Chapter 15 The Bitterness of Ecstasy

A storm of industry raged on in the house. Ursula did not go to college till October. So, with a distinct feeling of responsibility, as if she must express herself in this house, she laboured arranging, re-arranging, selecting, contriving¹.

She could use her father’s ordinary tools, both for woodwork and metal-work, so she hammered and tinkered. Her mother was quite content to have the thing done. Brangwen was interested. He had a ready belief in his daughter. He himself was at work putting up his work-shed in the garden.

At last she had finished for the time being. The drawingroom was big and empty. It had the good Wilton carpet, of which the family was so proud, and the large couch and large chairs covered with shiny chintz, and the piano, a little sculpture in plaster that Brangwen had done, and not very much more. It was too large and empty-feeling for the family to occupy very much. Yet they liked to know it was there, large and empty.

The home was the dining-room. There the hard rush floor-covering made the ground light, reflecting light upon the bottom their hearts; in the window-bay was a broad, sunny seat, the table was so solid one could not jostle it, and the chairs so strong one could knock them over without hurting them. The familiar organ that Brangwen had made stood on one side, looking peculiarly small, the sideboard was comfortably reduced to normal proportions. This was the family living-room.

Ursula had a bedroom to herself. It was really a servants’ bedroom, small and plain. Its window looked over the back garden at other back gardens, some of them old and very nice, some of them littered with packing-cases, then at the backs of the houses whose fronts were the shops in High Street, or the genteel homes of the under-manager or the chief cashier, facing the chapel⁴.

She had six weeks still before going to college. In this time she nervously⁵ read over some Latin and some botany, and fitfully worked at some mathematics. She was going into college as a teacher, for her training. But, having already taken her matriculation examination, she was entered for a university course. At the end of a year she would sit for the Intermediate Arts, then two years after for her B.A. So her case was not that of the ordinary school-teacher. She would be working among the private students who came only for pure education, not for mere² professional training. She would be of the elect.

For the next three years she would be more or less dependent on her parents again. Her training was free. All college fees were paid by the government, she had moreover a few pounds grant every year. This would just pay for her train fares and her clothing. Her parents would only have to feed her. She did not want to cost them much. They would not be well off. Her father would earn only two hundred a year, and a good deal of her mother’s capital was spent in buying the house. Still, there was enough to get along with.

Gudrun was attending the Art School at Nottingham. She was working particularly at sculpture. She had a gift for this. She loved making little models in clay, of children or of animals. Already some of these had appeared in the Students’ Exhibition in the Castle, and Gudrun was a distinguished⁸ person. She was chafing⁹ at the Art School and wanted to go to London. But there was not enough money. Neither would her parents let her go so far.

Theresa had left the High School. She was a great strapping¹⁰, bold hussy, indifferent to all higher claims. She would stay at home. The others were at school, except the youngest. When term started, they would all be transferred to the Grammar School at Willey Green.

Ursula was excited at making acquaintances in Beldover. The excitement soon passed. She had tea at the clergyman’s, at the chemist’s, at the other chemist’s, at the doctor’s, at the under-manager’s — then she knew practically everybody. She could not take people very seriously, though at the time she wanted to.

She wandered the country, on foot and on her bicycle, finding it very beautiful in the forest direction, between Mansfield and Southwell and Worksop. But she was here only skirmishing for amusement. Her real exploration would begin in college.

Term began. She went into town each day by train. The cloistered¹¹ quiet of the college began to close around her.

She was not at first disappointed. The big college built of stone, standing¹² in the quiet street, with a rim¹³ of grass and lime trees all so peaceful: she felt it remote, a magic land. Its architecture was foolish, she knew from her father. Still, it was different from that of all other buildings. Its rather pretty, plaything, Gothic form was almost a style, in the dirty industrial town.

She liked the hall, with its big stone chimney-piece and its Gothic arches supporting the balcony above. To be sure the arches were ugly, the chimney-piece of cardboard-like carved stone, with its armorial decoration, looked silly just opposite the bicycle stand and the radiator¹⁴, whilst the great notice-board with its fluttering papers seemed to slam away all sense of retreat and mystery from the far wall. Nevertheless, amorphous¹⁵ as it might be, there was in it a reminiscence of the wondrous¹⁶, cloistral¹⁷ origin of education. Her soul flew straight back to the medieval times, when the monks¹⁸ of God held the learning of men and imparted it within the shadow of religion. In this spirit she entered college.

The harshness and vulgarity of the lobbies and cloak-rooms hurt her at first. Why was it not all beautiful? But she could not openly admit her criticism. She was on holy ground.

She wanted all the students to have a high, pure spirit, she wanted them to say only the real, genuine things, she wanted their faces to be still and luminous¹⁹ as the nuns’ and the monks’ faces.

Alas²⁰, the girls chattered²¹ and giggled²² and were nervous, they were dressed up and frizzed, the men looked mean and clownish.

Still, it was lovely to pass along the corridor with one’s books in one’s hands, to push the swinging, glass-panelled door, and enter the big room where the first lecture would be given. The windows were large and lofty, the myriad²³ brown students’ desks stood waiting, the great blackboard was smooth behind the rostrum.

Ursula sat beside her window, rather far back. Looking down, she saw the lime trees turning yellow, the tradesman’s boy passing silent down the still, autumn-sunny street. There was the world, remote, remote.

Here, within the great, whispering sea-shell, that whispered all the while with reminiscence of all the centuries, time faded away, and the echo of knowledge filled the timeless silence.

She listened, she scribbled²⁴ her notes with joy, almost with ecstasy²⁵, never for a moment criticising what she heard. The lecturer was a mouth-piece, a priest. As he stood, black-gowned, on the rostrum, some strands²⁶ of the whispering confusion of knowledge that filled the whole place seemed to be singled out and woven together by him, till they became a lecture.

At first, she preserved herself from criticism. She would not consider the professors as men, ordinary men who ate bacon, and pulled on their boots before coming to college. They were the black-gowned priests of knowledge, serving for ever in a remote, hushed temple. They were the initiated²⁷, and the beginning and the end of the mystery was in their keeping.

Curious joy she had of the lectures. It was a joy to hear the theory of education, there was such freedom and pleasure in ranging over the very stuff of knowledge, and seeing how it moved and lived and had its being. How happy Racine made her! She did not know why. But as the big lines of the drama unfolded themselves, so steady, so measured, she felt a thrill as of being in the realm of the reality. Of Latin, she was doing Livy and Horace. The curious, intimate, gossiping tone of the Latin class suited Horace. Yet she never cared for him, nor even Livy. There was an entire lack of sternness in the gossipy class-room. She tried hard to keep her old grasp of the Roman spirit. But gradually the Latin became mere gossip-stuff and artificiality to her, a question of manners and verbosities.

Her terror was the mathematics class. The lecturer went so fast, her heart beat excitedly, she seemed to be straining every nerve. And she struggled hard, during private study, to get the stuff into control.

Then came the lovely, peaceful afternoons in the botany laboratory. There were few students. How she loved to sit on her high stool before the bench, with her pith and her razor and her material, carefully mounting her slides, carefully bringing her microscope into focus, then turning with joy to record her observation, drawing joyfully²⁸ in her book, if the slide were good.

She soon made a college friend, a girl who had lived in Florence, a girl who wore a wonderful purple or figured scarf draped over a plain, dark dress. She was Dorothy Russell, daughter of a south-country advocate. Dorothy lived with a maiden²⁹ aunt in Nottingham, and spent her spare moments slaving for the Women’s Social and Political union. She was quiet and intense, with an ivory face and dark hair looped plain over her ears. Ursula was very fond of her, but afraid of her. She seemed so old and so relentless³⁰ towards herself. Yet she was only twenty-two. Ursula always felt her to be a creature of fate, like Cassandra.

The two girls had a close, stern friendship. Dorothy worked at all things with the same passion, never sparing herself. She came closest to Ursula during the botany hours. For she could not draw. Ursula made beautiful and wonderful drawings of the sections under the microscope, and Dorothy always came to learn the manner of the drawing.

So the first year went by, in magnificent seclusion³¹ and activity of learning. It was strenuous³² as a battle, her college life, yet remote as peace.

She came to Nottingham in the morning with Gudrun. The two sisters were distinguished wherever they went, slim, strong girls, eager and extremely sensitive. Gudrun was the more beautiful of the two, with her sleepy, half-languid girlishness that looked so soft, and yet was balanced and inalterable underneath³³. She wore soft, easy clothing, and hats which fell by themselves into a careless grace.

Ursula was much more carefully dressed, but she was self-conscious, always falling into depths of admiration³⁴ of somebody else, and modelling herself upon this other, and so producing a hopeless incongruity³⁵. When she dressed for practical purposes she always looked well. In winter, wearing a tweed coat-and-skirt and a small hat of black fur pulled over her eager, palpitant face, she seemed to move down the street in a drifting motion of suspense³⁷ and exceeding sensitive receptivity.

At the end of the first year Ursula got through her Intermediate Arts examination, and there came a lull³⁸ in her eager activities. She slackened off, she relaxed altogether. Worn nervous and inflammable by the excitement of the preparation for the examination, and by the sort of exaltation which carried her through the crisis itself, she now fell into a quivering passivity, her will all loosened.

The family went to Scarborough for a month. Gudrun and the father were busy at the handicraft holiday school there, Ursula was left a good deal with the children. But when she could, she went off by herself.

She stood and looked out over the shining sea. It was very beautiful to her. The tears rose hot in her heart.

Out of the far, far space there drifted slowly in to her a passionate³⁹, unborn yearning⁴⁰. “There are so many dawns that have not yet risen.” It seemed as if, from over the edge of the sea, all the unrisen dawns were appealing to her, all her unborn soul was crying for the unrisen dawns.

As she sat looking out at the tender sea, with its lovely, swift glimmer⁴¹, the sob⁴² rose in her breast, till she caught her lip suddenly under her teeth, and the tears were forcing themselves from her. And in her very sob, she laughed. Why did she cry? She did not want to cry. It was so beautiful that she laughed. It was so beautiful that she cried.

She glanced apprehensively⁴³ round, hoping no one would see her in this state.

Then came a time when the sea was rough. She watched the water travelling in to the coast, she watched a big wave running unnoticed, to burst in a shock of foam⁴⁴ against a rock, enveloping⁴⁶ all in a great white beauty, to pour away again, leaving the rock emerged black and teeming⁴⁷. Oh, and if, when the wave burst into whiteness, it were only set free!

Sometimes she loitered along the harbour, looking at the sea-browned sailors, who, in their close blue jerseys⁴⁸, lounged on the harbour-wall, and laughed at her with impudent⁴⁹, communicative eyes.

There was established a little relation between her and them. She never would speak to them or know any more of them. Yet as she walked by and they leaned on the sea-wall, there was something between her and them, something keen and delightful⁵⁰ and painful. She liked best the young one whose fair, salty hair tumbled over his blue eyes. He was so new and fresh and salt and not of this world.

From Scarborough she went to her Uncle Tom’s. Winifred had a small baby, born at the end of the summer. She had become strange and alien to Ursula. There was an unmentionable reserve between the two women. Tom Brangwen was an attentive⁵¹ father, a very domestic husband. But there was something spurious about his domesticity, Ursula did not like him any more. Something ugly, blatant⁵² in his nature had come out now, making him shift everything over to a sentimental⁵³ basis. A materialistic⁵⁴ unbeliever, he carried it all off by becoming full of human feeling, a warm, attentive host, a generous husband, a model citizen. And he was clever enough to rouse admiration everywhere, and to take in his wife sufficiently⁵⁵. She did not love him. She was glad to live in a state of complacent⁵⁶ self-deception with him, she worked according to him.

Ursula was relieved to go home. She had still two peaceful years before her. Her future was settled for two years. She returned to college to prepare for her final examination.

But during this year the glamour⁵⁷ began to depart from college. The professors were not priests initiated into the deep mysteries of life and knowledge. After all, they were only middle-men handling wares⁵⁸ they had become so accustomed to that they were oblivious⁵⁹ of them. What was Latin? — So much dry goods of knowledge. What was the Latin class altogether but a sort of second-hand⁶⁰ curio shop, where one bought curios and learned the market-value of curios; dull curios too, on the whole. She was as bored by the Latin curiosities as she was by Chinese and Japanese curiosities in the antique shops. “Antiques”— the very word made her soul fall flat and dead.

The life went out of her studies, why, she did not know. But the whole thing seemed sham⁶¹, spurious; spurious Gothic arches, spurious peace, spurious Latinity, spurious dignity of France, spurious naivete of Chaucer. It was a second-hand dealer’s shop, and one bought an equipment for an examination. This was only a little side-show to the factories of the town. Gradually the perception stole into her. This was no religious retreat, no perception of pure learning. It was a little apprentice-shop where one was further equipped for making money. The college itself was a little, slovenly⁶³ laboratory for the factory.

A harsh and ugly disillusion⁶⁴ came over her again, the same darkness and bitter gloom from which she was never safe now, the realisation of the permanent substratum of ugliness under everything. As she came to the college in the afternoon, the lawns were frothed with daisies, the lime trees hung tender and sunlit and green; and oh, the deep, white froth of the daisies was anguish⁶⁵ to see.

For inside, inside the college, she knew she must enter the sham workshop. All the while, it was a sham store, a sham warehouse⁶⁶, with a single motive⁶⁷ of material gain, and no productivity. It pretended to exist by the religious virtue⁶⁸ of knowledge. But the religious virtue of knowledge was become a flunkey to the god of material success.

A sort of inertia⁶⁹ came over her. Mechanically, from habit, she went on with her studies. But it was almost hopeless. She could scarcely attend to anything. At the Anglo-Saxon lecture in the afternoon, she sat looking down, out of the window, hearing no word, of Beowulf or of anything else. Down below, in the street, the sunny grey pavement went beside the palisade. A woman in a pink frock, with a scarlet⁷¹ sunshade, crossed the road, a little white dog running like a fleck⁷² of light about her. The woman with the scarlet sunshade came over the road, a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her. Ursula watched spell- bound. The woman with the scarlet sunshade and the flickering⁷³ terrier was gone — and whither? Whither?

In what world of reality was the woman in the pink dress walking? To what warehouse of dead unreality was she herself confined?

What good was this place, this college? What good was Anglo-Saxon, when one only learned it in order to answer examination questions, in order that one should have a higher commercial value later on? She was sick with this long service at the inner commercial shrine⁷⁴. Yet what else was there? Was life all this, and this only? Everywhere, everything was debased to the same service. Everything went to produce vulgar things, to encumber⁷⁵ material life.

Suddenly she threw over French. She would take honours in botany. This was the one study that lived for her. She had entered into the lives of the plants. She was fascinated by the strange laws of the vegetable world. She had here a glimpse of something working entirely⁷⁶ apart from the purpose of the human world.

College was barren, cheap, a temple converted to the most vulgar, petty commerce. Had she not gone to hear the echo of learning pulsing back to the source of the mystery? — The source of mystery! And barrenly, the professors in their gowns offered commercial commodity that could be turned to good account in the examination room; ready-made stuff too, and not really worth the money it was intended to fetch; which they all knew.

All the time in the college now, save when she was labouring in her botany laboratory, for there the mystery still glimmered⁷⁷, she felt she was degrading herself in a kind of trade of sham jewjaws.

Angry and stiff, she went through her last term. She would rather be out again earning her own living. Even Brinsley Street and Mr. Harby seemed real in comparison. Her violent hatred⁷⁸ of the Ilkeston School was nothing compared with the sterile⁷⁹ degradation⁸⁰ of college. But she was not going back to Brinsley Street either. She would take her B.A., and become a mistress in some Grammar School for a time.

The last year of her college career was wheeling slowly round. She could see ahead her examination and her departure. She had the ash of disillusion gritting⁸² under her teeth. Would the next move turn out the same? Always the shining doorway⁸³ ahead; and then, upon approach, always the shining doorway was a gate into another ugly yard, dirty and active and dead. Always the crest⁸⁴ of the hill gleaming ahead under heaven: and then, from the top of the hill only another sordid⁸⁵ valley full of amorphous, squalid activity.

No matter! Every hill-top was a little different, every valley was somehow new. Cossethay and her childhood with her father; the Marsh⁸⁶ and the little Church school near the Marsh, and her grandmother and her uncles; the High School at Nottingham and Anton Skrebensky; Anton Skrebensky and the dance in the moonlight between the fires; then the time she could not think of without being blasted, Winifred Inger, and the months before becoming a school-teacher; then the horrors of Brinsley Street, lapsing⁸⁷ into comparative peacefulness, Maggie, and Maggie’s brother, whose influence she could still feel in her veins⁸⁸, when she conjured⁸⁹ him up; then college, and Dorothy Russell, who was now in France, then the next move into the world again!

Already it was a history. In every phase she was so different. Yet she was always Ursula Brangwen. But what did it mean, Ursula Brangwen? She did not know what she was. Only she was full of rejection⁹⁰, of refusal. Always, always she was spitting out of her mouth the ash and grit⁸¹ of disillusion, of falsity. She could only stiffen⁹¹ in rejection, in rejection. She seemed always negative in her action.

That which she was, positively⁹², was dark and unrevealed, it could not come forth⁹³. It was like a seed buried in dry ash. This world in which she lived was like a circle lighted by a lamp. This lighted area, lit up by man’s completest consciousness, she thought was all the world: that here all was disclosed for ever. Yet all the time, within the darkness she had been aware of points of light, like the eyes of wild beasts, gleaming, penetrating⁹⁴, vanishing. And her soul had acknowledged in a great heave of terror only the outer darkness. This inner circle of light in which she lived and moved, wherein the trains rushed and the factories ground out their machine-produce and the plants and the animals worked by the light of science and knowledge, suddenly it seemed like the area under an arc-lamp, wherein the moths⁹⁵ and children played in the security of blinding light, not even knowing there was any darkness, because they stayed in the light.

But she could see the glimmer of dark movement just out of range, she saw the eyes of the wild beast gleaming from the darkness, watching the vanity of the camp fire and the sleepers⁹⁶; she felt the strange, foolish vanity of the camp, which said “Beyond our light and our order there is nothing,” turning their faces always inward towards the sinking fire of illuminating⁹⁷ consciousness, which comprised sun and stars, and the Creator, and the System of Righteousness, ignoring always the vast darkness that wheeled round about, with half-revealed shapes lurking⁹⁸ on the edge.

Yea, and no man dared even throw a firebrand into the darkness. For if he did he was jeered⁹⁹ to death by the others, who cried “Fool, anti-social knave¹⁰⁰, why would you disturb us with bogeys¹⁰¹? There is no darkness. We move and live and have our being within the light, and unto us is given the eternal light of knowledge, we comprise and comprehend the innermost core and issue of knowledge. Fool and knave, how dare you belittle¹⁰² us with the darkness?”

Nevertheless the darkness wheeled round about, with grey shadow-shapes of wild beasts, and also with dark shadow-shapes of the angels, whom the light fenced out, as it fenced out the more familiar beasts of darkness. And some, having for a moment seen the darkness, saw it bristling¹⁰³ with the tufts of the hyena¹⁰⁴ and the wolf; and some having given up their vanity of the light, having died in their own conceit¹⁰⁵, saw the gleam in the eyes of the wolf and the hyena, that it was the flash of the sword of angels, flashing at the door to come in, that the angels in the darkness were lordly and terrible and not to be denied, like the flash of fangs¹⁰⁶.

It was a little while before Easter, in her last year of college, when Ursula was twenty-two years old, that she heard again from Skrebensky. He had written to her once or twice from South Africa, during the first months of his service out there in the war, and since had sent her a post-card every now and then, at ever longer intervals¹⁰⁷. He had become a first lieutenant¹⁰⁸, and had stayed out in Africa. She had not heard of him now for more than two years.

Often her thoughts returned to him. He seemed like the gleaming dawn, yellow, radiant, of a long, grey, ashy day. The memory of him was like the thought of the first radiant hours of morning. And here was the blank grey ashiness of later daytime. Ah, if he had only remained true to her, she might have known the sunshine, without all this toil¹⁰⁹ and hurt and degradation of a spoiled day. He would have been her angel. He held the keys of the sunshine. Still he held them. He could open to her the gates of succeeding freedom and delight. Nay¹¹⁰, if he had remained true to her, he would have been the doorway to her, into the boundless¹¹¹ sky of happiness and plunging¹¹², inexhaustible freedom which was the paradise of her soul. Ah, the great range he would have opened to her, the illimitable endless space for self-realisation and delight for ever.

The one thing she believed in was in the love she had held for him. It remained shining and complete, a thing to hark back to. And she said to herself, when present things seemed a failure:

“Ah, I was fond of him,” as if with him the leading flower of her life had died.

Now she heard from him again. The chief effect was pain. The pleasure, the spontaneous joy was not there any longer. But her will rejoiced. Her will had fixed¹¹³ itself to him. And the old excitement of her dreams stirred and woke up. He was come, the man with the wondrous lips that could send the kiss wavering to the very end of all space. Was he come back to her? She did not believe.

My dear Ursula, I am back in England again for a few months before going out again, this time to India. I wonder if you still keep the memory of our times together. I have still got the little photograph of you. You must be changed since then, for it is about six years ago. I am fully⁶ six years older — I have lived through another life since I knew you at Cossethay. I wonder if you would care to see me. I shall come up to Derby next week, and I would call in Nottingham, and we might have tea together. Will you let me know? I shall look for your answer.

Anton Skrebensky

Ursula had taken this letter from the rack in the hall at college, and torn it open as she crossed to the Women’s room. The world seemed to dissolve away from around her, she stood alone in clear air.

Where could she go, to be alone? She fled away, upstairs, and through the private way to the reference library. Seizing a book, she sat down and pondered the letter. Her heart beat, her limbs trembled. As in a dream, she heard one gong sound in the college, then, strangely, another. The first lecture had gone by.

Hurriedly she took one of her note-books and began to write.

“Dear Anton, Yes, I still have the ring. I should be very glad to see you again. You can come here to college for me, or I will meet you somewhere in the town. Will you let me know? Your sincere friend ——”

Trembling, she asked the librarian, who was her friend, if he would give her an envelope. She sealed and addressed her letter, and went out, bare-headed, to post it. When it was dropped into the pillar-box, the world became a very still, pale place, without confines. She wandered back to college, to her pale dream, like a first wan⁷ light of dawn.

