The great fact all the while, however, had been the incalculability; since he had supposed himself, from decade to decade, to be allowing, and in the most liberal and intelligent manner, for brilliancy of change. He actually saw that he had allowed for nothing; he missed what he would have been sure of finding, he found what he would never have imagined. Proportions and values were upside-down; the ugly things he had expected, the ugly things of his far-away youth, when he had too promptly waked up to a sense of the ugly—these uncanny phenomena9 placed him rather, as it happened, under the charm; whereas the “swagger” things, the modern, the monstrous10, the famous things, those he had more particularly, like thousands of ingenuous11 enquirers every year, come over to see, were exactly his sources of dismay. They were as so many set traps for displeasure, above all for reaction, of which his restless tread was constantly pressing the spring. It was interesting, doubtless, the whole show, but it would have been too disconcerting hadn’t a certain finer truth saved the situation. He had distinctly not, in this steadier light, come over all for the monstrosities; he had come, not only in the last analysis but quite on the face of the act, under an impulse with which they had nothing to do. He had come—putting the thing pompously—to look at his “property,” which he had thus for a third of a century not been within four thousand miles of; or, expressing it less sordidly13, he had yielded to the humour of seeing again his house on the jolly corner, as he usually, and quite fondly, described it—the one in which he had first seen the light, in which various members of his family had lived and had died, in which the holidays of his overschooled boyhood had been passed and the few social flowers of his chilled adolescence14 gathered, and which, alienated15 then for so long a period, had, through the successive deaths of his two brothers and the termination of old arrangements, come wholly into his hands. He was the owner of another, not quite so “good”—the jolly corner having been, from far back, superlatively extended and consecrated16; and the value of the pair represented his main capital, with an income consisting, in these later years, of their respective rents which (thanks precisely17 to their original excellent type) had never been depressingly low. He could live in “Europe,” as he had been in the habit of living, on the product of these flourishing New York leases, and all the better since, that of the second structure, the mere18 number in its long row, having within a twelvemonth fallen in, renovation19 at a high advance had proved beautifully possible.
These were items of property indeed, but he had found himself since his arrival distinguishing more than ever between them. The house within the street, two bristling20 blocks westward21, was already in course of reconstruction22 as a tall mass of flats; he had acceded23, some time before, to overtures24 for this conversion—in which, now that it was going forward, it had been not the least of his astonishments to find himself able, on the spot, and though without a previous ounce of such experience, to participate with a certain intelligence, almost with a certain authority. He had lived his life with his back so turned to such concerns and his face addressed to those of so different an order that he scarce knew what to make of this lively stir, in a compartment25 of his mind never yet penetrated26, of a capacity for business and a sense for construction. These virtues27, so common all round him now, had been dormant28 in his own organism—where it might be said of them perhaps that they had slept the sleep of the just. At present, in the splendid autumn weather—the autumn at least was a pure boon29 in the terrible place—he loafed about his “work” undeterred, secretly agitated30; not in the least “minding” that the whole proposition, as they said, was vulgar and sordid12, and ready to climb ladders, to walk the plank31, to handle materials and look wise about them, to ask questions, in fine, and challenge explanations and really “go into” figures.
