15
The end of Prothero's first love affair came to Benham in broken fragments in letters. When he looked for Anna Alexievna in December--he never learnt her surname--he found she had left the Cosmopolis Bazaar1 soon after Prothero's departure and he could not find whither she had gone. He never found her again. Moscow and Russia had swallowed her up.
Of course she and Prothero parted; that was a foregone conclusion. But Prothero's manner of parting succeeded in being at every phase a shock to Benham's ideas. It was clear he went off almost callously2; it would seem there was very little crying. Towards the end it was evident that the two had quarrelled. The tears only came at the very end of all. It was almost as if he had got through the passion and was glad to go. Then came regret, a regret that increased in geometrical proportion with every mile of distance.
In Warsaw it was that grief really came to Prothero. He had some hours there and he prowled the crowded streets, seeing girls and women happy with their lovers, abroad upon bright expeditions and full of delicious secrets, girls and women who ever and again flashed out some instant resemblance to Anna....
In Berlin he stopped a night and almost decided3 that he would go back. "But now I had the damned frontier," he wrote, "between us."
It was so entirely4 in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the "damned frontier" tip the balance against him.
Then came a scrawl5 of passionate6 confession7, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured. "I can't stand this business," he wrote. "It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance--you can have no idea! In the train--luckily I was alone in the compartment--I sat and thought, and suddenly, I could not help it, I was weeping--noisy weeping, an uproar8! A beastly German came and stood in the corridor to stare. I had to get out of the train. It is disgraceful, it is monstrous9 we should be made like this....
"Here I am stranded10 in Hanover with nothing to do but to write to you about my dismal11 feelings...."
After that surely there was nothing before a broken-hearted Prothero but to go on with his trailing wing to Trinity and a life of inappeasable regrets; but again Benham reckoned without the invincible12 earthliness of his friend. Prothero stayed three nights in Paris.
"There is an extraordinary excitement about Paris," he wrote. "A levity13. I suspect the gypsum in the subsoil--some as yet undescribed radiations. Suddenly the world looks brightly cynical14.... None of those tear-compelling German emanations....
"And, Benham, I have found a friend.
"A woman. Of course you will laugh, you will sneer15. You do not understand these things.... Yet they are so simple. It was the strangest accident brought us together. There was something that drew us together. A sort of instinct. Near the Boulevard Poissoniere...."
"Good heavens!" said Benham. "A sort of instinct!"
"I told her all about Anna!"
"Good Lord!" cried Benham.
"She understood. Perfectly16. None of your so-called 'respectable' women could have understood.... At first I intended merely to talk to her...."
Benham crumpled18 the letter in his hand.
"Little Anna Alexievna!" he said, "you were too clean for him."
16
Benham had a vision of Prothero returning from all this foreign travel meekly19, pensively20, a little sadly, and yet not without a kind of relief, to the grey mildness of Trinity. He saw him, capped and gowned, and restored to academic dignity again, nodding greetings, resuming friendships.
The little man merged21 again into his rare company of discreet22 Benedicts and restrained celibates23 at the high tables. They ate on in their mature wisdom long after the undergraduates had fled. Presently they would withdraw processionally to the combination room....
There would be much to talk about over the wine.
Benham speculated what account Prothero would give of Moscow....
And with that laugh Prothero dropped out of Benham's world for a space of years. There may have been other letters, but if so they were lost in the heaving troubles of a revolution-strained post-office. Perhaps to this day they linger sere26 and yellow in some forgotten pigeon-hole in Kishinev or Ekaterinoslav....
17
In November, after an adventure in the trader's quarter of Kieff which had brought him within an inch of death, and because an emotional wave had swept across him and across his correspondence with Amanda, Benham went back suddenly to England and her. He wanted very greatly to see her and also he wanted to make certain arrangements about his property. He returned by way of Hungary, and sent telegrams like shouts of excitement whenever the train stopped for a sufficient time. "Old Leopard27, I am coming, I am coming," he telegraphed, announcing his coming for the fourth time. It was to be the briefest of visits, very passionate, the mutual28 refreshment29 of two noble lovers, and then he was returning to Russia again.
Amanda was at Chexington, and there he found her installed in the utmost dignity of expectant maternity30. Like many other people he had been a little disposed to regard the bearing of children as a common human experience; at Chexington he came to think of it as a rare and sacramental function. Amanda had become very beautiful in quiet, grey, dove-like tones; her sun-touched, boy's complexion31 had given way to a soft glow of the utmost loveliness, her brisk little neck that had always reminded him of the stalk of a flower was now softened32 and rounded; her eyes were tender, and she moved about the place in the manner of one who is vowed33 to a great sacrifice. She dominated the scene, and Lady Marayne, with a certain astonishment34 in her eyes and a smouldering disposition35 to irony36, was the half-sympathetic, half-resentful priestess of her daughter-in-law's unparalleled immolation37. The MOTIF38 of motherhood was everywhere, and at his bedside he found--it had been put there for him by Amanda--among much other exaltation of woman's mission, that most wonderful of all philoprogenitive stories, Hudson's CRYSTAL AGE.
Everybody at Chexington had an air of being grouped about the impending39 fact. An epidemic40 of internal troubles, it is true, kept Sir Godfrey in the depths of London society, but to make up for his absence Mrs. Morris had taken a little cottage down by the river and the Wilder girls were with her, both afire with fine and subtle feelings and both, it seemed, and more particularly Betty, prepared to be keenly critical of Benham's attitude.
He did a little miss his cue in these exaltations, because he had returned in a rather different vein41 of exaltation.
In missing it he was assisted by Amanda herself, who had at moments an effect upon him of a priestess confidentially42 disrobed. It was as if she put aside for him something official, something sincerely maintained, necessary, but at times a little irksome. It was as if she was glad to take him into her confidence and unbend. Within the pre-natal Amanda an impish Amanda still lingered.
There were aspects of Amanda that it was manifest dear Betty must never know....
But the real Amanda of that November visit even in her most unpontifical moods did not quite come up to the imagined Amanda who had drawn43 him home across Europe. At times she was extraordinarily44 jolly. They had two or three happy walks about the Chexington woods; that year the golden weather of October had flowed over into November, and except for a carpet of green and gold under the horse-chestnuts most of the leaves were still on the trees. Gleams of her old wanton humour shone on him. And then would come something else, something like a shadow across the world, something he had quite forgotten since his idea of heroic love had flooded him, something that reminded him of those long explanations with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders that had never been explained, and of the curate in the doorway45 of the cottage and his unaccountable tears.
On the afternoon of his arrival at Chexington he was a little surprised to find Sir Philip Easton coming through the house into the garden, with an accustomed familiarity. Sir Philip perceived him with a start that was instantly controlled, and greeted him with unnatural46 ease.
Sir Philip, it seemed, was fishing and reading and playing cricket in the neighbourhood, which struck Benham as a poor way of spending the summer, the sort of soft holiday a man learns to take from scholars and literary men. A man like Sir Philip, he thought, ought to have been aviating or travelling.