Skrebensky came one afternoon the following week. Day after day, she had hurried swiftly to the letter-rack on her arrival at college in the morning, and during the intervals between lectures. Several times, swiftly, with secretive fingers, she had plucked his letter down from its public prominence¹¹⁴, and fled across the hall holding it fast and hidden. She read her letters in the botany laboratory, where her corner was always reserved to her.

Several letters, and then he was coming. It was Friday afternoon he appointed. She worked over her microscope with feverish¹¹⁵ activity, able to give only half her attention, yet working closely and rapidly. She had on her slide some special stuff come up from London that day, and the professor was fussy¹¹⁶ and excited about it. At the same time, as she focused the light on her field, and saw the plant-animal lying shadowy in a boundless light, she was fretting¹¹⁷ over a conversation she had had a few days ago with Dr. Frankstone, who was a woman doctor of physics in the college.

“No, really,” Dr. Frankstone had said, “I don’t see why we should attribute some special mystery to life — do you? We don’t understand it as we understand electricity, even, but that doesn’t warrant our saying it is something special, something different in kind and distinct from everything else in the universe — do you think it does? May it not be that life consists in a complexity¹¹⁸ of physical and chemical activities, of the same order as the activities we already know in science? I don’t see, really, why we should imagine there is a special order of life, and life alone ——”

The conversation had ended on a note of uncertainty¹¹⁹, indefinite, wistful. But the purpose, what was the purpose? Electricity had no soul, light and heat had no soul. Was she herself an impersonal¹²⁰ force, or conjunction of forces, like one of these? She looked still at the unicellular shadow that lay within the field of light, under her microscope. It was alive. She saw it move — she saw the bright mist of its ciliary activity, she saw the gleam of its nucleus¹²¹, as it slid across the plane of light. What then was its will? If it was a conjunction of forces, physical and chemical, what held these forces unified¹²², and for what purpose were they unified?

For what purpose were the incalculable physical and chemical activities nodalised in this shadowy, moving speck¹²³ under her microscope? What was the will which nodalised them and created the one thing she saw? What was its intention? To be itself? Was its purpose just mechanical and limited to itself?

It intended to be itself. But what self? Suddenly in her mind the world gleamed strangely, with an intense light, like the nucleus of the creature under the microscope. Suddenly she had passed away into an intensely-gleaming light of knowledge. She could not understand what it all was. She only knew that it was not limited mechanical energy, nor mere purpose of self-preservation and self-assertion. It was a consummation, a being infinite. Self was a oneness with the infinite. To be oneself was a supreme¹²⁴, gleaming triumph of infinity¹²⁵.

Ursula sat abstracted over her microscope, in suspense. Her soul was busy, infinitely¹²⁶ busy, in the new world. In the new world, Skrebensky was waiting for her — he would be waiting for her. She could not go yet, because her soul was engaged. Soon she would go.

A stillness, like passing away, took hold of her. Far off, down the corridors, she heard the gong booming five o’clock. She must go. Yet she sat still.

The other students were pushing back their stools and putting their microscopes away. Everything broke into turmoil¹²⁷. She saw, through the window, students going down the steps, with books under their arms, talking, all talking.

A great craving¹²⁸ to depart came upon her. She wanted also to be gone. She was in dread¹²⁹ of the material world, and in dread of her own transfiguration. She wanted to run to meet Skrebensky — the new life, the reality.

Very rapidly she wiped her slides and put them back, cleared her place at the bench, active, active, active. She wanted to run to meet Skrebensky, hasten — hasten. She did not know what she was to meet. But it would be a new beginning. She must hurry.

She flitted down the corridor on swift feet, her razor and note-books and pencil in one hand, her pinafore over her arm. Her face was lifted and tense with eagerness. He might not be there.

Issuing from the corridor, she saw him at once. She knew him at once. Yet he was so strange. He stood with the curious self-effacing diffidence which so frightened her in well-bred young men whom she knew. He stood as if he wished to be unseen. He was very well-dressed. She would not admit to herself the chill like a sunshine of frost that came over her. This was he, the key, the nucleus to the new world.

He saw her coming swiftly across the hall, a slim girl in a white flannel¹³⁰ blouse and dark skirt, with some of the abstraction and gleam of the unknown upon her, and he started, excited. He was very nervous. Other students were loitering about the hall.

She laughed, with a blind, dazzled face, as she gave him her hand. He too could not perceive her.

In a moment she was gone, to get her outdoor things. Then again, as when she had been at school, they walked out into the town to tea. And they went to the same tea-shop.

She knew a great difference in him. The kinship was there, the old kinship, but he had belonged to a different world from hers. It was as if they had cried a state of truce¹³¹ between him and her, and in this truce they had met. She knew, vaguely¹³², in the first minute, that they were enemies come together in a truce. Every movement and word of his was alien to her being.

Yet still she loved the fine texture¹³³ of his face, of his skin. He was rather browner, physically¹³⁴ stronger. He was a man now. She thought his manliness¹³⁵ made the strangeness in him. When he was only a youth, fluid, he was nearer to her. She thought a man must inevitably¹³⁶ set into this strange separateness, cold otherness of being. He talked, but not to her. She tried to speak to him, but she could not reach him.

He seemed so balanced and sure, he made such a confident presence. He was a great rider, so there was about him some of a horseman’s sureness and habitual¹³⁷ definiteness of decision, also some of the horseman’s animal darkness. Yet his soul was only the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a set of habitual actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable quick of the man was inaccessible¹³⁸. She knew nothing of it. She could only feel the dark, heavy fixity of his animal desire.

This dumb desire on his part had brought him to her? She was puzzled, hurt by some hopeless fixity in him, that terrified her with a cold feeling of despair. What did he want? His desires were so underground. Why did he not admit himself? What did he want? He wanted something that should be nameless. She shrank in fear.

Yet she flashed with excitement. In his dark, subterranean¹³⁹ male soul, he was kneeling before her, darkly exposing himself. She quivered, the dark flame ran over her. He was waiting at her feet. He was helpless, at her mercy. She could take or reject. If she rejected him, something would die in him. For him it was life or death. And yet, all must be kept so dark, the consciousness must admit nothing.

“How long,” she said, “are you staying in England?”

“I am not sure — but not later than July, I believe.”

Then they were both silent. He was here, in England, for six months. They had a space of six months between them. He waited. The same iron rigidity¹⁴¹, as if the world were made of steel, possessed¹⁴² her again. It was no use turning with flesh and blood to this arrangement of forged metal.

Quickly, her imagination adjusted itself to the situation.

“Have you an appointment in India?” she asked.

“Yes — I have just the six months’ leave.”

“Will you like being out there?”

“I think so — there’s a good deal of social life, and plenty going on — hunting, polo — and always a good horse — and plenty of work, any amount of work.”

He was always side-tracking, always side-tracking his own soul. She could see him so well out there, in India — one of the governing class, superimposed upon an old civilisation¹⁴³, lord and master of a clumsier civilisation than his own. It was his choice. He would become again an aristocrat¹⁴⁴, invested with authority and responsibility, having a great helpless populace beneath him. One of the ruling class, his whole being would be given over to the fulfilling and the executing of the better idea of the state. And in India, there would be real work to do. The country did need the civilisation which he himself represented: it did need his roads and bridges, and the enlightenment of which he was part. He would go to India. But that was not her road.

Yet she loved him, the body of him, whatever his decisions might be. He seemed to want something of her. He was waiting for her to decide of him. It had been decided¹⁴⁵ in her long ago, when he had kissed her first. He was her lover, though good and evil should cease. Her will never relaxed, though her heart and soul must be imprisoned¹⁴⁶ and silenced. He waited upon her, and she accepted him. For he had come back to her.

A glow came into his face, into his fine, smooth skin, his eyes, gold-grey, glowed intimately to her. He burned up, he caught fire and became splendid, royal, something like a tiger. She caught his brilliant, burnished¹⁴⁷ glamour. Her heart and her soul were shut away fast down below, hidden. She was free of them. She was to have her satisfaction.

She became proud and erect¹⁴⁸, like a flower, putting itself forth in its proper strength. His warmth invigorated her. His beauty of form, which seemed to glow out in contrast with the rest of people, made her proud. It was like deference¹⁴⁹ to her, and made her feel as if she represented before him all the grace and flower of humanity. She was no mere Ursula Brangwen. She was Woman, she was the whole of Woman in the human order. All-containing, universal, how should she be limited to individuality?

She was exhilarated, she did not want to go away from him. She had her place by him. Who should take her away?

They came out of the cafe.

“Is there anything you would like to do?” he said. “Is there anything we can do?”

It was a dark, windy night in March.

“There is nothing to do,” she said.

Which was the answer he wanted.

“Let us walk then — where shall we walk?” he asked.

“Shall we go to the river?” she suggested, timidly.

In a moment they were on the tram, going down to Trent Bridge. She was so glad. The thought of walking in the dark, far-reaching water-meadows, beside the full river, transported her. Dark water flowing in silence through the big, restless night made her feel wild.

They crossed the bridge, descended¹⁵⁰, and went away from the lights. In an instant, in the darkness, he took her hand and they went in silence, with subtle feet treading the darkness. The town fumed¹⁵² away on their left, there were strange lights and sounds, the wind rushed against the trees, and under the bridge. They walked close together, powerful in unison¹⁵³. He drew her very close, held her with a subtle, stealthy, powerful passion, as if they had a secret agreement which held good in the profound darkness. The profound darkness was their universe.

“It is like it was before,” she said.

Yet it was not in the least as it was before. Nevertheless his heart was perfectly¹⁵⁴ in accord with her. They thought one thought.

“I knew I should come back,” he said at length.

She quivered.

“Did you always love me?” she asked.

The directness of the question overcame him, submerged him for a moment. The darkness travelled massively along.

“I had to come back to you,” he said, as if hypnotised. “You were always at the back of everything.”

She was silent with triumph, like fate.

“I loved you,” she said, “always.”

The dark flame leaped up in him. He must give her himself. He must give her the very foundations of himself. He drew her very close, and they went on in silence.

She started violently, hearing voices. They were near a stile across the dark meadows.

“It’s only lovers,” he said to her, softly.

She looked to see the dark figures against the fence, wondering that the darkness was inhabited.

“Only lovers will walk here to-night,” he said.

Then in a low, vibrating voice he told her about Africa, the strange darkness, the strange, blood fear.

“I am not afraid of the darkness in England,” he said. “It is soft, and natural to me, it is my medium, especially when you are here. But in Africa it seems massive and fluid with terror — not fear of anything — just fear. One breathes it, like the smell of blood. The blacks know it. They worship it, really, the darkness. One almost likes it — the fear — something sensual.”

She thrilled again to him. He was to her a voice out of the darkness. He talked to her all the while, in low tones, about Africa, conveying something strange and sensual to her: the negro, with his loose, soft passion that could envelop⁴⁵ one like a bath. Gradually he transferred to her the hot, fecund¹⁵⁵ darkness that possessed his own blood. He was strangely secret. The whole world must be abolished. He maddened her with his soft, cajoling, vibrating tones. He wanted her to answer, to understand. A turgid, teeming night, heavy with fecundity¹⁵⁶ in which every molecule¹⁵⁷ of matter grew big with increase, secretly urgent with fecund desire, seemed to come to pass. She quivered, taut¹⁵⁸ and vibrating, almost pained. And gradually, he ceased telling her of Africa, there came a silence, whilst they walked the darkness beside the massive river. Her limbs were rich and tense, she felt they must be vibrating with a low, profound vibration¹⁵⁹. She could scarcely walk. The deep vibration of the darkness could only be felt, not heard.

Suddenly, as they walked, she turned to him and held him fast, as if she were turned to steel.

“Do you love me?” she cried in anguish.

“Yes,” he said, in a curious, lapping voice, unlike himself. “Yes, I love you.”

He seemed like the living darkness upon her, she was in the embrace of the strong darkness. He held her enclosed, soft, unutterably soft, and with the unrelaxing softness of fate, the relentless softness of fecundity. She quivered, and quivered, like a tense thing that is struck. But he held her all the time, soft, unending, like darkness closed upon her, omnipresent as the night. He kissed her, and she quivered as if she were being destroyed, shattered. The lighted vessel¹⁶⁰ vibrated, and broke in her soul, the light fell, struggled, and went dark. She was all dark, will-less, having only the receptive will.

He kissed her, with his soft, enveloping kisses, and she responded to them completely, her mind, her soul gone out. Darkness cleaving¹⁶¹ to darkness, she hung close to him, pressed herself into soft flow of his kiss, pressed herself down, down to the source and core of his kiss, herself covered and enveloped¹⁶² in the warm, fecund flow of his kiss, that travelled over her, flowed over her, covered her, flowed over the last fibre of her, so they were one stream, one dark fecundity, and she clung at the core of him, with her lips holding open the very bottommost source of him.

So they stood in the utter, dark kiss, that triumphed over them both, subjected them, knitted them into one fecund nucleus of the fluid darkness.

It was bliss¹⁶³, it was the nucleolating of the fecund darkness. Once the vessel had vibrated till it was shattered, the light of consciousness gone, then the darkness reigned¹⁶⁴, and the unutterable satisfaction.

They stood enjoying the unmitigated kiss, taking it, giving to it endlessly, and still it was not exhausted¹⁶⁵. Their veins fluttered, their blood ran together as one stream.

Till gradually a sleep, a heaviness settled on them, a drowse, and out of the drowse, a small light of consciousness woke up. Ursula became aware of the night around her, the water lapping and running full just near, the trees roaring and soughing in gusts¹⁶⁶ of wind.

She kept near to him, in contact with him, but she became ever more and more herself. And she knew she must go to catch her train. But she did not want to draw away from contact with him.

At length they roused and set out. No longer they existed in the unblemished darkness. There was the glitter of a bridge, the twinkle of lights across the river, the big flare¹⁶⁷ of the town in front and on their right.

But still, dark and soft and incontestable, their bodies walked untouched by the lights, darkness supreme and arrogant¹⁶⁸.

“The stupid lights,” Ursula said to herself, in her dark sensual arrogance¹⁶⁹. “The stupid, artificial, exaggerated town, fuming¹⁷⁰ its lights. It does not exist really. It rests upon the unlimited¹⁷¹ darkness, like a gleam of coloured oil on dark water, but what is it? — nothing, just nothing.”

In the tram, in the train, she felt the same. The lights, the civic¹⁷² uniform was a trick played, the people as they moved or sat were only dummies¹⁷³ exposed. She could see, beneath their pale, wooden pretence¹⁷⁴ of composure and civic purposefulness, the dark stream that contained them all. They were like little paper ships in their motion. But in reality each one was a dark, blind, eager wave urging blindly forward, dark with the same homogeneous desire. And all their talk and all their behaviour was sham, they were dressed-up creatures. She was reminded of the Invisible Man, who was a piece of darkness made visible only by his clothes.

During the next weeks, all the time she went about in the same dark richness, her eyes dilated¹⁷⁵ and shining like the eyes of a wild animal, a curious half-smile which seemed to be gibing¹⁷⁶ at the civic pretence of all the human life about her.

“What are you, you pale citizens?” her face seemed to say, gleaming. “You subdued¹⁷⁷ beast in sheep’s clothing, you primeval darkness falsified to a social mechanism¹⁷⁸.”

She went about in the sensual sub-consciousness all the time, mocking at the ready-made, artificial daylight of the rest.

“They assume selves as they assume suits of clothing,” she said to herself, looking in mocking contempt at the stiffened¹⁷⁹, neutralised men. “They think it better to be clerks or professors than to be the dark, fertile beings that exist in the potential darkness. What do you think you are?” her soul asked of the professor as she sat opposite him in class. “What do you think you are, as you sit there in your gown and your spectacles? You are a lurking, blood-sniffing creature with eyes peering out of the jungle darkness, snuffing for your desires. That is what you are, though nobody would believe it, and you would be the very last to allow it.”

Her soul mocked at all this pretence. Herself, she kept on pretending. She dressed herself and made herself fine, she attended her lectures and scribbled her notes. But all in a mood of superficial, mocking facility. She understood well enough their two-and-two-make-four tricks. She was as clever as they were. But care! — did she care about their monkey tricks of knowledge or learning or civic deportment? She did not care in the least.

There was Skrebensky, there was her dark, vital self. Outside the college, the outer darkness, Skrebensky was waiting. On the edge of the night, he was attentive. Did he care?

She was free as a leopard¹⁸¹ that sends up its raucous¹⁸² cry in the night. She had the potent¹⁸⁰, dark stream of her own blood, she had the glimmering¹⁸³ core of fecundity, she had her mate, her complement¹⁸⁴, her sharer in fruition. So, she had all, everything.

Skrebensky was staying in Nottingham all the time. He too was free. He knew no one in this town, he had no civic self to maintain. He was free. Their trams and markets and theatres and public meetings were a shaken kaleidoscope to him, he watched as a lion or a tiger may lie with narrowed eyes watching the people pass before its cage, the kaleidoscopic¹⁸⁵ unreality of people, or a leopard lie blinking, watching the incomprehensible feats¹⁸⁶ of the keepers. He despised it all — it was all non-existent. Their good professors, their good clergymen, their good political speakers, their good, earnest women — all the time he felt his soul was grinning, grinning at the sight of them. So many performing puppets, all wood and rag for the performance!

He watched the citizen, a pillar of society, a model, saw the stiff goat’s legs, which have become almost stiffened to wood in the desire to make them puppet in their action, he saw the trousers formed to the puppet-action: man’s legs, but man’s legs become rigid¹⁴⁰ and deformed¹⁸⁷, ugly, mechanical.

He was curiously¹⁸⁸ happy, being alone, now. The glimmering grin was on his face. He had no longer any necessity to take part in the performing tricks of the rest. He had discovered the clue to himself, he had escaped from the show, like a wild beast escaped straight back into its jungle. Having a room in a quiet hotel, he hired a horse and rode out into the country, staying sometimes for the night in some village, and returning the next day.

He felt rich and abundant in himself. Everything he did was a voluptuous¹⁸⁹ pleasure to him — either to ride on horseback, or to walk, or to lie in the sun, or to drink in a public-house. He had no use for people, nor for words. He had an amused pleasure in everything, a great sense of voluptuous richness in himself, and of the fecundity of the universal night he inhabited. The puppet shapes of people, their wood-mechanical voices, he was remote from them.

For there were always his meetings with Ursula. Very often, she did not go to college in the afternoon, but walked with him instead. Or he took a motor-car or a dog-cart and they drove into the country, leaving the car and going away by themselves into the woods. He had not taken her yet. With subtle, instinctive¹⁹⁰ economy, they went to the end of each kiss, each embrace, each pleasure in intimate contact, knowing subconsciously¹⁹¹ that the last was coming. It was to be their final entry into the source of creation.

She took him home, and he stayed a week-end at Beldover with her family. She loved having him in the house. Strange how he seemed to come into the atmosphere of her family, with his laughing, insidious¹⁹² grace. They all loved him, he was kin³ to them. His raillery, his warm, voluptuous mocking presence was meat and joy to the Brangwen household. For this house was always quivering with darkness, they put off their puppet form when they came home, to lie and drowse in the sun.

There was a sense of freedom amongst them all, of the undercurrent of darkness among them all. Yet here, at home, Ursula resented it. It became distasteful to her. And she knew that if they understood the real relationship between her and Skrebensky, her parents, her father in particular, would go mad with rage. So subtly, she seemed to be like any other girl who is more or less courted by a man. And she was like any other girl. But in her, the antagonism¹⁹³ to the social imposition was for the time complete and final.

She waited, every moment of the day, for his next kiss. She admitted it to herself in shame and bliss. Almost consciously, she waited. He waited, but, until the time came, more unconsciously. When the time came that he should kiss her again, a prevention was an annihilation to him. He felt his flesh go grey, he was heavy with a corpse¹⁹⁴-like inanition, he did not exist, if the time passed unfulfilled.

He came to her finally in a superb consummation. It was very dark, and again a windy, heavy night. They had come down the lane towards Beldover, down to the valley. They were at the end of their kisses, and there was the silence between them. They stood as at the edge of a cliff, with a great darkness beneath.

Coming out of the lane along the darkness, with the dark space spreading down to the wind, and the twinkling lights of the station below, the far-off windy chuff of a shunting train, the tiny clink-clink-clink of the wagons¹⁹⁵ blown between the wind, the light of Beldover-edge twinkling upon the blackness of the hill opposite, the glow of the furnaces along the railway to the right, their steps began to falter¹⁹⁶. They would soon come out of the darkness into the lights. It was like turning back. It was unfulfilment. Two quivering, unwilling¹⁹⁷ creatures, they lingered on the edge of the darkness, peering out at the lights and the machine-glimmer beyond. They could not turn back to the world — they could not.

So lingering along, they came to a great oak tree by the path. In all its budding mass it roared to the wind, and its trunk vibrated in every fibre, powerful, indomitable.

“We will sit down,” he said.

And in the roaring circle under the tree, that was almost invisible yet whose powerful presence received them, they lay a moment looking at the twinkling lights on the darkness opposite, saw the sweeping¹⁹⁸ brand of a train past the edge of their darkened field.

Then he turned and kissed her, and she waited for him. The pain to her was the pain she wanted, the agony was the agony she wanted. She was caught up, entangled¹⁹⁹ in the powerful vibration of the night. The man, what was he? — a dark, powerful vibration that encompassed²⁰⁰ her. She passed away as on a dark wind, far, far away, into the pristine²⁰¹ darkness of paradise, into the original immortality²⁰². She entered the dark fields of immortality.

When she rose, she felt strangely free, strong. She was not ashamed — why should she be? He was walking beside her, the man who had been with her. She had taken him, they had been together. Whither they had gone, she did not know. But it was as if she had received another nature. She belonged to the eternal, changeless place into which they had leapt together.

Her soul was sure and indifferent of the opinion of the world of artificial light. As they went up the steps of the foot-bridge over the railway, and met the train-passengers, she felt herself belonging to another world, she walked past them immune, a whole darkness dividing her from them. When she went into the lighted dining-room at home, she was impervious²⁰³ to the lights and the eyes of her parents. Her everyday self was just the same. She merely had another, stronger self that knew the darkness.