It amused, it verily quite charmed him; and, by the same stroke, it amused, and even more, Alice Staverton, though perhaps charming her perceptibly less. She wasn’t, however, going to be better-off for it, as he was—and so astonishingly much: nothing was now likely, he knew, ever to make her better-off than she found herself, in the afternoon of life, as the delicately frugal32 possessor and tenant33 of the small house in Irving Place to which she had subtly managed to cling through her almost unbroken New York career. If he knew the way to it now better than to any other address among the dreadful multiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the whole place to some vast ledger-page, overgrown, fantastic, of ruled and criss-crossed lines and figures—if he had formed, for his consolation35, that habit, it was really not a little because of the charm of his having encountered and recognised, in the vast wilderness36 of the wholesale37, breaking through the mere gross generalisation of wealth and force and success, a small still scene where items and shades, all delicate things, kept the sharpness of the notes of a high voice perfectly39 trained, and where economy hung about like the scent40 of a garden. His old friend lived with one maid and herself dusted her relics41 and trimmed her lamps and polished her silver; she stood oft, in the awful modern crush, when she could, but she sallied forth42 and did battle when the challenge was really to “spirit,” the spirit she after all confessed to, proudly and a little shyly, as to that of the better time, that of their common, their quite far-away and antediluvian43 social period and order. She made use of the street-cars when need be, the terrible things that people scrambled45 for as the panic-stricken at sea scramble44 for the boats; she affronted46, inscrutably, under stress, all the public concussions47 and ordeals48; and yet, with that slim mystifying grace of her appearance, which defied you to say if she were a fair young woman who looked older through trouble, or a fine smooth older one who looked young through successful indifference49 with her precious reference, above all, to memories and histories into which he could enter, she was as exquisite50 for him as some pale pressed flower (a rarity to begin with), and, failing other sweetnesses, she was a sufficient reward of his effort. They had communities of knowledge, “their” knowledge (this discriminating51 possessive was always on her lips) of presences of the other age, presences all overlaid, in his case, by the experience of a man and the freedom of a wanderer, overlaid by pleasure, by infidelity, by passages of life that were strange and dim to her, just by “Europe” in short, but still unobscured, still exposed and cherished, under that pious52 visitation of the spirit from which she had never been diverted.
She had come with him one day to see how his “apartment-house” was rising; he had helped her over gaps and explained to her plans, and while they were there had happened to have, before her, a brief but lively discussion with the man in charge, the representative of the building firm that had undertaken his work. He had found himself quite “standing53 up” to this personage over a failure on the latter’s part to observe some detail of one of their noted54 conditions, and had so lucidly55 argued his case that, besides ever so prettily56 flushing, at the time, for sympathy in his triumph, she had afterwards said to him (though to a slightly greater effect of irony57) that he had clearly for too many years neglected a real gift. If he had but stayed at home he would have anticipated the inventor of the sky-scraper. If he had but stayed at home he would have discovered his genius in time really to start some new variety of awful architectural hare and run it till it burrowed58 in a gold mine. He was to remember these words, while the weeks elapsed, for the small silver ring they had sounded over the queerest and deepest of his own lately most disguised and most muffled59 vibrations60.
It had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight, it had broken out with the oddest abruptness61, this particular wanton wonderment: it met him there—and this was the image under which he himself judged the matter, or at least, not a little, thrilled and flushed with it—very much as he might have been met by some strange figure, some unexpected occupant, at a turn of one of the dim passages of an empty house. The quaint62 analogy quite hauntingly remained with him, when he didn’t indeed rather improve it by a still intenser form: that of his opening a door behind which he would have made sure of finding nothing, a door into a room shuttered and void, and yet so coming, with a great suppressed start, on some quite erect63 confronting presence, something planted in the middle of the place and facing him through the dusk. After that visit to the house in construction he walked with his companion to see the other and always so much the better one, which in the eastward64 direction formed one of the corners,—the “jolly” one precisely, of the street now so generally dishonoured65 and disfigured in its westward reaches, and of the comparatively conservative Avenue. The Avenue still had pretensions66, as Miss Staverton said, to decency67; the old people had mostly gone, the old names were unknown, and here and there an old association seemed to stray, all vaguely68, like some very aged34 person, out too late, whom you might meet and feel the impulse to watch or follow, in kindness, for safe restoration to shelter.