Moreover, when Sir Philip greeted Amanda it seemed to Benham that there was a flavour of established association in their manner. But then Sir Philip was also very assiduous with Lady Marayne. She called him "Pip," and afterwards Amanda called across the tennis-court to him, "Pip!" And then he called her "Amanda." When the Wilder girls came up to join the tennis he was just as brotherly....
The next day he came to lunch.
During that meal Benham became more aware than he had ever been before of the peculiar47 deep expressiveness48 of this young man's eyes. They watched him and they watched Amanda with a solicitude49 that seemed at once pained and tender. And there was something about Amanda, a kind of hard brightness, an impartiality50 and an air of something undefinably suspended, that gave Benham an intuitive certitude that that afternoon Sir Philip would be spoken to privately52, and that then he would pack up and go away in a state of illumination from Chexington. But before he could be spoken to he contrived53 to speak to Benham.
They were left to smoke after lunch, and then it was he took advantage of a pause to commit his little indiscretion.
"Mrs. Benham," he said, "looks amazingly well--extraordinarily well, don't you think?"
"Yes," said Benham, startled. "Yes. She certainly keeps very well."
"She misses you terribly," said Sir Philip; "it is a time when a woman misses her husband. But, of course, she does not want to hamper54 your work...."
Benham felt it was very kind of him to take so intimate an interest in these matters, but on the spur of the moment he could find no better expression for this than a grunt55.
"You don't mind," said the young man with a slight catch in the breath that might have been apprehensive56, "that I sometimes bring her books and flowers and things? Do what little I can to keep life interesting down here? It's not very congenial.... She's so wonderful--I think she is the most wonderful woman in the world."
Benham perceived that so far from being a modern aristocrat57 he was really a primitive58 barbarian59 in these matters.
"I've no doubt," he said, "that my wife has every reason to be grateful for your attentions."
In the little pause that followed Benham had a feeling that Sir Philip was engendering60 something still more personal. If so, he might be constrained61 to invert62 very gently but very firmly the bowl of chrysanthemums63 over Sir Philip's head, or kick him in an improving manner. He had a ridiculous belief that Sir Philip would probably take anything of the sort very touchingly64. He scrambled65 in his mind for some remark that would avert66 this possibility.
"Have you ever been in Russia?" he asked hastily. "It is the most wonderful country in Europe. I had an odd adventure near Kiev. During a pogrom."
And he drowned the developing situation in a flood of description....
But it was not so easy to drown the little things that were presently thrown out by Lady Marayne. They were so much more in the air....
18
Sir Philip suddenly got out of the picture even as Benham had foreseen.
"Easton has gone away," he remarked three days later to Amanda.
"I told him to go. He is a bore with you about. But otherwise he is rather a comfort, Cheetah67." She meditated68 upon Sir Philip. "And he's an HONOURABLE69 man," she said. "He's safe...."
19
After that visit it was that the notes upon love and sex began in earnest. The scattered70 memoranda71 upon the perfectness of heroic love for the modern aristocrat ended abruptly. Instead there came the first draft for a study of jealousy72. The note was written in pencil on Chexington notepaper and manifestly that had been supported on the ribbed cover of a book. There was a little computation in the corner, converting forty-five degrees Reaumur into degrees Fahrenheit73, which made White guess it had been written in the Red Sea. But, indeed, it had been written in a rather amateurishly74 stoked corridor-train on Benham's journey to the gathering75 revolt in Moscow....
"I think I have been disposed to underrate the force of sexual jealousy.... I thought it was something essentially76 contemptible77, something that one dismissed and put behind oneself in the mere17 effort to be aristocratic, but I begin to realize that it is not quite so easily settled with....
"One likes to know.... Possibly one wants to know too much.... In phases of fatigue78, and particularly in phases of sleeplessness79, when one is leaving all that one cares for behind, it becomes an irrational80 torment81....
"And it is not only in oneself that I am astonished by the power of this base motive82. I see, too, in the queer business of Prothero how strongly jealousy, how strongly the sense of proprietorship83, weighs with a man....
"There is no clear reason why one should insist upon another human being being one's ownest own--utterly one's own....
"There is, of course, no clear reason for most human motives84....
"One does....
"There is something dishonouring85 in distrust--to both the distrusted and the one who distrusts...."
After that, apparently86, it had been too hot and stuffy87 to continue.
20
Benham did not see Amanda again until after the birth of their child. He spent his Christmas in Moscow, watching the outbreak, the fitful fighting and the subsequent break-up, of the revolution, and taking care of a lost and helpless English family whose father had gone astray temporarily on the way home from Baku. Then he went southward to Rostov and thence to Astrakhan. Here he really began his travels. He determined88 to get to India by way of Herat and for the first time in his life rode out into an altogether lawless wilderness89. He went on obstinately90 because he found himself disposed to funk the journey, and because discouragements were put in his way. He was soon quite cut off from all the ways of living he had known. He learnt what it is to be flea-bitten, saddle-sore, hungry and, above all, thirsty. He was haunted by a dread92 of fever, and so contrived strange torments93 for himself with overdoses of quinine. He ceased to be traceable from Chexington in March, and he reappeared in the form of a telegram from Karachi demanding news in May. He learnt he was the father of a man-child and that all was well with Amanda.
He had not expected to be so long away from any communication with the outer world, and something in the nature of a stricken conscience took him back to England. He found a second William Porphyry in the world, dominating Chexington, and Amanda tenderly triumphant94 and passionate, the Madonna enthroned. For William Porphyry he could feel no emotion. William Porphyry was very red and ugly and protesting, feeble and aggressive, a matter for a skilled nurse. To see him was to ignore him and dispel95 a dream. It was to Amanda Benham turned again.
For some days he was content to adore his Madonna and listen to the familiar flatteries of her love. He was a leaner, riper man, Amanda said, and wiser, so that she was afraid of him....
And then he became aware that she was requiring him to stay at her side. "We have both had our adventures," she said, which struck him as an odd phrase.
It forced itself upon his obstinate91 incredulity that all those conceptions of heroic love and faithfulness he had supposed to be so clearly understood between them had vanished from her mind. She had absolutely forgotten that twilight96 moment at the window which had seemed to him the crowning instant, the real marriage of their lives. It had gone, it had left no recoverable trace in her. And upon his interpretations97 of that he had loved her passionately98 for a year. She was back at exactly the ideas and intentions that ruled her during their first settlement in London. She wanted a joint99 life in the social world of London, she demanded his presence, his attention, the daily practical evidences of love. It was all very well for him to be away when the child was coming, but now everything was different. Now he must stay by her.
This time he argued no case. These issues he had settled for ever. Even an indignant dissertation100 from Lady Marayne, a dissertation that began with appeals and ended in taunts101, did not move him. Behind these things now was India. The huge problems of India had laid an unshakeable hold upon his imagination. He had seen Russia, and he wanted to balance that picture by a vision of the east....
He saw Easton only once during a week-end at Chexington. The young man displayed no further disposition to be confidentially sentimental102. But he seemed to have something on his mind. And Amanda said not a word about him. He was a young man above suspicion, Benham felt....
