled with a stammer.我们不可以取笑这个有口吃病的男孩。

1137 puddle   

n.(雨)水坑，泥潭

参考例句：

• The boy hopped the mud puddle and ran down the walk.这个男孩跳过泥坑，沿着人行道跑了。
• She tripped over and landed in a puddle.她绊了一下，跌在水坑里。

1138 quack   

n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子

参考例句：

• He describes himself as a doctor,but I feel he is a quack.他自称是医生，可是我感觉他是个江湖骗子。
• The quack was stormed with questions.江湖骗子受到了猛烈的质问。

1139 gilded   

a.镀金的，富有的

参考例句：

• The golden light gilded the sea. 金色的阳光使大海如金子般闪闪发光。
• "Friends, they are only gilded disks of lead!" "朋友们，这只不过是些镀金的铅饼！ 来自英汉文学 - 败坏赫德莱堡

1140 anecdotes   

n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• amusing anecdotes about his brief career as an actor 关于他短暂演员生涯的趣闻逸事
• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman. 他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1141 eminence   

n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家

参考例句：

• He is a statesman of great eminence.他是个声名显赫的政治家。
• Many of the pilots were to achieve eminence in the aeronautical world.这些飞行员中很多人将会在航空界声名显赫。

1142 omission   

n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长

参考例句：

• The omission of the girls was unfair.把女孩排除在外是不公平的。
• The omission of this chapter from the third edition was a gross oversight.第三版漏印这一章是个大疏忽。

1143 irritation   

n.激怒，恼怒，生气

参考例句：

• He could not hide his irritation that he had not been invited.他无法掩饰因未被邀请而生的气恼。
• Barbicane said nothing,but his silence covered serious irritation.巴比康什么也不说，但是他的沉默里潜伏着阴郁的怒火。

1144 squeaks   

n.短促的尖叫声，吱吱声( squeak的名词复数 )v.短促地尖叫( squeak的第三人称单数 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者

参考例句：

• The upper-middle-classes communicate with each other in inaudible squeaks, like bats. 那些上中层社会的人交谈起来象是蚊子在哼哼，你根本听不见。 来自辞典例句
• She always squeaks out her ideas when she is excited. 她一激动总是尖声说出自己的想法。 来自互联网

1145 vein   

n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络

参考例句：

• The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
• The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。

1146 rendering   

n.表现，描写

参考例句：

• She gave a splendid rendering of Beethoven's piano sonata.她精彩地演奏了贝多芬的钢琴奏鸣曲。
• His narrative is a super rendering of dialect speech and idiom.他的叙述是方言和土语最成功的运用。

1147 pettishly   

参考例句：

• \"Oh, no,'she said, almost pettishly, \"I just don't feel very good.\" “哦，不是，\"她说，几乎想发火了，\"我只是觉得不大好受。” 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. 于是他一气之下扔掉那个弹子，站在那儿沉思。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

1148 lodging   

n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍

参考例句：

• The bill is inclusive of the food and lodging. 账单包括吃、住费用。
• Where can you find lodging for the night? 你今晚在哪里借宿?

1149 abash   

v.使窘迫，使局促不安

参考例句：

• Nothing could abash him.没有什么可以使他感到难堪。
• When the child see all the room fille with strangers,he is much abash.那小孩一看到满屋子都是陌生人，感到非常局促不安。

1150 panes   

窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sun caught the panes and flashed back at him. 阳光照到窗玻璃上，又反射到他身上。
• The window-panes are dim with steam. 玻璃窗上蒙上了一层蒸汽。

1151 trampled   

踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯

参考例句：

• He gripped his brother's arm lest he be trampled by the mob. 他紧抓着他兄弟的胳膊，怕他让暴民踩着。
• People were trampled underfoot in the rush for the exit. 有人在拼命涌向出口时被踩在脚下。

1152 tablecloth   

n.桌布，台布

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth.他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。
• She smoothed down a wrinkled tablecloth.她把起皱的桌布熨平了。

1153 sullen   

adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的

参考例句：

• He looked up at the sullen sky.他抬头看了一眼阴沉的天空。
• Susan was sullen in the morning because she hadn't slept well.苏珊今天早上郁闷不乐，因为昨晚没睡好。