This curious separate strength, that existed in darkness and pride of night, never forsook²⁰⁴ her. She had never been more herself. It could not occur to her that anybody, not even the young man of the world, Skrebensky, should have anything at all to do with her permanent self. As for her temporal, social self, she let it look after itself.

Her whole soul was implicated²⁰⁵ with Skrebensky — not the young man of the world, but the undifferentiated man he was. She was perfectly sure of herself, perfectly strong, stronger than all the world. The world was not strong — she was strong. The world existed only in a secondary sense:— she existed supremely²⁰⁶.

She continued at college, in her ordinary routine, merely as a cover to her dark, powerful under-life. The fact of herself, and with her Skrebensky, was so powerful, that she took rest in the other. She went to college in the morning, and attended her classes, flowering, and remote.

She had lunch with him in his hotel; every evening she spent with him, either in town, at his rooms, or in the country. She made the excuse at home of evening study for her degree. But she paid not the slightest attention to her study.

They were both absolute and happy and calm. The fact of their own consummate²⁰⁷ being made everything else so entirely subordinate that they were free. The only thing they wanted, as the days went by, was more time to themselves. They wanted the time to be absolutely their own.

The Easter vacation was approaching. They agreed to go right away. It would not matter if they did not come back. They were indifferent to the actual facts.

“I suppose we ought to get married,” he said, rather wistfully. It was so magnificently free and in a deeper world, as it was. To make public their connection would be to put it in range with all the things which nullified him, and from which he was for the moment entirely dissociated. If he married he would have to assume his social self. And the thought of assuming his social self made him at once diffident and abstract. If she were his social wife, if she were part of that complication of dead reality, then what had his under-life to do with her? One’s social wife was almost a material symbol. Whereas now she was something more vivid to him than anything in conventional life could be. She gave the complete lie to all conventional life, he and she stood together, dark, fluid, infinitely potent, giving the living lie to the dead whole which contained them.

He watched her pensive²⁰⁸, puzzled face.

“I don’t think I want to marry you,” she said, her brow clouded.

It piqued²⁰⁹ him rather.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Let’s think about it afterwards, shall we?” she said.

He was crossed, yet he loved her violently.

“You’ve got a museau, not a face,” he said.

“Have I?” she cried, her face lighting²¹⁰ up like a pure flame. She thought she had escaped. Yet he returned — he was not satisfied.

“Why?” he asked, “why don’t you want to marry me?”

“I don’t want to be with other people,” she said. “I want to be like this. I’ll tell you if ever I want to marry you.”

“All right,” he said.

He would rather the thing was left indefinite, and that she took the responsibility.

They talked of the Easter vacation. She thought only of complete enjoyment²¹¹.

They went to an hotel in Piccadilly. She was supposed to be his wife. They bought a wedding-ring for a shilling, from a shop in a poor quarter.

They had revoked²¹² altogether the ordinary mortal world. Their confidence was like a possession upon them. They were possessed. Perfectly and supremely free they felt, proud beyond all question, and surpassing mortal conditions.

They were perfect, therefore nothing else existed. The world was a world of servants whom one civilly ignored. Wherever they went, they were the sensuous²¹³ aristocrats²¹⁴, warm, bright, glancing with pure pride of the senses.

The effect upon other people was extraordinary. The glamour was cast from the young couple upon all they came into contact with, waiters or chance acquaintances.

“Oui, Monsieur le baron²¹⁵,” she would reply with a mocking courtesy to her husband.

So they came to be treated as titled people. He was an officer in the engineers. They were just married, going to India immediately.

Thus a tissue of romance was round them. She believed she was a young wife of a titled husband on the eve of departure for India. This, the social fact, was a delicious make-belief. The living fact was that he and she were man and woman, absolute and beyond all limitation.

The days went by — they were to have three weeks together — in perfect success. All the time, they themselves were reality, all outside was tribute to them. They were quite careless about money, but they did nothing very extravagant²¹⁷. He was rather surprised when he found that he had spent twenty pounds in a little under a week, but it was only the irritation²¹⁸ of having to go to the bank. The machinery²¹⁹ of the old system lasted for him, not the system. The money simply did not exist.

Neither did any of the old obligations. They came home from the theatre, had supper, then flitted about in their dressing²²⁰-gowns. They had a large bedroom and a corner sitting-room²²¹ high up, remote and very cosy²²². They ate all their meals in their own rooms, attended by a young German called Hans, who thought them both wonderful, and answered assiduously:

“Gewiss, Herr Baron — bitte sehr, Frau Baronin.”

Often, they saw the pink of dawn away across the park. The tower of Westminster Cathedral was emerging, the lamps of Piccadilly, stringing away beside the trees of the park, were becoming pale and moth-like, the morning traffic was clock-clocking down the shadowy road, which had gleamed all night like metal, down below, running far ahead into the night, beneath the lamps, and which was now vague, as in a mist, because of the dawn.

Then, as the flush of dawn became stronger, they opened the glass doors and went on to the giddy balcony, feeling triumphant²²³ as two angels in bliss, looking down at the still sleeping world, which would wake to a dutiful, rumbling²²⁴, sluggish²²⁵ turmoil of unreality.

But the air was cold. They went into their bedroom, and bathed before going to bed, leaving the partition doors of the bath-room open, so that the vapour came into the bedroom and faintly dimmed the mirror. She was always in bed first. She watched him as he bathed, his quick, unconscious movements, the electric light glinting on his wet shoulders. He stood out of the bath, his hair all washed flat over his forehead, and pressed the water out of his eyes. He was slender, and, to her, perfect, a clean, straight-cut youth, without a grain of superfluous²²⁶ body. The brown hair on his body was soft and fine and adorable, he was all beautifully flushed, as he stood in the white bath-apartment.

He saw her warm, dark, lit-up face watching him from the pillow — yet he did not see it — it was always present, and was to him as his own eyes. He was never aware of the separate being of her. She was like his own eyes and his own heart beating to him.

So he went across to her, to get his sleeping suit. It was always a perfect adventure to go near to her. She put her arms round him, and snuffed his warm, softened²²⁷ skin.

“Scent²²⁸,” she said.

“Soap,” he answered.

“Soap,” she repeated, looking up with bright eyes. They were both laughing, always laughing.

Soon they were fast asleep, asleep till midday, close together, sleeping one sleep. Then they awoke to the ever-changing reality of their state. They alone inhabited the world of reality. All the rest lived on a lower sphere.

Whatever they wanted to do, they did. They saw a few people — Dorothy, whose guest she was supposed to be, and a couple of friends of Skrebensky, young Oxford²²⁹ men, who called her Mrs. Skrebensky with entire simplicity²³⁰. They treated her, indeed, with such respect, that she began to think she was really quite of the whole universe, of the old world as well as of the new. She forgot she was outside the pale of the old world. She thought she had brought it under the spell of her own, real world. And so she had.

In such ever-changing reality the weeks went by. All the time, they were an unknown world to each other. Every movement made by the one was a reality and an adventure to the other. They did not want outside excitements. They went to very few theatres, they were often in their sitting-room high up over Piccadilly, with windows open on two sides, and the door open on to the balcony, looking over the Green Park, or down upon the minute travelling of the traffic.

Then suddenly, looking at a sunset, she wanted to go. She must be gone. She must be gone at once. And in two hours’ time they were at Charing²³¹ Cross taking train for Paris. Paris was his suggestion. She did not care where it was. The great joy was in setting out. And for a few days she was happy in the novelty of Paris.

Then, for some reason, she must call in Rouen on the way back to London. He had an instinctive mistrust of her desire for the place. But, perversely²³², she wanted to go there. It was as if she wanted to try its effect upon her.

For the first time, in Rouen, he had a cold feeling of death; not afraid of any other man, but of her. She seemed to leave him. She followed after something that was not him. She did not want him. The old streets, the cathedral, the age and the monumental peace of the town took her away from him. She turned to it as if to something she had forgotten, and wanted. This was now the reality; this great stone cathedral slumbering²³³ there in its mass, which knew no transience nor heard any denial. It was majestic²³⁴ in its stability, its splendid absoluteness.

Her soul began to run by itself. He did not realise, nor did she. Yet in Rouen he had the first deadly anguish, the first sense of the death towards which they were wandering. And she felt the first heavy yearning, heavy, heavy hopeless warning, almost like a deep, uneasy sinking into apathy²³⁵, hopelessness.

They returned to London. But still they had two days. He began to tremble, he grew feverish with the fear of her departure. She had in her some fatal prescience, that made her calm. What would be, would be.

He remained fairly easy, however, still in his state of heightened glamour, till she had gone, and he had turned away from St. Pancras, and sat on the tram-car going up Pimlico to the “Angel”, to Moorgate Street on Sunday evening.

Then the cold horror gradually soaked into him. He saw the horror of the City Road, he realised the ghastly cold sordidness²³⁶ of the tram-car in which he sat. Cold, stark²³⁷, ashen²³⁸ sterility²³⁹ had him surrounded. Where then was the luminous, wonderful world he belonged to by rights? How did he come to be thrown on this refuse-heap where he was?

He was as if mad. The horror of the brick buildings, of the tram-car, of the ashen-grey people in the street made him reeling and blind as if drunk. He went mad. He had lived with her in a close, living, pulsing world, where everything pulsed with rich being. Now he found himself struggling amid an ashen-dry, cold world of rigidity, dead walls and mechanical traffic, and creeping, spectre-like people. The life was extinct, only ash moved and stirred or stood rigid, there was a horrible, clattering²⁴⁰ activity, a rattle²⁴¹ like the falling of dry slag²⁴², cold and sterile. It was as if the sunshine that fell were unnatural²⁴³ light exposing the ash of the town, as if the lights at night were the sinister²⁴⁴ gleam of decomposition²⁴⁵.

Quite mad, beside himself, he went to his club and sat with a glass of whisky, motionless, as if turned to clay. He felt like a corpse that is inhabited with just enough life to make it appear as any other of the spectral²⁴⁶, unliving beings which we call people in our dead language. Her absence was worse than pain to him. It destroyed his being.

Dead, he went on from lunch to tea. His face was all the time fixed and stiff and colourless, his life was a dry, mechanical movement. Yet even he wondered slightly at the awful misery²⁴⁷ that had overcome him. How could he be so ashlike and extinct? He wrote her a letter.

I have been thinking that we must get married before long. My pay will be more when I get out to India, we shall be able to get along. Or if you don’t want to go to India, I could very probably stay here in England. But I think you would like India. You could ride, and you would know just everybody out there. Perhaps if you stay on to take your degree, we might marry immediately after that. I will write to your father as soon as I hear from you ——

He went on, disposing of her. If only he could be with her! All he wanted now was to marry her, to be sure of her. Yet all the time he was perfectly, perfectly hopeless, cold, extinct, without emotion or connection.

He felt as if his life were dead. His soul was extinct. The whole being of him had become sterile, he was a spectre, divorced from life. He had no fullness, he was just a flat shape. Day by day the madness accumulated in him. The horror of not-being possessed him.

He went here, there, and everywhere. But whatever he did, he knew that only the cipher²⁴⁸ of him was there, nothing was filled in. He went to the theatre; what he heard and saw fell upon a cold surface of consciousness, which was now all that he was, there was nothing behind it, he could have no experience of any sort. Mechanical registering took place in him, no more. He had no being, no contents. Neither had the people he came into contact with. They were mere permutations of known quantities. There was no roundness or fullness in this world he now inhabited, everything was a dead shape mental arrangement, without life or being.

Much of the time, he was with friends and comrades. Then he forgot everything. Their activities made up for his own negation²⁴⁹, they engaged his negative horror.

He only became happy when he drank, and he drank a good deal. Then he was just the opposite to what he had been. He became a warm, diffuse²⁵⁰, glowing cloud, in a warm, diffuse formless fashion. Everything melted down into a rosy²⁵¹ glow, and he was the glow, and everything was the glow, everybody else was the glow, and it was very nice, very nice. He would sing songs, it was so nice.

Ursula went back to Beldover shut and firm. She loved Skrebensky, of that she was resolved. She would allow nothing else.

She read his long, obsessed²⁵² letter about getting married and going to India, without any particular response. She seemed to ignore what he said about marriage. It did not come home to her. He seemed, throughout the greater part of his letter, to be talking without much meaning.

She replied to him pleasantly and easily. She rarely wrote long letters.

India sounds lovely. I can just see myself on an elephant swaying between lanes of obsequious²⁵³ natives. But I don’t know if father would let me go. We must see.

I keep living over again the lovely times we have had. But I don’t think you liked me quite so much towards the end, did you? You did not like me when we left Paris. Why didn’t you?

I love you very much. I love your body. It is so clear and fine. I am glad you do not go naked, or all the women would fall in love with you. I am very jealous of it, I love it so much.

He was more or less satisfied with this letter. But day after day he was walking about, dead, non-existent.

He could not come again to Nottingham until the end of April. Then he persuaded her to go with him for a week-end to a friend’s house near Oxford. By this time they were engaged. He had written to her father, and the thing was settled. He brought her an emerald ring, of which she was very proud.

Her people treated her now with a little distance, as if she had already left them. They left her very much alone.

She went with him for the three days in the country house near Oxford. It was delicious, and she was very happy. But the thing she remembered most was when, getting up in the morning after he had gone back quietly to his own room, having spent the night with her, she found herself very rich in being alone, and enjoying to the full her solitary²⁵⁴ room, she drew up her blind and saw the plum trees in the garden below all glittering and snowy and delighted with the sunshine, in full bloom under a blue sky. They threw out their blossom, they flung it out under the blue heavens, the whitest blossom! How excited it made her.

She had to hurry through her dressing to go and walk in the garden under the plum trees, before anyone should come and talk to her. Out she slipped, and paced like a queen in fairy pleasaunces. The blossom was silver-shadowy when she looked up from under the tree at the blue sky. There was a faint scent, a faint noise of bees, a wonderful quickness of happy morning.

She heard the breakfast gong and went indoors.

“Where have you been?” asked the others.

“I had to go out under the plum trees,” she said, her face glowing like a flower. “It is so lovely.”

A shadow of anger crossed Skrebensky’s soul. She had not wanted him to be there. He hardened his will.

At night there was a moon, and the blossom glistened²⁵⁵ ghostly, they went together to look at it. She saw the moonlight on his face as he waited near her, and his features were like silver and his eyes in shadow were unfathomable. She was in love with him. He was very quiet.

They went indoors and she pretended to be tired. So she went quickly to bed.

“Don’t be long coming to me,” she whispered, as she was supposed to be kissing him good night.

And he waited, intent, obsessed, for the moment when he could come to her.

She enjoyed him, she made much of him. She liked to put her fingers on the soft skin of his sides, or on the softness of his back, when he made the muscles hard underneath, the muscles developed very strong through riding; and she had a great thrill of excitement and passion, because of the unimpressible hardness of his body, that was so soft and smooth under her fingers, that came to her with such absolute service.

She owned his body and enjoyed it with all the delight and carelessness of a possessor. But he had become gradually afraid of her body. He wanted her, he wanted her endlessly. But there had come a tension into his desire, a constraint²⁵⁶ which prevented his enjoying the delicious approach and the lovable close of the endless embrace. He was afraid. His will was always tense, fixed.

Her final examination was at midsummer. She insisted on sitting for it, although she had neglected her work during the past months. He also wanted her to go in for the degree. Then, he thought, she would be satisfied. Secretly he hoped she would fail, so that she would be more glad of him.

“Would you rather live in India or in England when we are married?” he asked her.

“Oh, in India, by far,” she said, with a careless lack of consideration which annoyed him.

Once she said, with heat:

“I shall be glad to leave England. Everything is so meagre and paltry²⁵⁷, it is so unspiritual — I hate democracy.”

He became angry to hear her talk like this, he did not know why. Somehow, he could not bear it, when she attacked things. It was as if she were attacking him.

“What do you mean?” he asked her, hostile. “Why do you hate democracy?”

“Only the greedy and ugly people come to the top in a democracy,” she said, “because they’re the only people who will push themselves there. Only degenerate²⁵⁸ races are democratic.”

“What do you want then — an aristocracy?” he asked, secretly moved. He always felt that by rights he belonged to the ruling aristocracy. Yet to hear her speak for his class pained him with a curious, painful pleasure. He felt he was acquiescing²⁵⁹ in something illegal, taking to himself some wrong, reprehensible²⁶⁰ advantages.

“I do want an aristocracy,” she cried. “And I’d far rather have an aristocracy of birth than of money. Who are the aristocrats now — who are chosen as the best to rule? Those who have money and the brains for money. It doesn’t matter what else they have: but they must have money-brains — because they are ruling in the name of money.”

“The people elect the government,” he said.

“I know they do. But what are the people? Each one of them is a money-interest. I hate it, that anybody is my equal who has the same amount of money as I have. I know I am better than all of them. I hate them. They are not my equals. I hate equality on a money basis. It is the equality of dirt.”

Her eyes blazed at him, he felt as if she wanted to destroy him. She had gripped him and was trying to break him. His anger sprang up, against her. At least he would fight for his existence with her. A hard, blind resistance possessed him.

“I don’t care about money,” he said, “neither do I want to put my finger in the pie. I am too sensitive about my finger.”

“What is your finger to me?” she cried, in a passion. “You with your dainty fingers, and your going to India because you will be one of the somebodies there! It’s a mere dodge²⁶¹, your going to India.”

“In what way a dodge?” he cried, white with anger and fear.

“You think the Indians are simpler than us, and so you’ll enjoy being near them and being a lord over them,” she said. “And you’ll feel so righteous, governing them for their own good. Who are you, to feel righteous? What are you righteous about, in your governing? Your governing stinks²⁶². What do you govern for, but to make things there as dead and mean as they are here!”

“I don’t feel righteous in the least,” he said.

“Then what do you feel? It’s all such a nothingness, what you feel and what you don’t feel.”

“What do you feel yourself?” he said. “Aren’t you righteous in your own mind?”

“Yes, I am, because I’m against you, and all your old, dead things,” she cried.

She seemed, with the last words, uttered in hard knowledge, to strike down the flag that he kept flying. He felt cut off at the knees, a figure made worthless. A horrible sickness gripped him, as if his legs were really cut away, and he could not move, but remained a crippled trunk, dependent, worthless. The ghastly sense of helplessness, as if he were a mere figure that did not exist vitally, made him mad, beside himself.

Now, even whilst he was with her, this death of himself came over him, when he walked about like a body from which all individual life is gone. In this state he neither heard nor saw nor felt, only the mechanism of his life continued.

He hated her, as far as, in this state, he could hate. His cunning suggested to him all the ways of making her esteem²⁶³ him. For she did not esteem him. He left her and did not write to her. He flirted²⁶⁴ with other women, with Gudrun.

This last made her very fierce. She was still fiercely jealous of his body. In passionate anger she upbraided²⁶⁵ him because, not being man enough to satisfy one woman, he hung round others.

“Don’t I satisfy you?” he asked of her, again going white to the throat.

“No,” she said. “You’ve never satisfied me since the first week in London. You never satisfy me now. What does it mean to me, your having me —” She lifted her shoulders and turned aside her face in a motion of cold, indifferent worthlessness. He felt he would kill her.

When she had roused him to a pitch of madness, when she saw his eyes all dark and mad with suffering, then a great suffering overcame her soul, a great, inconquerable suffering. And she loved him. For, oh, she wanted to love him. Stronger than life or death was her craving to be able to love him.

And at such moments, when he was made with her destroying him, when all his complacency was destroyed, all his everyday self was broken, and only the stripped, rudimentary, primal²⁶⁶ man remained, demented with torture, her passion to love him became love, she took him again, they came together in an overwhelming passion, in which he knew he satisfied her.

But it all contained a developing germ of death. After each contact, her anguished²⁶⁷ desire for him or for that which she never had from him was stronger, her love was more hopeless. After each contact his mad dependence²⁶⁸ on her was deepened, his hope of standing strong and taking her in his own strength was weakened. He felt himself a mere attribute of her.

Whitsuntide came, just before her examination. She was to have a few days of rest. Dorothy had inherited her patrimony²⁶⁹, and had taken a cottage in Sussex. She invited them to stay with her.

They went down to Dorothy’s neat, low cottage at the foot of the downs. Here they could do as they liked. Ursula was always yearning to go to the top of the downs. The white track wound up to the rounded summit. And she must go.

Up there, she could see the Channel a few miles away, the sea raised up and faintly glittering in the sky, the Isle²⁷⁰ of Wight a shadow lifted in the far distance, the river winding²⁷¹ bright through the patterned plain to seaward, Arundel Castle a shadowy bulk, and then the rolling of the high, smooth downs, making a high, smooth land under heaven, acknowledging only the heavens in their great, sun-glowing strength, and suffering only a few bushes to trespass²⁷² on the intercourse²⁷³ between their great, unabateable body and the changeful body of the sky.

Below she saw the villages and the woods of the weald, and the train running bravely, a gallant²⁷⁴ little thing, running with all the importance of the world over the water meadows and into the gap of the downs, waving its white steam, yet all the while so little. So little, yet its courage carried it from end to end of the earth, till there was no place where it did not go. Yet the downs, in magnificent indifference²⁷⁵, bearing limbs and body to the sun, drinking sunshine and sea-wind and sea-wet cloud into its golden skin, with superb stillness and calm of being, was not the downs still more wonderful? The blind, pathetic, energetic courage of the train as it steamed tinily away through the patterned levels to the sea’s dimness, so fast and so energetic, made her weep. Where was it going? It was going nowhere, it was just going. So blind, so without goal or aim, yet so hasty! She sat on an old prehistoric²⁷⁶ earth-work and cried, and the tears ran down her face. The train had tunnelled all the earth, blindly, and uglily.

And she lay face downwards²⁷⁷ on the downs, that were so strong, that cared only for their intercourse with the everlasting²⁷⁸ skies, and she wished she could become a strong mound²⁷⁹ smooth under the sky, bosom²⁸⁰ and limbs bared to all winds and clouds and bursts of sunshine.

But she must get up again and look down from her foothold of sunshine, down and away at the patterned, level earth, with its villages and its smoke and its energy. So shortsighted the train seemed, running to the distance, so terrifying in their littleness the villages, with such pettiness in their activity.