And from his departure the quality of the correspondence of these two larger carnivores began to change. Except for the repetition of accustomed endearments103, they ceased to be love letters in any sense of the word. They dealt chiefly with the "Cub," and even there Benham felt presently that the enthusiasm diminished. A new amazing quality for Amanda appeared--triteness. The very writing of her letters changed as though it had suddenly lost backbone104. Her habitual105 liveliness of phrasing lost its point. Had she lost her animation106? Was she ill unknowingly? Where had the light gone? It was as if her attention was distracted.... As if every day when she wrote her mind was busy about something else.
Abruptly at last he understood. A fact that had never been stated, never formulated107, never in any way admitted, was suddenly pointed108 to convergently by a thousand indicating fingers, and beyond question perceived to be THERE....
He left a record of that moment of realization109.
"Suddenly one night I woke up and lay still, and it was as if I had never seen Amanda before. Now I saw her plainly, I saw her with that same dreadful clearness that sometimes comes at dawn, a pitiless, a scientific distinctness that has neither light nor shadow....
"Of course," I said, and then presently I got up very softly....
"I wanted to get out of my intolerable, close, personal cabin. I wanted to feel the largeness of the sky. I went out upon the deck. We were off the coast of Madras, and when I think of that moment, there comes back to me also the faint flavour of spice in the air, the low line of the coast, the cool flooding abundance of the Indian moonlight, the swish of the black water against the side of the ship. And a perception of infinite loss, as if the limitless heavens above this earth and below to the very uttermost star were just one boundless110 cavity from which delight had fled....
"Of course I had lost her. I knew it with absolute certainty. I knew it from her insecure temperament111, her adventurousness112, her needs. I knew it from every line she had written me in the last three months. I knew it intuitively. She had been unfaithful. She must have been unfaithful.
"What had I been dreaming about to think that it would not be so?"
21
"Now let me write down plainly what I think of these matters. Let me be at least honest with myself, whatever self-contradictions I may have been led into by force of my passions. Always I have despised jealousy....
"Only by the conquest of four natural limitations is the aristocratic life to be achieved. They come in a certain order, and in that order the spirit of man is armed against them less and less efficiently113. Of fear and my struggle against fear I have told already. I am fearful. I am a physical coward until I can bring shame and anger to my assistance, but in overcoming fear I have been helped by the whole body of human tradition. Every one, the basest creatures, every Hottentot, every stunted115 creature that ever breathed poison in a slum, knows that the instinctive116 constitution of man is at fault here and that fear is shameful117 and must be subdued118. The race is on one's side. And so there is a vast traditional support for a man against the Second Limitation, the limitation of physical indulgence. It is not so universal as the first, there is a grinning bawling119 humour on the side of grossness, but common pride is against it. And in this matter my temperament has been my help: I am fastidious, I eat little, drink little, and feel a shivering recoil120 from excess. It is no great virtue121; it happens so; it is something in the nerves of my skin. I cannot endure myself unshaven or in any way unclean; I am tormented122 by dirty hands or dirty blood or dirty memories, and after I had once loved Amanda I could not--unless some irrational impulse to get equal with her had caught me--have broken my faith to her, whatever breach123 there was in her faith to me....
"I see that in these matters I am cleaner than most men and more easily clean; and it may be that it is in the vein of just that distinctive124 virtue that I fell so readily into a passion of resentment125 and anger.
"I despised a jealous man. There is a traditional discredit126 of jealousy, not so strong as that against cowardice127, but still very strong. But the general contempt of jealousy is curiously128 wrapped up with the supposition that there is no cause for jealousy, that it is unreasonable129 suspicion. Given a cause then tradition speaks with an uncertain voice....
"I see now that I despised jealousy because I assumed that it was impossible for Amanda to love any one but me; it was intolerable to imagine anything else, I insisted upon believing that she was as fastidious as myself and as faithful as myself, made indeed after my image, and I went on disregarding the most obvious intimations that she was not, until that still moment in the Indian Ocean, when silently, gently as a drowned body might rise out of the depths of a pool, that knowledge of love dead and honour gone for ever floated up into my consciousness.
"And then I felt that Amanda had cheated me! Outrageously130. Abominably132.
"Now, so far as my intelligence goes, there is not a cloud upon this question. My demand upon Amanda was outrageous131 and I had no right whatever to her love or loyalty133. I must have that very clear....
"This aristocratic life, as I conceive it, must be, except accidentally here and there, incompatible134 with the domestic life. It means going hither and thither135 in the universe of thought as much as in the universe of matter, it means adventure, it means movement and adventure that must needs be hopelessly encumbered136 by an inseparable associate, it means self-imposed responsibilities that will not fit into the welfare of a family. In all ages, directly society had risen above the level of a barbaric tribal137 village, this need of a release from the family for certain necessary types of people has been recognized. It was met sometimes informally, sometimes formally, by the growth and establishment of special classes and orders, of priests, monks138, nuns139, of pledged knights140, of a great variety of non-family people, whose concern was the larger collective life that opens out beyond the simple necessities and duties and loyalties141 of the steading and of the craftsman's house. Sometimes, but not always, that release took the form of celibacy142; but besides that there have been a hundred institutional variations of the common life to meet the need of the special man, the man who must go deep and the man who must go far. A vowed celibacy ceased to be a tolerable rule for an aristocracy directly the eugenic143 idea entered the mind of man, because a celibate24 aristocracy means the abandonment of the racial future to a proletariat of base unleaderly men. That was plain to Plato. It was plain to Campanelea. It was plain to the Protestant reformers. But the world has never yet gone on to the next step beyond that recognition, to the recognition of feminine aristocrats144, rulers and the mates of rulers, as untrammelled by domestic servitudes and family relationships as the men of their kind. That I see has always been my idea since in my undergraduate days I came under the spell of Plato. It was a matter of course that my first gift to Amanda should be his REPUBLIC. I loved Amanda transfigured in that dream....
"There are no such women....
"It is no excuse for me that I thought she was like-minded with myself. I had no sound reason for supposing that. I did suppose that. I did not perceive that not only was she younger than myself, but that while I had been going through a mill of steely education, kept close, severely145 exercised, polished by discussion, she had but the weak training of a not very good school, some scrappy reading, the vague discussions of village artists, and the draped and decorated novelties of the 'advanced.' It all went to nothing on the impact of the world.... She showed herself the woman the world has always known, no miracle, and the alternative was for me to give myself to her in the ancient way, to serve her happiness, to control her and delight and companion her, or to let her go.
"The normal woman centres upon herself; her mission is her own charm and her own beauty and her own setting; her place is her home. She demands the concentration of a man. Not to be able to command that is her failure. Not to give her that is to shame her. As I had shamed Amanda...."
22
"There are no such women." He had written this in and struck it out, and then at some later time written it in again. There it stayed now as his last persuasion146, but it set White thinking and doubting. And, indeed, there was another sheet of pencilled broken stuff that seemed to glance at quite another type of womanhood.
23
"It is clear that the women aristocrats who must come to the remaking of the world will do so in spite of limitations at least as great as those from which the aristocratic spirit of man escapes. These women must become aristocratic through their own innate147 impulse, they must be self-called to their lives, exactly as men must be; there is no making an aristocrat without a predisposition for rule and nobility. And they have to discover and struggle against just exactly the limitations that we have to struggle against. They have to conquer not only fear but indulgence, indulgence of a softer, more insidious148 quality, and jealousy--proprietorship....