1154 moodily   

adv.喜怒无常地；情绪多变地；心情不稳地；易生气地

参考例句：

• Pork slipped from the room as she remained staring moodily into the distance. 阿宝从房间里溜了出来，留她独个人站在那里瞪着眼睛忧郁地望着远处。 来自辞典例句
• He climbed moodily into the cab, relieved and distressed. 他忧郁地上了马车，既松了一口气，又忧心忡忡。 来自互联网

1155 multiplication   

n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法

参考例句：

• Our teacher used to drum our multiplication tables into us.我们老师过去老是让我们反覆背诵乘法表。
• The multiplication of numbers has made our club building too small.会员的增加使得我们的俱乐部拥挤不堪。

1156 malice   

n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋

参考例句：

• I detected a suggestion of malice in his remarks.我觉察出他说的话略带恶意。
• There was a strong current of malice in many of his portraits.他的许多肖像画中都透着一股强烈的怨恨。

1157 eldest   

adj.最年长的，最年老的

参考例句：

• The King's eldest son is the heir to the throne.国王的长子是王位的继承人。
• The castle and the land are entailed on the eldest son.城堡和土地限定由长子继承。

1158 fatuity   

n.愚蠢，愚昧

参考例句：

• This is no doubt the first step out of confusion and fatuity.这无疑是摆脱混乱与愚味的第一步。
• Therefore,ignorance of history often leads to fatuity in politics.历史的无知，往往导致政治上的昏庸。

1159 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

1160 dictates   

n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布

参考例句：

• Convention dictates that a minister should resign in such a situation. 依照常规部长在这种情况下应该辞职。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He always follows the dictates of common sense. 他总是按常识行事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1161 incorrigibly   

adv.无法矫正地；屡教不改地；无可救药地；不能矫正地

参考例句：

• He was incorrigibly obstinate, no matter who persuaded him. 不论谁劝他，他都顽固不化。 来自互联网
• Medora is incorrigibly romantic. 梅朵拉很富于幻想，这是不可救药的。 来自互联网

1162 apprising   

v.告知，通知( apprise的现在分词 )；评价

参考例句：

1163 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

1164 mumbled   

含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He mumbled something to me which I did not quite catch. 他对我叽咕了几句话，可我没太听清楚。
• George mumbled incoherently to himself. 乔治语无伦次地喃喃自语。

1165 hysterically   

ad. 歇斯底里地

参考例句：

• The children giggled hysterically. 孩子们歇斯底里地傻笑。
• She sobbed hysterically, and her thin body was shaken. 她歇斯底里地抽泣着，她瘦弱的身体哭得直颤抖。

1166 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

1167 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

1168 revert   

v.恢复，复归，回到

参考例句：

• Let us revert to the earlier part of the chapter.让我们回到本章的前面部分。
• Shall we revert to the matter we talked about yesterday?我们接着昨天谈过的问题谈，好吗？

1169 restive   

adj.不安宁的，不安静的

参考例句：

• The government has done nothing to ease restrictions and manufacturers are growing restive.政府未采取任何措施放松出口限制,因此国内制造商变得焦虑不安。
• The audience grew restive.观众变得不耐烦了。

1170 munched   

v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She munched on an apple. 她在大口啃苹果。
• The rabbit munched on the fresh carrots. 兔子咯吱咯吱地嚼着新鲜胡萝卜。 来自辞典例句

1171 tripe   

n.废话，肚子, 内脏

参考例句：

• I can't eat either tripe or liver.我不吃肚也不吃肝。
• I don't read that tripe.我才不看那种无聊的东西呢。

1172 mirage   

n.海市蜃楼，幻景

参考例句：

• Perhaps we are all just chasing a mirage.也许我们都只是在追逐一个幻想。
• Western liberalism was always a mirage.西方自由主义永远是一座海市蜃楼。

1173 adherents   

n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙

参考例句：

• He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1174 absurdity   

n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论

参考例句：

• The proposal borders upon the absurdity.这提议近乎荒谬。
• The absurdity of the situation made everyone laugh.情况的荒谬可笑使每个人都笑了。

1175 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

1176 earnings   

n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得

参考例句：

• That old man lives on the earnings of his daughter.那个老人靠他女儿的收入维持生活。
• Last year there was a 20% decrease in his earnings.去年他的收入减少了20%。