Skrebensky wandered dazed, not knowing where he was or what he was doing with her. All her passion seemed to be to wander up there on the downs, and when she must descend¹⁵¹ to earth, she was heavy. Up there she was exhilarated and free.

She would not love him in a house any more. She said she hated houses, and particularly she hated beds. There was something distasteful in his coming to her bed.

She would stay the night on the downs, up there, he with her. It was midsummer, the days were glamorously²⁸¹ long. At about half-past ten, when the bluey-black darkness had at last fallen, they took rugs and climbed the steep track to the summit of the downs, he and she.

Up there, the stars were big, the earth below was gone into darkness. She was free up there with the stars. Far out they saw tiny yellow lights — but it was very far out, at sea, or on land. She was free up among the stars.

She took off her clothes, and made him take off all his, and they ran over the smooth, moonless turf, a long way, more than a mile from where they had left their clothing, running in the dark, soft wind, utterly²⁸² naked, as naked as the downs themselves. Her hair was loose and blew about her shoulders, she ran swiftly, wearing sandals when she set off on the long run to the dew-pond.

In the round dew-pond the stars were untroubled. She ventured softly into the water, grasping at the stars with her hands.

And then suddenly she started back, running swiftly. He was there, beside her, but only on sufferance. He was a screen for her fears. He served her. She took him, she clasped him, clenched²⁸³ him close, but her eyes were open looking at the stars, it was as if the stars were lying with her and entering the unfathomable darkness of her womb, fathoming²⁸⁴ her at last. It was not him.

The dawn came. They stood together on a high place, an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little wind was running in from the sea behind. It seemed to be running to the pale rift³⁶ of the dawn. And she and he darkly, on an outpost of the darkness, stood watching for the dawn.

The light grew stronger, gushing²⁸⁵ up against the dark sap-hire of the transparent²⁸⁶ night. The light grew stronger, whiter, then over it hovered²⁸⁷ a flush of rose. A flush of rose, and then yellow, pale, new-created yellow, the whole quivering and poising²⁸⁸ momentarily over the fountain on the sky’s rim.

The rose hovered and quivered, burned, fused to flame, to a transient red, while the yellow urged out in great waves, thrown from the ever-increasing fountain, great waves of yellow flinging into the sky, scattering²⁸⁹ its spray over the darkness, which became bluer and bluer, paler, till soon it would itself be a radiance, which had been darkness.

The sun was coming. There was a quivering, a powerful terrifying swim of molten light. Then the molten source itself surged forth, revealing itself. The sun was in the sky, too powerful to look at.

And the ground beneath lay so still, so peaceful. Only now and again a cock crew. Otherwise, from the distant yellow hills to the pine trees at the foot of the downs, everything was newly washed into being, in a flood of new, golden creation.

It was so unutterably still and perfect with promise, the golden-lighted, distinct land, that Ursula’s soul rocked and wept. Suddenly he glanced at her. The tears were running over her cheeks, her mouth was working strangely.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

After a moment’s struggle with her voice.

“It is so beautiful,” she said, looking at the glowing, beautiful land. It was so beautiful, so perfect, and so unsullied.

He too realised what England would be in a few hours’ time — a blind, sordid, strenuous activity, all for nothing, fuming with dirty smoke and running trains and groping in the bowels²⁹⁰ of the earth, all for nothing. A ghastliness came over him.

He looked at Ursula. Her face was wet with tears, very bright, like a transfiguration in the refulgent²⁹¹ light. Nor was his the hand to wipe away the burning, bright tears. He stood apart, overcome by a cruel ineffectuality.

Gradually a great, helpless sorrow was rising in him. But as yet he was fighting it away, he was struggling for his own life. He became very quiet and unaware²⁹² of the things about him, awaiting, as it were, her judgment²⁹³ on him.

They returned to Nottingham, the time of her examination came. She must go to London. But she would not stay with him in an hotel. She would go to a quiet little pension near the British Museum.

Those quiet residential²⁹⁴ squares of London made a great impression on her mind. They were very complete. Her mind seemed imprisoned in their quietness. Who was going to liberate²⁹⁵ her?

In the evening, her practical examinations being over, he went with her to dinner at one of the hotels down the river, near Richmond. It was golden and beautiful, with yellow water and white and scarlet-striped boat-awnings, and blue shadows under the trees.

“When shall we be married?” he asked her, quietly, simply, as if it were a mere question of comfort.

She watched the changing pleasure-traffic of the river. He looked at her golden, puzzled museau. The knot gathered in his throat.

“I don’t know,” she said.

A hot grief gripped his throat.

“Why don’t you know — don’t you want to be married?” he asked her.

Her head turned slowly, her face, puzzled, like a boy’s face, expressionless because she was trying to think, looked towards his face. She did not see him, because she was pre-occupied. She did not quite know what she was going to say.

“I don’t think I want to be married,” she said, and her naive⁶², troubled, puzzled eyes rested a moment on his, then travelled away, pre-occupied.

“Do you mean never, or not just yet?” he asked.

The knot in his throat grew harder, his face was drawn²⁹⁶ as if he were being strangled.

“I mean never,” she said, out of some far self which spoke²⁹⁷ for once beyond her.

His drawn, strangled face watched her blankly for a few moments, then a strange sound took place in his throat. She started, came to herself, and, horrified²⁹⁸, saw him. His head made a queer motion, the chin jerked back against the throat, the curious, crowing, hiccupping sound came again, his face twisted like insanity²⁹⁹, and he was crying, crying blind and twisted as if something were broken which kept him in control.

“Tony — don’t,” she cried, starting up.

It tore every one of her nerves to see him. He made groping movements to get out of his chair. But he was crying uncontrollably, noiselessly, with his face twisted like a mask, contorted and the tears running down the amazing grooves³⁰⁰ in his cheeks. Blindly, his face always this horrible working mask, he groped for his hat, for his way down from the terrace. It was eight o’clock, but still brightly light. The other people were staring. In great agitation³⁰¹, part of which was exasperation³⁰², she stayed behind, paid the waiter with a half-sovereign, took her yellow silk coat, then followed Skrebensky.

She saw him walking with brittle³⁰³, blind steps along the path by the river. She could tell by the strange stiffness and brittleness³⁰⁴ of his figure that he was still crying. Hurrying after him, running, she took his arm.

“Tony,” she cried, “don’t! Why are you like this? What are you doing this for? Don’t. It’s not necessary.”

He heard, and his manhood was cruelly, coldly defaced. Yet it was no good. He could not gain control of his face. His face, his breast, were weeping violently, as if automatically. His will, his knowledge had nothing to do with it. He simply could not stop.

She walked holding his arm, silent with exasperation and perplexity and pain. He took the uncertain steps of a blind man, because his mind was blind with weeping.

“Shall we go home? Shall we have a taxi?” she said.

He could pay no attention. Very flustered³⁰⁵, very agitated³⁰⁶, she signalled indefinitely to a taxi-cab that was going slowly by. The driver saluted³⁰⁷ and drew up. She opened the door and pushed Skrebensky in, then took her own place. Her face was uplifted, the mouth closed down, she looked hard and cold and ashamed. She winced³⁰⁹ as the driver’s dark red face was thrust round upon her, a full-blooded, animal face with black eyebrows³¹⁰ and a thick, short-cut moustache.

“Where to, lady?” he said, his white teeth showing. Again for a moment she was flustered.

“Forty, Rutland Square,” she said.

He touched his cap and stolidly³¹¹ set the car in motion. He seemed to have a league with her to ignore Skrebensky.

The latter sat as if trapped within the taxi-cab, his face still working, whilst occasionally he made quick slight movements of the head, to shake away his tears. He never moved his hands. She could not bear to look at him. She sat with face uplifted and averted³¹³ to the window.

At length, when she had regained³¹⁴ some control over herself, she turned again to him. He was much quieter. His face was wet, and twitched³¹⁵ occasionally, his hands still lay motionless. But his eyes were quite still, like a washed sky after rain, full of a wan light, and quite steady, almost ghost-like.

A pain flamed in her womb, for him.

“I didn’t think I should hurt you,” she said, laying her hand very lightly, tentatively, on his arm. “The words came without my knowing. They didn’t mean anything, really.”

He remained quite still, hearing, but washed all wan and without feeling. She waited, looking at him, as if he were some curious, not-understandable creature.

“You won’t cry again, will you, Tony?”

Some shame and bitterness against her burned him in the question. She noticed how his moustache was soddened³¹⁶ wet with tears. Taking her handkerchief, she wiped his face. The driver’s heavy, stolid³¹² back remained always turned to them, as if conscious but indifferent. Skrebensky sat motionless whilst Ursula wiped his face, softly, carefully, and yet clumsily, not as well as he would have wiped it himself.

Her handkerchief was too small. It was soon wet through. She groped in his pocket for his own. Then, with its more ample capacity, she carefully dried his face. He remained motionless all the while. Then she drew his cheek to hers and kissed him. His face was cold. Her heart was hurt. She saw the tears welling quickly to his eyes again. As if he were a child, she again wiped away his tears. By now she herself was on the point of weeping. Her underlip was caught between her teeth.

So she sat still, for fear of her own tears, sitting close by him, holding his hand warm and close and loving. Meanwhile the car ran on, and a soft, midsummer dusk began to gather. For a long while they sat motionless. Only now and again her hand closed more closely, lovingly, over his hand, then gradually relaxed.

The dusk began to fall. One or two lights appeared. The driver drew up to light his lamps. Skrebensky moved for the first time, leaning forward to watch the driver. His face had always the same still, clarified, almost childlike look, impersonal.

They saw the driver’s strange, full, dark face peering into the lamps under drawn brows. Ursula shuddered³¹⁷. It was the face almost of an animal yet of a quick, strong, wary³¹⁹ animal that had them within its knowledge, almost within its power. She clung closer to Krebensky.

“My love?” she said to him, questioningly, when the car was again running in full motion.

He made no movement or sound. He let her hold his hand, he let her reach forward, in the gathering³²⁰ darkness, and kiss his still cheek. The crying had gone by — he would not cry any more. He was whole and himself again.

“My love,” she repeated, trying to make him notice her. But as yet he could not.

He watched the road. They were running by Kensington Gardens. For the first time his lips opened.

“Shall we get out and go into the park,” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, quietly, not sure what was coming.

After a moment he took the tube from its peg³²¹. She saw the stout³²², strong, self-contained driver lean his head.

“Stop at Hyde Park Corner.”

The dark head nodded, the car ran on just the same.

Presently they pulled up. Skrebensky paid the man. Ursula stood back. She saw the driver salute³⁰⁸ as he received his tip, and then, before he set the car in motion, turn and look at her, with his quick, powerful, animal’s look, his eyes very concentrated and the whites of his eyes flickering. Then he drove away into the crowd. He had let her go. She had been afraid.

Skrebensky turned with her into the park. A band was still playing and the place was thronged³²³ with people. They listened to the ebbing³²⁴ music, then went aside to a dark seat, where they sat closely, hand in hand.

Then at length, as out of the silence, she said to him, wondering:

“What hurt you so?”

She really did not know, at this moment.

“When you said you wanted never to marry me,” he replied, with a childish simplicity.

“But why did that hurt you so?” she said. “You needn’t mind everything I say so particularly.”

“I don’t know — I didn’t want to do it,” he said, humbly³²⁵, ashamed.

She pressed his hand warmly. They sat close together, watching the soldiers go by with their sweethearts, the lights trailing in myriads³²⁶ down the great thoroughfares that beat on the edge of the park.

“I didn’t know you cared so much,” she said, also humbly.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I was knocked over myself. — But I care — all the world.”

His voice was so quiet and colourless, it made her heart go pale with fear.

“My love!” she said, drawing near to him. But she spoke out of fear, not out of love.

“I care all the world — I care for nothing else — neither in life nor in death,” he said, in the same steady, colourless voice of essential truth.

“Than for what?” she murmured duskily.

“Than for you — to be with me.”

And again she was afraid. Was she to be conquered by this? She cowered³²⁸ close to him, very close to him. They sat perfectly still, listening to the great, heavy, beating sound of the town, the murmur³²⁷ of lovers going by, the footsteps of soldiers.

She shivered against him.

“You are cold?” he said.

“A little.”

“We will go and have some supper.”

He was now always quiet and decided and remote, very beautiful. He seemed to have some strange, cold power over her.

They went to a restaurant, and drank chianti. But his pale, wan look did not go away.

“Don’t leave me to-night,” he said at length, looking at her, pleading. He was so strange and impersonal, she was afraid.

“But the people of my place,” she said, quivering.

“I will explain to them — they know we are engaged.”

She sat pale and mute. He waited.

“Shall we go?” he said at length.

“Where?”

“To an hotel.”

Her heart was hardened. Without answering, she rose to acquiesce³²⁹. But she was now cold and unreal. Yet she could not refuse him. It seemed like fate, a fate she did not want.

They went to an Italian hotel somewhere, and had a sombre bedroom with a very large bed, clean, but sombre. The ceiling was painted with a bunch of flowers in a big medallion over the bed. She thought it was pretty.

He came to her, and cleaved³³⁰ to her very close, like steel cleaving and clinching³³¹ on to her. Her passion was roused, it was fierce but cold. But it was fierce, and extreme, and good, their passion this night. He slept with her fast in his arms. All night long he held her fast against him. She was passive, acquiscent. But her sleep was not very deep nor very real.

She woke in the morning to a sound of water dashed on a courtyard, to sunlight streaming through a lattice. She thought she was in a foreign country. And Skrebensky was there an incubus³³² upon her.

She lay still, thinking, whilst his arm was round her, his head against her shoulders, his body against hers, just behind her. He was still asleep.

She watched the sunshine coming in bars through the persiennes, and her immediate²¹⁶ surroundings again melted away.

She was in some other land, some other world, where the old restraints had dissolved and vanished, where one moved freely, not afraid of one’s fellow men, nor wary, nor on the defensive³³³, but calm, indifferent, at one’s ease. Vaguely, in a sort of silver light, she wandered at large and at ease. The bonds of the world were broken. This world of England had vanished away. She heard a voice in the yard below calling:

“O Giovann’— O’-O’-O’-Giovann’——!”

And she knew she was in a new country, in a new life. It was very delicious to lie thus still, with one’s soul wandering freely and simply in the silver light of some other, simpler, more finely natural world.

But always there was a foreboding waiting to command her. She became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he was waking up. She must modify her soul, depart from her further world, for him.

She knew he was awake. He lay still, with a concrete stillness, not as when he slept. Then his arm tightened³³⁴ almost convulsively upon her, and he said, half timidly:

“Did you sleep well?”

“Very well.”

“So did I.”

There was a pause.

“And do you love me?” he asked.

She turned and looked at him searchingly. He seemed outside her.

“I do,” she said.

But she said it out of complacency and a desire not to be harried³³⁵. There was a curious breach³³⁶ of silence between them, which frightened him.

They lay rather late, then he rang for breakfast. She wanted to be able to go straight downstairs and away from the place, when she got up. She was happy in this room, but the thought of the publicity³³⁷ of the hall downstairs rather troubled her.

A young Italian, a Sicilian, dark and slightly pock-marked, buttoned up in a sort of grey tunic³³⁸, appeared with the tray. His face had an almost African imperturbability³³⁹, impassive, incomprehensible.

“One might be in Italy,” Skrebensky said to him, genially³⁴⁰. A vacant look, almost like fear, came on the fellow’s face. He did not understand.

“This is like Italy,” Skrebensky explained.

The face of the Italian flashed with a non-comprehending smile, he finished setting out the tray, and was gone. He did not understand: he would understand nothing: he disappeared from the door like a half- domesticated³⁴¹ wild animal. It made Ursula shudder³¹⁸ slightly, the quick, sharp-sighted, intent animality of the man.

Skrebensky was beautiful to her this morning, his face softened and transfused³⁴² with suffering and with love, his movements very still and gentle. He was beautiful to her, but she was detached from him by a chill distance. Always she seemed to be bearing up against the distance that separated them. But he was unaware. This morning he was transfused and beautiful. She admired his movements, the way he spread honey on his roll, or poured out the coffee.

When breakfast was over, she lay still again on the pillows, whilst he went through his toilet. She watched him, as he sponged himself, and quickly dried himself with the towel. His body was beautiful, his movements intent and quick, she admired him and she appreciated him without reserve. He seemed completed now. He aroused no fruitful fecundity in her. He seemed added up, finished. She knew him all round, not on any side did he lead into the unknown. Poignant³⁴³, almost passionate appreciation³⁴⁴ she felt for him, but none of the dreadful wonder, none of the rich fear, the connection with the unknown, or the reverence³⁴⁵ of love. He was, however, unaware this morning. His body was quiet and fulfilled, his veins complete with satisfaction, he was happy, finished.

Again she went home. But this time he went with her. He wanted to stay by her. He wanted her to marry him. It was already July. In early September he must sail for India. He could not bear to think of going alone. She must come with him. Nervously, he kept beside her.

Her examination was finished, her college career was over. There remained for her now to marry or to work again. She applied³⁴⁶ for no post. It was concluded she would marry. India tempted³⁴⁷ her — the strange, strange land. But with the thought of Calcutta, or Bombay, or of Simla, and of the European population, India was no more attractive to her than Nottingham.

She had failed in her examination: she had gone down: she had not taken her degree. It was a blow to her. It hardened her soul.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What are the odds³⁴⁸, whether you are a Bachelor of Arts or not, according to the London University? All you know, you know, and if you are Mrs. Skrebensky, the B.A. is meaningless.”

Instead of consoling her, this made her harder, more ruthless. She was now up against her own fate. It was for her to choose between being Mrs. Skrebensky, even Baroness³⁴⁹ Skrebensky, wife of a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, the Sappers, as he called them, living with the European population in India — or being Ursula Brangwen, spinster, school-mistress. She was qualified³⁵⁰ by her Intermediate Arts examination. She would probably even now get a post quite easily as assistant in one of the higher grade schools, or even in Willey Green School. Which was she to do?

She hated most of all entering the bondage³⁵¹ of teaching once more. Very heartily³⁵² she detested³⁵³ it. Yet at the thought of marriage and living with Skrebensky amid the European population in India, her soul was locked and would not budge³⁵⁴. She had very little feeling about it: only there was a deadlock³⁵⁵.

Skrebensky waited, she waited, everybody waited for the decision. When Anton talked to her, and seemed insidiously³⁵⁶ to suggest himself as a husband to her, she knew how utterly locked out he was. On the other hand, when she saw Dorothy, and discussed the matter, she felt she would marry him promptly³⁵⁷, at once, as a sharp disavowal of adherence³⁵⁸ with Dorothy’s views.

The situation was almost ridiculous.

“But do you love him?” asked Dorothy.

“It isn’t a question of loving him,” said Ursula. “I love him well enough — certainly more than I love anybody else in the world. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. We have had the flower of each other. But I don’t care about love. I don’t value it. I don’t care whether I love or whether I don’t, whether I have love or whether I haven’t. What is it to me?”

And she shrugged³⁵⁹ her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt.

Dorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid.

“Then what do you care about?” she asked, exasperated³⁶⁰.

“I don’t know,” said Ursula. “But something impersonal. Love — love — love — what does it mean — what does it amount to? So much personal gratification. It doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“It isn’t supposed to lead anywhere, is it?” said Dorothy, satirically. “I thought it was the one thing which is an end in itself.”

“Then what does it matter to me?” cried Ursula. “As an end in itself, I could love a hundred men, one after the other. Why should I end with a Skrebensky? Why should I not go on, and love all the types I fancy, one after another, if love is an end in itself? There are plenty of men who aren’t Anton, whom I could love — whom I would like to love.”

“Then you don’t love him,” said Dorothy.

“I tell you I do; — quite as much, and perhaps more than I should love any of the others. Only there are plenty of things that aren’t in Anton that I would love in the other men.”

“What, for instance?”

“It doesn’t matter. But a sort of strong understanding, in some men, and then a dignity, a directness, something unquestioned that there is in working men, and then a jolly, reckless passionateness³⁶¹ that you see — a man who could really let go ——”

Dorothy could feel that Ursula was already hankering after something else, something that this man did not give her.

“The question is, what do you want,” propounded³⁶² Dorothy. “Is it just other men?”

Ursula was silenced. This was her own dread. Was she just promiscuous³⁶³?

“Because if it is,” continued Dorothy, “you’d better marry Anton. The other can only end badly.”

So out of fear of herself Ursula was to marry Skrebensky.

He was very busy now, preparing to go to India. He must visit relatives and contract business. He was almost sure of Ursula now. She seemed to have given in. And he seemed to become again an important, self-assured man.

It was the first week in August, and he was one of a large party in a bungalow³⁶⁴ on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a tennis, golf, motor-car, motor-boat party, given by his great-aunt, a lady of social pretensions³⁶⁵. Ursula was invited to spend the week with the party.

She went rather reluctantly. Her marriage was more or less fixed for the twenty-eighth of the month. They were to sail for India on September the fifth. One thing she knew, in her subconsciousness³⁶⁶, and that was, she would never sail for India.

She and Anton, being important guests on account of the coming marriage, had rooms in the large bungalow. It was a big place, with a great central hall, two smaller writing-rooms, and then two corridors from which opened eight or nine bedrooms. Skrebensky was put on one corridor, Ursula on the other. They felt very lost, in the crowd.

Being lovers, however, they were allowed to be out alone together as much as they liked. Yet she felt very strange, in this crowd of strange people, uneasy, as if she had no privacy. She was not used to these homogeneous crowds. She was afraid.

She felt different from the rest of them, with their hard, easy, shallow intimacy³⁶⁷, that seemed to cost them so little. She felt she was not pronounced enough. It was a kind of hold-your-own unconventional atmosphere.

She did not like it. In crowds, in assemblies of people, she liked formality. She felt she did not produce the right effect. She was not effective: she was not beautiful: she was nothing. Even before Skrebensky she felt unimportant, almost inferior. He could take his part very well with the rest.

He and she went out into the night. There was a moon behind clouds, shedding a diffused³⁶⁸ light, gleaming now and again in bits of smoky mother-of-pearl. So they walked together on the wet, ribbed sands near the sea, hearing the run of the long, heavy waves, that made a ghostly whiteness and a whisper.