"It is as natural to want a mate as to want bread, and a thousand times in my work and in my wanderings I have thought of a mate and desired a mate. A mate--not a possession. It is a need almost naively149 simple. If only one could have a woman who thought of one and with one! Though she were on the other side of the world and busied about a thousand things....
"'WITH one,' I see it must be rather than 'OF one.' That 'of one' is just the unexpurgated egotistical demand coming back again....
"Man is a mating creature. It is not good to be alone. But mating means a mate....
"We should be lovers, of course; that goes without saying....
"And yet not specialized150 lovers, not devoted151, ATTENDING lovers. 'Dancing attendance'--as they used to say. We should meet upon our ways as the great carnivores do....
"That at any rate was a sound idea. Though we only played with it.
"But that mate desire is just a longing152 that can have no possible satisfaction now for me. What is the good of dreaming? Life and chance have played a trick upon my body and soul. I am mated, though I am mated to a phantom153. I loved and I love Arnanda, not Easton's Amanda, but Amanda in armour154, the Amanda of my dreams. Sense, and particularly the sense of beauty, lies deeper than reason in us. There can be no mate for me now unless she comes with Amanda's voice and Amanda's face and Amanda's quick movements and her clever hands...."
24
"Why am I so ungrateful to her still for all the happiness she gave me?
"There were things between us two as lovers,--love, things more beautiful than anything else in the world, things that set the mind hunting among ineffectual images in a search for impossible expression, images of sunlight shining through blood-red petals155, images of moonlight in a scented156 garden, of marble gleaming in the shade, of far-off wonderful music heard at dusk in a great stillness, of fairies dancing softly, of floating happiness and stirring delights, of joys as keen and sudden as the knife of an assassin, assassin's knives made out of tears, tears that are happiness, wordless things; and surprises, expectations, gratitudes, sudden moments of contemplation, the sight of a soft eyelid157 closed in sleep, shadowy tones in the sound of a voice heard unexpectedly; sweet, dear magical things that I can find no words for....
"If she was a goddess to me, should it be any affair of mine that she was not a goddess to herself; that she could hold all this that has been between us more cheaply than I did? It does not change one jot158 of it for me. At the time she did not hold it cheaply. She forgets where I do not forget...."
25
Such were the things that Benham could think and set down.
Yet for whole days he was possessed159 by the thought of killing160 Amanda and himself.
He did not at once turn homeward. It was in Ceylon that he dropped his work and came home. At Colombo he found a heap of letters awaiting him, and there were two of these that had started at the same time. They had been posted in London on one eventful afternoon. Lady Marayne and Amanda had quarrelled violently. Two earnest, flushed, quick-breathing women, full of neat but belated repartee161, separated to write their simultaneous letters. Each letter trailed the atmosphere of that truncated162 encounter. Lady Marayne told her story ruthlessly. Amanda, on the other hand, generalized, and explained. Sir Philip's adoration163 of her was a love-friendship, it was beautiful, it was pure. Was there no trust nor courage in the world? She would defy all jealous scandal. She would not even banish164 him from her side. Surely the Cheetah could trust her. But the pitiless facts of Lady Marayne went beyond Amanda's explaining. The little lady's dignity had been stricken. "I have been used as a cloak," she wrote.
Her phrases were vivid. She quoted the very words of Amanda, words she had overheard at Chexington in the twilight. They were no invention. They were the very essence of Amanda, the lover. It was as sure as if Benham had heard the sound of her voice, as if he had peeped and seen, as if she had crept by him, stooping and rustling165 softly. It brought back the living sense of her, excited, flushed, reckless; his wild-haired Amanda of infinite delight.... All day those words of hers pursued him. All night they flared166 across the black universe. He buried his face in the pillows and they whispered softly in his ear.
He walked his room in the darkness longing to smash and tear.
He went out from the house and shook his ineffectual fists at the stirring quiet of the stars.
He sent no notice of his coming back. Nor did he come back with a definite plan. But he wanted to get at Amanda.
26
It was with Amanda he had to reckon. Towards Easton he felt scarcely any anger at all. Easton he felt only existed for him because Amanda willed to have it so.
Such anger as Easton did arouse in him was a contemptuous anger. His devotion filled Benham with scorn. His determination to serve Amanda at any price, to bear the grossest humiliations and slights for her, his humility167, his service and tenderness, his care for her moods and happiness, seemed to Benham a treachery to human nobility. That rage against Easton was like the rage of a trade-unionist against a blackleg. Are all the women to fall to the men who will be their master-slaves and keepers? But it was not simply that Benham felt men must be freed from this incessant168 attendance; women too must free themselves from their almost instinctive demand for an attendant....
His innate disposition was to treat women as responsible beings. Never in his life had he thought of a woman as a pretty thing to be fooled and won and competed for and fought over. So that it was Amanda he wanted to reach and reckon with now, Amanda who had mated and ruled his senses only to fling him into this intolerable pit of shame and jealous fury. But the forces that were driving him home now were the forces below the level of reason and ideas, organic forces compounded of hate and desire, profound aboriginal169 urgencies. He thought, indeed, very little as he lay in his berth170 or sulked on deck; his mind lay waste under a pitiless invasion of exasperating171 images that ever and again would so wring172 him that his muscles would tighten173 and his hands clench174 or he would find himself restraining a snarl175, the threat of the beast, in his throat.
Amanda grew upon his imagination until she overshadowed the whole world. She filled the skies. She bent176 over him and mocked him. She became a mystery of passion and dark beauty. She was the sin of the world. One breathed her in the winds of the sea. She had taken to herself the greatness of elemental things....
So that when at last he saw her he was amazed to see her, and see that she was just a creature of common size and quality, a rather tired and very frightened-looking white-faced young woman, in an evening-dress of unfamiliar177 fashion, with little common trinkets of gold and colour about her wrists and neck.
In that instant's confrontation178 he forgot all that had brought him homeward. He stared at her as one stares at a stranger whom one has greeted in mistake for an intimate friend.
For he saw that she was no more the Amanda he hated and desired to kill than she had ever been the Amanda he had loved.
27
He took them by surprise. It had been his intention to take them by surprise. Such is the inelegance of the jealous state.
He reached London in the afternoon and put up at a hotel near Charing179 Cross. In the evening about ten he appeared at the house in Lancaster Gate. The butler was deferentially180 amazed. Mrs. Benham was, he said, at a theatre with Sir Philip Easton, and he thought some other people also. He did not know when she would be back. She might go on to supper. It was not the custom for the servants to wait up for her.
Benham went into the study that reduplicated his former rooms in Finacue Street and sat down before the fire the butler lit for him. He sent the man to bed, and fell into profound meditation181.
It was nearly two o'clock when he heard the sound of her latchkey and went out at once upon the landing.
The half-door stood open and Easton's car was outside. She stood in the middle of the hall and relieved Easton of the gloves and fan he was carrying.