They went in together, our friends; he admitted himself with his key, as he kept no one there, he explained, preferring, for his reasons, to leave the place empty, under a simple arrangement with a good woman living in the neighbourhood and who came for a daily hour to open windows and dust and sweep. Spencer Brydon had his reasons and was growingly aware of them; they seemed to him better each time he was there, though he didn’t name them all to his companion, any more than he told her as yet how often, how quite absurdly often, he himself came. He only let her see for the present, while they walked through the great blank rooms, that absolute vacancy69 reigned70 and that, from top to bottom, there was nothing but Mrs. Muldoon’s broomstick, in a corner, to tempt71 the burglar. Mrs. Muldoon was then on the premises72, and she loquaciously73 attended the visitors, preceding them from room to room and pushing back shutters74 and throwing up sashes—all to show them, as she remarked, how little there was to see. There was little indeed to see in the great gaunt shell where the main dispositions75 and the general apportionment of space, the style of an age of ampler allowances, had nevertheless for its master their honest pleading message, affecting him as some good old servant’s, some lifelong retainer’s appeal for a character, or even for a retiring-pension; yet it was also a remark of Mrs. Muldoon’s that, glad as she was to oblige him by her noonday round, there was a request she greatly hoped he would never make of her. If he should wish her for any reason to come in after dark she would just tell him, if he “plased,” that he must ask it of somebody else.
The fact that there was nothing to see didn’t militate for the worthy76 woman against what one might see, and she put it frankly77 to Miss Staverton that no lady could be expected to like, could she? “craping up to thim top storeys in the ayvil hours.” The gas and the electric light were off the house, and she fairly evoked78 a gruesome vision of her march through the great grey rooms—so many of them as there were too!—with her glimmering79 taper80. Miss Staverton met her honest glare with a smile and the profession that she herself certainly would recoil81 from such an adventure. Spencer Brydon meanwhile held his peace—for the moment; the question of the “evil” hours in his old home had already become too grave for him. He had begun some time since to “crape,” and he knew just why a packet of candles addressed to that pursuit had been stowed by his own hand, three weeks before, at the back of a drawer of the fine old sideboard that occupied, as a “fixture,” the deep recess82 in the dining-room. Just now he laughed at his companions—quickly however changing the subject; for the reason that, in the first place, his laugh struck him even at that moment as starting the odd echo, the conscious human resonance83 (he scarce knew how to qualify it) that sounds made while he was there alone sent back to his ear or his fancy; and that, in the second, he imagined Alice Staverton for the instant on the point of asking him, with a divination84, if he ever so prowled. There were divinations he was unprepared for, and he had at all events averted enquiry by the time Mrs. Muldoon had left them, passing on to other parts.
There was happily enough to say, on so consecrated a spot, that could be said freely and fairly; so that a whole train of declarations was precipitated85 by his friend’s having herself broken out, after a yearning86 look round: “But I hope you don’t mean they want you to pull this to pieces!” His answer came, promptly, with his re-awakened wrath87: it was of course exactly what they wanted, and what they were “at” him for, daily, with the iteration of people who couldn’t for their life understand a man’s liability to decent feelings. He had found the place, just as it stood and beyond what he could express, an interest and a joy. There were values other than the beastly rent-values, and in short, in short—! But it was thus Miss Staverton took him up. “In short you’re to make so good a thing of your sky-scraper that, living in luxury on those ill-gotten gains, you can afford for a while to be sentimental88 here!” Her smile had for him, with the words, the particular mild irony with which he found half her talk suffused89; an irony without bitterness and that came, exactly, from her having so much imagination—not, like the cheap sarcasms90 with which one heard most people, about the world of “society,” bid for the reputation of cleverness, from nobody’s really having any. It was agreeable to him at this very moment to be sure that when he had answered, after a brief demur91, “Well, yes; so, precisely, you may put it!” her imagination would still do him justice. He explained that even if never a dollar were to come to him from the other house he would nevertheless cherish this one; and he dwelt, further, while they lingered and wandered, on the fact of the stupefaction he was already exciting, the positive mystification he felt himself create.