1177 bristles   

短而硬的毛发，刷子毛( bristle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the bristles on his chin 他下巴上的胡楂子
• This job bristles with difficulties. 这项工作困难重重。

1178 whim   

n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想

参考例句：

• I bought the encyclopedia on a whim.我凭一时的兴致买了这本百科全书。
• He had a sudden whim to go sailing today.今天他突然想要去航海。

1179 undesirable   

adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子

参考例句：

• They are the undesirable elements among the employees.他们是雇员中的不良分子。
• Certain chemicals can induce undesirable changes in the nervous system.有些化学物质能在神经系统中引起不良变化。

1180 outlet   

n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄

参考例句：

• The outlet of a water pipe was blocked.水管的出水口堵住了。
• Running is a good outlet for his energy.跑步是他发泄过剩精力的好方法。

1181 groove   

n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯

参考例句：

• They're happy to stay in the same old groove.他们乐于墨守成规。
• The cupboard door slides open along the groove.食橱门沿槽移开。

1182 languishing   

a. 衰弱下去的

参考例句：

• He is languishing for home. 他苦思家乡。
• How long will she go on languishing for her red-haired boy? 为想见到她的红头发的儿子，她还将为此烦恼多久呢？

1183 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

1184 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

• He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
• He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。

1185 gratitude   

adj.感激，感谢

参考例句：

• I have expressed the depth of my gratitude to him.我向他表示了深切的谢意。
• She could not help her tears of gratitude rolling down her face.她感激的泪珠禁不住沿着面颊流了下来。

1186 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

1187 bonnet   

n.无边女帽；童帽

参考例句：

• The baby's bonnet keeps the sun out of her eyes.婴孩的帽子遮住阳光，使之不刺眼。
• She wore a faded black bonnet garnished with faded artificial flowers.她戴着一顶褪了色的黑色无边帽，帽上缀着褪了色的假花。

1188 larches   

n.落叶松（木材）( larch的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Most larches have brittle branches and produce relatively few flowers on lower branches. 大多数落叶松具有脆弱的枝条，并且下部枝条开花较少。 来自辞典例句
• How many golden larches are there in the arboretum? 植物园里有几棵金钱松？ 来自互联网

1189 Flared   

adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The match flared and went out. 火柴闪亮了一下就熄了。
• The fire flared up when we thought it was out. 我们以为火已经熄灭，但它突然又燃烧起来。

1190 mythology   

n.神话，神话学，神话集

参考例句：

• In Greek mythology,Zeus was the ruler of Gods and men.在希腊神话中，宙斯是众神和人类的统治者。
• He is the hero of Greek mythology.他是希腊民间传说中的英雄。

1191 prattle   

n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音

参考例句：

• Amy's happy prattle became intolerable.艾美兴高采烈地叽叽喳喳说个不停，汤姆感到无法忍受。
• Flowing water and green grass witness your lover's endless prattle.流水缠绕，小草依依，都是你诉不尽的情话。

1192 crumbs   

int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式

参考例句：

• She stood up and brushed the crumbs from her sweater. 她站起身掸掉了毛衣上的面包屑。
• Oh crumbs! Is that the time? 啊，天哪！都这会儿啦？

1193 proximity   

n.接近，邻近

参考例句：

• Marriages in proximity of blood are forbidden by the law.法律规定禁止近亲结婚。
• Their house is in close proximity to ours.他们的房子很接近我们的。

1194 chestnut   

n.栗树，栗子

参考例句：

• We have a chestnut tree in the bottom of our garden.我们的花园尽头有一棵栗树。
• In summer we had tea outdoors,under the chestnut tree.夏天我们在室外栗树下喝茶。

1195 flute   

n.长笛；v.吹笛

参考例句：

• He took out his flute, and blew at it.他拿出笛子吹了起来。
• There is an extensive repertoire of music written for the flute.有很多供长笛演奏的曲目。

1196 yew   

n.紫杉属树木

参考例句：

• The leaves of yew trees are poisonous to cattle.紫杉树叶会令牛中毒。
• All parts of the yew tree are poisonous,including the berries.紫杉的各个部分都有毒，包括浆果。

1197 cryptic   

adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的

参考例句：

• She made a cryptic comment about how the film mirrored her life.她隐晦地表示说这部电影是她人生的写照。
• The new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms.新的保险单在编写时没有隐秘条款或秘密条款。

