“Here,” went on Ayesha, laying her hand upon the rock—“here have I slept night by night for all these generations, with but a cloak to cover me. It did not become me that I should lie soft when my spouse3 yonder,” and she pointed4 to the rigid5 form, “lay stiff in death. Here night by night have I slept in his cold company—till, thou seest, this thick slab6, like the stairs down which we passed, has worn thin with the tossing of my form—so faithful have I been to thee even in thy space of sleep, Kallikrates. And now, mine own, thou shalt see a wonderful thing—living, thou shalt behold7 thyself dead—for well have I tended thee during all these years, Kallikrates. Art thou prepared?”
We made no answer, but gazed at each other with frightened eyes, the whole scene was so dreadful and so solemn. Ayesha advanced, and laid her hand upon the corner of the shroud9, and once more spoke10.
“Be not affrighted,” she said; “though the thing seem wonderful to thee—all we who live have thus lived before; nor is the very shape that holds us a stranger to the sun! Only we know it not, because memory writes no record, and earth hath gathered in the earth she lent us, for none have saved our glory from the grave. But I, by my arts and by the arts of those dead men of Kôr which I have learned, have held thee back, oh Kallikrates, from the dust, that the waxen stamp of beauty on thy face should ever rest before mine eye. ‘Twas a mask that memory might fill, serving to fashion out thy presence from the past, and give it strength to wander in the habitations of my thought, clad in a mummery of life that stayed my appetite with visions of dead days.
“Behold now, let the Dead and Living meet! Across the gulf12 of Time they still are one. Time hath no power against Identity, though sleep the merciful hath blotted13 out the tablets of our mind, and with oblivion sealed the sorrows that else would hound us from life to life, stuffing the brain with gathered griefs till it burst in the madness of uttermost despair. Still are they one, for the wrappings of our sleep shall roll away as thunder-clouds before the wind; the frozen voice of the past shall melt in music like mountain snows beneath the sun; and the weeping and the laughter of the lost hours shall be heard once more most sweetly echoing up the cliffs of immeasurable time.
“Ay, the sleep shall roll away, and the voices shall be heard, when down the completed chain, whereof our each existence is a link, the lightning of the Spirit hath passed to work out the purpose of our being; quickening and fusing those separated days of life, and shaping them to a staff whereon we may safely lean as we wend to our appointed fate.
“Therefore, have no fear, Kallikrates, when thou—living, and but lately born—shalt look upon thine own departed self, who breathed and died so long ago. I do but turn one page in thy Book of Being, and show thee what is writ11 thereon.
“Behold!”
With a sudden motion she drew the shroud from the cold form, and let the lamplight play upon it. I looked, and then shrank back terrified; since, say what she might in explanation, the sight was an uncanny one—for her explanations were beyond the grasp of our finite minds, and when they were stripped from the mists of vague esoteric philosophy, and brought into conflict with the cold and horrifying14 fact, did not do much to break its force. For there, stretched upon the stone bier before us, robed in white and perfectly15 preserved, was what appeared to be the body of Leo Vincey. I stared from Leo, standing16 there alive, to Leo lying there dead, and could see no difference; except, perhaps, that the body on the bier looked older. Feature for feature they were the same, even down to the crop of little golden curls, which was Leo’s most uncommon17 beauty. It even seemed to me, as I looked, that the expression on the dead man’s face resembled that which I had sometimes seen upon Leo’s when he was plunged18 into profound sleep. I can only sum up the closeness of the resemblance by saying that I never saw twins so exactly similar as that dead and living pair.
I turned to see what effect was produced upon Leo by the sight of his dead self, and found it to be one of partial stupefaction. He stood for two or three minutes staring, and said nothing, and when at last he spoke it was only to ejaculate—
“Cover it up, and take me away.”
“Nay, wait, Kallikrates,” said Ayesha, who, standing with the lamp raised above her head, flooding with its light her own rich beauty and the cold wonder of the death-clothed form upon the bier, resembled an inspired Sibyl rather than a woman, as she rolled out her majestic19 sentences with a grandeur20 and a freedom of utterance21 which I am, alas22! quite unable to reproduce.
“Wait, I would show thee something, that no tittle of my crime may be hidden from thee. Do thou, oh Holly23, open the garment on the breast of the dead Kallikrates, for perchance my lord may fear to touch it himself.”
I obeyed with trembling hands. It seemed a desecration24 and an unhallowed thing to touch that sleeping image of the live man by my side. Presently his broad chest was bare, and there upon it, right over the heart, was a wound, evidently inflicted25 with a spear.