He spoke92 of the value of all he read into it, into the mere sight of the walls, mere shapes of the rooms, mere sound of the floors, mere feel, in his hand, of the old silver-plated knobs of the several mahogany doors, which suggested the pressure of the palms of the dead the seventy years of the past in fine that these things represented, the annals of nearly three generations, counting his grandfather’s, the one that had ended there, and the impalpable ashes of his long-extinct youth, afloat in the very air like microscopic93 motes94. She listened to everything; she was a woman who answered intimately but who utterly95 didn’t chatter96. She scattered97 abroad therefore no cloud of words; she could assent98, she could agree, above all she could encourage, without doing that. Only at the last she went a little further than he had done himself. “And then how do you know? You may still, after all, want to live here.” It rather indeed pulled him up, for it wasn’t what he had been thinking, at least in her sense of the words, “You mean I may decide to stay on for the sake of it?”
“Well, with such a home—!” But, quite beautifully, she had too much tact99 to dot so monstrous an i, and it was precisely an illustration of the way she didn’t rattle100. How could any one—of any wit—insist on any one else’s “wanting” to live in New York?
“Oh,” he said, “I might have lived here (since I had my opportunity early in life); I might have put in here all these years. Then everything would have been different enough—and, I dare say, ‘funny’ enough. But that’s another matter. And then the beauty of it—I mean of my perversity101, of my refusal to agree to a ‘deal’—is just in the total absence of a reason. Don’t you see that if I had a reason about the matter at all it would have to be the other way, and would then be inevitably102 a reason of dollars? There are no reasons here but of dollars. Let us therefore have none whatever—not the ghost of one.”
They were back in the hall then for departure, but from where they stood the vista103 was large, through an open door, into the great square main saloon, with its almost antique felicity of brave spaces between windows. Her eyes came back from that reach and met his own a moment. “Are you very sure the ‘ghost’ of one doesn’t, much rather, serve—?”
He had a positive sense of turning pale. But it was as near as they were then to come. For he made answer, he believed, between a glare and a grin: “Oh ghosts—of course the place must swarm104 with them! I should be ashamed of it if it didn’t. Poor Mrs. Muldoon’s right, and it’s why I haven’t asked her to do more than look in.”
Miss Staverton’s gaze again lost itself, and things she didn’t utter, it was clear, came and went in her mind. She might even for the minute, off there in the fine room, have imagined some element dimly gathering105. Simplified like the death-mask of a handsome face, it perhaps produced for her just then an effect akin38 to the stir of an expression in the “set” commemorative plaster. Yet whatever her impression may have been she produced instead a vague platitude106. “Well, if it were only furnished and lived in—!”
She appeared to imply that in case of its being still furnished he might have been a little less opposed to the idea of a return. But she passed straight into the vestibule, as if to leave her words behind her, and the next moment he had opened the house-door and was standing with her on the steps. He closed the door and, while he re-pocketed his key, looking up and down, they took in the comparatively harsh actuality of the Avenue, which reminded him of the assault of the outer light of the Desert on the traveller emerging from an Egyptian tomb. But he risked before they stepped into the street his gathered answer to her speech. “For me it is lived in. For me it is furnished.” At which it was easy for her to sigh “Ah yes!” all vaguely and discreetly107; since his parents and his favourite sister, to say nothing of other kin2, in numbers, had run their course and met their end there. That represented, within the walls, ineffaceable life.
It was a few days after this that, during an hour passed with her again, he had expressed his impatience108 of the too flattering curiosity—among the people he met—about his appreciation109 of New York. He had arrived at none at all that was socially producible, and as for that matter of his “thinking” (thinking the better or the worse of anything there) he was wholly taken up with one subject of thought. It was mere vain egoism, and it was moreover, if she liked, a morbid111 obsession112. He found all things come back to the question of what he personally might have been, how he might have led his life and “turned out,” if he had not so, at the outset, given it up. And confessing for the first time to the intensity113 within him of this absurd speculation—which but proved also, no doubt, the habit of too selfishly thinking—he affirmed the impotence there of any other source of interest, any other native appeal. “What would it have made of me, what would it have made of me? I keep for ever wondering, all idiotically; as if I could possibly know! I see what it has made of dozens of others, those I meet, and it positively114 aches within me, to the point of exasperation115, that it would have made something of me as well. Only I can’t make out what, and the worry of it, the small rage of curiosity never to be satisfied, brings back what I remember to have felt, once or twice, after judging best, for reasons, to burn some important letter unopened. I’ve been sorry, I’ve hated it—I’ve never known what was in the letter. You may, of course, say it’s a trifle—!”