1198 irritably   

ad.易生气地

参考例句：

• He lost his temper and snapped irritably at the children. 他发火了，暴躁地斥责孩子们。
• On this account the silence was irritably broken by a reproof. 为了这件事，他妻子大声斥责，令人恼火地打破了宁静。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

1199 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

1200 impudent   

adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的

参考例句：

• She's tolerant toward those impudent colleagues.她对那些无礼的同事采取容忍的态度。
• The teacher threatened to kick the impudent pupil out of the room.老师威胁着要把这无礼的小学生撵出教室。

1201 beverage   

n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料

参考例句：

• The beverage is often colored with caramel.这种饮料常用焦糖染色。
• Beer is a beverage of the remotest time.啤酒是一种最古老的饮料。

1202 consultation   

n.咨询；商量；商议；会议

参考例句：

• The company has promised wide consultation on its expansion plans.该公司允诺就其扩展计划广泛征求意见。
• The scheme was developed in close consultation with the local community.该计划是在同当地社区密切磋商中逐渐形成的。

1203 attic   

n.顶楼，屋顶室

参考例句：

• Leakiness in the roof caused a damp attic.屋漏使顶楼潮湿。
• What's to be done with all this stuff in the attic?顶楼上的材料怎么处理？

1204 deluded   

v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Don't be deluded into thinking that we are out of danger yet. 不要误以为我们已脱离危险。
• She deluded everyone into following her. 她骗得每个人都听信她的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1205 patrician   

adj.贵族的，显贵的；n.贵族；有教养的人；罗马帝国的地方官

参考例句：

• The old patrician was buried in the family vault.这位老贵族埋在家族的墓地里。
• Its patrician dignity was a picturesque sham.它的贵族的尊严只是一套华丽的伪装。

1206 prefix   

n.前缀；vt.加…作为前缀；置于前面

参考例句：

• We prefix "Mr."to a man's name.我们在男士的姓名前加“先生”。
• In the word "unimportant ","un-" is a prefix.在单词“unimportant”中“un”是前缀。

1207 mesh   

n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络

参考例句：

• Their characters just don't mesh.他们的性格就是合不来。
• This is the net having half inch mesh.这是有半英寸网眼的网。

1208 incarnate   

adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的

参考例句：

• She was happiness incarnate.她是幸福的化身。
• That enemy officer is a devil incarnate.那个敌军军官简直是魔鬼的化身。

1209 conglomerate   

n.综合商社，多元化集团公司

参考例句：

• The firm has been taken over by an American conglomerate.该公司已被美国一企业集团接管。
• An American conglomerate holds a major share in the company.一家美国的大联合企业持有该公司的大部分股份。

1210 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

1211 bruised   

[医]青肿的，瘀紫的

参考例句：

• his bruised and bloodied nose 他沾满血的青肿的鼻子
• She had slipped and badly bruised her face. 她滑了一跤，摔得鼻青脸肿。

1212 grudged   

怀恨（grudge的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The mean man grudged the food his horse ate. 那个吝啬鬼舍不得喂马。
• He grudged the food his horse ate. 他吝惜马料。

1213 clenching   

v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I'll never get used to them, she thought, clenching her fists. 我永远也看不惯这些家伙，她握紧双拳，心里想。 来自飘（部分）
• Clenching her lips, she nodded. 她紧闭着嘴唇，点点头。 来自辞典例句

1214 ripples   

逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The moon danced on the ripples. 月亮在涟漪上舞动。
• The sea leaves ripples on the sand. 海水在沙滩上留下了波痕。

1215 venom   

n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨

参考例句：

• The snake injects the venom immediately after biting its prey.毒蛇咬住猎物之后马上注入毒液。
• In fact,some components of the venom may benefit human health.事实上，毒液的某些成分可能有益于人类健康。

1216 veins   

n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理

参考例句：

• The blood flows from the capillaries back into the veins. 血从毛细血管流回静脉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I felt a pleasant glow in all my veins from the wine. 喝过酒后我浑身的血都热烘烘的，感到很舒服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

1217 parched   

adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干

参考例句：

• Hot winds parched the crops.热风使庄稼干透了。
• The land in this region is rather dry and parched.这片土地十分干燥。