He was sure of himself. As she walked, the soft silk of her dress — she wore a blue shantung, full-skirted — blew away from the sea and flapped and clung to her legs. She wished it would not. Everything seemed to give her away, and she could not rouse herself to deny, she was so confused.

He would lead her away to a pocket in the sand-hills, secret amid the grey thorn-bushes and the grey, glassy grass. He held her close against him, felt all her firm, unutterably desirable mould of body through the fine fibre of the silk that fell about her limbs. The silk, slipping fierily³⁶⁹ on the hidden, yet revealed roundness and firmness of her body, her loins, seemed to run in him like fire, make his brain burn like brimstone. She liked it, the electric fire of the silk under his hands upon her limbs, the fire flew over her, as he drew nearer and nearer to discovery. She vibrated like a jet of electric, firm fluid in response. Yet she did not feel beautiful. All the time, she felt she was not beautiful to him, only exciting. She let him take her, and he seemed mad, mad with excited passion. But she, as she lay afterwards on the cold, soft sand, looking up at the blotted³⁷⁰, faintly luminous sky, felt that she was as cold now as she had been before. Yet he, breathing heavily, seemed almost savagely³⁷¹ satisfied. He seemed revenged.

A little wind wafted³⁷² the sea grass and passed over her face. Where was the supreme fulfilment she would never enjoy? Why was she so cold, so unroused, so indifferent?

As they went home, and she saw the many, hateful lights of the bungalow, of several bungalows³⁷³ in a group, he said softly:

“Don’t lock your door.”

“I’d rather, here,” she said.

“No, don’t. We belong to each other. Don’t let us deny it.”

She did not answer. He took her silence for consent.

He shared his room with another man.

“I suppose,” he said, “it won’t alarm the house if I go across to happier regions.”

“So long as you don’t make a great row going, and don’t try the wrong door,” said the other man, turning in to sleep.

Skrebensky went out in his wide-striped sleeping suit. He crossed the big dining hall, whose low firelight smelled of cigars and whisky and coffee, entered the other corridor and found Ursula’s room. She was lying awake, wide-eyed and suffering. She was glad he had come, if only for consolation³⁷⁴. It was consolation to be held in his arms, to feel his body against hers. Yet how foreign his arms and body were! Yet still, not so horribly foreign and hostile as the rest of the house felt to her.

She did not know how she suffered in this house. She was healthy and exorbitantly³⁷⁵ full of interest. So she played tennis and learned golf, she rowed out and swam in the deep sea, and enjoyed it very much indeed, full of zest³⁷⁶. Yet all the time, among those others, she felt shocked and wincing³⁷⁷, as if her violently-sensitive nakedness were exposed to the hard, brutal³⁷⁸, material impact of the rest of the people.

The days went by unmarked, in a full, almost strenuous enjoyment of one’s own physique. Skrebensky was one among the others, till evening came, and he took her for himself. She was allowed a great deal of freedom and was treated with a good deal of respect, as a girl on the eve of marriage, about to depart for another continent.

The trouble began at evening. Then a yearning for something unknown came over her, a passion for something she knew not what. She would walk the foreshore alone after dusk, expecting, expecting something, as if she had gone to a rendezvous³⁷⁹. The salt, bitter passion of the sea, its indifference to the earth, its swinging, definite motion, its strength, its attack, and its salt burning, seemed to provoke her to a pitch of madness, tantalizing³⁸⁰ her with vast suggestions of fulfilment. And then, for personification, would come Skrebensky, Skrebensky, whom she knew, whom she was fond of, who was attractive, but whose soul could not contain her in its waves of strength, nor his breast compel her in burning, salty passion.

One evening they went out after dinner, across the low golf links to the dunes³⁸¹ and the sea. The sky had small, faint stars, all was still and faintly dark. They walked together in silence, then ploughed, labouring, through the heavy loose sand of the gap between the dunes. They went in silence under the even, faint darkness, in the darker shadow of the sandhills.

Suddenly, cresting³⁸² the heavy, sandy pass, Ursula lifted her head, and shrank back, momentarily frightened. There was a great whiteness confronting her, the moon was incandescent³⁸³ as a round furnace door, out of which came the high blast of moonlight, over the seaward half of the world, a dazzling, terrifying glare of white light. They shrank back for a moment into shadow, uttering a cry. He felt his chest laid bare, where the secret was heavily hidden. He felt himself fusing down to nothingness, like a bead³⁸⁴ that rapidly disappears in an incandescent flame.

“How wonderful!” cried Urusla, in low, calling tones. “How wonderful!”

And she went forward, plunging into it. He followed behind. She too seemed to melt into the glare, towards the moon.

The sands were as ground silver, the sea moved in solid brightness, coming towards them, and she went to meet the advance of the flashing, buoyant water. She gave her breast to the moon, her belly³⁸⁵ to the flashing, heaving water. He stood behind, encompassed, a shadow ever dissolving.

She stood on the edge of the water, at the edge of the solid, flashing body of the sea, and the wave rushed over her feet.

“I want to go,” she cried, in a strong, dominant³⁸⁶ voice. “I want to go.”

He saw the moonlight on her face, so she was like metal, he heard her ringing, metallic³⁸⁷ voice, like the voice of a harpy to him.

She prowled, ranging on the edge of the water like a possessed creature, and he followed her. He saw the froth of the wave followed by the hard, bright water swirl³⁸⁸ over her feet and her ankles, she swung out her arms, to balance, he expected every moment to see her walk into the sea, dressed as she was, and be carried swimming out.

But she turned, she walked to him.

“I want to go,” she cried again, in the high, hard voice, like the scream of gulls³⁸⁹.

“Where?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

And she seized hold of his arm, held him fast, as if captive, and walked him a little way by the edge of the dazzling, dazing water.

Then there in the great flare of light, she clinched³⁹⁰ hold of him, hard, as if suddenly she had the strength of destruction, she fastened her arms round him and tightened him in her grip, whilst her mouth sought his in a hard, rending³⁹¹, ever-increasing kiss, till his body was powerless in her grip, his heart melted in fear from the fierce, beaked³⁹², harpy’s kiss. The water washed again over their feet, but she took no notice. She seemed unaware, she seemed to be pressing in her beaked mouth till she had the heart of him. Then, at last, she drew away and looked at him — looked at him. He knew what she wanted. He took her by the hand and led her across the foreshore, back to the sandhills. She went silently. He felt as if the ordeal³⁹³ of proof was upon him, for life or death. He led her to a dark hollow.

“No, here,” she said, going out to the slope full under the moonshine. She lay motionless, with wide-open eyes looking at the moon. He came direct to her, without preliminaries. She held him pinned down at the chest, awful. The fight, the struggle for consummation was terrible. It lasted till it was agony to his soul, till he succumbed³⁹⁴, till he gave way as if dead, lay with his face buried, partly in her hair, partly in the sand, motionless, as if he would be motionless now for ever, hidden away in the dark, buried, only buried, he only wanted to be buried in the goodly darkness, only that, and no more.

He seemed to swoon. It was a long time before he came to himself. He was aware of an unusual motion of her breast. He looked up. Her face lay like an image in the moonlight, the eyes wide open, rigid. But out of the eyes, slowly, there rolled a tear, that glittered in the moonlight as it ran down her cheek.

He felt as if as the knife were being pushed into his already dead body. With head strained back, he watched, drawn tense, for some minutes, watched the unaltering, rigid face like metal in the moonlight, the fixed, unseeing eye, in which slowly the water gathered, shook with glittering moonlight, then surcharged, brimmed over and ran trickling³⁹⁵, a tear with its burden of moonlight, into the darkness, to fall in the sand.

He drew gradually away as if afraid, drew away — she did not move. He glanced at her — she lay the same. Could he break away? He turned, saw the open foreshore, clear in front of him, and he plunged³⁹⁶ away, on and on, ever farther from the horrible figure that lay stretched in the moonlight on the sands with the tears gathering and travelling on the motionless, eternal face.

He felt, if ever he must see her again, his bones must be broken, his body crushed, obliterated³⁹⁷ for ever. And as yet, he had the love of his own living body. He wandered on a long, long way, till his brain drew dark and he was unconscious with weariness. Then he curled in the deepest darkness he could find, under the sea-grass, and lay there without consciousness.

She broke from her tense cramp³⁹⁸ of agony gradually, though each movement was a goad³⁹⁹ of heavy pain. Gradually, she lifted her dead body from the sands, and rose at last. There was now no moon for her, no sea. All had passed away. She trailed her dead body to the house, to her room, where she lay down inert⁷⁰.

Morning brought her a new access of superficial life. But all within her was cold, dead, inert. Skrebensky appeared at breakfast. He was white and obliterated. They did not look at each other nor speak to each other. Apart from the ordinary, trivial talk of civil people, they were separate, they did not speak of what was between them during the remaining two days of their stay. They were like two dead people who dare not recognise, dare not see each other.

Then she packed her bag and put on her things. There were several guests leaving together, for the same train. He would have no opportunity to speak to her.

He tapped at her bedroom door at the last minute. She stood with her umbrella in her hand. He closed the door. He did not know what to say.

“Have you done with me?” he asked her at length, lifting his head.

“It isn’t me,” she said. “You have done with me — we have done with each other.”

He looked at her, at the closed face, which he thought so cruel. And he knew he could never touch her again. His will was broken, he was seared, but he clung to the life of his body.

“Well, what have I done?” he asked, in a rather querulous voice.

“I don’t know,” she said, in the same dull, feelingless voice. “It is finished. It had been a failure.”

He was silent. The words still burned his bowels.

“Is it my fault?” he said, looking up at length, challenging the last stroke.

“You couldn’t ——” she began. But she broke down.

He turned away, afraid to hear more. She began to gather her bag, her handkerchief, her umbrella. She must be gone now. He was waiting for her to be gone.

At length the carriage came and she drove away with the rest. When she was out of sight, a great relief came over him, a pleasant banality⁴⁰⁰. In an instant, everything was obliterated. He was childishly amiable⁴⁰¹ and companionable all the day long. He was astonished that life could be so nice. It was better than it had been before. What a simple thing it was to be rid of her! How friendly and simple everything felt to him. What false thing had she been forcing on him?

But at night he dared not be alone. His room-mate had gone, and the hours of darkness were an agony to him. He watched the window in suffering and terror. When would this horrible darkness be lifted off him? Setting all his nerves, he endured it. He went to sleep with the dawn.

He never thought of her. Only his terror of the hours of night grew on him, obsessed him like a mania⁴⁰². He slept fitfully, with constant wakings of anguish. The fear wore away the core of him.

His plan was to sit up very late: drink in company until one or half-past one in the morning; then he would get three hours of sleep, of oblivion. It was light by five o’clock. But he was shocked almost to madness if he opened his eyes on the darkness.

In the daytime he was all right, always occupied with the thing of the moment, adhering to the trivial present, which seemed to him ample and satisfying. No matter how little and futile⁴⁰³ his occupations were, he gave himself to them entirely, and felt normal and fulfilled. He was always active, cheerful, gay, charming, trivial. Only he dreaded⁴⁰⁴ the darkness and silence of his own bedroom, when the darkness should challenge him upon his own soul. That he could not bear, as he could not bear to think about Ursula. He had no soul, no background. He never thought of Ursula, not once, he gave her no sign. She was the darkness, the challenge, the horror. He turned to immediate things. He wanted to marry quickly, to screen himself from the darkness, the challenge of his own soul. He would marry his Colonel’s daughter. Quickly, without hesitation⁴⁰⁵, pursued by his obsession⁴⁰⁶ for activity, he wrote to this girl, telling her his engagement was broken — it had been a temporary infatuation which he less than any one else could understand now it was over — and could he see his very dear friend soon? He would not be happy till he had an answer.

He received a rather surprised reply from the girl, but she would be glad to see him. She was living with her aunt. He went down to her at once, and proposed to her the first evening. He was accepted. The marriage took place quietly within fourteen days’ time. Ursula was not notified of the event. In another week, Skrebensky sailed with his new wife to India.

1 contriving   

（不顾困难地）促成某事( contrive的现在分词 )； 巧妙地策划，精巧地制造（如机器）； 设法做到

参考例句：

• Why may not several Deities combine in contriving and framing a world? 为什么不可能是数个神联合起来，设计和构造世界呢？ 来自哲学部分
• The notorious drug-pusher has been contriving an escape from the prison. 臭名昭著的大毒枭一直都在图谋越狱。

2 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

3 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

4 chapel   

n.小教堂，殡仪馆

参考例句：

• The nimble hero,skipped into a chapel that stood near.敏捷的英雄跳进近旁的一座小教堂里。
• She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel.那个星期天的下午，她在小教堂的演出，可以说是登峰造极。

5 nervously   

adv.神情激动地，不安地

参考例句：

• He bit his lip nervously,trying not to cry.他紧张地咬着唇，努力忍着不哭出来。
• He paced nervously up and down on the platform.他在站台上情绪不安地走来走去。

6 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

7 wan   

(wide area network)广域网

参考例句：

• The shared connection can be an Ethernet,wireless LAN,or wireless WAN connection.提供共享的网络连接可以是以太网、无线局域网或无线广域网。

8 distinguished   

adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的

参考例句：

• Elephants are distinguished from other animals by their long noses.大象以其长长的鼻子显示出与其他动物的不同。
• A banquet was given in honor of the distinguished guests.宴会是为了向贵宾们致敬而举行的。

9 chafing   

n.皮肤发炎v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的现在分词 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒

参考例句：

• My shorts were chafing my thighs. 我的短裤把大腿磨得生疼。 来自辞典例句
• We made coffee in a chafing dish. 我们用暖锅烧咖啡。 来自辞典例句

10 strapping   

adj. 魁伟的, 身材高大健壮的 n. 皮绳或皮带的材料, 裹伤胶带, 皮鞭 动词strap的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• He's a strapping lad—already bigger than his father. 他是一个魁梧的小伙子——已经比他父亲高了。
• He was a tall strapping boy. 他是一个高大健壮的小伙子。

11 cloistered   

adj.隐居的，躲开尘世纷争的v.隐退，使与世隔绝( cloister的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• the cloistered world of the university 与世隔绝的大学
• She cloistered herself in the office. 她呆在办公室里好像与世隔绝一样。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

13 rim   

n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界

参考例句：

• The water was even with the rim of the basin.盆里的水与盆边平齐了。
• She looked at him over the rim of her glass.她的目光越过玻璃杯的边沿看着他。

14 radiator   

n.暖气片，散热器

参考例句：

• The two ends of the pipeline are connected with the radiator.管道的两端与暖气片相连接。
• Top up the radiator before making a long journey.在长途旅行前加满散热器。

15 amorphous   

adj.无定形的

参考例句：

• There was a weakening of the intermolecular bonds,primarily in the amorphous region of the polymer.分子间键合减弱，尤其在聚合物的无定形区内更为明显。
• It is an amorphous colorless or white powder.它是一种无定形的无色或白色粉末。

16 wondrous   

adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地

参考例句：

• The internal structure of the Department is wondrous to behold.看一下国务院的内部结构是很有意思的。
• We were driven across this wondrous vast land of lakes and forests.我们乘车穿越这片有着湖泊及森林的广袤而神奇的土地。

17 cloistral   

adj.修道院的，隐居的，孤独的

参考例句：

• It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance. 是这种幽幽的寂静使我们朗朗的笑声发出回响。 来自辞典例句

18 monks   

n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The monks lived a very ascetic life. 僧侣过着很清苦的生活。
• He had been trained rigorously by the monks. 他接受过修道士的严格训练。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 luminous   

adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的

参考例句：

• There are luminous knobs on all the doors in my house.我家所有门上都安有夜光把手。
• Most clocks and watches in this shop are in luminous paint.这家商店出售的大多数钟表都涂了发光漆。

20 alas   

int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)

参考例句：

• Alas!The window is broken!哎呀！窗子破了！
• Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而，真理很少带有浪漫色彩。

21 chattered   

（人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤

参考例句：

• They chattered away happily for a while. 他们高兴地闲扯了一会儿。
• We chattered like two teenagers. 我们聊着天，像两个十多岁的孩子。

22 giggled   

v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The girls giggled at the joke. 女孩子们让这笑话逗得咯咯笑。
• The children giggled hysterically. 孩子们歇斯底里地傻笑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

23 myriad   

adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量

参考例句：

• They offered no solution for all our myriad problems.对于我们数不清的问题他们束手无策。
• I had three weeks to make a myriad of arrangements.我花了三个星期做大量准备工作。

24 scribbled   

v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下

参考例句：

• She scribbled his phone number on a scrap of paper. 她把他的电话号码匆匆写在一张小纸片上。
• He scribbled a note to his sister before leaving. 临行前，他给妹妹草草写了一封短信。

25 ecstasy   

n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷

参考例句：

• He listened to the music with ecstasy.他听音乐听得入了神。
• Speechless with ecstasy,the little boys gazed at the toys.小孩注视着那些玩具，高兴得说不出话来。

26 strands   

n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Twist a length of rope from strands of hemp. 用几股麻搓成了一段绳子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She laced strands into a braid. 她把几股线编织成一根穗带。 来自《简明英汉词典》

27 initiated   

n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入

参考例句：

• He has not yet been thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of computers. 他对计算机的奥秘尚未入门。
• The artist initiated the girl into the art world in France. 这个艺术家介绍这个女孩加入巴黎艺术界。

28 joyfully   

adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地

参考例句：

• She tripped along joyfully as if treading on air. 她高兴地走着，脚底下轻飘飘的。
• During these first weeks she slaved joyfully. 在最初的几周里，她干得很高兴。

29 maiden   

n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的

参考例句：

• The prince fell in love with a fair young maiden.王子爱上了一位年轻美丽的少女。
• The aircraft makes its maiden flight tomorrow.这架飞机明天首航。

30 relentless   

adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的

参考例句：

• The traffic noise is relentless.交通车辆的噪音一刻也不停止。
• Their training has to be relentless.他们的训练必须是无情的。

31 seclusion   

n.隐遁，隔离

参考例句：

• She liked to sunbathe in the seclusion of her own garden.她喜欢在自己僻静的花园里晒日光浴。
• I live very much in seclusion these days.这些天我过着几乎与世隔绝的生活。

32 strenuous   

adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的

参考例句：

• He made strenuous efforts to improve his reading. 他奋发努力提高阅读能力。
• You may run yourself down in this strenuous week.你可能会在这紧张的一周透支掉自己。

33 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

34 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

35 incongruity   

n.不协调，不一致

参考例句：

• She smiled at the incongruity of the question.面对这样突兀的问题，她笑了。
• When the particular outstrips the general,we are faced with an incongruity.当特别是超过了总的来讲，我们正面临着一个不协调。

36 rift   

n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入

参考例句：

• He was anxious to mend the rift between the two men.他急于弥合这两个人之间的裂痕。
• The sun appeared through a rift in the clouds.太阳从云层间隙中冒出来。

37 suspense   

n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑

参考例句：

• The suspense was unbearable.这样提心吊胆的状况实在叫人受不了。
• The director used ingenious devices to keep the audience in suspense.导演用巧妙手法引起观众的悬念。

38 lull   

v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇

参考例句：

• The drug put Simpson in a lull for thirty minutes.药物使辛普森安静了30分钟。
• Ground fighting flared up again after a two-week lull.经过两个星期的平静之后，地面战又突然爆发了。

39 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

40 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

41 glimmer   

v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光

参考例句：

• I looked at her and felt a glimmer of hope.我注视她，感到了一线希望。
• A glimmer of amusement showed in her eyes.她的眼中露出一丝笑意。

42 sob   

n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣

参考例句：

• The child started to sob when he couldn't find his mother.孩子因找不到他妈妈哭了起来。
• The girl didn't answer,but continued to sob with her head on the table.那个女孩不回答，也不抬起头来。她只顾低声哭着。

43 apprehensively   

adv.担心地

参考例句：

• He glanced a trifle apprehensively towards the crowded ballroom. 他敏捷地朝挤满了人的舞厅瞟了一眼。 来自辞典例句
• Then it passed, leaving everything in a state of suspense, even the willow branches waiting apprehensively. 一阵这样的风过去，一切都不知怎好似的，连柳树都惊疑不定的等着点什么。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子

44 foam   

v./n.泡沫，起泡沫

参考例句：

• The glass of beer was mostly foam.这杯啤酒大部分是泡沫。
• The surface of the water is full of foam.水面都是泡沫。

45 envelop   

vt.包，封，遮盖；包围

参考例句：

• All combine to form a layer of mist to envelop this region.织成一层烟雾又笼罩着这个地区。
• The dust cloud will envelop the planet within weeks.产生的尘云将会笼罩整个星球长达几周。

46 enveloping   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. 那眼睛总是死死盯着你，那声音总是紧紧围着你。 来自英汉文学
• The only barrier was a mosquito net, enveloping the entire bed. 唯一的障碍是那顶蚊帐罩住整个床。 来自辞典例句

47 teeming   

adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注

参考例句：

• The rain was teeming down. 大雨倾盆而下。
• the teeming streets of the city 熙熙攘攘的城市街道

48 jerseys   

n.运动衫( jersey的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The maximum quantity of cotton jerseys this year is about DM25,000. 平方米的羊毛地毯超过了以往的订货。 来自口语例句
• The NBA is mulling the prospect of stitching advertising logos onto jerseys. 大意：NBA官方正在酝酿一个大煞风景的计划——把广告标志绣上球服！ 来自互联网

49 impudent   

adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的

参考例句：

• She's tolerant toward those impudent colleagues.她对那些无礼的同事采取容忍的态度。
• The teacher threatened to kick the impudent pupil out of the room.老师威胁着要把这无礼的小学生撵出教室。

50 delightful   

adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的

参考例句：

• We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
• Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。

51 attentive   

adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的

参考例句：

• She was very attentive to her guests.她对客人招待得十分周到。
• The speaker likes to have an attentive audience.演讲者喜欢注意力集中的听众。

52 blatant   

adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的

参考例句：

• I cannot believe that so blatant a comedy can hoodwink anybody.我无法相信这么显眼的一出喜剧能够欺骗谁。
• His treatment of his secretary was a blatant example of managerial arrogance.他管理的傲慢作风在他对待秘书的态度上表露无遗。