"Good-night," she said, "I am so tired."
"My wonderful goddess," he said.
She yielded herself to his accustomed embrace, then started, stared, and wrenched182 herself out of his arms.
Benham stood at the top of the stairs looking down upon them, white-faced and inexpressive. Easton dropped back a pace. For a moment no one moved nor spoke51, and then very quietly Easton shut the half-door and shut out the noises of the road.
For some seconds Benham regarded them, and as he did so his spirit changed....
Everything he had thought of saying and doing vanished out of his mind.
He stuck his hands into his pockets and descended183 the staircase. When he was five or six steps above them, he spoke. "Just sit down here," he said, with a gesture of one hand, and sat down himself upon the stairs. "DO sit down," he said with a sudden testiness184 as they continued standing185. "I know all about this affair. Do please sit down and let us talk.... Everybody's gone to bed long ago."
"Cheetah!" she said. "Why have you come back like this?"
Then at his mute gesture she sat down at his feet.
"I wish you would sit down, Easton," he said in a voice of subdued savagery186.
"Why have you come back?" Sir Philip Easton found his voice to ask.
"SIT down," Benham spat187, and Easton obeyed unwillingly188.
"I came back," Benham went on, "to see to all this. Why else? I don't--now I see you--feel very fierce about it. But it has distressed189 me. You look changed, Amanda, and fagged. And your hair is untidy. It's as if something had happened to you and made you a stranger.... You two people are lovers. Very natural and simple, but I want to get out of it. Yes, I want to get out of it. That wasn't quite my idea, but now I see it is. It's queer, but on the whole I feel sorry for you. All of us, poor humans--. There's reason to be sorry for all of us. We're full of lusts191 and uneasiness and resentments192 that we haven't the will to control. What do you two people want me to do to you? Would you like a divorce, Amanda? It's the clean, straight thing, isn't it? Or would the scandal hurt you?"
Amanda sat crouched193 together, with her eyes on Benham.
"Give us a divorce," said Easton, looking to her to confirm him.
Amanda shook her head.
"I don't want a divorce," she said.
"Then what do you want?" asked Benham with sudden asperity194.
"I don't want a divorce," she repeated. "Why do you, after a long silence, come home like this, abruptly, with no notice?"
"It was the way it took me," said Benham, after a little interval195.
"You have left me for long months."
"Yes. I was angry. And it was ridiculous to be angry. I thought I wanted to kill you, and now I see you I see that all I want to do is to help you out of this miserable196 mess--and then get away from you. You two would like to marry. You ought to be married."
"I would die to make Amanda happy," said Easton.
"Your business, it seems to me, is to live to make her happy. That you may find more of a strain. Less tragic197 and more tiresome198. I, on the other hand, want neither to die nor live for her." Amanda moved sharply. "It's extraordinary what amazing vapours a lonely man may get into his head. If you don't want a divorce then I suppose things might go on as they are now."
"I hate things as they are now," said Easton. "I hate this falsehood and deception199."
"You would hate the scandal just as much," said Amanda.
"I would not care what the scandal was unless it hurt you."
"It would be only a temporary inconvenience," said Benham. "Every one would sympathize with you.... The whole thing is so natural.... People would be glad to forget very soon. They did with my mother."
"No," said Amanda, "it isn't so easy as that."
She seemed to come to a decision.
"Pip," she said. "I want to talk to--HIM--alone."
Easton's brown eyes were filled with distress190 and perplexity. "But why?" he asked.
"I do," she said.
"But this is a thing for US."
"Pip, I want to talk to him alone. There is something--something I can't say before you...."
Sir Philip rose slowly to his feet.
"Shall I wait outside?"
"No, Pip. Go home. Yes,--there are some things you must leave to me."
She stood up too and turned so that she and Benham both faced the younger man. The strangest uneasiness mingled200 with his resolve to be at any cost splendid. He felt--and it was a most unexpected and disconcerting feeling--that he was no longer confederated with Amanda; that prior, more fundamental and greater associations prevailed over his little new grip upon her mind and senses. He stared at husband and wife aghast in this realization. Then his resolute201 romanticism came to his help. "I would trust you--" he began. "If you tell me to go--"
Amanda seemed to measure her hold upon him.
She laid her hand upon his arm. "Go, my dear Pip," she said. "Go."
He had a moment of hesitation202, of anguish203, and it seemed to Benham as though he eked204 himself out with unreality, as though somewhen, somewhere, he had seen something of the sort in a play and filled in a gap that otherwise he could not have supplied.
Then the door had closed upon him, and Amanda, pale and darkly dishevelled, faced her husband, silently and intensely.
"WELL?" said Benham.
She held out her arms to him.
"Why did you leave me, Cheetah? Why did you leave me?"
28
Benham affected205 to ignore those proffered206 arms. But they recalled in a swift rush the animal anger that had brought him back to England. To remind him of desire now was to revive an anger stronger than any desire. He spoke seeking to hurt her.
"I am wondering now," he said, "why the devil I came back."
"You had to come back to me."
"I could have written just as well about these things."
"CHEETAH," she said softly, and came towards him slowly, stooping forward and looking into his eyes, "you had to come back to see your old Leopard. Your wretched Leopard. Who has rolled in the dirt. And is still yours."
"Do you want a divorce? How are we to fix things, Amanda?"
"Cheetah, I will tell you how we will fix things."
She dropped upon the step below him. She laid her hands with a deliberate softness upon him, she gave a toss so that her disordered hair was a little more disordered, and brought her soft chin down to touch his knees. Her eyes implored208 him.
"Cheetah," she said. "You are going to forgive."
He sat rigid209, meeting her eyes.
"Amanda," he said at last, "you would be astonished if I kicked you away from me and trampled210 over you to the door. That is what I want to do."
"Do it," she said, and the grip of her hands tightened211. "Cheetah, dear! I would love you to kill me."
"I don't want to kill you."
Her eyes dilated212. "Beat me."
"And I haven't the remotest intention of making love to you," he said, and pushed her soft face and hands away from him as if he would stand up.
She caught hold of him again. "Stay with me," she said.
He made no effort to shake off her grip. He looked at the dark cloud of her hair that had ruled him so magically, and the memory of old delights made him grip a great handful almost inadvertently as he spoke. "Dear Leopard," he said, "we humans are the most streaky of conceivable things. I thought I hated you. I do. I hate you like poison. And also I do not hate you at all."
Then abruptly he was standing over her.
She rose to her knees.
"Stay here, old Cheetah!" she said. "This is your house. I am your wife."
He went towards the unfastened front door.
"Cheetah!" she cried with a note of despair.
He halted at the door.
"Amanda, I will come to-morrow. I will come in the morning, in the sober London daylight, and then we will settle things."
He stared at her, and to her amazement213 he smiled. He spoke as one who remarks upon a quite unexpected fact....
"Never in my life, Amanda, have I seen a human being that I wanted so little to kill."
29
White found a fragment that might have been written within a week of those last encounters of Benham and Amanda.
"The thing that astonished me most in Amanda was the change in her mental quality.