“I don’t say it’s a trifle,” Miss Staverton gravely interrupted.
She was seated by her fire, and before her, on his feet and restless, he turned to and fro between this intensity of his idea and a fitful and unseeing inspection116, through his single eye-glass, of the dear little old objects on her chimney-piece. Her interruption made him for an instant look at her harder. “I shouldn’t care if you did!” he laughed, however; “and it’s only a figure, at any rate, for the way I now feel. Not to have followed my perverse117 young course—and almost in the teeth of my father’s curse, as I may say; not to have kept it up, so, ‘over there,’ from that day to this, without a doubt or a pang118; not, above all, to have liked it, to have loved it, so much, loved it, no doubt, with such an abysmal119 conceit120 of my own preference; some variation from that, I say, must have produced some different effect for my life and for my ‘form.’ I should have stuck here—if it had been possible; and I was too young, at twenty-three, to judge, pour deux sous, whether it were possible. If I had waited I might have seen it was, and then I might have been, by staying here, something nearer to one of these types who have been hammered so hard and made so keen by their conditions. It isn’t that I admire them so much—the question of any charm in them, or of any charm, beyond that of the rank money-passion, exerted by their conditions for them, has nothing to do with the matter: it’s only a question of what fantastic, yet perfectly possible, development of my own nature I mayn’t have missed. It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego110 deep down somewhere within me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and that I just took the course, I just transferred him to the climate, that blighted121 him for once and for ever.”
“And you wonder about the flower,” Miss Staverton said. “So do I, if you want to know; and so I’ve been wondering these several weeks. I believe in the flower,” she continued, “I feel it would have been quite splendid, quite huge and monstrous.”
“Monstrous above all!” her visitor echoed; “and I imagine, by the same stroke, quite hideous122 and offensive.”
“You don’t believe that,” she returned; “if you did you wouldn’t wonder. You’d know, and that would be enough for you. What you feel—and what I feel for you—is that you’d have had power.”
“You’d have liked me that way?” he asked.
She barely hung fire. “How should I not have liked you?”
“I see. You’d have liked me, have preferred me, a billionaire!”
“How should I not have liked you?” she simply again asked.
He stood before her still—her question kept him motionless. He took it in, so much there was of it; and indeed his not otherwise meeting it testified to that. “I know at least what I am,” he simply went on; “the other side of the medal’s clear enough. I’ve not been edifying—I believe I’m thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent. I’ve followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again—in fact you’ve admitted to me as much—that I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous123 scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me.”
She just waited, smiling at him. “You see what it has made of me.”
“Oh you’re a person whom nothing can have altered. You were born to be what you are, anywhere, anyway: you’ve the perfection nothing else could have blighted. And don’t you see how, without my exile, I shouldn’t have been waiting till now—?” But he pulled up for the strange pang.
“The great thing to see,” she presently said, “seems to me to be that it has spoiled nothing. It hasn’t spoiled your being here at last. It hasn’t spoiled this. It hasn’t spoiled your speaking—” She also however faltered124.
He wondered at everything her controlled emotion might mean. “Do you believe then—too dreadfully!—that I am as good as I might ever have been?”
“Oh no! Far from it!” With which she got up from her chair and was nearer to him. “But I don’t care,” she smiled.
“You mean I’m good enough?”
She considered a little. “Will you believe it if I say so? I mean will you let that settle your question for you?” And then as if making out in his face that he drew back from this, that he had some idea which, however absurd, he couldn’t yet bargain away: “Oh you don’t care either—but very differently: you don’t care for anything but yourself.”
Spencer Brydon recognised it—it was in fact what he had absolutely professed125. Yet he importantly qualified126. “He isn’t myself. He’s the just so totally other person. But I do want to see him,” he added. “And I can. And I shall.”
Their eyes met for a minute while he guessed from something in hers that she divined his strange sense. But neither of them otherwise expressed it, and her apparent understanding, with no protesting shock, no easy derision, touched him more deeply than anything yet, constituting for his stifled127 perversity, on the spot, an element that was like breatheable air. What she said however was unexpected. “Well, I’ve seen him.”
“You—?”
“I’ve seen him in a dream.”
“Oh a ‘dream’—!” It let him down.
“But twice over,” she continued. “I saw him as I see you now.”
“You’ve dreamed the same dream—?”
“Twice over,” she repeated. “The very same.”
This did somehow a little speak to him, as it also gratified him. “You dream about me at that rate?”
“Ah about him!” she smiled.
His eyes again sounded her. “Then you know all about him.” And as she said nothing more: “What’s the wretch128 like?”
She hesitated, and it was as if he were pressing her so hard that, resisting for reasons of her own, she had to turn away. “I’ll tell you some other time!”
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1
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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2
kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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3
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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4
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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5
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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6
repatriation
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| n.遣送回国，归国 | |
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7
allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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10
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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11
ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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12
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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sordidly
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| adv.肮脏地；污秽地；不洁地 | |
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14
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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15
alienated
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| 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） | |
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16
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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renovation
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| n.革新，整修 | |
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bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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acceded
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| v.（正式）加入( accede的过去式和过去分词 )；答应；（通过财产的添附而）增加；开始任职 | |
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overtures
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| n.主动的表示，提议；（向某人做出的）友好表示、姿态或提议( overture的名词复数 )；（歌剧、芭蕾舞、音乐剧等的）序曲，前奏曲 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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26
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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31
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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32
frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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33
tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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34
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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35
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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36
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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37
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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38
akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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39
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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40
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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41
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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42
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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43
antediluvian
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| adj.史前的，陈旧的 | |
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44
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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45
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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46
affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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47
concussions
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| n.震荡( concussion的名词复数 )；脑震荡；冲击；震动 | |
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48
ordeals
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| n.严峻的考验，苦难的经历( ordeal的名词复数 ) | |
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49
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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50
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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51
discriminating
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| a.有辨别能力的 | |
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52
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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53
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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54
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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55
lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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56
prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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57
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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58
burrowed
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的过去式和过去分词 )；翻寻 | |
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59
muffled
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| 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） | |
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60
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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61
abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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62
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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63
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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65
dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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66
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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67
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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68
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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69
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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70
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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71
tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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72
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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73
loquaciously
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74
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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75
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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76
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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77
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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78
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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79
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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80
taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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81
recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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82
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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83
resonance
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| n.洪亮；共鸣；共振 | |
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84
divination
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| n.占卜，预测 | |
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85
precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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86
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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87
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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88
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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89
suffused
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| v.（指颜色、水气等）弥漫于，布满( suffuse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sarcasms
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，挖苦( sarcasm的名词复数 ) | |
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91
demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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92
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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93
microscopic
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| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
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94
motes
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| n.尘埃( mote的名词复数 )；斑点 | |
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95
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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96
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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97
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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98
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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99
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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100
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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101
perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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102
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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103
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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104
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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105
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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106
platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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107
discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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108
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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109
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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110
ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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111
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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112
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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113
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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114
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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115
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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116
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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117
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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118
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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119
abysmal
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| adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的 | |
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120
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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121
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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122
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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123
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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124
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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125
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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126
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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127
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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128
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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