53 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

54 materialistic   

a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的

参考例句：

• She made him both soft and materialistic. 她把他变成女性化而又实际化。
• Materialistic dialectics is an important part of constituting Marxism. 唯物辩证法是马克思主义的重要组成部分。

55 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

56 complacent   

adj.自满的；自鸣得意的

参考例句：

• We must not become complacent the moment we have some success.我们决不能一见成绩就自满起来。
• She was complacent about her achievements.她对自己的成绩沾沾自喜。

57 glamour   

n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住

参考例句：

• Foreign travel has lost its glamour for her.到国外旅行对她已失去吸引力了。
• The moonlight cast a glamour over the scene.月光给景色增添了魅力。

58 wares   

n. 货物, 商品

参考例句：

• They sold their wares at half-price. 他们的货品是半价出售的。
• The peddler was crying up his wares. 小贩极力夸耀自己的货物。

59 oblivious   

adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的

参考例句：

• Mother has become quite oblivious after the illness.这次病后，妈妈变得特别健忘。
• He was quite oblivious of the danger.他完全没有察觉到危险。

60 second-hand   

adj.用过的，旧的，二手的

参考例句：

• I got this book by chance at a second-hand bookshop.我赶巧在一家旧书店里买到这本书。
• They will put all these second-hand goods up for sale.他们将把这些旧货全部公开出售。

61 sham   

n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的)

参考例句：

• They cunningly played the game of sham peace.他们狡滑地玩弄假和平的把戏。
• His love was a mere sham.他的爱情是虚假的。

62 naive   

adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的

参考例句：

• It's naive of you to believe he'll do what he says.相信他会言行一致，你未免太单纯了。
• Don't be naive.The matter is not so simple.你别傻乎乎的。事情没有那么简单。

63 slovenly   

adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的

参考例句：

• People were scandalized at the slovenly management of the company.人们对该公司草率的经营感到愤慨。
• Such slovenly work habits will never produce good products.这样马马虎虎的工作习惯决不能生产出优质产品来。

64 disillusion   

vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭

参考例句：

• Do not say anything to disillusion them.别说什么叫他们泄气的话。
• I'd hate to be the one to disillusion him.我不愿意成为那个让他幻想破灭的人。

65 anguish   

n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼

参考例句：

• She cried out for anguish at parting.分手时，她由于痛苦而失声大哭。
• The unspeakable anguish wrung his heart.难言的痛苦折磨着他的心。

66 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

67 motive   

n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的

参考例句：

• The police could not find a motive for the murder.警察不能找到谋杀的动机。
• He had some motive in telling this fable.他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

68 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

69 inertia   

adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝

参考例句：

• We had a feeling of inertia in the afternoon.下午我们感觉很懒。
• Inertia carried the plane onto the ground.飞机靠惯性着陆。

70 inert   

adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的

参考例句：

• Inert gas studies are providing valuable information about other planets,too.对惰性气体的研究，也提供了有关其它行星的有价值的资料。
• Elemental nitrogen is a very unreactive and inert material.元素氮是一个十分不活跃的惰性物质。

71 scarlet   

n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的

参考例句：

• The scarlet leaves of the maples contrast well with the dark green of the pines.深红的枫叶和暗绿的松树形成了明显的对比。
• The glowing clouds are growing slowly pale,scarlet,bright red,and then light red.天空的霞光渐渐地淡下去了，深红的颜色变成了绯红，绯红又变为浅红。

72 fleck   

n.斑点，微粒 vt.使有斑点，使成斑驳

参考例句：

• The garlic moss has no the yellow fleck and other virus. 蒜苔无黄斑点及其它病毒。
• His coat is blue with a grey fleck.他的上衣是蓝色的，上面带有灰色的斑点。

73 flickering   

adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的

参考例句：

• The crisp autumn wind is flickering away. 清爽的秋风正在吹拂。
• The lights keep flickering. 灯光忽明忽暗。

74 shrine   

n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣

参考例句：

• The shrine was an object of pilgrimage.这处圣地是人们朝圣的目的地。
• They bowed down before the shrine.他们在神龛前鞠躬示敬。

75 encumber   

v.阻碍行动，妨碍，堆满

参考例句：

• He never let a woman encumber him for any length of time.他从来不让一个女人妨碍他太久的时间。
• They can't encumber us on the road.他们不会在路上拖累大家。

76 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

77 glimmered   

v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• "There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray." 她胸前绣着的字母闪着的非凡的光辉，将温暖舒适带给他人。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学
• The moon glimmered faintly through the mists. 月亮透过薄雾洒下微光。 来自辞典例句

78 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

79 sterile   

adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的

参考例句：

• This top fits over the bottle and keeps the teat sterile.这个盖子严实地盖在奶瓶上，保持奶嘴无菌。
• The farmers turned the sterile land into high fields.农民们把不毛之地变成了高产田。

80 degradation   

n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变

参考例句：

• There are serious problems of land degradation in some arid zones.在一些干旱地带存在严重的土地退化问题。
• Gambling is always coupled with degradation.赌博总是与堕落相联系。

81 grit   

n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关

参考例句：

• The soldiers showed that they had plenty of grit. 士兵们表现得很有勇气。
• I've got some grit in my shoe.我的鞋子里弄进了一些砂子。

82 gritting   

v.以沙砾覆盖（某物），撒沙砾于( grit的现在分词 )；咬紧牙关

参考例句：

• Gritting my teeth, I did my best to stifle one or two remarks. 我咬紧牙关，硬是吞回了几句话。 来自辞典例句
• It takes gritting your teeth. It takes discipline. 你得咬紧牙关，你得有严格的纪律。 来自辞典例句

83 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

84 crest   

n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖

参考例句：

• The rooster bristled his crest.公鸡竖起了鸡冠。
• He reached the crest of the hill before dawn.他于黎明前到达山顶。

85 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

86 marsh   

n.沼泽，湿地

参考例句：

• There are a lot of frogs in the marsh.沼泽里有许多青蛙。
• I made my way slowly out of the marsh.我缓慢地走出这片沼泽地。

87 lapsing   

v.退步( lapse的现在分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失

参考例句：

• He tried to say, but his voice kept lapsing. 他是想说这句话，可已经抖得语不成声了。 来自辞典例句
• I saw the pavement lapsing beneath my feet. 我看到道路在我脚下滑过。 来自辞典例句

88 veins   

n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理

参考例句：

• The blood flows from the capillaries back into the veins. 血从毛细血管流回静脉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I felt a pleasant glow in all my veins from the wine. 喝过酒后我浑身的血都热烘烘的，感到很舒服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

89 conjured   

用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现

参考例句：

• He conjured them with his dying breath to look after his children. 他临终时恳求他们照顾他的孩子。
• His very funny joke soon conjured my anger away. 他讲了个十分有趣的笑话，使得我的怒气顿消。

90 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

91 stiffen   

v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬

参考例句：

• The blood supply to the skin is reduced when muscles stiffen.当肌肉变得僵硬时，皮肤的供血量就减少了。
• I was breathing hard,and my legs were beginning to stiffen.这时我却气吁喘喘地开始感到脚有点僵硬。

92 positively   

adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实

参考例句：

• She was positively glowing with happiness.她满脸幸福。
• The weather was positively poisonous.这天气着实讨厌。

93 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

94 penetrating   

adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的

参考例句：

• He had an extraordinarily penetrating gaze. 他的目光有股异乎寻常的洞察力。
• He examined the man with a penetrating gaze. 他以锐利的目光仔细观察了那个人。

95 moths   

n.蛾( moth的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The moths have eaten holes in my wool coat. 蛀虫将我的羊毛衫蛀蚀了几个小洞。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The moths tapped and blurred at the window screen. 飞蛾在窗帘上跳来跳去，弄上了许多污点。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

96 sleepers   

n.卧铺（通常以复数形式出现）；卧车( sleeper的名词复数 )；轨枕；睡觉（呈某种状态）的人；小耳环

参考例句：

• He trod quietly so as not to disturb the sleepers. 他轻移脚步，以免吵醒睡着的人。 来自辞典例句
• The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. 保姆出去了，只剩下我们两个瞌睡虫。 来自辞典例句

97 illuminating   

a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的

参考例句：

• We didn't find the examples he used particularly illuminating. 我们觉得他采用的那些例证启发性不是特别大。
• I found his talk most illuminating. 我觉得他的话很有启发性。

98 lurking   

潜在

参考例句：

• Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的，想干什么？
• There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

99 jeered   

v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The police were jeered at by the waiting crowd. 警察受到在等待的人群的嘲弄。
• The crowd jeered when the boxer was knocked down. 当那个拳击手被打倒时，人们开始嘲笑他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

100 knave   

n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克

参考例句：

• Better be a fool than a knave.宁做傻瓜，不做无赖。
• Once a knave,ever a knave.一次成无赖，永远是无赖。

101 bogeys   

n.妖怪，可怕的人（物）( bogey的名词复数 )v.妖怪，可怕的人（物）( bogey的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Bogeys appear to be heading directly at us. 我们现在左转，面向150，偏离敌机30度。 来自互联网
• Movement is powered by hidden electric motors on 'bogeys' integrated into the wall thickness. 运动是由电动机的隐藏'忌'融入壁厚。 来自互联网

102 belittle   

v.轻视，小看，贬低

参考例句：

• Do not belittle what he has achieved.不能小看他取得的成绩。
• When you belittle others,you are actually the one who appears small.当你轻视他人时， 真正渺小的其实是你自己。

103 bristling   

a.竖立的

参考例句：

• "Don't you question Miz Wilkes' word,'said Archie, his beard bristling. "威尔克斯太太的话，你就不必怀疑了。 "阿尔奇说。他的胡子也翘了起来。
• You were bristling just now. 你刚才在发毛。

104 hyena   

n.土狼，鬣狗

参考例句：

• African hyena noted for its distinctive howl.非洲鬣狗，以其特别的嚎叫而闻名。
• The hyena's public image is not aided by its ridiculous appearance.鬣狗滑稽的外表无助于改善它在公众心中的形象。

105 conceit   

n.自负，自高自大

参考例句：

• As conceit makes one lag behind,so modesty helps one make progress.骄傲使人落后，谦虚使人进步。
• She seems to be eaten up with her own conceit.她仿佛已经被骄傲冲昏了头脑。

106 fangs   

n.（尤指狗和狼的）长而尖的牙( fang的名词复数 )；（蛇的）毒牙；罐座

参考例句：

• The dog fleshed his fangs in the deer's leg. 狗用尖牙咬住了鹿腿。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Dogs came lunging forward with their fangs bared. 狗龇牙咧嘴地扑过来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

107 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

108 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。

109 toil   

vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事

参考例句：

• The wealth comes from the toil of the masses.财富来自大众的辛勤劳动。
• Every single grain is the result of toil.每一粒粮食都来之不易。

110 nay   

adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者

参考例句：

• He was grateful for and proud of his son's remarkable,nay,unique performance.他为儿子出色的，不，应该是独一无二的表演心怀感激和骄傲。
• Long essays,nay,whole books have been written on this.许多长篇大论的文章，不，应该说是整部整部的书都是关于这件事的。

111 boundless   

adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的

参考例句：

• The boundless woods were sleeping in the deep repose of nature.无边无际的森林在大自然静寂的怀抱中酣睡着。
• His gratitude and devotion to the Party was boundless.他对党无限感激、无限忠诚。

112 plunging   

adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• War broke out again, plunging the people into misery and suffering. 战祸复发，生灵涂炭。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He is plunging into an abyss of despair. 他陷入了绝望的深渊。 来自《简明英汉词典》

113 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

114 prominence   

n.突出；显著；杰出；重要

参考例句：

• He came to prominence during the World Cup in Italy.他在意大利的世界杯赛中声名鹊起。
• This young fashion designer is rising to prominence.这位年轻的时装设计师的声望越来越高。

115 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

116 fussy   

adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的

参考例句：

• He is fussy about the way his food's cooked.他过分计较食物的烹调。
• The little girl dislikes her fussy parents.小女孩讨厌她那过分操心的父母。

117 fretting   

n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的

参考例句：

• Fretting about it won't help. 苦恼于事无补。
• The old lady is always fretting over something unimportant. 那位老妇人总是为一些小事焦虑不安。

118 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

119 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。

120 impersonal   

adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的

参考例句：

• Even his children found him strangely distant and impersonal.他的孩子们也认为他跟其他人很疏远，没有人情味。
• His manner seemed rather stiff and impersonal.他的态度似乎很生硬冷淡。

121 nucleus   

n.核，核心，原子核

参考例句：

• These young people formed the nucleus of the club.这些年轻人成了俱乐部的核心。
• These councils would form the nucleus of a future regime.这些委员会将成为一个未来政权的核心。

122 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

123 speck   

n.微粒，小污点，小斑点

参考例句：

• I have not a speck of interest in it.我对它没有任何兴趣。
• The sky is clear and bright without a speck of cloud.天空晴朗，一星星云彩也没有。

124 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

125 infinity   

n.无限，无穷，大量

参考例句：

• It is impossible to count up to infinity.不可能数到无穷大。
• Theoretically,a line can extend into infinity.从理论上来说直线可以无限地延伸。

126 infinitely   

adv.无限地，无穷地

参考例句：

• There is an infinitely bright future ahead of us.我们有无限光明的前途。
• The universe is infinitely large.宇宙是无限大的。

127 turmoil   

n.骚乱，混乱，动乱

参考例句：

• His mind was in such a turmoil that he couldn't get to sleep.内心的纷扰使他无法入睡。
• The robbery put the village in a turmoil.抢劫使全村陷入混乱。

128 craving   

n.渴望,热望

参考例句：

• a craving for chocolate 非常想吃巧克力
• She skipped normal meals to satisfy her craving for chocolate and crisps. 她不吃正餐，以便满足自己吃巧克力和炸薯片的渴望。

129 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

130 flannel   

n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服

参考例句：

• She always wears a grey flannel trousers.她总是穿一条灰色法兰绒长裤。
• She was looking luscious in a flannel shirt.她穿着法兰绒裙子，看上去楚楚动人。

131 truce   

n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束

参考例句：

• The hot weather gave the old man a truce from rheumatism.热天使这位老人暂时免受风湿病之苦。
• She had thought of flying out to breathe the fresh air in an interval of truce.她想跑出去呼吸一下休战期间的新鲜空气。

132 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

• He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
• He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。

133 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

134 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

135 manliness   

刚毅

参考例句：

• She was really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his manliness. 她真喜欢他的坚强，他那健康的容貌，他的男子气概。
• His confidence, his manliness and bravery, turn his wit into wisdom. 他的自信、男子气概和勇敢将他的风趣变为智慧。

136 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

137 habitual   

adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的

参考例句：

• He is a habitual criminal.他是一个惯犯。
• They are habitual visitors to our house.他们是我家的常客。

138 inaccessible   

adj.达不到的，难接近的

参考例句：

• This novel seems to me among the most inaccessible.这本书对我来说是最难懂的小说之一。
• The top of Mount Everest is the most inaccessible place in the world.珠穆朗玛峰是世界上最难到达的地方。

139 subterranean   

adj.地下的，地表下的

参考例句：

• London has 9 miles of such subterranean passages.伦敦像这样的地下通道有9英里长。
• We wandered through subterranean passages.我们漫游地下通道。

140 rigid   

adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的

参考例句：

• She became as rigid as adamant.她变得如顽石般的固执。
• The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out.考试很严，几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。

141 rigidity   

adj.钢性，坚硬

参考例句：

• The rigidity of the metal caused it to crack.这金属因刚度强而产生裂纹。
• He deplored the rigidity of her views.他痛感她的观点僵化。

142 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

143 civilisation   

n.文明，文化，开化，教化

参考例句：

• Energy and ideas are the twin bases of our civilisation.能源和思想是我们文明的两大基石。
• This opera is one of the cultural totems of Western civilisation.这部歌剧是西方文明的文化标志物之一。

144 aristocrat   

n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物

参考例句：

• He was the quintessential english aristocrat.他是典型的英国贵族。
• He is an aristocrat to the very marrow of his bones.他是一个道道地地的贵族。

145 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

146 imprisoned   

下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was imprisoned for two concurrent terms of 30 months and 18 months. 他被判处30个月和18个月的监禁，合并执行。
• They were imprisoned for possession of drugs. 他们因拥有毒品而被监禁。

147 burnished   

adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光

参考例句：

• The floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright. 地板上没有污迹；炉栅和火炉用具擦得发亮。 来自辞典例句
• The woods today are burnished bronze. 今天的树林是一片发亮的青铜色。 来自辞典例句

148 erect   

n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的

参考例句：

• She held her head erect and her back straight.她昂着头，把背挺得笔直。
• Soldiers are trained to stand erect.士兵们训练站得笔直。

149 deference   

n.尊重，顺从；敬意

参考例句：

• Do you treat your parents and teachers with deference?你对父母师长尊敬吗？
• The major defect of their work was deference to authority.他们的主要缺陷是趋从权威。

150 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

151 descend   

vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降

参考例句：

• I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
• We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。

152 fumed   

愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟

参考例句：

• He fumed with rage because she did not appear. 因为她没出现，所以他大发雷霆。
• He fumed and fretted and did not know what was the matter. 他烦躁，气恼，不知是怎么回事。

153 unison   

n.步调一致，行动一致

参考例句：

• The governments acted in unison to combat terrorism.这些国家的政府一致行动对付恐怖主义。
• My feelings are in unison with yours.我的感情与你的感情是一致的。

154 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

155 fecund   

adj.多产的，丰饶的，肥沃的

参考例句：

• The pampas are still among the most fecund lands in the world.南美大草原仍然是世界上最肥沃的土地之一。
• They have a fecund soil.他们有肥沃的土地。

156 fecundity   

n.生产力；丰富

参考例句：

• The probability of survival is the reciprocal of fecundity.生存的概率是生殖力的倒数。
• The boy's fecundity of imagination amazed his teacher.男孩想像力的丰富使教师感到惊异。

157 molecule   

n.分子，克分子

参考例句：

• A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hygrogen and one atom of oxygen.一个水分子是由P妈̬f婘̬ 妈̬成的。
• This gives us the structural formula of the molecule.这种方式给出了分子的结构式。

158 taut   

adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的

参考例句：

• The bowstring is stretched taut.弓弦绷得很紧。
• Scarlett's taut nerves almost cracked as a sudden noise sounded in the underbrush near them. 思嘉紧张的神经几乎一下绷裂了，因为她听见附近灌木丛中突然冒出的一个声音。

159 vibration   

n.颤动，振动；摆动

参考例句：

• There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
• The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。

160 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

161 cleaving   

v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The freighter carrying pig iron is cleaving through the water. 装着生铁的货船正在破浪前进。 来自辞典例句
• IL-10-cDNA fragment was obtained through cleaving pUC-T-IL-10cDNA by reconstriction enzymes. 结果：pcDNA3.1-IL-10酶切鉴定的电泳结果显示，pcDNA3.1-IL-10质粒有一个560bp左右的插入片断，大小和IL-10cDNA大致符合。 来自互联网

162 enveloped   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She was enveloped in a huge white towel. 她裹在一条白色大毛巾里。
• Smoke from the burning house enveloped the whole street. 燃烧着的房子冒出的浓烟笼罩了整条街。 来自《简明英汉词典》

163 bliss   

n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福

参考例句：

• It's sheer bliss to be able to spend the day in bed.整天都可以躺在床上真是幸福。
• He's in bliss that he's won the Nobel Prize.他非常高兴，因为获得了诺贝尔奖金。

164 reigned   

vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式）

参考例句：

• Silence reigned in the hall. 全场肃静。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Night was deep and dead silence reigned everywhere. 夜深人静，一片死寂。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

165 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

166 gusts   

一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作

参考例句：

• Her profuse skirt bosomed out with the gusts. 她的宽大的裙子被风吹得鼓鼓的。
• Turbulence is defined as a series of irregular gusts. 紊流定义为一组无规则的突风。

167 flare   

v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发

参考例句：

• The match gave a flare.火柴发出闪光。
• You need not flare up merely because I mentioned your work.你大可不必因为我提到你的工作就动怒。

168 arrogant   

adj.傲慢的，自大的

参考例句：

• You've got to get rid of your arrogant ways.你这骄傲劲儿得好好改改。
• People are waking up that he is arrogant.人们开始认识到他很傲慢。

169 arrogance   

n.傲慢，自大

参考例句：

• His arrogance comes out in every speech he makes.他每次讲话都表现得骄傲自大。
• Arrogance arrested his progress.骄傲阻碍了他的进步。

170 fuming   

愤怒( fume的现在分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟

参考例句：

• She sat in the car, silently fuming at the traffic jam. 她坐在汽车里，心中对交通堵塞感到十分恼火。
• I was fuming at their inefficiency. 我正因为他们效率低而发火。

171 unlimited   

adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的

参考例句：

• They flew over the unlimited reaches of the Arctic.他们飞过了茫茫无边的北极上空。
• There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.在技术方面自以为是会很危险。

172 civic   

adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的

参考例句：

• I feel it is my civic duty to vote.我认为投票选举是我作为公民的义务。
• The civic leaders helped to forward the project.市政府领导者协助促进工程的进展。

173 dummies   

n.仿制品( dummy的名词复数 )；橡皮奶头；笨蛋；假传球

参考例句：

• If he dummies up, just try a little persuasion. 如果他不说话，稍微劝劝他就是了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• All the articles in the window are dummies. 橱窗里的全部物品都是仿制品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

174 pretence   

n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰

参考例句：

• The government abandoned any pretence of reform. 政府不再装模作样地进行改革。
• He made a pretence of being happy at the party.晚会上他假装很高兴。

175 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：

• Her eyes dilated with fear. 她吓得瞪大了眼睛。
• The cat dilated its eyes. 猫瞪大了双眼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

176 gibing   

adj.讥刺的，嘲弄的v.嘲笑，嘲弄( gibe的现在分词 )

参考例句：

177 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：

• He seemed a bit subdued to me. 我觉得他当时有点闷闷不乐。
• I felt strangely subdued when it was all over. 一切都结束的时候，我却有一种奇怪的压抑感。

178 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

179 stiffened   

加强的

参考例句：

• He leaned towards her and she stiffened at this invasion of her personal space. 他向她俯过身去，这种侵犯她个人空间的举动让她绷紧了身子。
• She stiffened with fear. 她吓呆了。