"With me in the old days she had always been a sincere person; she had deceived me about facts, but she had never deceived me about herself. Her personal, stark214 frankness had been her essential strength. And it was gone. I came back to find Amanda an accomplished215 actress, a thing of poses and calculated effects. She was a surface, a sham114, a Lorelei. Beneath that surface I could not discover anything individual at all. Fear and a grasping quality, such as God gave us all when he gave us hands; but the individual I knew, the humorous wilful216 Spotless Leopard was gone. Whither, I cannot imagine. An amazing disappearance217. Clean out of space and time like a soul lost for ever.
"When I went to see her in the morning, she was made up for a scene, she acted an intricate part, never for a moment was she there in reality....
"I have got a remarkable218 persuasion that she lost herself in this way, by cheapening love, by making base love to a lover she despised.... There can be no inequality in love. Give and take must balance. One must be one's natural self or the whole business is an indecent trick, a vile219 use of life! To use inferiors in love one must needs talk down to them, interpret oneself in their insufficient220 phrases, pretend, sentimentalize. And it is clear that unless oneself is to be lost, one must be content to leave alone all those people that one can reach only by sentimentalizing. But Amanda--and yet somehow I love her for it still--could not leave any one alone. So she was always feverishly221 weaving nets of false relationship. Until her very self was forgotten. So she will go on until the end. With Easton it had been necessary for her to key herself to a simple exalted222 romanticism that was entirely insincere. She had so accustomed herself to these poses that her innate gestures were forgotten. She could not recover them; she could not even reinvent them. Between us there were momentary223 gleams as though presently we should be our frank former selves again. They were never more than momentary...."
And that was all that this astonishing man had seen fit to tell of his last parting from his wife.
Perhaps he did Amanda injustice224. Perhaps there was a stronger thread of reality in her desire to recover him than he supposed. Clearly he believed that under the circumstances Amanda would have tried to recover anybody.
She had dressed for that morning's encounter in a very becoming and intimate wrap of soft mauve and white silk, and she had washed and dried her dark hair so that it was a vapour about her face. She set herself with a single mind to persuade herself and Benham that they were inseparable lovers, and she would not be deflected226 by his grim determination to discuss the conditions of their separation. When he asked her whether she wanted a divorce, she offered to throw over Sir Philip and banish him for ever as lightly as a great lady might sacrifice an objectionable poodle to her connubial227 peace.
Benham passed through perplexing phases, so that she herself began to feel that her practice with Easton had spoilt her hands. His initial grimness she could understand, and partially228 its breakdown229 into irritability230. But she was puzzled by his laughter. For he laughed abruptly.
"You know, Amanda, I came home in a mood of tremendous tragedy. And really,--you are a Lark231."
And then overriding232 her altogether, he told her what he meant to do about their future and the future of their little son.
"You don't want a divorce and a fuss. Then I'll leave things. I perceive I've no intention of marrying any more. But you'd better do the straight thing. People forget and forgive. Especially when there is no one about making a fuss against you.
"Perhaps, after all, there is something to be said for shirking it. We'll both be able to get at the boy then. You'll not hurt him, and I shall want to see him. It's better for the boy anyhow not to have a divorce.
"I'll not stand in your way. I'll get a little flat and I shan't come too much to London, and when I do, you can get out of town. You must be discreet about Easton, and if people say anything about him, send them to me. After all, this is our private affair.
"We'll go on about money matters as we have been going. I trust to you not to run me into overwhelming debts. And, of course, if at any time, you do want to marry--on account of children or anything--if nobody knows of this conversation we can be divorced then...."
Benham threw out these decisions in little dry sentences while Amanda gathered her forces for her last appeal.
It was an unsuccessful appeal, and at the end she flung herself down before him and clung to his knees. He struggled ridiculously to get himself clear, and when at last he succeeded she dropped prostrate233 on the floor with her dishevelled hair about her.
She heard the door close behind him, and still she lay there, a dark Guinevere, until with a start she heard a step upon the thick carpet without. He had come back. The door reopened. There was a slight pause, and then she raised her face and met the blank stare of the second housemaid. There are moments, suspended fragments of time rather than links in its succession, when the human eye is more intelligible234 than any words.
The housemaid made a rapid apologetic noise and vanished with a click of the door.
"DAMN!" said Amanda.
Then slowly she rose to her knees.
She meditated through vast moments.
"It's a cursed thing to be a woman," said Amanda. She stood up. She put her hand on the telephone in the corner and then she forgot about it. After another long interval of thought she spoke.
"Cheetah!" she said, "Old Cheetah!...
"I didn't THINK it of you...."
Then presently with the even joyless movements of one who does a reasonable business, with something indeed of the manner of one who packs a trunk, she rang up Sir Philip Easton.
30
The head chambermaid on the first floor of the Westwood Hotel in Danebury Street had a curious and perplexing glimpse of Benham's private processes the morning after this affair.
Benham had taken Room 27 on the afternoon of his return to London. She had seen him twice or three times, and he had struck her as a coldly decorous person, tall, white-faced, slow speaking; the last man to behave violently or surprise a head chambermaid in any way. On the morning of his departure she was told by the first-floor waiter that the occupant of Room 26 had complained of an uproar in the night, and almost immediately she was summoned to see Benham.
He was standing facing the door and in a position which did a little obscure the condition of the room behind him. He was carefully dressed, and his manner was more cold and decorous than ever. But one of his hands was tied up in a white bandage.
"I am going this morning," he said, "I am going down now to breakfast. I have had a few little accidents with some of the things in the room and I have cut my hand. I want you to tell the manager and see that they are properly charged for on the bill.... Thank you."
The head chambermaid was left to consider the accidents.
Benham's things were all packed up and the room had an air of having been straightened up neatly236 and methodically after a destructive cataclysm237. One or two items that the chambermaid might possibly have overlooked in the normal course of things were carefully exhibited. For example, the sheet had been torn into half a dozen strips and they were lying side by side on the bed. The clock on the mantelpiece had been knocked into the fireplace and then pounded to pieces. All the looking-glasses in the room were smashed, apparently the electric lamp that stood on the night table by the bedside had been wrenched off and flung or hammered about amidst the other breakables. And there was a considerable amount of blood splashed about the room. The head chambermaid felt unequal to the perplexities of the spectacle and summoned her most convenient friend, the head chambermaid on the third floor, to her aid. The first-floor waiter joined their deliberations and several housemaids displayed a respectful interest in the matter. Finally they invoked238 the manager. He was still contemplating239 the scene of the disorder207 when the precipitate240 retreat of his subordinates warned him of Benham's return.
Benham was smoking a cigarette and his bearing was reassuringly241 tranquil242.
"I had a kind of nightmare," he said. "I am fearfully sorry to have disarranged your room. You must charge me for the inconvenience as well as for the damage."
31
"An aristocrat cannot be a lover."
"One cannot serve at once the intricacies of the wider issues of life and the intricacies of another human being. I do not mean that one may not love. One loves the more because one does not concentrate one's love. One loves nations, the people passing in the street, beasts hurt by the wayside, troubled scoundrels and university dons in tears....
"But if one does not give one's whole love and life into a woman's hands I do not think one can expect to be loved.