“Thou seest, Kallikrates,” she said. “Know then that it was I who slew26 thee: in the Place of Life I gave thee death. I slew thee because of the Egyptian Amenartas, whom thou didst love, for by her wiles27 she held thy heart, and her I could not smite28 as but now I smote29 that woman, for she was too strong for me. In my haste and bitter anger I slew thee, and now for all these days have I lamented30 thee, and waited for thy coming. And thou hast come, and none can stand between thee and me, and of a truth now for death I will give thee life—not life eternal, for that none can give, but life and youth that shall endure for thousands upon thousands of years, and with it pomp, and power, and wealth, and all things that are good and beautiful, such as have been to no man before thee, nor shall be to any man who comes after. And now one thing more, and thou shalt rest and make ready for the day of thy new birth. Thou seest this body, which was thine own. For all these centuries it hath been my cold comfort and my companion, but now I need it no more, for I have thy living presence, and it can but serve to stir up memories of that which I would fain forget. Let it therefore go back to the dust from which I held it.
“Behold! I have prepared against this happy hour!” And going to the other shelf or stone ledge31, which she said had served her for a bed, she took from it a large vitrified double-handed vase, the mouth of which was tied up with a bladder. This she loosed, and then, having bent32 down and gently kissed the white forehead of the dead man, she undid33 the vase, and sprinkled its contents carefully over the form, taking, I observed, the greatest precautions against any drop of them touching34 us or herself, and then poured out what remained of the liquid upon the chest and head. Instantly a dense35 vapour arose, and the cave was filled with choking fumes36 that prevented us from seeing anything while the deadly acid (for I presume it was some tremendous preparation of that sort) did its work. From the spot where the body lay came a fierce fizzing and cracking sound, which ceased, however, before the fumes had cleared away. At last they were all gone, except a little cloud that still hung over the corpse37. In a couple of minutes more this too had vanished, and, wonderful as it may seem, it is a fact that on the stone bench that had supported the mortal remains38 of the ancient Kallikrates for so many centuries there was now nothing to be seen but a few handfuls of smoking white powder. The acid had utterly39 destroyed the body, and even in places eaten into the stone. Ayesha stooped down, and, taking a handful of this powder in her grasp, threw it into the air, saying at the same time, in a voice of calm solemnity—
“Dust to dust!—the past to the past!—the dead to the dead!—Kallikrates is dead, and is born again!”
The ashes floated noiselessly to the rocky floor, and we stood in awed40 silence and watched them fall, too overcome for words.
“Now leave me,” she said, “and sleep if ye may. I must watch and think, for to-morrow night we go hence, and the time is long since I trod the path that we must follow.”
Accordingly we bowed, and left her.
As we passed to our own apartment I peeped into Job’s sleeping place, to see how he fared, for he had gone away just before our interview with the murdered Ustane, quite prostrated41 by the terrors of the Amahagger festivity. He was sleeping soundly, good honest fellow that he was, and I rejoiced to think that his nerves, which, like those of most uneducated people, were far from strong, had been spared the closing scenes of this dreadful day. Then we entered our own chamber42, and here at last poor Leo, who, ever since he had looked upon that frozen image of his living self, had been in a state not far removed from stupefaction, burst out into a torrent43 of grief. Now that he was no longer in the presence of the dread8 She, his sense of the awfulness of all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder of Ustane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like a storm, and lashed44 him into an agony of remorse45 and terror which was painful to witness. He cursed himself—he cursed the hour when we had first seen the writing on the sherd, which was being so mysteriously verified, and bitterly he cursed his own weakness. Ayesha he dared not curse—who dared speak evil of such a woman, whose consciousness, for aught we knew, was watching us at the very moment?
“What am I to do, old fellow?” he groaned46, resting his head against my shoulder in the extremity47 of his grief. “I let her be killed—not that I could help that, but within five minutes I was kissing her murderess over her body. I am a degraded brute48, but I cannot resist that” (and here his voice sank)—“that awful sorceress. I know I shall do it again to-morrow; I know that I am in her power for always; if I never saw her again I should never think of anybody else during all my life; I must follow her as a needle follows a magnet; I would not go away now if I could; I could not leave her, my legs would not carry me, but my mind is still clear enough, and in my mind I hate her—at least, I think so. It is all so horrible; and that—that body! What can I make of it? It was I! I am sold into bondage49, old fellow, and she will take my soul as the price of herself!”
Then, for the first time, I told him that I was in a but very little better position; and I am bound to say that, notwithstanding his own infatuation, he had the decency50 to sympathise with me. Perhaps he did not think it worth while being jealous, realising that he had no cause so far as the lady was concerned. I went on to suggest that we should try to run away, but we soon rejected the project as futile51, and, to be perfectly honest, I do not believe that either of us would really have left Ayesha even if some superior power had suddenly offered to convey us from these gloomy caves and set us down in Cambridge. We could no more have left her than a moth52 can leave the light that destroys it. We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.
No man who once had seen She unveiled, and heard the music of her voice, and drunk in the bitter wisdom of her words, would willingly give up the sight for a whole sea of placid53 joys. How much more, then, was this likely to be so when, as in Leo’s case, to put myself out of the question, this extraordinary creature declared her utter and absolute devotion, and gave what appeared to be proofs of its having lasted for some two thousand years?
No doubt she was a wicked person, and no doubt she had murdered Ustane when she stood in her path, but then she was very faithful, and by a law of nature man is apt to think but lightly of a woman’s crimes, especially if that woman be beautiful, and the crime be committed for the love of him.
And then, for the rest, when had such a chance ever come to a man before as that which now lay in Leo’s hand? True, in uniting himself to this dread woman, he would place his life under the influence of a mysterious creature of evil tendencies,[*] but then that would be likely enough to happen to him in any ordinary marriage. On the other hand, however, no ordinary marriage could bring him such awful beauty—for awful is the only word that can describe it—such divine devotion, such wisdom, and command over the secrets of nature, and the place and power that they must win, or, lastly, the royal crown of unending youth, if indeed she could give that. No, on the whole, it is not wonderful that, though Leo was plunged in bitter shame and grief, such as any gentleman would have felt under the circumstances, he was not ready to entertain the idea of running away from his extraordinary fortune.
[*] After some months of consideration of this statement I
am bound to confess that I am not quite satisfied of its
truth. It is perfectly true that Ayesha committed a murder,
but I shrewdly suspect that, were we endowed with the same
absolute power, and if we had the same tremendous interest
at stake, we would be very apt to do likewise under parallel
circumstances. Also, it must be remembered that she looked
on it as an execution for disobedience under a system which
made the slightest disobedience punishable by death. Putting
aside this question of the murder, her evil-doing resolves
itself into the expression of views and the acknowledgment
of motives54 which are contrary to our preaching if not to our
practice. Now at first sight this might be fairly taken as a
proof of an evil nature, but when we come to consider the
great antiquity55 of the individual it becomes doubtful if it
was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises
from age and bitter experience, and the possession of
extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well known fact
that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the
question, the older we grow the more cynical56 and hardened we
get; indeed many of us are only saved by timely death from
utter moral petrifaction57 if not moral corruption58. No one
will deny that a young man is on the average better than an
old one, for he is without that experience of the order of
things that in certain thoughtful dispositions59 can hardly
fail to produce cynicism, and that disregard of acknowledged
methods and established custom which we call evil. Now the
oldest man upon the earth was but a babe compared to Ayesha,
and the wisest man upon the earth was not one-third as wise.
And the fruit of her wisdom was this, that there was but one
thing worth living for, and that was Love in its highest
sense, and to gain that good thing she was not prepared to
stop at trifles. This is really the sum of her evil doings,
and it must be remembered, on the other hand, that, whatever
may be thought of them, she had some virtues60 developed to a
degree very uncommon in either sex—constancy, for
instance.—L. H. H.
My own opinion is that he would have been mad if he had done so. But then I confess that my statement on the matter must be accepted with qualifications. I am in love with Ayesha myself to this day, and I would rather have been the object of her affection for one short week than that of any other woman in the world for a whole lifetime. And let me add that, if anybody who doubts this statement, and thinks me foolish for making it, could have seen Ayesha draw her veil and flash out in beauty on his gaze, his view would exactly coincide with my own. Of course, I am speaking of any man. We never had the advantage of a lady’s opinion of Ayesha, but I think it quite possible that she would have regarded the Queen with dislike, would have expressed her disapproval61 in some more or less pointed manner, and ultimately have got herself blasted.
For two hours or more Leo and I sat with shaken nerves and frightened eyes, and talked over the miraculous62 events through which we were passing. It seemed like a dream or a fairy tale, instead of the solemn, sober fact. Who would have believed that the writing on the potsherd was not only true, but that we should live to verify its truth, and that we two seekers should find her who was sought, patiently awaiting our coming in the tombs of Kôr? Who would have thought that in the person of Leo this mysterious woman should, as she believed, discover the being whom she awaited from century to century, and whose former earthly habitation she had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble63 hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence64 of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of that watching Providence65 which had thus chosen to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, and reveal to us for good or evil some glimpse of the possibilities of life.
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1
fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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spouse
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| n.配偶(指夫或妻) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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7
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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spoke
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| 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 | |
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writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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13
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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14
horrifying
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| a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的 | |
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15
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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16
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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17
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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18
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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19
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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20
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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21
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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22
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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23
holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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24
desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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25
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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27
wiles
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| n.（旨在欺骗或吸引人的）诡计，花招；欺骗，欺诈( wile的名词复数 ) | |
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28
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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29
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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30
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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32
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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33
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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34
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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35
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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36
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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37
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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38
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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39
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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40
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
prostrated
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| 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 | |
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42
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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43
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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44
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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45
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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46
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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47
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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48
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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49
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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50
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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51
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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52
moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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53
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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54
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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55
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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56
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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57
petrifaction
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| n.石化，化石；吓呆；惊呆 | |
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58
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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59
dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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60
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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61
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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62
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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63
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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