180 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

181 leopard   

n.豹

参考例句：

• I saw a man in a leopard skin yesterday.我昨天看见一个穿着豹皮的男人。
• The leopard's skin is marked with black spots.豹皮上有黑色斑点。

182 raucous   

adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的

参考例句：

• I heard sounds of raucous laughter upstairs.我听见楼上传来沙哑的笑声。
• They heard a bottle being smashed,then more raucous laughter.他们听见酒瓶摔碎的声音，然后是一阵更喧闹的笑声。

183 glimmering   

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 )

参考例句：

• I got some glimmering of what he was driving at. 他这么说是什么意思，我有点明白了。 来自辞典例句
• Now that darkness was falling, only their silhouettes were outlined against the faintly glimmering sky. 这时节两山只剩余一抹深黑，赖天空微明为画出一个轮廓。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

184 complement   

n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足

参考例句：

• The two suggestions complement each other.这两条建议相互补充。
• They oppose each other also complement each other.它们相辅相成。

185 kaleidoscopic   

adj.千变万化的

参考例句：

• London is a kaleidoscopic world.伦敦是个天花筒般的世界。
• The transfer of administrative personnel in that colony was so frequent as to create kaleidoscopic effect.在那个殖民地，官员调动频繁，就象走马灯似的。

186 feats   

功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He used to astound his friends with feats of physical endurance. 过去，他表现出来的惊人耐力常让朋友们大吃一惊。
• His heroic feats made him a legend in his own time. 他的英雄业绩使他成了他那个时代的传奇人物。

187 deformed   

adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的

参考例句：

• He was born with a deformed right leg.他出生时右腿畸形。
• His body was deformed by leprosy.他的身体因为麻风病变形了。

188 curiously   

adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地

参考例句：

• He looked curiously at the people.他好奇地看着那些人。
• He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.他迈着悄没声息的大步。他的双手出奇地冷。

189 voluptuous   

adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的

参考例句：

• The nobility led voluptuous lives.贵族阶层过着骄奢淫逸的生活。
• The dancer's movements were slow and voluptuous.舞女的动作缓慢而富挑逗性。

190 instinctive   

adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的

参考例句：

• He tried to conceal his instinctive revulsion at the idea.他试图饰盖自己对这一想法本能的厌恶。
• Animals have an instinctive fear of fire.动物本能地怕火。

191 subconsciously   

ad.下意识地，潜意识地

参考例句：

• In choosing a partner we are subconsciously assessing their evolutionary fitness to be a mother of children or father provider and protector. 在选择伴侣的时候，我们会在潜意识里衡量对方将来是否会是称职的母亲或者父亲，是否会是合格的一家之主。
• Lao Yang thought as he subconsciously tightened his grasp on the rifle. 他下意识地攥紧枪把想。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

192 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：

• That insidious man bad-mouthed me to almost everyone else.那个阴险的家伙几乎见人便说我的坏话。
• Organized crime has an insidious influence on all who come into contact with it.所有和集团犯罪有关的人都会不知不觉地受坏影响。

193 antagonism   

n.对抗，敌对，对立

参考例句：

• People did not feel a strong antagonism for established policy.人们没有对既定方针产生强烈反应。
• There is still much antagonism between trades unions and the oil companies.工会和石油公司之间仍然存在着相当大的敌意。

194 corpse   

n.尸体，死尸

参考例句：

• What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
• The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。

195 wagons   

n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车

参考例句：

• The wagons were hauled by horses. 那些货车是马拉的。
• They drew their wagons into a laager and set up camp. 他们把马车围成一圈扎起营地。

196 falter   

vi.(嗓音)颤抖，结巴地说；犹豫；蹒跚

参考例句：

• His voice began to falter.他的声音开始发颤。
• As he neared the house his steps faltered.当他走近房子时，脚步迟疑了起来。

197 unwilling   

adj.不情愿的

参考例句：

• The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
• His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。

198 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

199 entangled   

adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The bird had become entangled in the wire netting. 那只小鸟被铁丝网缠住了。
• Some military observers fear the US could get entangled in another war. 一些军事观察家担心美国会卷入另一场战争。 来自《简明英汉词典》

200 encompassed   

v.围绕( encompass的过去式和过去分词 )；包围；包含；包括

参考例句：

• The enemy encompassed the city. 敌人包围了城市。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I have encompassed him with every protection. 我已经把他保护得严严实实。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

201 pristine   

adj.原来的，古时的，原始的，纯净的，无垢的

参考例句：

• He wiped his fingers on his pristine handkerchief.他用他那块洁净的手帕擦手指。
• He wasn't about to blemish that pristine record.他本不想去玷污那清白的过去。

202 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

203 impervious   

adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的

参考例句：

• He was completely impervious to criticism.他对批评毫不在乎。
• This material is impervious to gases and liquids.气体和液体都透不过这种物质。

204 forsook   

forsake的过去式

参考例句：

• He faithlessly forsook his friends in their hour of need. 在最需要的时刻他背信弃义地抛弃朋友。
• She forsook her worldly possessions to devote herself to the church. 她抛弃世上的财物而献身教会。

205 implicated   

adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的

参考例句：

• These groups are very strongly implicated in the violence. 这些组织与这起暴力事件有着极大的关联。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Having the stolen goods in his possession implicated him in the robbery. 因藏有赃物使他涉有偷盗的嫌疑。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

206 supremely   

adv.无上地，崇高地

参考例句：

• They managed it all supremely well. 这件事他们干得极其出色。
• I consider a supremely beautiful gesture. 我觉得这是非常优雅的姿态。

207 consummate   

adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle

参考例句：

• The restored jade burial suit fully reveals the consummate skill of the labouring people of ancient China.复原后的金缕玉衣充分显示出中国古代劳动人民的精湛工艺。
• The actor's acting is consummate and he is loved by the audience.这位演员技艺精湛，深受观众喜爱。

208 pensive   

a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的

参考例句：

• He looked suddenly sombre,pensive.他突然看起来很阴郁，一副忧虑的样子。
• He became so pensive that she didn't like to break into his thought.他陷入沉思之中,她不想打断他的思路。

209 piqued   

v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的过去式和过去分词 )；激起（好奇心）

参考例句：

• Their curiosity piqued, they stopped writing. 他们的好奇心被挑起，停下了手中的笔。 来自辞典例句
• This phenomenon piqued Dr Morris' interest. 这一现象激起了莫里斯医生的兴趣。 来自辞典例句

210 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。

211 enjoyment   

n.乐趣；享有；享用

参考例句：

• Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同，我们这次访问更加愉快了。
• After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话，这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。

212 revoked   

adj.[法]取消的v.撤销，取消，废除( revoke的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It may be revoked if the check is later dishonoured. 以后如支票被拒绝支付，结算可以撤销。 来自辞典例句
• A will is revoked expressly. 遗嘱可以通过明示推翻。 来自辞典例句

213 sensuous   

adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的

参考例句：

• Don't get the idea that value of music is commensurate with its sensuous appeal.不要以为音乐的价值与其美的感染力相等。
• The flowers that wreathed his parlor stifled him with their sensuous perfume.包围著客厅的花以其刺激人的香味使他窒息。

214 aristocrats   

n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many aristocrats were killed in the French Revolution. 许多贵族在法国大革命中被处死。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• To the Guillotine all aristocrats! 把全部贵族都送上断头台！ 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

215 baron   

n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王

参考例句：

• Henry Ford was an automobile baron.亨利·福特是一位汽车业巨头。
• The baron lived in a strong castle.男爵住在一座坚固的城堡中。

216 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

217 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• He is extravagant in behaviour.他行为放肆。

218 irritation   

n.激怒，恼怒，生气

参考例句：

• He could not hide his irritation that he had not been invited.他无法掩饰因未被邀请而生的气恼。
• Barbicane said nothing,but his silence covered serious irritation.巴比康什么也不说，但是他的沉默里潜伏着阴郁的怒火。

219 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

220 dressing   

n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料

参考例句：

• Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
• The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。

221 sitting-room   

n.（BrE）客厅，起居室

参考例句：

• The sitting-room is clean.起居室很清洁。
• Each villa has a separate sitting-room.每栋别墅都有一间独立的起居室。

222 cosy   

adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的

参考例句：

• We spent a cosy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。
• It was so warm and cosy in bed that Simon didn't want to get out.床上温暖而又舒适，西蒙简直不想下床了。

223 triumphant   

adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的

参考例句：

• The army made a triumphant entry into the enemy's capital.部队胜利地进入了敌方首都。
• There was a positively triumphant note in her voice.她的声音里带有一种极为得意的语气。

224 rumbling   

n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词

参考例句：

• The earthquake began with a deep [low] rumbling sound. 地震开始时发出低沉的隆隆声。
• The crane made rumbling sound. 吊车发出隆隆的响声。

225 sluggish   

adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的

参考例句：

• This humid heat makes you feel rather sluggish.这种湿热的天气使人感到懒洋洋的。
• Circulation is much more sluggish in the feet than in the hands.脚部的循环比手部的循环缓慢得多。

226 superfluous   

adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的

参考例句：

• She fined away superfluous matter in the design. 她删去了这图案中多余的东西。
• That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it.我这样写的时候觉得这个请求似乎是多此一举。

227 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：

• His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
• The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。

228 scent   

n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉

参考例句：

• The air was filled with the scent of lilac.空气中弥漫着丁香花的芬芳。
• The flowers give off a heady scent at night.这些花晚上散发出醉人的芳香。

229 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

230 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

231 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：

• We married in the chapel of Charing Cross Hospital in London. 我们是在伦敦查令十字医院的小教堂里结的婚。 来自辞典例句
• No additional charge for children under12 charing room with parents. ☆十二岁以下小童与父母同房不另收费。 来自互联网

232 perversely   

adv. 倔强地

参考例句：

• Intelligence in the mode of passion is always perversely. 受激情属性控制的智力，总是逆着活动的正确方向行事。
• She continue, perversely, to wear shoes that damaged her feet. 她偏偏穿那双挤脚的鞋。

233 slumbering   

微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• It was quiet. All the other inhabitants of the slums were slumbering. 贫民窟里的人已经睡眠静了。
• Then soft music filled the air and soothed the slumbering heroes. 接着，空中响起了柔和的乐声，抚慰着安睡的英雄。

234 majestic   

adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的

参考例句：

• In the distance rose the majestic Alps.远处耸立着雄伟的阿尔卑斯山。
• He looks majestic in uniform.他穿上军装显得很威风。

235 apathy   

n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡

参考例句：

• He was sunk in apathy after his failure.他失败后心恢意冷。
• She heard the story with apathy.她听了这个故事无动于衷。

236 sordidness   

n.肮脏；污秽；卑鄙；可耻

参考例句：

237 stark   

adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地

参考例句：

• The young man is faced with a stark choice.这位年轻人面临严峻的抉择。
• He gave a stark denial to the rumor.他对谣言加以完全的否认。

238 ashen   

adj.灰的

参考例句：

• His face was ashen and wet with sweat.他面如土色，汗如雨下。
• Her ashen face showed how much the news had shocked her.她灰白的脸显示出那消息使她多么震惊。

239 sterility   

n.不生育，不结果，贫瘠，消毒，无菌

参考例句：

• A major barrier to interspecific hybridization is sterility in the F1 progeny.种间杂交的主要障碍是F1代的不育性。
• Sterility is some permanent factor preventing procreation.不育是阻碍生殖的一种永久性因素。

240 clattering   

发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Typewriters keep clattering away. 打字机在不停地嗒嗒作响。
• The typewriter was clattering away. 打字机啪嗒啪嗒地响着。

241 rattle   

v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓

参考例句：

• The baby only shook the rattle and laughed and crowed.孩子只是摇着拨浪鼓，笑着叫着。
• She could hear the rattle of the teacups.她听见茶具叮当响。

242 slag   

n.熔渣，铁屑，矿渣；v.使变成熔渣，变熔渣

参考例句：

• Millions of tons of slag now go into building roads each year.每年有数百万吨炉渣用于铺路。
• The slag powder had been widely used as the additive in the cement and concrete.矿渣微粉作为水泥混凝土的掺和料已得到广泛应用。

243 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

244 sinister   

adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的

参考例句：

• There is something sinister at the back of that series of crimes.在这一系列罪行背后有险恶的阴谋。
• Their proposals are all worthless and designed out of sinister motives.他们的建议不仅一钱不值，而且包藏祸心。

245 decomposition   

n. 分解, 腐烂, 崩溃

参考例句：

• It is said that the magnetite was formed by a chemical process called thermal decomposition. 据说这枚陨星是在热分解的化学过程中形成的。
• The dehydration process leads to fairly extensive decomposition of the product. 脱水过程会导致产物相当程度的分解。

246 spectral   

adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的

参考例句：

• At times he seems rather ordinary.At other times ethereal,perhaps even spectral.有时他好像很正常，有时又难以捉摸，甚至像个幽灵。
• She is compelling,spectral fascinating,an unforgettably unique performer.她极具吸引力，清幽如鬼魅，令人着迷，令人难忘，是个独具特色的演员。

247 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

248 cipher   

n.零；无影响力的人；密码

参考例句：

• All important plans were sent to the police in cipher.所有重要计划均以密码送往警方。
• He's a mere cipher in the company.他在公司里是个无足轻重的小人物。

249 negation   

n.否定；否认

参考例句：

• No reasonable negation can be offered.没有合理的反对意见可以提出。
• The author boxed the compass of negation in his article.该作者在文章中依次探讨了各种反面的意见。

250 diffuse   

v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的

参考例句：

• Direct light is better for reading than diffuse light.直射光比漫射光更有利于阅读。
• His talk was so diffuse that I missed his point.他的谈话漫无边际，我抓不住他的要点。

251 rosy   

adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的

参考例句：

• She got a new job and her life looks rosy.她找到一份新工作，生活看上去很美好。
• She always takes a rosy view of life.她总是对生活持乐观态度。

252 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

253 obsequious   

adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的

参考例句：

• He looked at the two ladies with an obsequious air.他看着两位太太,满脸谄媚的神情。
• He was obsequious to his superiors,but he didn't get any favor.他巴结上司，但没得到任何好处。

254 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

255 glistened   

v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Pearls of dew glistened on the grass. 草地上珠露晶莹。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Her eyes glistened with tears. 她的眼里闪着泪花。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

256 constraint   

n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物

参考例句：

• The boy felt constraint in her presence.那男孩在她面前感到局促不安。
• The lack of capital is major constraint on activities in the informal sector.资本短缺也是影响非正规部门生产经营的一个重要制约因素。

257 paltry   

adj.无价值的，微不足道的

参考例句：

• The parents had little interest in paltry domestic concerns.那些家长对家里鸡毛蒜皮的小事没什么兴趣。
• I'm getting angry;and if you don't command that paltry spirit of yours.我要生气了，如果你不能振作你那点元气。

258 degenerate   

v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者

参考例句：

• He didn't let riches and luxury make him degenerate.他不因财富和奢华而自甘堕落。
• Will too much freedom make them degenerate?太多的自由会令他们堕落吗？

259 acquiescing   

v.默认，默许( acquiesce的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Japan were acquiescing in being strangled. 日本默然同意别人把它捏死。 来自辞典例句
• Smith urged Ariza to retract his trade request and be patient several times before finally acquiescing. 在阿里扎提出要被交易时，在答应之前，他曾经数次要求对方多加考虑。 来自互联网

260 reprehensible   

adj.该受责备的

参考例句：

• Lying is not seen as being morally reprehensible in any strong way.人们并不把撒谎当作一件应该大加谴责的事儿。
• It was reprehensible of him to be so disloyal.他如此不忠，应受谴责。

261 dodge   

v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计

参考例句：

• A dodge behind a tree kept her from being run over.她向树后一闪，才没被车从身上辗过。
• The dodge was coopered by the police.诡计被警察粉碎了。

262 stinks   

v.散发出恶臭( stink的第三人称单数 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• The whole scheme stinks to high heaven—don't get involved in it. 整件事十分卑鄙龌龊——可别陷了进去。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The soup stinks of garlic. 这汤有大蒜气味。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

263 esteem   

n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• The veteran worker ranks high in public love and esteem.那位老工人深受大伙的爱戴。

264 flirted   

v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She flirted her fan. 她急速挥动着扇子。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• During his four months in Egypt he flirted with religious emotions. 在埃及逗留的这四个月期间，他又玩弄起宗教情绪来了。 来自辞典例句

265 upbraided   

v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The captain upbraided his men for falling asleep. 上尉因他的部下睡着了而斥责他们。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• My wife upbraided me for not earning more money. 我的太太为了我没有赚更多的钱而责备我。 来自辞典例句

266 primal   

adj.原始的；最重要的

参考例句：

• Jealousy is a primal emotion.嫉妒是最原始的情感。
• Money was a primal necessity to them.对于他们，钱是主要的需要。

267 anguished   

adj.极其痛苦的v.使极度痛苦(anguish的过去式)

参考例句：

• Desmond eyed her anguished face with sympathy. 看着她痛苦的脸，德斯蒙德觉得理解。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The loss of her husband anguished her deeply. 她丈夫的死亡使她悲痛万分。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

268 dependence   

n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属

参考例句：

• Doctors keep trying to break her dependence of the drug.医生们尽力使她戒除毒瘾。
• He was freed from financial dependence on his parents.他在经济上摆脱了对父母的依赖。

269 patrimony   

n.世袭财产，继承物

参考例句：

• I left my parents' house,relinquished my estate and my patrimony.我离开了父母的家，放弃了我的房产和祖传财产。
• His grandfather left the patrimony to him.他的祖父把祖传的财物留给了他。

270 isle   

n.小岛，岛

参考例句：

• He is from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.他来自爱尔兰海的马恩岛。
• The boat left for the paradise isle of Bali.小船驶向天堂一般的巴厘岛。

271 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

272 trespass   

n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地

参考例句：

• The fishing boat was seized for its trespass into restricted waters.渔船因非法侵入受限制水域而被扣押。
• The court sentenced him to a fine for trespass.法庭以侵害罪对他判以罚款。

273 intercourse   

n.性交；交流，交往，交际

参考例句：

• The magazine becomes a cultural medium of intercourse between the two peoples.该杂志成为两民族间文化交流的媒介。
• There was close intercourse between them.他们过往很密。

274 gallant   

adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的

参考例句：

• Huang Jiguang's gallant deed is known by all men. 黄继光的英勇事迹尽人皆知。
• These gallant soldiers will protect our country.这些勇敢的士兵会保卫我们的国家的。

275 indifference   

n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎

参考例句：

• I was disappointed by his indifference more than somewhat.他的漠不关心使我很失望。
• He feigned indifference to criticism of his work.他假装毫不在意别人批评他的作品。

276 prehistoric   

adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的

参考例句：

• They have found prehistoric remains.他们发现了史前遗迹。
• It was rather like an exhibition of prehistoric electronic equipment.这儿倒像是在展览古老的电子设备。

277 downwards   

adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地）

参考例句：

• He lay face downwards on his bed.他脸向下伏在床上。
• As the river flows downwards,it widens.这条河愈到下游愈宽。

278 everlasting   

adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的

参考例句：

• These tyres are advertised as being everlasting.广告上说轮胎持久耐用。
• He believes in everlasting life after death.他相信死后有不朽的生命。

279 mound   

n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫

参考例句：

• The explorers climbed a mound to survey the land around them.勘探者爬上土丘去勘测周围的土地。
• The mound can be used as our screen.这个土丘可做我们的掩蔽物。

280 bosom   

n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的

参考例句：

• She drew a little book from her bosom.她从怀里取出一本小册子。
• A dark jealousy stirred in his bosom.他内心生出一阵恶毒的嫉妒。

281 glamorously   

富有魅力的； 迷人的； 富于刺激的； 独特的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels. 南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It was an opera, very glamorous and very sensual. 这场歌剧美轮美奂，声色俱佳，给感官以极大享受。

282 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

283 clenched   

v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He clenched his fists in anger. 他愤怒地攥紧了拳头。
• She clenched her hands in her lap to hide their trembling. 她攥紧双手放在腿上，以掩饰其颤抖。 来自《简明英汉词典》

284 fathoming   

测量

参考例句：

• Incapable of fathoming such depravity, the great Titan began to slip into a brooding depression. 强大的泰坦无法感知这种恶毒和腐化到底有多么深重，他自己也陷入了不断膨胀的消极情绪之中。
• Both the driving circuit and the fathoming circuit are also essential to the UATS. 驱动电路和测深电路对于水声靶标系统而言同样是不可或缺的。

285 gushing   

adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话

参考例句：

• blood gushing from a wound 从伤口冒出的血
• The young mother was gushing over a baby. 那位年轻的母亲正喋喋不休地和婴儿说话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

286 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

287 hovered   

鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• A hawk hovered over the hill. 一只鹰在小山的上空翱翔。
• A hawk hovered in the blue sky. 一只老鹰在蓝色的天空中翱翔。

288 poising   

使平衡( poise的现在分词 )； 保持（某种姿势）； 抓紧； 使稳定

参考例句：

• The dynamic poising of the watch-balance enhances the performance of each movement. 腕表平衡摆轮的动态性能决定了机芯的性能。
• Also has the poising action to the blood sugar. 对血糖还具有双向平衡作用。

289 scattering   

n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散

参考例句：

• The child felle into a rage and began scattering its toys about. 这孩子突发狂怒，把玩具扔得满地都是。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The farmers are scattering seed. 农夫们在播种。 来自《简明英汉词典》

290 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

291 refulgent   

adj.辉煌的，灿烂的

参考例句：

• Middle East has declined since modern era,however it had possessed of refulgent history.中东地区曾有过辉煌的历史，只是在近代以来衰落了。
• Our target is only one:Autosecu compose refulgent tomorrow! 我们的目标就一个：为安特佳谱写辉煌的明天。

292 unaware   

a.不知道的，未意识到的

参考例句：

• They were unaware that war was near. 他们不知道战争即将爆发。
• I was unaware of the man's presence. 我没有察觉到那人在场。

293 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

294 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

295 liberate   

v.解放，使获得自由，释出，放出；vt.解放，使获自由

参考例句：

• They did their best to liberate slaves.他们尽最大能力去解放奴隶。
• This will liberate him from economic worry.这将消除他经济上的忧虑。

296 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

297 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

298 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

299 insanity   

n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐

参考例句：

• In his defense he alleged temporary insanity.他伪称一时精神错乱，为自己辩解。
• He remained in his cell,and this visit only increased the belief in his insanity.他依旧还是住在他的地牢里，这次视察只是更加使人相信他是个疯子了。

300 grooves   

n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏

参考例句：

• Wheels leave grooves in a dirt road. 车轮在泥路上留下了凹痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sliding doors move in grooves. 滑动门在槽沟中移动。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

301 agitation   

n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动

参考例句：

• Small shopkeepers carried on a long agitation against the big department stores.小店主们长期以来一直在煽动人们反对大型百货商店。
• These materials require constant agitation to keep them in suspension.这些药剂要经常搅动以保持悬浮状态。

302 exasperation   

n.愤慨

参考例句：

• He snorted with exasperation.他愤怒地哼了一声。
• She rolled her eyes in sheer exasperation.她气急败坏地转动着眼珠。

303 brittle   

adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的

参考例句：

• The pond was covered in a brittle layer of ice.池塘覆盖了一层易碎的冰。
• She gave a brittle laugh.她冷淡地笑了笑。

304 brittleness   

n.脆性，脆度，脆弱性

参考例句：

• Brittleness is often a result of alloying. 脆性往往是合金化的一种结果。 来自辞典例句
• The mechanism of brittleness of the alloy has been discussed. 对硬质含金脆性机理进行了探讨。 来自互联网

305 flustered   

adj.慌张的；激动不安的v.使慌乱，使不安( fluster的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The honking of horns flustered the boy. 汽车喇叭的叫声使男孩感到慌乱。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She was so flustered that she forgot her reply. 她太紧张了，都忘记了该如何作答。 来自辞典例句

306 agitated   

adj.被鼓动的，不安的

参考例句：

• His answers were all mixed up,so agitated was he.他是那样心神不定，回答全乱了。
• She was agitated because her train was an hour late.她乘坐的火车晚点一个小时，她十分焦虑。

307 saluted   

v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂

参考例句：

• The sergeant stood to attention and saluted. 中士立正敬礼。
• He saluted his friends with a wave of the hand. 他挥手向他的朋友致意。 来自《简明英汉词典》

308 salute   

vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮

参考例句：

• Merchant ships salute each other by dipping the flag.商船互相点旗致敬。
• The Japanese women salute the people with formal bows in welcome.这些日本妇女以正式的鞠躬向人们施礼以示欢迎。

309 winced   

赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He winced as the dog nipped his ankle. 狗咬了他的脚腕子，疼得他龇牙咧嘴。
• He winced as a sharp pain shot through his left leg. 他左腿一阵剧痛疼得他直龇牙咧嘴。

310 eyebrows   

眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Eyebrows stop sweat from coming down into the eyes. 眉毛挡住汗水使其不能流进眼睛。
• His eyebrows project noticeably. 他的眉毛特别突出。

311 stolidly   

adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地

参考例句：

• Too often people sat stolidly watching the noisy little fiddler. 人们往往不动声色地坐在那里，瞧着这位瘦小的提琴手闹腾一番。 来自辞典例句
• He dropped into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor. 他坐在椅子上，两眼呆呆地望着地板。 来自辞典例句

312 stolid   

adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的

参考例句：

• Her face showed nothing but stolid indifference.她的脸上毫无表情，只有麻木的无动于衷。
• He conceals his feelings behind a rather stolid manner.他装作无动于衷的样子以掩盖自己的感情。

313 averted   

防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移

参考例句：

• A disaster was narrowly averted. 及时防止了一场灾难。
• Thanks to her skilful handling of the affair, the problem was averted. 多亏她对事情处理得巧妙，才避免了麻烦。

314 regained   

复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地

参考例句：

• The majority of the people in the world have regained their liberty. 世界上大多数人已重获自由。
• She hesitated briefly but quickly regained her poise. 她犹豫片刻，但很快恢复了镇静。

315 twitched   

vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Her lips twitched with amusement. 她忍俊不禁地颤动着嘴唇。
• The child's mouth twitched as if she were about to cry. 这小孩的嘴抽动着，像是要哭。 来自《简明英汉词典》

316 soddened   

v.（液体）沸腾( seethe的过去分词 )( sodden的过去分词 )；激动，大怒；强压怒火；生闷气(~with sth|~ at sth)

参考例句：

• His shirt soddened with sweat. 他的衬衫被汗水湿透了。 来自互联网

317 shuddered   

v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动

参考例句：

• He slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. 他猛踩刹车，车颤抖着停住了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I shuddered at the sight of the dead body. 我一看见那尸体就战栗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

318 shudder   

v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动

参考例句：

• The sight of the coffin sent a shudder through him.看到那副棺材，他浑身一阵战栗。
• We all shudder at the thought of the dreadful dirty place.我们一想到那可怕的肮脏地方就浑身战惊。

319 wary   

adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的

参考例句：

• He is wary of telling secrets to others.他谨防向他人泄露秘密。
• Paula frowned,suddenly wary.宝拉皱了皱眉头，突然警惕起来。

320 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

321 peg   

n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定

参考例句：

• Hang your overcoat on the peg in the hall.把你的大衣挂在门厅的挂衣钩上。
• He hit the peg mightily on the top with a mallet.他用木槌猛敲木栓顶。

323 thronged   

v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Mourners thronged to the funeral. 吊唁者蜂拥着前来参加葬礼。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The department store was thronged with people. 百货商店挤满了人。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

324 ebbing   

（指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落

参考例句：

• The pain was ebbing. 疼痛逐渐减轻了。
• There are indications that his esoteric popularity may be ebbing. 有迹象表明，他神秘的声望可能正在下降。

325 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。

326 myriads   

n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Each galaxy contains myriads of stars. 每一星系都有无数的恒星。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The sky was set with myriads of stars. 无数星星点缀着夜空。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

327 murmur   

n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言

参考例句：

• They paid the extra taxes without a murmur.他们毫无怨言地交了附加税。
• There was a low murmur of conversation in the hall.大厅里有窃窃私语声。

328 cowered   

v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 )

参考例句：

• A gun went off and people cowered behind walls and under tables. 一声枪响，人们缩到墙后或桌子底下躲起来。
• He cowered in the corner, gibbering with terror. 他蜷缩在角落里，吓得语无伦次。

329 acquiesce   

vi.默许，顺从，同意

参考例句：

• Her parents will never acquiesce in such an unsuitable marriage.她的父母决不会答应这门不相宜的婚事。
• He is so independent that he will never acquiesce.他很有主见，所以绝不会顺从。

330 cleaved   

v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• His spade cleaved the firm sand with a satisfying crunch. 他的锹凿开了坚实的砂土，发出令人舒心的嘎扎声。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Eagles cleaved the sky. 鹰击长空。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

331 clinching   

v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的现在分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议）

参考例句：

• Joe gets clinching evidence of the brains role when he dreams. 乔做梦时得到了大脑发生作用的决定性依据。 来自辞典例句
• Clinching, wrestling, pushing, or seizing, without attempting a throw or other technique. 抱，扭摔，推或抓而没有摔或其它的技术。 来自互联网

332 incubus   

n.负担；恶梦

参考例句：

• Joyce regarded his US citizenship as a moral and political incubus.乔伊斯把他的美国公民身份当做是一个道德和政治上的负担。Like the sumerian wind demon and its later babylonian counterpart,Lilith was regarded as a succubus,or female version of the incubus.像风妖苏美尔和后来的巴比伦妖怪，莉莉丝被视为一个女妖，或女版梦魇。

333 defensive   

adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的

参考例句：

• Their questions about the money put her on the defensive.他们问到钱的问题，使她警觉起来。
• The Government hastily organized defensive measures against the raids.政府急忙布置了防卫措施抵御空袭。

334 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：

• The rope holding the boat suddenly tightened and broke. 系船的绳子突然绷断了。
• His index finger tightened on the trigger but then relaxed again. 他的食指扣住扳机，然后又松开了。

335 harried   

v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰

参考例句：

• She has been harried by the press all week. 整个星期她都受到新闻界的不断烦扰。
• The soldiers harried the enemy out of the country. 士兵们不断作骚扰性的攻击直至把敌人赶出国境为止。 来自《简明英汉词典》

336 breach   

n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破

参考例句：

• We won't have any breach of discipline.我们不允许任何破坏纪律的现象。
• He was sued for breach of contract.他因不履行合同而被起诉。

337 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

338 tunic   

n.束腰外衣

参考例句：

• The light loose mantle was thrown over his tunic.一件轻质宽大的斗蓬披在上衣外面。
• Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel,young man.你的外套和裤子跟你那首饰可不相称呢，年轻人。

339 imperturbability   

n.冷静；沉着

参考例句：

• The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armor. 高山的宁静象一套盔甲似的罩在他的身上。
• You must want imperturbability more than you want approval, control and security. 你必须想要不受侵扰的安宁大于想要赞同、控制和安全。

340 genially   

adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地

参考例句：

• The white church peeps out genially from behind the huts scattered on the river bank. 一座白色教堂从散布在岸上的那些小木房后面殷勤地探出头来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "Well, It'seems strange to see you way up here,'said Mr. Kenny genially. “咳，真没想到会在这么远的地方见到你，"肯尼先生亲切地说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

341 domesticated   

adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He is thoroughly domesticated and cooks a delicious chicken casserole. 他精于家务，烹制的砂锅炖小鸡非常可口。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The donkey is a domesticated form of the African wild ass. 驴是非洲野驴的一种已驯化的品种。 来自《简明英汉词典》

342 transfused   

v.输（血或别的液体）( transfuse的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；使…被灌输或传达

参考例句：

• He transfused his own courage into his men. 他用自己的勇气鼓舞了士兵。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The professor transfused his enthusiasm for research into his students. 教授把自己的研究热忱移注给学生。 来自辞典例句

343 poignant   

adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的

参考例句：

• His lyrics are as acerbic and poignant as they ever have been.他的歌词一如既往的犀利辛辣。
• It is especially poignant that he died on the day before his wedding.他在婚礼前一天去世了，这尤其令人悲恸。

344 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

345 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

346 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

347 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

348 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

349 baroness   

n.男爵夫人，女男爵

参考例句：

• I'm sure the Baroness will be able to make things fine for you.我相信男爵夫人能够把家里的事替你安排妥当的。
• The baroness,who had signed,returned the pen to the notary.男爵夫人这时已签过字，把笔交回给律师。

350 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

351 bondage   

n.奴役，束缚

参考例句：

• Masters sometimes allowed their slaves to buy their way out of bondage.奴隶主们有时允许奴隶为自己赎身。
• They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。

352 heartily   

adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很

参考例句：

• He ate heartily and went out to look for his horse.他痛快地吃了一顿，就出去找他的马。
• The host seized my hand and shook it heartily.主人抓住我的手，热情地和我握手。

353 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

354 budge   

v.移动一点儿；改变立场

参考例句：

• We tried to lift the rock but it wouldn't budge.我们试图把大石头抬起来，但它连动都没动一下。
• She wouldn't budge on the issue.她在这个问题上不肯让步。

355 deadlock   

n.僵局，僵持

参考例句：

• The negotiations reached a deadlock after two hours.两小时后，谈判陷入了僵局。
• The employers and strikers are at a deadlock over the wage.雇主和罢工者在工资问题上相持不下。

356 insidiously   

潜在地，隐伏地，阴险地

参考例句：

• This disease may develop insidiously, with fever as the only clinical manifestation. 这种病可能隐袭发生，仅有发热为其唯一的临床表现。
• Actinobacillosis develops insidiously in soft tissues. 放线杆菌病是在软组织中呈隐袭性发生的。

357 promptly   

adv.及时地，敏捷地

参考例句：

• He paid the money back promptly.他立即还了钱。
• She promptly seized the opportunity his absence gave her.她立即抓住了因他不在场给她创造的机会。

358 adherence   

n.信奉，依附，坚持，固着

参考例句：

• He was well known for his adherence to the rules.他因遵循这些规定而出名。
• The teacher demanded adherence to the rules.老师要求学生们遵守纪律。

359 shrugged   

vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Sam shrugged and said nothing. 萨姆耸耸肩膀，什么也没说。
• She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 她耸耸肩，装出一副无所谓的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

360 exasperated   

adj.恼怒的

参考例句：

• We were exasperated at his ill behaviour. 我们对他的恶劣行为感到非常恼怒。
• Constant interruption of his work exasperated him. 对他工作不断的干扰使他恼怒。

361 passionateness   

参考例句：

362 propounded   

v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• the theory of natural selection, first propounded by Charles Darwin 查尔斯∙达尔文首先提出的物竞天择理论
• Indeed it was first propounded by the ubiquitous Thomas Young. 实际上，它是由尽人皆知的杨氏首先提出来的。 来自辞典例句

363 promiscuous   

adj.杂乱的，随便的

参考例句：

• They were taking a promiscuous stroll when it began to rain.他们正在那漫无目的地散步，突然下起雨来。
• Alec know that she was promiscuous and superficial.亚历克知道她是乱七八糟和浅薄的。

364 bungalow   

n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房

参考例句：

• A bungalow does not have an upstairs.平房没有上层。
• The old couple sold that large house and moved into a small bungalow.老两口卖掉了那幢大房子，搬进了小平房。

365 pretensions   

自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力

参考例句：

• The play mocks the pretensions of the new middle class. 这出戏讽刺了新中产阶级的装模作样。
• The city has unrealistic pretensions to world-class status. 这个城市不切实际地标榜自己为国际都市。

366 subconsciousness   

潜意识；下意识

参考例句：

• Tucked away in our subconsciousness is an idyllic vision. 我们的潜意识里藏着一派田园诗般的风光！ 来自互联网
• If common subconsciousness is satisfied, aesthetic perception is of general charactor. 共性潜意识得到满足与否，产生的审美接受体验就有共性。 来自互联网

367 intimacy   

n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行

参考例句：

• His claims to an intimacy with the President are somewhat exaggerated.他声称自己与总统关系密切，这有点言过其实。
• I wish there were a rule book for intimacy.我希望能有个关于亲密的规则。

368 diffused   

散布的，普及的，扩散的

参考例句：

• A drop of milk diffused in the water. 一滴牛奶在水中扩散开来。
• Gases and liquids diffused. 气体和液体慢慢混合了。

369 fierily   

如火地，炽热地，猛烈地

参考例句：

370 blotted   

涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干

参考例句：

• She blotted water off the table with a towel. 她用毛巾擦干桌上的水。
• The blizzard blotted out the sky and the land. 暴风雪铺天盖地而来。

371 savagely   

adv. 野蛮地，残酷地

参考例句：

• The roses had been pruned back savagely. 玫瑰被狠狠地修剪了一番。
• He snarled savagely at her. 他向她狂吼起来。

372 wafted   

v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The sound of their voices wafted across the lake. 他们的声音飘过湖面传到了另一边。
• A delicious smell of freshly baked bread wafted across the garden. 花园中飘过一股刚出炉面包的香味。 来自《简明英汉词典》

373 bungalows   

n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 )；单层小屋，多于一层的小屋

参考例句：

• It was a town filled with white bungalows. 这个小镇里都是白色平房。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We also seduced by the reasonable price of the bungalows. 我们也确实被这里单层间的合理价格所吸引。 来自互联网

374 consolation   

n.安慰，慰问

参考例句：

• The children were a great consolation to me at that time.那时孩子们成了我的莫大安慰。
• This news was of little consolation to us.这个消息对我们来说没有什么安慰。

375 exorbitantly   

参考例句：

• Prices are exorbitantly high in the capital. 首都的物价高得不可思议。 来自互联网
• In some countries, prices are exorbitantly high which are ten as much as that in China. 一些国家的物价水平高，大概是中国国内的十倍。 来自互联网

376 zest   

n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣

参考例句：

• He dived into his new job with great zest.他充满热情地投入了新的工作。
• He wrote his novel about his trip to Asia with zest.他兴趣浓厚的写了一本关于他亚洲之行的小说。

377 wincing   

赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She switched on the light, wincing at the sudden brightness. 她打开了灯，突如其来的强烈光线刺得她不敢睜眼。
• "I will take anything," he said, relieved, and wincing under reproof. “我什么事都愿意做，"他说，松了一口气，缩着头等着挨骂。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

378 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

379 rendezvous   

n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇

参考例句：

• She made the rendezvous with only minutes to spare.她还差几分钟时才来赴约。
• I have a rendezvous with Peter at a restaurant on the harbour.我和彼得在海港的一个餐馆有个约会。

380 tantalizing   

adj.逗人的；惹弄人的；撩人的；煽情的v.逗弄，引诱，折磨( tantalize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• This was my first tantalizing glimpse of the islands. 这是我第一眼看见的这些岛屿的动人美景。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We have only vague and tantalizing glimpses of his power. 我们只能隐隐约约地领略他的威力，的确有一种可望不可及的感觉。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史

381 dunes   

沙丘( dune的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The boy galloped over the dunes barefoot. 那男孩光着脚在沙丘间飞跑。
• Dragging the fully laden boat across the sand dunes was no mean feat. 将满载货物的船拖过沙丘是一件了不起的事。

382 cresting   

n.顶饰v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的现在分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点

参考例句：

• The old man stood with his back to the fire, cresting up erect. 老人背火昂然而立。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Various shapes of returns like triangular, semi-circular are available for cresting your own office. 极富创意的办公桌，有着不同形装如三角形、半圆形、曲尺形及四边形，以创造您个人品位的办公室。 来自互联网

383 incandescent   

adj.遇热发光的， 白炽的，感情强烈的

参考例句：

• The incandescent lamp we use in daily life was invented by Edison.我们日常生活中用的白炽灯，是爱迪生发明的。
• The incandescent quality of his words illuminated the courage of his countrymen.他炽热的语言点燃了他本国同胞的勇气。

384 bead   

n.念珠；(pl.)珠子项链；水珠

参考例句：

• She accidentally swallowed a glass bead.她不小心吞下了一颗玻璃珠。
• She has a beautiful glass bead and a bracelet in the box.盒子里有一颗美丽的玻璃珠和手镯。

385 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

386 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

387 metallic   

adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的

参考例句：

• A sharp metallic note coming from the outside frightened me.外面传来尖锐铿锵的声音吓了我一跳。
• He picked up a metallic ring last night.昨夜他捡了一个金属戒指。

388 swirl   

v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形

参考例句：

• The car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust.汽车在一股粉红色尘土的漩涡中颠簸着快速前进。
• You could lie up there,watching the flakes swirl past.你可以躺在那儿，看着雪花飘飘。

389 gulls   

n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A flock of sea gulls are hovering over the deck. 一群海鸥在甲板上空飞翔。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. 数不清的海鸥在遥远的岩石上栖息。 来自辞典例句

390 clinched   

v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议）

参考例句：

• The two businessmen clinched the deal quickly. 两位生意人很快达成了协议。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Evidently this information clinched the matter. 显然，这一消息使问题得以最终解决。 来自辞典例句

391 rending   

v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破

参考例句：

• The cries of those imprisoned in the fallen buildings were heart-rending. 被困于倒塌大楼里的人们的哭喊声令人心碎。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She was rending her hair out in anger. 她气愤得直扯自己的头发。 来自《简明英汉词典》

392 beaked   

adj.有喙的，鸟嘴状的

参考例句：

• A Fox invited a long-beaked Stork to have dinner with him. 狐狸请长嘴鹳同他一起吃饭。 来自互联网
• Most of the other fossils come from rhynchosaurs (parrot-beaked reptiles). 其他大部分化石来自剪嘴龙（嘴像鹦鹉的爬行动物）。 来自互联网

393 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

394 succumbed   

不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死

参考例句：

• The town succumbed after a short siege. 该城被围困不久即告失守。
• After an artillery bombardment lasting several days the town finally succumbed. 在持续炮轰数日后，该城终于屈服了。

395 trickling   

n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动

参考例句：

• Tears were trickling down her cheeks. 眼泪顺着她的面颊流了下来。
• The engine was trickling oil. 发动机在滴油。 来自《简明英汉词典》

396 plunged   

v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• The train derailed and plunged into the river. 火车脱轨栽进了河里。
• She lost her balance and plunged 100 feet to her death. 她没有站稳，从100英尺的高处跌下摔死了。

397 obliterated   

v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭

参考例句：

• The building was completely obliterated by the bomb. 炸弹把那座建筑物彻底摧毁了。
• He began to drink, drank himself to intoxication, till he slept obliterated. 他一直喝，喝到他快要迷糊地睡着了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

398 cramp   

n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚

参考例句：

• Winston stopped writing,partly because he was suffering from cramp.温斯顿驻了笔，手指也写麻了。
• The swimmer was seized with a cramp and had to be helped out of the water.那个在游泳的人突然抽起筋来，让别人帮着上了岸。

399 goad   

n.刺棒，刺痛物；激励；vt.激励，刺激

参考例句：

• The opposition is trying to goad the government into calling an election.在野反对党正努力激起政府提出选举。
• The writer said he needed some goad because he was indolent.这个作家说他需要刺激，因为他很懒惰。

400 banality   

n.陈腐；平庸；陈词滥调

参考例句：

• Neil's ability to utter banalities never ceased to amaze me.每次我都很惊讶，尼尔怎么能讲出这么索然无味的东西。
• He couldn't believe the banality of the question.他无法相信那问题竟如此陈腐。

401 amiable   

adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的

参考例句：

• She was a very kind and amiable old woman.她是个善良和气的老太太。
• We have a very amiable companionship.我们之间存在一种友好的关系。

402 mania   

n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好

参考例句：

• Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
• Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。

403 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

404 dreaded   

adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The dreaded moment had finally arrived. 可怕的时刻终于来到了。
• He dreaded having to spend Christmas in hospital. 他害怕非得在医院过圣诞节不可。 来自《用法词典》

405 hesitation   

n.犹豫，踌躇

参考例句：

• After a long hesitation, he told the truth at last.踌躇了半天，他终于直说了。
• There was a certain hesitation in her manner.她的态度有些犹豫不决。

406 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。