"An aristocrat must do without close personal love...."
This much was written at the top of a sheet of paper. The writing ended halfway243 down the page. Manifestly it was an abandoned beginning. And it was, it seemed to White, the last page of all this confusion of matter that dealt with the Second and Third Limitations. Its incompleteness made its expression perfect....
There Benham's love experience ended. He turned to the great business of the world. Desire and Jealousy should deflect225 his life no more; like Fear they were to be dismissed as far as possible and subdued when they could not be altogether dismissed. Whatever stirrings of blood or imagination there were in him after that parting, whatever failures from this resolution, they left no trace on the rest of his research, which was concerned with the hates of peoples and classes and war and peace and the possibilities science unveils and starry244 speculations245 of what mankind may do.
32
But Benham did not leave England again until he had had an encounter with Lady Marayne.
The little lady came to her son in a state of extraordinary anger and distress. Never had she seemed quite so resolute nor quite so hopelessly dispersed246 and mixed. And when for a moment it seemed to him that she was not as a matter of fact dispersed and mixed at all, then with an instant eagerness he dismissed that one elucidatory247 gleam. "What are you doing in England, Poff?" she demanded. "And what are you going to do?
"Nothing! And you are going to leave her in your house, with your property and a lover. If that's it, Poff, why did you ever come back? And why did you ever marry her? You might have known; her father was a swindler. She's begotten248 of deceit. She'll tell her own story while you are away, and a pretty story she'll make of it."
"Do you want me to divorce her and make a scandal?"
"I never wanted you to go away from her. If you'd stayed and watched her as a man should, as I begged you and implored you to do. Didn't I tell you, Poff? Didn't I warn you?"
"But now what am I to do?"
"There you are! That's just a man's way. You get yourself into this trouble, you follow your passions and your fancies and fads249 and then you turn to me! How can I help you now, Poff? If you'd listened to me before!"
Her blue eyes were demonstratively round.
"Yes, but--"
"I warned you," she interrupted. "I warned you. I've done all I could for you. It isn't that I haven't seen through her. When she came to me at first with that made-up story of a baby! And all about loving me like her own mother. But I did what I could. I thought we might still make the best of a bad job. And then--. I might have known she couldn't leave Pip alone.... But for weeks I didn't dream. I wouldn't dream. Right under my nose. The impudence250 of it!"
Her voice broke. "Such a horrid251 mess! Such a hopeless, horrid mess!"
She wiped away a bright little tear....
"It's all alike. It's your way with us. All of you. There isn't a man in the world deserves to have a woman in the world. We do all we can for you. We do all we can to amuse you, we dress for you and we talk for you. All the sweet, warm little women there are! And then you go away from us! There never was a woman yet who pleased and satisfied a man, who did not lose him. Give you everything and off you must go! Lovers, mothers...."
It dawned upon Benham dimly that his mother's troubles did not deal exclusively with himself.
"But Amanda," he began.
"If you'd looked after her properly, it would have been right enough. Pip was as good as gold until she undermined him.... A woman can't wait about like an umbrella in a stand.... He was just a boy.... Only of course there she was--a novelty. It is perfectly easy to understand. She flattered him.... Men are such fools."
"Still--it's no good saying that now."
"But she'll spend all your money, Poff! She'll break your back with debts. What's to prevent her? With him living on her! For that's what it comes to practically."
"Well, what am I to do?"
"You aren't going back without tying her up, Poff? You ought to stop every farthing of her money--every farthing. It's your duty."
"I can't do things like that."
"But have you no Shame? To let that sort of thing go on!"
"If I don't feel the Shame of it-- And I don't."
"And that money--. I got you that money, Poff! It was my money."
Benham stared at her perplexed252. "What am I to do?" he asked.
"Cut her off, you silly boy! Tie her up! Pay her through a solicitor253. Say that if she sees him ONCE again--"
He reflected. "No," he said at last.
"Poff!" she cried, "every time I see you, you are more and more like your father. You're going off--just as he did. That baffled, MULISH look--priggish--solemn! Oh! it's strange the stuff a poor woman has to bring into the world. But you'll do nothing. I know you'll do nothing. You'll stand everything. You--you Cuckold! And she'll drive by me, she'll pass me in theatres with the money that ought to have been mine! Oh! Oh!"
She dabbed254 her handkerchief from one swimming eye to the other. But she went on talking. Faster and faster, less and less coherently; more and more wildly abusive. Presently in a brief pause of the storm Benham sighed profoundly....
It brought the scene to a painful end....
For weeks her distress pursued and perplexed him.
He had an extraordinary persuasion that in some obscure way he was in default, that he was to blame for her distress, that he owed her--he could never define what he owed her.
And yet, what on earth was one to do?
And something his mother had said gave him the odd idea that he had misjudged his father, that he had missed depths of perplexed and kindred goodwill255. He went down to see him before he returned to India. But if there was a hidden well of feeling in Mr. Benham senior, it had been very carefully boarded over. The parental256 mind and attention were entirely engaged in a dispute in the SCHOOL WORLD about the heuristic method. Somebody had been disrespectful to Martindale House and the thing was rankling257 almost unendurably. It seemed to be a relief to him to show his son very fully235 the essentially illogical position of his assailant. He was entirely inattentive to Benham's carefully made conversational258 opportunities. He would be silent at times while Benham talked and then he would break out suddenly with: "What seems to me so unreasonable, so ridiculous, in the whole of that fellow's second argument--if one can call it an argument--.... A man who reasons as he does is bound to get laughed at. If people will only see it...."
收听单词发音 |
1
bazaar
|
|
| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
callously
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
scrawl
|
|
| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
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： |
|
|
|
|
7
confession
|
|
| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
uproar
|
|
| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
monstrous
|
|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
stranded
|
|
| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
dismal
|
|
| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
invincible
|
|
| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
levity
|
|
| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
cynical
|
|
| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
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： |
|
|
|
|
19
meekly
|
|
| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
pensively
|
|
| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
merged
|
|
| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
discreet
|
|
| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
celibates
|
|
| n.独身者( celibate的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
celibate
|
|
| adj.独身的，独身主义的；n.独身者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
sere
|
|
| adj.干枯的；n.演替系列 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
leopard
|
|
| n.豹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
mutual
|
|
| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
refreshment
|
|
| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
maternity
|
|
| n.母性，母道，妇产科病房；adj.孕妇的，母性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
complexion
|
|
| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
softened
|
|
| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
vowed
|
|
| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
astonishment
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
disposition
|
|
| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
immolation
|
|
| n.牺牲品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
motif
|
|
| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
impending
|
|
| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
epidemic
|
|
| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
vein
|
|
| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
confidentially
|
|
| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
extraordinarily
|
|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
doorway
|
|
| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
unnatural
|
|
| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
expressiveness
|
|
| n.富有表现力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
solicitude
|
|
| n.焦虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
impartiality
|
|
| n. 公平, 无私, 不偏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
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： |
|
|
|
|
52
privately
|
|
| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
contrived
|
|
| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
hamper
|
|
| vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
grunt
|
|
| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
apprehensive
|
|
| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
aristocrat
|
|
| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
barbarian
|
|
| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
engendering
|
|
| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
constrained
|
|
| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
invert
|
|
| vt.使反转，使颠倒，使转化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
chrysanthemums
|
|
| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
touchingly
|
|
| adv.令人同情地，感人地，动人地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
scrambled
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
avert
|
|
| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
cheetah
|
|
| n.(动物)猎豹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
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： |
|
|
|
|
69
honourable
|
|
| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
scattered
|
|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
memoranda
|
|
| n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
jealousy
|
|
| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
Fahrenheit
|
|
| n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
amateurishly
|
|
| adv.外行地，生手地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
gathering
|
|
| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
contemptible
|
|
| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
fatigue
|
|
| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
sleeplessness
|
|
| n.失眠，警觉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
irrational
|
|
| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
torment
|
|
| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
motive
|
|
| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
proprietorship
|
|
| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
motives
|
|
| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
dishonouring
|
|
| 使（人、家族等）丧失名誉（dishonour的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
86
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
stuffy
|
|
| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
obstinately
|
|
| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
obstinate
|
|
| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
dread
|
|
| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
torments
|
|
| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
triumphant
|
|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
dispel
|
|
| vt.驱走，驱散，消除 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
interpretations
|
|
| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
passionately
|
|
| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
joint
|
|
| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
dissertation
|
|
| n.（博士学位）论文，学术演讲，专题论文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
taunts
|
|
| 嘲弄的言语，嘲笑，奚落( taunt的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
sentimental
|
|
| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
endearments
|
|
| n.表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示( endearment的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
backbone
|
|
| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
habitual
|
|
| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
animation
|
|
| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
formulated
|
|
| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
realization
|
|
| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
boundless
|
|
| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
temperament
|
|
| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
adventurousness
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
efficiently
|
|
| adv.高效率地，有能力地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
sham
|
|
| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
stunted
|
|
| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
instinctive
|
|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
shameful
|
|
| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
subdued
|
|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
bawling
|
|
| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
recoil
|
|
| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
tormented
|
|
| 饱受折磨的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
breach
|
|
| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
distinctive
|
|
| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
resentment
|
|
| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
discredit
|
|
| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
cowardice
|
|
| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
curiously
|
|
| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
unreasonable
|
|
| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
outrageously
|
|
| 凶残地； 肆无忌惮地； 令人不能容忍地； 不寻常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
outrageous
|
|
| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
abominably
|
|
| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
loyalty
|
|
| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
incompatible
|
|
| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
thither
|
|
| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
encumbered
|
|
| v.妨碍，阻碍，拖累( encumber的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
tribal
|
|
| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
monks
|
|
| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
nuns
|
|
| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
knights
|
|
| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
loyalties
|
|
| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
celibacy
|
|
| n.独身(主义) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
eugenic
|
|
| adj.优生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
aristocrats
|
|
| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
severely
|
|
| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
persuasion
|
|
| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
innate
|
|
| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
insidious
|
|
| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
naively
|
|
| adv. 天真地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
specialized
|
|
| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
devoted
|
|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
longing
|
|
| n.（for）渴望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
phantom
|
|
| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
armour
|
|
| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
petals
|
|
| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
scented
|
|
| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
eyelid
|
|
| n.眼睑，眼皮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
jot
|
|
| n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
killing
|
|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
repartee
|
|
| n.机敏的应答 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
truncated
|
|
| adj.切去顶端的，缩短了的，被删节的v.截面的( truncate的过去式和过去分词 )；截头的；缩短了的；截去顶端或末端 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
adoration
|
|
| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
banish
|
|
| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
rustling
|
|
| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
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： |
|
|
|
|
167
humility
|
|
| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
incessant
|
|
| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
aboriginal
|
|
| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
berth
|
|
| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
exasperating
|
|
| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
172
wring
|
|
| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
173
tighten
|
|
| v.(使)变紧；(使)绷紧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
174
clench
|
|
| vt.捏紧（拳头等），咬紧（牙齿等），紧紧握住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
175
snarl
|
|
| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
176
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
177
unfamiliar
|
|
| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
178
confrontation
|
|
| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
179
charing
|
|
| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
180
deferentially
|
|
| adv.表示敬意地，谦恭地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
181
meditation
|
|
| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
182
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： |
|
|
|
|
183
descended
|
|
| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
184
testiness
|
|
| n.易怒，暴躁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
185
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
186
savagery
|
|
| n.野性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
187
spat
|
|
| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
188
unwillingly
|
|
| adv.不情愿地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
189
distressed
|
|
| 痛苦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
190
distress
|
|
| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
191
lusts
|
|
| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
192
resentments
|
|
| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
193
crouched
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
194
asperity
|
|
| n.粗鲁，艰苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
195
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
196
miserable
|
|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
197
tragic
|
|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
198
tiresome
|
|
| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
199
deception
|
|
| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
200
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： |
|
|
|
|
201
resolute
|
|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
202
hesitation
|
|
| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
203
anguish
|
|
| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
204
eked
|
|
| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
205
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
206
proffered
|
|
| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
207
disorder
|
|
| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
208
implored
|
|
| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
209
rigid
|
|
| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
210
trampled
|
|
| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
211
tightened
|
|
| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
212
dilated
|
|
| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
213
amazement
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
214
stark
|
|
| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
215
accomplished
|
|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
216
wilful
|
|
| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
217
disappearance
|
|
| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
218
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
219
vile
|
|
| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
220
insufficient
|
|
| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
221
feverishly
|
|
| adv. 兴奋地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
222
exalted
|
|
| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
223
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
224
injustice
|
|
| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
225
deflect
|
|
| v.(使)偏斜，(使)偏离，(使)转向 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
226
deflected
|
|
| 偏离的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
227
connubial
|
|
| adj.婚姻的，夫妇的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
228
partially
|
|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
229
breakdown
|
|
| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
230
irritability
|
|
| n.易怒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
231
lark
|
|
| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
232
overriding
|
|
| a.最主要的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
233
prostrate
|
|
| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
234
intelligible
|
|
| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
235
fully
|
|
| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
236
neatly
|
|
| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
237
cataclysm
|
|
| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
238
invoked
|
|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
239
contemplating
|
|
| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
240
precipitate
|
|
| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
241
reassuringly
|
|
| ad.安心，可靠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
242
tranquil
|
|
| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
243
halfway
|
|
| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
244
starry
|
|
| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
245
speculations
|
|
| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
246
dispersed
|
|
| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
247
elucidatory
|
|
| adj.阐释的，阐明的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
248
begotten
|
|
| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
249
fads
|
|
| n.一时的流行，一时的风尚( fad的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
250
impudence
|
|
| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
251
horrid
|
|
| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
252
perplexed
|
|
| adj.不知所措的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
253
solicitor
|
|
| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
254
dabbed
|
|
| （用某物）轻触( dab的过去式和过去分词 )； 轻而快地擦掉（或抹掉）； 快速擦拭； （用某物）轻而快地涂上（或点上）… | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
255
goodwill
|
|
| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
256
parental
|
|
| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
257
rankling
|
|
| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
258
conversational
|
|
| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |