CHAPTER IX THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

She looked at the glowing bands on the skin of her arm, spaced like bracelets² from her wrist to her shoulder. They were strips of sunlight from the Venetian blinds on the window of an unfamiliar³ room. She saw a bruise⁴ above her elbow, with dark beads⁶ that had been blood. Her arm lay on the blanket that covered her body. She was aware of her legs and hips⁷, but the rest of her body was only a sense of lightness, as if it were stretched restfully across the air in a place that looked like a cage made of sunrays.  Turning to look at him, she thought: From his aloofness⁸, from his manner of glass-enclosed formality, from his pride in never being made to feel anything-to this, to Hank Rearden in bed beside her, after hours of a violence which they could not name now, not in words or in daylight-but which was in their eyes, as they looked at each other, which they wanted to name, to stress, to throw at each other's face.  He saw the face of a young girl, her lips suggesting a smile, as if her natural state of relaxation¹⁰ were a state of radiance, a lock of hair falling across her cheek to the curve of a naked shoulder, her eyes looking at him as if she were ready to accept anything he might wish to say, as she had been ready to accept anything he had wished to do.  He reached over and moved the lock of hair from her cheek, cautiously, as if it were fragile. He held it back with his fingertips and looked at her face. Then his fingers closed suddenly in her hair and he raised the lock to his lips. The way he pressed his mouth to it was tenderness, but the way his fingers held it was despair.  He dropped back on the pillow and lay still, his eyes closed. His face seemed young, at peace. Seeing it for a moment without the reins¹¹ of tension, she realized suddenly the extent of the unhappiness he had borne; but it's past now, she thought, it's over.  He got up, not looking at her. His face was blank and closed again.  He picked up his clothes from the floor and proceeded to dress, standing¹² in the middle of the room, half-turned away from her. He acted, not as if she wasn't present, but as if it did not matter that she was. His movements, as he buttoned his shirt, as he buckled¹³ the belt of his slacks, had the rapid precision of performing a duty.  She lay back on the pillow, watching him, enjoying the sight of his figure in motion. She liked the gray slacks and shirt-the expert mechanic of the John Galt Line, she thought, in the stripes of sunlight and shadow, like a convict behind bars. But they were not bars any longer, they were the cracks of a wall which the John Galt Line had broken, the advance notice of what awaited them outside, beyond the Venetian blinds-she thought of the trip back, on the new rail, with the first train from Wyatt Junction¹⁶-the trip back to her office in the Taggart Building and to all the things now open for her to win-but she was free to let it wait, she did not want to think of it, she was thinking of the first touch of his mouth on hers-she was free to feel it, to hold a moment when nothing else was of any concern-she smiled defiantly¹⁷ at the strips of sky beyond the blinds.  "I want you to know this."  He stood by the bed, dressed, looking down at her. His voice had pronounced it evenly, with great clarity and no inflection. She looked up at him obediently. He said: "What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I've never loved anyone.  “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore-for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind.  “You're not. You're as vile¹⁸ an animal as I am. I should loathe¹⁹ my discovering it. I don't. Yesterday, I would have killed anyone who'd tell me that you were capable of doing what I've had you do. Today, I would give my life not to let it be otherwise, not to have you be anything but the bitch you are. All the greatness that I saw in you-I would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of your talent at an animal's sensation of pleasure. We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren't we? Well, this is all that's left of us-and I want no self-deception about it."  He spoke²⁰ slowly, as if lashing²¹ himself with his words. There was no sound of emotion in his voice, only the lifeless pull of effort; it was not the tone of a man's willingness to speak, but the ugly, tortured sound of duty.  "I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. It had been my pride that I had always acted on my convictions. I've given in to a desire which I despise. It is a desire that has reduced my mind, my will, my being, my power to exist into an abject²² dependence²³ upon you-not even upon the Dagny Taggart whom I admired-but upon your body, your hands, your mouth and the few seconds of a convulsion of your muscles. I had never broken my word. Now I've broken an oath I gave for life. I had never committed an act that had to be hidden. Now I am to lie, to sneak²⁴, to hide. Whatever I wanted, I was free to proclaim it aloud and achieve it in the sight of the whole world.  “Now my only desire is one I loathe to name even to myself. But it is my only desire. I'm going to have you-I'd give up everything I own for it, the mills, the Metal, the achievement of my whole life. I'm going to have you at the price of more than myself: at the price of my self esteem-and I want you to know it. I want no pretense²⁵, no evasion²⁶, no silent indulgence, with the nature of our actions left unnamed. I want no pretense about love, value, loyalty²⁷ or respect. I want no shred²⁸ of honor left to us, to hide behind. I've never begged for mercy. I've chosen to do this-and I'll take all the consequences, including the full recognition of my choice. It's depravity-and I accept it as such-and there is no height of virtue²⁹ that I wouldn't give up for it. Now if you wish to slap my face, go ahead. I wish you would."  She had listened, sitting up straight, holding the blanket clutched at her throat to cover her body. At first, he had seen her eyes growing dark with incredulous shock. Then it seemed to him that she was listening with greater attentiveness³⁰, but seeing more than his face, even though her eyes were fixed³¹ on his. She looked as if she were studying intently some revelation that had never confronted her before. He felt as if some ray of light were growing stronger on his face, because he saw its reflection on hers, as she watched him-he saw the shock vanishing, then the wonder-he saw her face being smoothed into a strange serenity³² that seemed quiet and glittering at once.  When he stopped, she burst out laughing.  The shock to him was that he heard no anger in her laughter. She laughed simply, easily, in joyous³³ amusement, in release, not as one laughs at the solution of a problem, but at the discovery that no problem had ever existed.  She threw the blanket off with a stressed, deliberate sweep of her arm.  She stood up. She saw her clothes on the floor and kicked them aside.  She stood facing him, naked. She said: "I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you-and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed-and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There's nothing you'll have to pretend-don't think of me, don't feel, don't care-I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it's to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but that sensation of pleasure which you despise--but I want it from you. You'd give up any height of virtue for it, while I-I haven't any to give up. There's none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. And seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don't have to fear that you're now dependent upon me. It's I who will depend on any whim³⁴ of yours. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any. terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please-I'm not afraid to admit it-I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt³⁵, and I-as my pride. I'm more proud of it than of anything I've done, more proud than of building the Line. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment³⁶, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.”  When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.  The rain was invisible in the darkness of the streets, but it hung like the sparkling fringe of a lampshade under the corner light. Fumbling³⁷ in his pockets, James Taggart discovered that he had lost his handkerchief.  He swore half-aloud, with resentful malice³⁸, as if the loss, the rain and his head cold were someone's personal conspiracy³⁹ against him.  There was a thin gruel⁴⁰ of mud on the pavements; he felt a gluey suction under his shoe soles and a chill slipping down past his collar. He did not want to walk or to stop. He had no place to go.  Leaving his office, after the meeting of the Board of Directors, he had realized suddenly that there were no other appointments, that he had a long evening ahead and no one to help him kill it. The front pages of the newspapers were screaming of the triumph of the John Galt Line, as the radios had screamed it yesterday and all through the night. The name of Taggart Transcontinental was stretched in headlines across the continent, like its track, and he had smiled in answer to the congratulations. He had smiled, seated at the bead⁵ of the long table, at the Board meeting, while the Directors spoke about the soaring rise of the Taggart stock on the Exchange, while they cautiously asked to see his written agreement with his sister-just in case, they said-and commented that it was fine, it was hole proof, there was no doubt but that she would have to turn the Line over to Taggart Transcontinental at once, they spoke about their brilliant future and the debt of gratitude⁴¹ which the company owed to James Taggart.  He had sat through the meeting, wishing it were over with, so that he could go home. Then he had stepped out into the street and realized that home was the one place where he dared not go tonight. He could not be alone, not in the next few hours, yet there was nobody to call.  He did not want to see people. He kept seeing the eyes of the men of the Board when they spoke about his greatness: a sly, filmy look that held contempt for him and, more terrifyingly, for themselves.  He walked, head down, a needle of rain pricking⁴³ the skin of his neck once in a while. He looked away whenever he passed a newsstand. The papers seemed to shriek⁴⁴ at him the name of the John Galt Line, and another name which he did not want to hear: Ragnar Danneskjold. A ship bound for the People's State of Norway with an Emergency Gift cargo⁴⁵ of machine tools had been seized by Ragnar Danneskjold last night. That story disturbed him in some personal manner which he could not explain. The feeling seemed to have some quality in common with the things he felt about the John Galt Line.  It's because he had a cold, he thought; he wouldn't feel this way if he didn't have a cold; a man couldn't be expected to be in top form when he had a cold-he couldn't help it-what did they expect him to do tonight, sing and dance?-he snapped the question angrily at the unknown judges of his unwitnessed mood. He fumbled⁴⁶ for his handkerchief again, cursed and decided⁴⁷ that he'd better stop somewhere to buy some paper tissues.  Across the square of what had once been a busy neighborhood, he saw the lighted windows of a dime⁴⁹ store, still open hopefully at this late hour. There's another one that will go out of business pretty soon, he thought as he crossed the square; the thought gave him pleasure.  There were glaring lights inside, a few tired salesgirls among a spread of deserted⁵⁰ counters, and the screaming of a phonograph record being played for a lone⁴², listless customer in a corner. The music swallowed the sharp edges of Taggart's voice: he asked for paper tissues in a tone which implied that the salesgirl was responsible for his cold. The girl turned to the counter behind her, but turned back once to glance swiftly at his face. She took a packet, but stopped, hesitating, studying him with peculiar⁵¹ curiosity.  "Are you James Taggart?" she asked.  "Yes!" he snapped. "Why?"  "Oh!"  She gasped⁵³ like a child at a burst of firecrackers; she was looking at him with a glance which he had thought to be reserved only for movie stars.  "I saw your picture in the paper this morning, Mr. Taggart," she said very rapidly, a faint flush appearing on her face and vanishing. "It said what a great achievement it was and how it was really you who had done it all, only you didn't want it to be known."  "Oh," said Taggart. He was smiling.  "You look just like your picture," she said in immense astonishment⁵⁵, and added, "Imagine you walking in here like this, in person!"  "Shouldn't I?" His tone was amused.  "I mean, everybody's talking about it, the whole country, and you're the man who did it-and here you are! I've never seen an important person before. I've never been so close to anything important, I mean to any newspaper news."  He had never had the experience of seeing his presence give color to a place he entered: the girl looked as if she was not tired any longer, as if the dime store had become a scene of drama and wonder.  "Mr. Taggart, is it true, what they said about you in the paper?"  "What did they say?"  "About your secret."  "What secret?"  "Well, they said that when everybody was fighting about your bridge, whether it would stand or not, you didn't argue with them, you just went ahead, because you knew it would stand, when nobody else was sure of it-so the Line was a Taggart project and you were the guiding spirit behind the scenes, but you kept it secret, because you didn't care whether you got credit for it or not."  He had seen the mimeographed release of his Public Relations Department. "Yes," he said, "it's true." The way she looked at him made him feel as if it were.  "It was wonderful of you, Mr. Taggart."  "Do you always remember what you read in the newspapers, so well, in such detail?"  "Why, yes, I guess so-all the interesting things. The big things. I like to read about them. Nothing big ever happens to me."  She said it gaily⁵⁶, without self-pity. There was a young, determined⁵⁷ brusqueness in her voice and movements. She had a head of reddish brown curls, wide-set eyes, a few freckles⁵⁸ on the bridge of an upturned nose. He thought that one would call her face attractive if one ever noticed it, but there was no particular reason to notice it. It was a common little face, except for a look of alertness, of eager interest, a look that expected the world to contain an exciting secret behind every corner.  "Mr. Taggart, how does it feel to be a great man?"  "How does it feel to be a little girl?"  She laughed. "Why, wonderful."  "Then you're better off than I am."  "Oh, how can you say such a-"  "Maybe you're lucky if you don't have anything to do with the big events in the newspapers. Big. What do you call big, anyway?"  "Why . . . important."  "What's important?"  "You're the one who ought to tell me that, Mr. Taggart."  "Nothing's important."  She looked at him incredulously. "You, of all people, saying that tonight of all nights!"  "1 don't feel wonderful at all, if that's what you want to know. I've never felt less wonderful in my life."  He was astonished to see her studying his face with a look of concern such as no one had ever granted him. "You're worn out, Mr. Taggart," she said earnestly. "Tell them to go to hell."  "Whom?"  "Whoever's getting you down. It isn't right."  "What isn't?"  "That you should feel this way. You've had a tough time, but you've licked them all, so you ought to enjoy yourself now. You've earned it."  "And how do you propose that I enjoy myself?"  "Oh, I don't know. But I thought you'd be having a celebration tonight, a party with all the big shots, and champagne⁵⁹, and things given to you, like keys to cities, a real swank party like that-instead of walking around all by yourself, shopping for paper handkerchiefs, of all fool things!"  "You give me those handkerchiefs, before you forget them altogether," he said, handing her a dime. "And as to the swank party, did it occur to you that I might not want to see anybody tonight?"  She considered it earnestly. "No," she said, "I hadn't thought of it. But I can see why you wouldn't."  "Why?" It was a question to which he bad no answer.  "Nobody's really good enough for you, Mr. Taggart," she answered very simply, not as flattery, but as a matter of fact.  "Is that what you think?"  "I don't think I like people very much, Mr. Taggart. Not most of them."  "I don't either. Not any of them."  "I thought a man like you-you wouldn't know how mean they can be and how they try to step on you and ride on your back, if you let them. I thought the big men in the world could get away from them and not have to be flea-bait all of the time, but maybe I was wrong."  "What do you mean, flea-bait?"  "Oh, it's just something I tell myself when things get tough-that I've got to beat my way out to where I won't feel like I'm flea-bitten all the time by all kinds of lousiness-but maybe it's the same anywhere, only the fleas⁶⁰ get bigger."  "Much bigger."  She remained silent, as if considering something. "It's funny," she said sadly to some thought of her own.  "What's funny?"  "I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater-the unhappier. It didn't make sense to me. But maybe it's true."  "It's much truer than you think."  She looked away, her face disturbed.  "Why do you worry so much about the great men?" he asked. "What are you, a hero worshipper of some kind?"  She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile, while her face remained solemnly grave; it was the most eloquently⁶¹ personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she answered in a quiet, impersonal⁶³ voice, "Mr. Taggart, what else is there to look up to?"  A screeching⁶⁴ sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer⁶⁵, rang out suddenly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence⁶⁶.  She jerked her head, as if awakening⁶⁷ at the scream of an alarm clock, then sighed. "That's closing time, Mr. Taggart," she said regretfully.  "Go get your hat-I'll wait for you outside," he said.  She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.  "No kidding?" she whispered.  "No kidding."  She whirled around and ran like a streak⁶⁸ to the door of the employee’s quarters, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man's invitation.  He stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling-never to identify his emotions was the only steadfast⁶⁹ rule of his life; he merely felt it-and this particular feeling was pleasurable, which was the only identification he cared to know. But the feeling was the product of a thought he would not utter. He had often met girls of the lower classes, who had put on a brash little act, pretending to look up to him, spilling crude flattery for an obvious purpose; he had neither liked nor resented them; he had found a bored amusement in their company and he had granted them the status of his equals in a game he considered natural to both players involved. This girl was different. The unuttered words in his mind were: The damn little fool means it.  That he waited for her impatiently, when he stood in the rain on the sidewalk, that she was the one person he needed tonight, did not disturb him or strike him as a contradiction. He did not name the nature of his need. The unnamed and the unuttered could not clash into a contradiction.  When she came out, he noted⁷⁰ the peculiar combination of her shyness and of her head held high. She wore an ugly raincoat, made worse by a gob of cheap jewelry⁷¹ on the lapel, and a small hat of plush flowers planted defiantly among her curls. Strangely, the lift of her head made the apparel seem attractive; it stressed how well she wore even the things she wore.  "Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?" he asked.  She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the right words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stating it to herself, "You didn't want to see anybody tonight, but you want to see me. . . " He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in anyone's voice.  She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers⁷² they passed. After a while, she said, "I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they'd happen to me."  "Where do you come from?"  "Buffalo⁷⁴."  "Got any family?"  She hesitated. "I guess so. In Buffalo."  "What do you mean, you guess so?"  "I walked out on them."  "Why?"  "I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away."  "Why? What happened?"  "Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That's what I couldn't stand."  "What do you mean?"  "Well, they . . . well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man's never been any good, and Ma didn't care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn't get out, it would get me-I'd rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn't say good-bye. They didn't even know I was going." She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. "Mr. Taggart," she said, "it was a Taggart train."  "When did you come here?"  "Six months ago."  "And you're all alone?"  "Yes," she said happily.  "What was it you wanted to do?"  "Well, you know-make something of myself, get somewhere."  "Where?"  "Oh, I don't know, but . . . but people do things in the world. I saw pictures of New York and I thought"-she pointed⁷⁵ at the giant buildings beyond the streaks⁷⁶ of rain on the cab window-"I thought, somebody built those buildings-he didn't just sit and whine⁷⁷ that the kitchen was filthy⁷⁸ and the roof leaking and the plumbing⁷⁹ clogged⁸⁰ and it's a goddamn world and . . . Mr. Taggart"-she jerked her head in a shudder⁸¹ and looked straight at him-"we were stinking⁸² poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take-that they didn't really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!" Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard.  "I don't want to talk about them," she said. "Not with you. This-my meeting you, I mean-that's what they couldn't have. That's what I'm not going to share with them. It's mine, not theirs."  "How old are you?" he asked.  "Nineteen."  When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she'd have a good figure if she'd eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage⁸³ by the gaudy⁸⁴ plastic bracelets tinkling⁸⁵ on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently⁸⁶ memorize everything.  "What's your name?" he asked.  "Cherryl Brooks⁸⁷."  "Well, sit down."  He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.  He took a gulp⁸⁸ of his drink and put the glass down with irritation⁸⁹: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly⁹¹, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff⁹² links, his shoelaces, his lampshades and ashtrays⁹³ acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.  "Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?"  "Why should you care whether I am or not?"  "Because . . . well, if you haven't the right to be happy and proud, who has?"  "That's what I want to know-who has?" He turned to her abruptly⁹⁴, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. "He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?"  "Who?"  "Rearden. He didn't invent smelting⁹⁵ and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."  She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"  "He didn't do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he's never done anything for any other reason."  "What's wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?" Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle⁹⁶. "That's nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don't mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all his profits, and so have you. You're saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done-you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!"  "Yeah? That's what you think. She's a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that's what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I'm not so sure it was great-building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists⁹⁷ in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted⁹⁸ areas who need transportation."  "But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line."  "Yes, because it was my duty-to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don't expect me to enjoy it. I'm not so sure it was great-inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron-why, do you know that the People's State of China hasn't even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people's heads?"  "But . . . but I don't see that that's your fault."  "Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days-when there's so much suffering around us-would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it's great? Well, it's not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn't pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don't read about them in the headlines and you don't run to gape⁹⁹ at them at grade crossings-because they can't invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!"  She was looking at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness toned down, her eyes subdued¹⁰⁰. He felt better.  He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled¹⁰² abruptly at a sudden recollection.  "It was funny, though," he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone of a confidence to a pal¹⁰³. "You should have seen Orren Boyle yesterday, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt Junction! He turned green-but I mean, green, the color of a fish that's been lying around too long! Do you know what he did last night, by way of taking the bad news? Hired himself a suite¹⁰⁴ at the Valhalla Hotel-and you know what that is-and the last I heard, he was still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population of upper Amsterdam Avenue!"  "Who is Mr. Boyle?" she asked, stupefied.  "Oh, a fat slob that's inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yesterday! I got a kick out of that. That-and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That smoothy didn't like it a bit, oh not a bit!-the elegant Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-leather vocabulary-but he carried it off pretty well, I must say, only you could see him squirming in every paragraph-I mean, that interview he gave out this morning, where he said, 'The country gave Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country something in return.' That was pretty nifty, considering who's been riding on the gravy¹⁰⁵ train and . . . well, considering. That was better than Bertram Scudder-Mr. Scudder couldn't think of anything but 'No comment,' when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice his sentiments. 'No comment'-from Bertram Scudder who's never been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about anything you ask him or don't ask, Abyssinian poetry or the state of the ladies' rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rearden didn't invent that Metal-because he was told, by an unnamed reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless inventor whom he murdered!"  He was chuckling¹⁰⁶ happily. She was listening as to a lecture on higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the language, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was certain that it did not mean-coming from him-what it would have meant anywhere else.  He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly.  He slumped¹⁰⁷ into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred¹⁰⁸.  "She's coming back tomorrow," he said, with a sound like a chuckle¹⁰¹ devoid¹⁰⁹ of amusement.  "Who?"  "My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she'll think she's great, won't she?"  "You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?" He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent⁶² that she needed no other answer. "Why?" she asked.  "Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."  "You don't mean it, Mr. Taggart."  "I mean, we're only human beings-and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones-so humility¹¹⁰ is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good-that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."  "But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"  "Then he ought to apologize for it."  "To whom?"  "To those who haven't done it."  "I . . . I don't understand."  "Of course you don't. It takes years and years of study in the higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?" She shook her head, frightened. "How do you know what's good, anyway? Who knows what's good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes-as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that bridge hasn't collapsed¹¹¹? You only think it hasn't. How do you know that there's any bridge at all? You think that a system of philosophy-such as Dr. Pritchett's-is just something academic, remote, impractical¹¹²? But it isn't. Oh, boy, how it isn't!"  "But, Mr. Taggart, the Line you built-"  "Oh, what's that Line, anyway? It's only a material achievement, is that of any importance? Is there any greatness in anything material? Only a low animal can gape at that bridge-when there are so many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recognition? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue¹¹³ and cry and front pages about some trick arrangement of some scraps¹¹⁴ of matter. Do they care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it's true that a great man is doomed¹¹⁵ to unhappiness in this depraved world!" He leaned forward, staring at her intently. "I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you something . . . unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person."  He saw the puzzled, anxious look of her face. "But, Mr. Taggart, you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune for you overnight, you got everything you could ask for-aren't you glad of it?"  In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, sensing a sudden fear within him. He answered, "No."  She didn't know why her voice dropped to a whisper. "You'd rather the bridge had collapsed?"  "I haven't said that!" he snapped sharply. Then he shrugged¹¹⁶ and waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. "You don't understand."  "I'm sorry . . . Oh, I know that I have such an awful lot to learn!"  "I am talking about a hunger for something much beyond that bridge. A hunger that nothing material will ever satisfy."  "What, Mr. Taggart? What is it you want?"  "Oh, there you go! The moment you ask, 'What is it?' you're back in the crude, material world where everything's got to be tagged and measured. I'm speaking of things that can't be named in materialistic¹¹⁷ words . . . the higher realms of the spirit, which man can never reach. . . . What's any human achievement, anyway? The earth is only an atom whirling in the universe-of what importance is that bridge to the solar system?"  A sudden, happy look of understanding cleared her eyes. "It's great of you, Mr. Taggart, to think that your own achievement isn't good enough for you. I guess no matter how far you've gone, you want to go still farther. You're ambitious. That's what I admire most: ambition. I mean, doing things, not stopping and giving up, but doing. I understand, Mr. Taggart . . . even if I don't understand all the big thoughts."  "You'll learn."  "Oh, I'll work very hard to learn!"  Her glance of admiration¹¹⁸ had not changed. He walked across the room, moving in that glance as in a gentle spotlight¹¹⁹. He went to refill his glass. A mirror hung in the niche¹²⁰ behind the portable bar. He caught a glimpse of his own figure: the tall body distorted by a sloppy¹²¹, sagging¹²² posture¹²³, as if in deliberate negation¹²⁴ of human grace, the thinning hair, the soft, sullen⁹⁰ mouth. It struck him suddenly that she did not see him at all: what she saw was the heroic figure of a builder, with proudly straight shoulders and wind-blown hair. He chuckled aloud, feeling that this was a good joke on her, feeling dimly a satisfaction that resembled a sense of victory: the superiority of having put something over on her.  Sipping¹²⁵ his drink, he glanced at the door of his bedroom and thought of the usual ending for an adventure of this kind. He thought that it would be easy: the girl was too awed¹²⁶ to resist. He saw the reddish-bronze sparkle of her hair-as she sat, head bent¹²⁷, under a light-and a wedge of smooth, glowing skin on her shoulder. He looked away. Why bother?-he thought.  The hint of desire that he felt, was no more than a sense of physical discomfort¹²⁸. The sharpest impulse in his mind, nagging¹²⁹ him to action, was not the thought of the girl, but of all the men who would not pass up an opportunity of this kind. He admitted to himself that she was a much better person than Betty Pope, perhaps the best person ever offered to him. The admission left him indifferent. He felt no more than he had felt for Betty Pope. He felt nothing. The prospect¹³⁰ of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire to experience pleasure.  "It's getting late," he said. "Where do you live? Let me give you another drink and then I'll take you home."  When he said good-bye to her at the door of a miserable¹³¹ rooming house in a slum neighborhood, she hesitated, fighting not to ask a question which she desperately¹³² wished to ask him, "Will I . . . " she began, and stopped.  "What?"  "No, nothing, nothing!"  He knew that the question was: "Will I see you again?" It gave him pleasure not to answer, even though he knew that she would.  She glanced up at him once more, as if it were perhaps for the last time, then said earnestly, her voice low, "Mr. Taggart, I'm very grateful to you, because you . . . I mean, any other man would have tried to . . . I mean, that's all he'd want, but you're so much better than that, oh, so much better!"  He leaned closer to her with a faint, interested smile. "Would you have?" he asked.  She drew back from him, in sudden terror at her own words. "Oh, I didn't mean it that way!" she gasped. "Oh God, I wasn't hinting or . . . or . . ." She blushed furiously, whirled around and ran, vanishing up the long, steep stairs of the rooming house.  He stood on the sidewalk, feeling an odd, heavy, foggy sense of satisfaction: feeling as if he had committed an act of virtue-and as if he had taken his revenge upon every person who had stood cheering along the three-hundred-mile track of the John Galt Line.  When their train reached Philadelphia, Rearden left her without a word, as if the nights of their return journey deserved no acknowledgment in the daylight reality of crowded station platforms and moving engines, the reality he respected. She went on to New York, alone. But late that evening, the doorbell of her apartment rang and Dagny knew that she had expected it.  He said nothing when he entered, he looked at her, making his silent presence more intimate a greeting than words. There was the faint suggestion of a contemptuous smile in his face, at once admitting and mocking his knowledge of her hours of impatience¹³³ and his own. He stood in the middle of her living room, looking slowly around him; this was her apartment, the one place in the city that had been the focus of two years of his torment¹³⁴, as the place he could not think about and did, the place he could not enter-and was now entering with the casual, unannounced right of an owner. He sat down in an armchair, stretching his legs forward-and she stood before him, almost as if she needed his permission to sit down and it gave her pleasure to wait.  "Shall I tell you that you did a magnificent job, building that Line?" he asked. She glanced at him in astonishment; he had never paid her open compliments of that kind; the admiration in his voice was genuine, but the hint of mockery remained in his face, and she felt as if he were speaking to some purpose which she could not guess. "I've spent all day answering questions about you--and about the Line, the Metal and the future. That, and counting the orders for the Metal.  “They're coming in at the rate of thousands of tons an hour. When was it, nine months ago?-I couldn't get a single answer anywhere. Today, I had to cut off my phone, not to listen to all the people who wanted to speak to me personally about their urgent need of Rearden Metal. What did you do today?"  "I don't know. Tried to listen to Eddie's reports-tried to get away from people-tried to find the rolling stock to put more trains on the John Galt Line, because the schedule I'd planned won't be enough for the business that's piled up in just three days."  "A great many people wanted to see you today, didn't they?"  "Why. yes."  "They'd have given anything just for a word with you, wouldn't they?" '  "I . . . I suppose so."  "The reporters kept asking me what you were like. A young boy from a local sheet kept saying that you were a great woman. He said he'd be afraid to speak to you, if he ever had the chance. He's right. That future that they're all talking and trembling about-it will be as you made it, because you had the courage none of them could conceive of. All the roads to wealth that they're scrambling¹³⁵ for now, it's your strength that broke them open. The strength to stand against everyone. The strength to recognize no will but your own."  She caught the sinking gasp⁵² of her breath: she knew his purpose. She stood straight, her arms at her sides, her face austere¹³⁶, as if in unflinching endurance; she stood under the praise as under a lashing of insults.  "They kept asking you questions, too, didn't they?" He spoke intently, leaning forward. "And they looked at you with admiration. They looked, as if you stood on a mountain peak and they could only take their hats off to you across the great distance. Didn't they?"  "Yes," she whispered.  "They looked as if they knew that one may not approach you or speak in your presence or touch a fold of your dress. They knew it and it's true. They looked at you with respect, didn't they? They looked up to you?"  He seized her arm, threw her down on her knees, twisting her body against his legs, and bent down to kiss her mouth. She laughed soundlessly, her laughter mocking, but her eyes half-closed, veiled with pleasure.  Hours later, when they lay in bed together, his hand moving over her body, he asked suddenly, throwing her back against the curve of his arm, bending over her-and she knew, by the intensity¹³⁷ of his face, by the sound of a gasp somewhere in the quality of his voice, even though his voice was low and steady, that the question broke out of him as if it were worn by the hours of torture he had spent with it: "Who were the other men that had you?"  He looked at her as if the question were a sight visualized¹³⁸ in every detail, a sight he loathed¹³⁹, but would not abandon; she heard the contempt in his voice, the hatred¹⁴⁰, the suffering-and an odd eagerness that did not pertain¹⁴¹ to torture; he had asked the question, holding her body tight against him.  She answered evenly, but he saw a dangerous flicker¹⁴² in her eyes, as of a warning that she understood him too well. "There was only one other, Hank."  "When?"  "When I was seventeen.”  "Did it last?"  "For some years."  "Who was he?"  She drew back, lying against his arm; he leaned closer, his face taut¹⁴³; she held his eyes. "I won't answer you."  "Did you love him?"  "I won't answer."  "Did you like sleeping with him?"  "Yes!"  The laughter in her eyes made it sound like a slap across his face, the laughter of her knowledge that this was the answer he dreaded¹⁴⁴ and wanted.  He twisted her arms behind her, holding her helpless, her breasts pressed against him; she felt the pain ripping through her shoulders, she heard the anger in his words and the huskiness of pleasure in his voice: "Who was he?"  She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain, was the shape of a mocking smile.  He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his lips.  He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out of her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eagerness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way she wanted to be taken.  * * *  The silhouette¹⁴⁵ of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire in the sky, raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inexhaustible number of small black buckets rode out of the earth in a diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter¹⁴⁶ kept going through the rattle¹⁴⁷ of the chains which a young man in blue overalls¹⁴⁸ was fastening over the machinery¹⁴⁹, securing it to the flatcars lined on the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.  Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated¹⁵⁰ Switch and Signal Company across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying, blondish head.  There was a first touch of September chill in the air. All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide open, while men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking the vital organs and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.  "Another one?" asked Mr. Mowen, jerking his thumb at the plant, even though he knew the answer.  "Huh?" asked the young man, who had not noticed him standing there.  "Another company moving to Colorado?"  "Uh-huh."  "It's the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks," said Mr. Mowen. "And when you look at what's happening in New Jersey¹⁵¹, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic coast . . ."  The young man was not looking and did not seem to listen. "It's like a leaking faucet," said Mr. Mowen, "and all the water's running out to Colorado. All the money." The young man flung the chain across and followed it deftly¹⁵², climbing over the big shape covered with canvas.  "You'd think people would have some feeling for their native state, some loyalty . . . But they're running away. I don't know what's happening to people."  "It's the Bill," said the young man.  "What Bill?"  "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill."  "How do you mean?"  "I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he's made up his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel."  "I don't see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It's a rotten shame-old firms that have been here for generations . . . There ought to be a law . . ."  The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it. Behind him. the conveyor belt kept rising and clattering¹⁵³ against the sky.  Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in the reddish glow of the evening.  Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since the days of his father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.  "It isn't right," he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large, but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear him.  "That's not the way it was in my father's time. I'm not a big shot. I don't want to fight anybody. What's the matter with the world?" There was no answer, "Now you, for instance-are they taking you along to Colorado?"  "Me? No. I don't work here. I'm just transient labor¹⁵⁴. Just picked up this job helping¹⁵⁵ to lug¹⁵⁶ the stuff out."  "Well, where are you going to go when they move away?"  "Haven't any idea."  "What are you going to do, if more of them move out?"  "Wait and see."  Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously¹⁵⁷: he could not tell whether the answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the young man's attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking down.  He moved on, to the shrouded¹⁵⁸ shapes on the next flatcar, and Mr. Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something up in space: "I've got rights, haven't I? I was born here. I expected the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he's got a right to count on it, hasn't he? . . . Something ought to be done about it."  "About what?"  "Oh, I know, you think it's great, don't you?-that Taggart boom and Rearden Metal and the gold rush to Colorado and the drunken spree out there, with Wyatt and his bunch expanding their production like kettles boiling over! Everybody thinks it's great-that's all you hear anywhere you go-people are slap-happy, making plans like six-year olds on a vacation-you'd think it was a national honeymoon¹⁵⁹ of some kind or a permanent Fourth of July!"  The young man said nothing.  "Well, I don't think so," said Mr. Mowen. He lowered his voice. 'The newspapers don't say so, either-mind you that-the newspapers aren't saying anything."  Mr. Mowen heard no answer, only the clanking of the chains.  "Why are they all running to Colorado?" he asked. "What have they got down there that we haven't got?"  The young man grinned. "Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got."  "What?" The young man did not answer. "I don't see it. It's a backward, primitive¹⁶⁰, unenlightened place. They don't even have a modern government. It's the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing-outside of keeping law courts and a police department.  It doesn't do anything for the people. It doesn't help anybody. I don't see why all our best companies want to run there."  The young man glanced down at him, but did not answer.  Mr. Mowen sighed. "Things aren't right," he said. "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill was a sound idea. There's got to be a chance for everybody. It's a rotten shame if people like Quinn take unfair advantage of it. Why didn't he let somebody else start manufacturing ball bearings in Colorado? . . . I wish the Colorado people would leave us alone. That Stockton Foundry out there had no right going into the switch and signal business. That's been my business for years, I have the right of seniority, it isn't fair, it's dog-eat-dog competition, newcomers shouldn't be allowed to muscle in. Where am I going to sell switches and signals? There were two big railroads out in Colorado. Now the Phoenix-Durango's gone, so there's just Taggart Transcontinental left. It isn't fair-their forcing Dan Conway out. There's got to be room for competition. . . . And I've been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle-and now he says he can't promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there's a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench¹⁶¹. It isn't fair-Rearden being allowed to ruin other people's markets that way. . . . And I want to get some Rearden Metal, too, I need it-but try and get it! He has a waiting line that would stretch across three states-nobody can get a scrap⁷³ of it, except his old friends, people like Wyatt and Danagger and such. It isn't fair. It's discrimination. I'm just as good as the next fellow. I'm entitled to my share of that Metal."  The young man looked up. "I was in Pennsylvania last week," he said. "I saw the Rearden mills. There's a place that's busy! They're building four new open-hearth furnaces, and they've got six more coming. . . . New furnaces," he said, looking off to the south. "Nobody's built a new furnace on the Atlantic coast for the last five years. . . ." He stood against the sky, on the top of a shrouded motor, looking off at the dusk with a faint smile of eagerness and longing¹⁶², as one looks at the distant vision of one's love. "They're busy. . . ." he said.  Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the chain was the first break in the smooth competence¹⁶³ of his movements: it looked like a jolt¹⁶⁴ of anger.  Mr. Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the smoke-the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening air, stretching in a long haze¹⁶⁵ all the way to the city of New York somewhere beyond the sunset-and he felt reassured¹⁶⁶ by the thought of New York in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas tanks, cranes and high tension lines. He felt a current of power flowing through every grimy structure of his familiar street; he liked the figure of the young man above him, there was something reassuring¹⁶⁷ in the way he worked, something that blended with the skyline. . . . Yet Mr. Mowen wondered why he felt that a crack was growing somewhere, eating through the solid, the eternal walls.  "Something ought to be done," said Mr. Mowen. "A friend of mine went out of business last week-the oil business-had a couple of wells down in Oklahoma-couldn't compete with Ellis Wyatt. It isn't fair. They ought to leave the little people a chance. They ought to place a limit on Wyatt's output. He shouldn't be allowed to produce so much that he'll swamp everybody else off the market. . . . I got stuck in New York yesterday, had to leave my car there and come home on a damn commuter¹⁶⁸ local, couldn't get any gas for the car, they said there's a shortage of oil in the city. . . . Things aren't right. Something ought to be done about it. . . ."  Looking at the skyline, Mr. Mowen wondered what was the nameless threat to it and who was its destroyer.  "What do you want to do about it?" asked the young man.  "Who, me?" said Mr. Mowen. "I wouldn't know. I'm not a big shot. I can't solve national problems. I just want to make a living. All I know is, somebody ought to do something about it. . . . Things aren't right. . . . Listen-what's your name?"  "Owen Kellogg."  "Listen, Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?"  "You wouldn't care to know."  A whistle blew on a distant tower, the night-shift whistle, and Mr. Mowen realized that it was getting late. He sighed, buttoning his coat, turning to go.  "Well, things are being done," he said. "Steps are being taken. Constructive¹⁶⁹ steps. The Legislature has passed a Bill giving wider powers to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. They've appointed a very able man as Top Co-ordinator. Can't say I've heard of him before, but the newspapers said he's a man to be watched. His name is Wesley Mouch."  Dagny stood at the window of her living room, looking at the city. It was late and the lights were like the last sparks left glittering on the black remnants of a bonfire. She felt at peace, and she wished she could hold her mind still to let her own emotions catch up with her, to look at every moment of the month that had rushed past her. She had had no time to feel that she was back in her own office at Taggart Transcontinental; there had been so much to do that she forgot it was a return from exile. She had not noticed what Jim had said on her return or whether he had said anything. There had been only one person whose reaction she had wanted to know; she had telephoned the Wayne-Falkland Hotel; but Senor Francisco d'Anconia, she was told, had gone back to Buenos Aires.  She remembered the moment when she signed her name at the bottom of a long legal page; it was the moment that ended the John Galt Line. Now it was the Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinental again-except that the men of the train crews refused to give up its name. She, too, found it hard to give up; she forced herself not to call it "the John Galt," and wondered why that required an effort, and why she felt a faint wrench¹⁷⁰ of sadness.  One evening, on a sudden impulse, she had turned the corner of the Taggart Building, for a last look at the office of John Galt, Inc., in the alley¹⁷¹; she did not know what she wanted-just to see it, she thought.  A plank¹⁷² barrier had been raised along the sidewalk: the old building was being demolished¹⁷³; it had given up, at last. She had climbed over the planks¹⁷⁴ and, by the light of the street lamp that had once thrown a stranger's shadow across the pavement, she had looked in through the window of her former office. Nothing was left of the ground floor; the partitions had been torn down, there were broken pipes hanging from the ceiling and a pile of rubble¹⁷⁵ on the floor. There was nothing to see.  She had asked Rearden whether he had come there one night last spring and stood outside her window, fighting his desire to enter. But she had known, even before he answered, that he had not. She did not tell him why she asked it. She did not know why that memory still disturbed her at times.  Beyond the window of her living room, the lighted rectangle of the calendar hung like a small shipping¹⁷⁶ tag in the black sky. It read: September 2. She smiled defiantly, remembering the race she had run against its changing pages; there were no deadlines now, she thought, no barriers, no threats, no limits.  She heard a key turning in the door of her apartment; this was the sound she had waited for, had wanted to hear tonight.  Rearden came in, as he had come many times, using the key she had given him, as sole announcement. He threw his hat and coat down on a chair with a gesture that had become familiar; he wore the formal black of dinner clothes.  "Hello," she said.  "I'm still waiting for the evening when I won't find you in," he answered, "Then you'll have to phone the offices of Taggart Transcontinental."  "Any evening? Nowhere else?"  "Jealous, Hank?"  "No. Curious what it would feel like, to be."  He stood looking at her across the room, refusing to let himself approach her, deliberately¹⁷⁷ prolonging the pleasure of knowing that he could do it whenever he wished. She wore the tight gray skirt of an office suit and a blouse of transparent¹⁷⁸ white cloth tailored like a man's shirt; the blouse flared¹⁷⁹ out above her waistline, stressing the trim flatness of her hips; against the glow of a lamp behind her, he could see the slender silhouette of her body within the flaring¹⁸⁰ circle of the blouse.  "How was the banquet?" she asked.  "Fine. I escaped as soon as I could. Why didn't you come? You were invited."  "I didn't want to see you in public."  He glanced at her, as if stressing that he noted the full meaning of her answer; then the lines of his face moved to the hint of an amused smile. "You missed a lot. The National Council of Metal Industries won't put itself again through the ordeal¹⁸¹ of having me for guest of honor. Not if they can help it."  "What happened?"  "Nothing. Just a lot of speeches."  "Was it an ordeal for you?"  "No . . . Yes, in a way . . . I had really wanted to enjoy it."  "Shall I get you a drink?"  "Yes, will you?"  She turned to go. He stopped her, grasping her shoulders from behind; he bent her head back and kissed her mouth. When he raised his head, she pulled it down again with a demanding gesture of ownership, as if stressing her right to do it. Then she stepped away from him.  "Never mind the drink," he said, "I didn't really want it-except for seeing you wait on me."  "Well, then, let me wait on you."  "No."  He smiled, stretching himself out on the couch, his hands crossed under his head. He felt at home; it was the first home he had ever found.  "You know, the worst part of the banquet was that the only wish of every person present was to get it over with," he said. "What I can't understand is why they wanted to do it at all. They didn't have to. Certainly not for my sake."  She picked up a cigarette box, extended it to him, then held the flame of a lighter¹⁸² to the tip of his cigarette, in the deliberate manner of waiting on him. She smiled in answer to his chuckle, then sat down on the arm of a chair across the room.  "Why did you accept their invitation, Hank?" she asked. "You've always refused to join them."  "I didn't want to refuse a peace offer-when I've beaten them and they know it. I'll never join them, but an invitation to appear as a guest of honor-well, I thought they were good losers. I thought it was generous of them."  "Of them?"  "Are you going to say: of me?"  "Hank! After all the things they've done to stop you-"  "I won, didn't I? So I thought . . . You know, I didn't hold it against them that they couldn't see the value of the Metal sooner-so long as they saw it at last. Every man learns in his own way and time. Sure, I knew there was a lot of cowardice¹⁸³ there, and envy and hypocrisy¹⁸⁴, but I thought that that was only the surface-now, when I've proved my case, when I've proved it so loudly!-I thought their real motive¹⁸⁵ for inviting¹⁸⁶ me was their appreciation¹⁸⁷ of the Metal, and-"  She smiled in the brief space of his pause; she knew the sentence he had stopped himself from uttering: " and for that, I would forgive anyone anything."  "But it wasn't," he said. "And I couldn't figure out what their motive was. Dagny, I don't think they had any motive at all. They didn't give that banquet to please me, or to gain something from me, or to save face with the public. There was no purpose of any kind about it, no meaning. They didn't really care when they denounced the Metal-and they don't care now. They're not really afraid that I'll drive them all off the market-they don't care enough even about that. Do you know what that banquet was like? It's as if they'd heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them-so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age. I . . . I couldn't stand it."  She said, her face tight, "And you don't think you're generous!"  He glanced up at her; his eyes brightened to a look of amusement.  "Why do they make you so angry?"  She said, her voice low to hide the sound of tenderness, "You wanted to enjoy it . . ."  "It probably serves me right. I shouldn't have expected anything. I don't know what it was that I wanted."  "I do."  "I've never liked occasions of that sort. I don't see why I expected it to be different, this time. . . . You know, I went there feeling almost as if the Metal had changed everything, even people."  "Oh yes, Hank, I know!"  "Well, it was the wrong place to seek anything. . . . Do you remember? You said once that celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate."  The dot of her lighted cigarette stopped in mid-air; she sat still. She had never spoken to him of that party or of anything related to his home. In a moment., she answered quietly, "I remember."  "1 know what you meant . . . I knew it then, too."  He was looking straight at her. She lowered her eyes.  He remained silent; when he spoke again, his voice was gay. "The worst thing about people is not the insults they hand out, but the compliments. I couldn't bear the kind they spouted¹⁸⁸ tonight, particularly when they kept saying how much everybody needs me-they, the city, the country and the whole world, I guess. Apparently¹⁸⁹, their idea of the height of glory is to deal with people who need them. I can't stand people who need me." He glanced at her. "Do you need me?"  She answered, her voice earnest, "Desperately."  He laughed. "No. Not the way I meant. You didn't say it the way they do."  "How did I say it?"  "Like a trader-who pays for what he wants. They say it like beggars who use a tin cup as a claim check."  "I . . . pay for it, Hank?"  "Don't look innocent. You know exactly what I mean."  "Yes," she whispered; she was smiling.  "Oh, to hell with them!" he said happily, stretching his legs, shifting the position of his body on the couch, stressing the luxury of relaxation. "I'm no good as a public figure. Anyway, it doesn't matter now.  We don't have to care what they see or don't see. They'll leave us alone. It's clear track ahead. What's the next undertaking¹⁹⁰, Mr. Vice-President?"  "A transcontinental track of Rearden Metal."  "How soon do you want it?"  "Tomorrow morning. Three years from now is when I'll get it."  "Think you can do it in three years?"  "If the John Galt . . . if the Rio Norte Line does as well as it's doing now."  "It's going to do better. That's only the beginning."  "I have an installment¹⁹¹ plan made out. As the money comes in, I'm going to start tearing up the main track, one division at a time, and replacing it with Rearden Metal rail."  "Okay. Any time you wish to start."  "I'll keep moving the old rail to the branch lines-they won't last much longer, if I don't. In three years, you'll ride on your own Metal into San Francisco, if somebody wants to give you a banquet there."  "In three years, I'll have mills pouring Rearden Metal in Colorado, in Michigan and in Idaho. That's my installment plan."  "Your own mills? Branches?"  "Uh-huh."  "What about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill?"  "You don't think it's going to exist three years from now, do you?  We've given them such a demonstration¹⁹² that all that rot is going to be swept away. The whole country is with us. Who'll want to stop things now? Who'll listen to the bilge? There's a lobby of the better kind of men working In Washington right this moment. They're going to get the Equalization Bill scrapped¹⁹³ at the next session."  "I . . . I hope so."  "I've had a terrible time, these last few weeks, getting the new furnaces started, but it's all set now, they're being built, I can sit back and take it easy. I can sit at my desk, rake in the money, loaf like a bum¹⁹⁴, watch the orders for the Metal pouring in and play favorites ail¹⁵ over the place. . . . Say, what's the first train you've got for Philadelphia tomorrow morning?"  "Oh, I don't know."  "You don't? What's the use of an Operating Vice-president? I have to be at the mills by seven tomorrow. Got anything running around six?"  "Five-thirty A.M. is the first one, I think."  "Will you wake me up in time to make it or would you rather order the train held for me?"  "I'll wake you up."  "Ok".  She sat, watching him as he remained silent. He had looked tired when he came in; the lines of exhaustion¹⁹⁵ were gone from his face now.  "Dagny," he asked suddenly; his tone had changed, there was some hidden, earnest note in his voice, "why didn't you want to see me in public?"  "I don't want to be part of your . . . official life."  He did not answer; in a moment, he asked casually¹⁹⁶, "When did you take a vacation last?"  "I think it was two . . . no, three years ago."  "What did you do?"  "Went to the Adirondacks for a month. Came back in a week."  "I did that five years ago. Only it was Oregon." He lay flat on his back, looking at the ceiling. "Dagny, let's take a vacation together. Let's take my car and drive away for a few weeks, anywhere, just drive, down the back roads, where no one knows us. We'll leave no address, we won't look at a newspaper, we won't touch a phone-we won't have any official life at all."  She got up. She approached him, she stood by the side of the couch, looking down at him, the light of the lamp behind her; she did not want him to see her face and the effort she was making not to smile.  "You can take a few weeks off. can't you?" he said. "Things are set and going now. It's safe. We won't have another chance in the next three years."  "All right, Hank," she said, forcing her voice to sound calmly toneless.  "Will you?"  "When do you want to start?"  "Monday morning."  "All right."  She turned to step away. He seized her wrist, pulled her down, swung her body to lie stretched full-length on top of him, he held her still, uncomfortably, as she had fallen, his one hand in her hair, pressing her mouth to his, his other hand moving from the shoulder blades under her thin blouse to her waist, to her legs. She whispered, "And you say I don't need you . . . !"  She pulled herself away from him, and stood up, brushing her hair off her face. He lay still, looking up at her, his eyes narrowed, the bright flicker of some particular interest in his eyes, intent and faintly mocking. She glanced down: a strap¹⁹⁷ of her slip had broken, the slip hung diagonally from her one shoulder to her side, and he was looking at her breast under the transparent film of the blouse. She raised her hand to adjust the strap. He slapped her hand down. She smiled, in understanding, in answering mockery. She walked slowly, deliberately across the room and leaned against a table, facing him, her hands holding the table's edge, her shoulders thrown back. It was the contrast he liked-the severity of her clothes and the half-naked body, the railroad executive who was a woman he owned.  He sat up; he sat leaning comfortably across the couch, his legs crossed and stretched forward, his hands in his pockets, looking at her with the glance of a property appraisal¹⁹⁸.  "Did you say you wanted a transcontinental track of Rearden Metal, Mr. Vice-President?" he asked. "What if I don't give it to you? I can choose my customers now and demand any price I please. If this were a year ago, I would have demanded that you sleep with me in exchange."  "I wish you had."  "Would you have done it?"  "Of course."  "As a matter of business? As a sale?"  "If you were the buyer. You would have liked that, wouldn't you?"  "Would you?"  "Yes . . ." she whispered.  He approached her, he grasped her shoulders and pressed his mouth to her breast through the thin cloth.  Then, holding her, he looked at her silently for a long moment.  "What did you do with that bracelet¹?" he asked.  They had never referred to it; she had to let a moment pass to regain¹⁹⁹ the steadiness of her voice. "I have it," she answered.  "I want you to wear it."  "If anyone guesses, it will be worse for you than for me."  "Wear it."  She brought out the bracelet of Rearden Metal. She extended it to him without a word, looking straight at him, the green-blue chain glittering across her palm. Holding her glance, he clasped the bracelet on her wrist. In the moment when the clasp clicked shut under his fingers, she bent her head down to them and kissed his hand.  The earth went flowing under the hood⁴⁸ of the car. Uncoiling from among the curves of Wisconsin's hills, the highway was the only evidence of human labor, a precarious²⁰⁰ bridge stretched across a sea of brush, weeds and trees. The sea rolled softly, in sprays of yellow and orange, with a few red jets shooting up on the hillsides, with pools of remnant green in the hollows, under a pure blue sky. Among the colors of a picture post card, the car's hood looked like the work of a jeweler, with the sun sparkling on its chromium steel, and its black enamel²⁰¹ reflecting the sky.  Dagny leaned against the corner of the side window, her legs stretched forward; she liked the wide, comfortable space of the car's seat and the warmth of the sun on her shoulders; she thought that the countryside was beautiful.  "What I'd like to see," said Rearden, "is a billboard²⁰²,"  She laughed: he had answered her silent thought. "Selling what and to whom? We haven't seen a car or a house for an hour."  "That's what I don't like about it." He bent forward a little, his hands on the wheel; he was frowning. "Look at that road."  The long strip of concrete was bleached²⁰³ to the powdery gray of bones left on a desert, as if sun and snows had eaten away the traces of tires, oil and carbon, the lustrous²⁰⁴ polish of motion. Green weeds rose from the angular cracks of the concrete. No one had used the road or repaired it for many years; but the cracks were few.  "It's a good road," said Rearden. "It was built to last. The man who built it must have had a good reason for expecting it to carry a heavy traffic in the years ahead."  "Yes . . . "  "I don't like the looks of this."  "I don't either." Then she smiled. "But think how often we've heard people complain that billboards²⁰⁵ ruin the appearance of the countryside. Well, there's the unruined countryside for them to admire." She added, "They're the people I hate."  She did not want to feel the uneasiness which she felt like a thin crack under her enjoyment²⁰⁶ of this day. She had felt that uneasiness at times, in the last three weeks, at the sight of the country streaming past the wedge of the car's hood. She smiled: it was the hood that had been the immovable point in her field of vision, while the earth had gone by, it was the hood that had been the center, the focus, the security in a blurred, dissolving world . . . the hood before her and Rearden's hands on the wheel by her side . . . she smiled, thinking that she was satisfied to let this be the shape of her world.  After the first week of their wandering, when they had driven at random²⁰⁷, at the mercy of unknown crossroads, he had said to her one morning as they started out, "Dagny, does resting have to be purposeless?" She had laughed, answering, "No. What factory do you want to see?" He had smiled-at the guilt he did not have to assume, at the explanations he did not have to give-and he had answered, "It's an abandoned ore mine around Saginaw Bay, that I've heard about. They say it's exhausted²⁰⁸."  They had driven across Michigan to the ore mine. They had walked through the ledges²⁰⁹ of an empty pit, with the remnants of a crane like a skeleton bending above them against the sky, and someone's rusted²¹⁰ lunchbox clattering away from under their feet. She had felt a stab of uneasiness, sharper than sadness-but Rearden had said cheerfully, "Exhausted, hell! I'll show them how many tons and dollars I can draw out of this place!" On their way back to the car, he had said, "If I could find the right man, I'd buy that mine for him tomorrow morning and set him up to work it."  The next day, when they were driving west and south, toward the plains of Illinois, he had said suddenly, after a long silence, "No, I'll have to wait till they junk the Bill. The man who could work that mine, wouldn't need me to teach him. The man who'd need me, wouldn't be worth a damn."  They could speak of their work, as they always had, with full confidence in being understood. But they never spoke of each other. He acted as if their passionate²¹¹ intimacy²¹² were a nameless physical fact, not to be identified in the communication between two minds. Each night, it was as if she lay in the arms of a stranger who let her see every shudder of sensation that ran through his body, but would never permit her to know whether the shocks reached any answering tremor²¹³ within him. She lay naked at his side, but on her wrist there was the bracelet of Rearden Metal.  She knew that he hated the ordeal of signing the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" on the registers of squalid roadside hotels. There were evenings when she noticed the faint contraction²¹⁴ of anger in the tightness of his mouth, as he signed the expected names of the expected fraud, anger at those who made fraud necessary. She noticed, indifferently, the air of knowing slyness in the manner of the hotel clerks, which seemed to suggest that guests and clerks alike were accomplices²¹⁵ in a shameful²¹⁶ guilt: the guilt of seeking pleasure. But she knew that it did not matter to him when they were alone, when he held her against him for a moment and she saw his eyes look alive and guiltless.  They drove through small towns, through obscure side roads, through the kind of places they had not seen for years. She felt uneasiness at the sight of the towns. Days passed before she realized what it was that she missed most: a glimpse of fresh paint. The houses stood like men in unpressed suits, who had lost the desire to stand straight: the cornices were like sagging shoulders, the crooked²¹⁷ porch steps like torn hem¹⁴ lines, the broken windows like patches, mended with clapboard. The people in the streets stared at the new car, not as one stares at a rare sight, but as if the glittering black shape were an impossible vision from another world. There were few vehicles in the streets and too many of them were horse-drawn²¹⁸. She had forgotten the literal shape and usage of horsepower; she did not like to see its return.  She did not laugh, that day at the grade crossing, when Rearden chuckled, pointing, and she saw the train of a small local railroad come tottering²¹⁹ from behind a hill, drawn by an ancient locomotive that coughed black smoke through a tall stack.  "Oh God, Hank, it's not funny!"  "I know," he said.  They were seventy miles and an hour away from it, when she said, "Hank, do you see the Taggart Comet being pulled across the continent by a coal-burner of that kind?"  "What's the matter with you? Pull yourself together."  "I'm sorry . . . It's just that I keep thinking it won't be any use, all my new track and all your new furnaces, if we don't find someone able to produce Diesel²²⁰ engines. If we don't find him fast. . .  "Ted⁹ Nielsen of Colorado is your man."  "Yes, if he finds a way to open his new plant. He's sunk more money than he should into the bonds of the John Galt Line."  "That's turned out to be a pretty profitable investment, hasn't it?"  "Yes, but it's held him up. Now he's ready to go ahead, but he can't find the tools. There are no machine tools to buy, not anywhere, not at any price. He's getting nothing but promises and delays. He's combing the country, looking for old junk to reclaim²²¹, from closed factories. If he doesn't start soon-"  "He will. Who's going to stop him now?"  "Hank," she said suddenly, "could we go to a place I'd like to see?"  "Sure, Anywhere. Which place?"  "It's in Wisconsin. There used to be a great motor company there, in my father's time. We had a branch line serving it, but we closed the line-about seven years ago-when they closed the factory. I think it's one of those blighted areas now. Maybe there's still some machinery left there that Ted Nielsen could use. It might have been overlooked-the place is forgotten and there's no transportation to it at all."  "I'll find it. What was the name of the factory?"  "The Twentieth Century Motor Company."  "Oh, of course! That was one of the best motor firms in my youth, perhaps the best. I seem to remember that there was something odd about the way it went out of business . . . can't recall what it was.”  It took them three days of inquiries²²², but they found the bleached, abandoned road-and now they were driving through the yellow leaves that glittered like a sea of gold coins, to the Twentieth Century Motor Company.  "Hank, what if anything happens to Ted Nielsen?" she asked suddenly, as they drove in silence.  "Why should anything happen to him?"  "I don't know, but . . . well, there was Dwight Sanders. He vanished. United Locomotives is done for now. And the other plants are in no condition to produce Diesels²²³. I've stopped listening to promises. And . . . and of what use is a railroad without motive power?"  "Of what use is anything, for that matter, without it?"  The leaves sparkled, swaying in the wind. They spread for miles, from grass to brush to trees, with the motion and all the colors of fire; they seemed to celebrate an accomplished²²⁴ purpose, burning in unchecked, untouched abundance.  Rearden smiled. "There's something to be said for the wilderness²²⁵. I'm beginning to like it. New country that nobody's discovered." She nodded gaily. "It's good soil-look at the way things grow. I'd clear that brush and I'd build a-"  And then they stopped smiling. The corpse²²⁶ they saw in the weeds by the roadside was a rusty²²⁷ cylinder²²⁸ with bits of glass-the remnant of a gas-station pump.  It was the only thing left visible. The few charred²²⁹ posts, the slab²³⁰ of concrete and the sparkle of glass dust-which had been a gas station-were swallowed in the brush, not to be noticed except by a careful glance, not to be seen at all in another year.  They looked away. They drove on, not wanting to know what else lay hidden under the miles of weeds. They felt the same wonder like a weight in the silence between them: wonder as to how much the weeds had swallowed and how fast.  The road ended abruptly behind the turn of a hill. What remained was a few chunks²³¹ of concrete sticking out of a long, pitted stretch of tar⁵⁴ and mud. The concrete had been smashed by someone and  carted away; even weeds could not grow in the strip of earth left behind. On the crest²³² of a distant hill, a single telegraph pole stood slanted²³³ against the sky, like a cross over a vast grave.  It took them three hours and a punctured²³⁴ tire to crawl in low gear through trackless soft, through gullies, then down ruts left by cart wheels-to reach the settlement that lay in the valley beyond the hill with the telegraph pole.  A few houses still stood within the skeleton of what had once been an industrial town. Everything that could move, had moved away; but some human beings had remained. The empty structures were vertical²³⁵ rubble; they had been eaten, not by time, but by men: boards torn out at random, missing patches of roofs, holes left in gutted²³⁶ cellars. It looked as if blind hands had seized whatever fitted the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence the next morning.  The inhabited houses were scattered²³⁷ at random among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only movement visible in town. A shell of concrete, which had been a schoolhouse, stood on the outskirts²³⁸; it looked like a skull²³⁹, with the empty sockets²⁴⁰ of glassless windows, with a few strands²⁴¹ of hair still clinging to it, in the shape of broken wires.  Beyond the town, on a distant hill, stood the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. Its walls, roof lines and smokestacks looked trim, impregnable like a fortress²⁴². It would have seemed intact but for a silver water tank: the water tank was tipped sidewise.  They saw no trace of a road to the factory in the tangled²⁴³ miles of trees and hillsides. They drove to the door of the first house in sight that showed a feeble signal of rising smoke. The door was open. An old woman came shuffling²⁴⁴ out at the sound of the motor. She was bent and swollen²⁴⁵, barefooted, dressed in a garment of flour sacking. She looked at the car without astonishment, without curiosity; it was the blank stare of a being who had lost the capacity to feel anything but exhaustion.  "Can you tell me the way to the factory?" asked Rearden.  The woman did not answer at once; she looked as if she would be unable to speak English. "What factory?" she asked.  Rearden pointed. "That one."  "It's closed."  "I know it's closed. But is there any way to get there?"  "I don't know."  "Is there any sort of road?"  "There's roads in the woods."  "Any for a car to drive through?"  "Maybe."  "Well, which would be the best road to take?"  "I don't know."  Through the open door, they could see the interior of her house.  There was a useless gas stove, its oven stuffed with rags, serving as a chest of drawers. There was a stove built of stones in a corner, with a few logs burning under an old kettle, and long streaks of soot²⁴⁶ rising up the wall. A white object lay propped²⁴⁷ against the legs of a table: it was a porcelain²⁴⁸ washbowl, torn from the wall of some bathroom, filled with wilted²⁴⁹ cabbages. A tallow candle stood in a bottle on the table. There was no paint left on the floor; its boards were scrubbed to a soggy gray that looked like the visual expression of the pain in the bones of the person who had bent and scrubbed and lost the battle against the grime now soaked into the grain of the boards.  A brood of ragged²⁵⁰ children had gathered at the door behind the woman, silently, one by one. They stared at the car, not with the bright curiosity of children, but with the tension of savages²⁵¹ ready to vanish at the first sign of danger.  "How many miles is it to the factory?" asked Rearden.  "Ten miles," said the woman, and added, "Maybe five."  "How far is the next town?"  "There ain't any next town."  "There are other towns somewhere. I mean, how far?"  "Yeah. Somewhere."  In the vacant space by the side of the house, they saw faded rags hanging on a clothesline, which was a piece of telegraph wire. Three chickens pecked among the beds of a scraggly vegetable garden; a fourth sat roosting on a bar which was a length of plumber's pipe. Two pigs waddled²⁵² in a stretch of mud and refuse; the stepping stones laid across the muck were pieces of the highway's concrete.  They heard a screeching sound in the distance and saw a man drawing water from a public well by means of a rope pulley. They watched him as he came slowly down the street. He carried two buckets that seemed too heavy for his thin arms. One could not tell his age.  He approached and stopped, looking at the car. His eyes darted²⁵³ at the strangers, then away, suspicious and furtive²⁵⁴.  Rearden took out a ten-dollar bill and extended it to him, asking, "Would you please tell us the way to the factory?"  The man stared at the money with sullen indifference²⁵⁵, not moving, not lifting a hand for it, still clutching the two buckets. If one were ever to see a man devoid of greed, thought Dagny, there he was.  "We don't need no money around here," he said.  "Don't you work for a living?"  "Yeah."  "Well, what do you use for money?"  The man put the buckets down, as if it had just occurred to him that he did not have to stand straining under their weight. "We don't use no money," he said. "We just trade things amongst us."  "How do you trade with people from other towns?"  "We don't go to no other towns."  "You don't seem to have it easy here."  "What's that to you?"  "Nothing. Just curiosity. Why do you people stay here?"  "My old man used to have a grocery store here. Only the factory closed."  "Why didn't you move?"  "Where to?"  "Anywhere."  "What for?"  Dagny was staring at the two buckets: they were square tins with rope handles; they had been oil cans.  "Listen," said Rearden, "can you tell us whether there's a road to the factory?"  "There's plenty of roads."  "Is there one that a car can take?"  "I guess so."  "Which one?"  The man weighed the problem earnestly for some moments. "Well, now, if you turn to the left by the schoolhouse," he said, "and go on til you come to the crooked oak, there's a road up there that's fine when it don't rain for a couple of weeks."  "When did it rain last?"  "Yesterday."  "Is there another road?"  "Well, you could go through Hanson's pasture and across the woods and then there's a good, solid road there, all the way down to the creek²⁵⁶."  "Is there a bridge across the creek?"  "No."  "What are the other roads?"  "Well, if it's a car road that you want, there's one the other side of Miller's patch, it's paved, it's the best road for a car, you just turn to the right by the schoolhouse and-"  "But that road doesn't go to the factory, does it?"  "No, not to the factory."  "All right," said Rearden. "Guess we'll find our own way."  He had pressed the starter, when a rock came smashing into the windshield. The glass was shatterproof, but a sunburst of cracks spread across it. They saw a ragged little hoodlum vanishing behind a corner with a scream of laughter, and they heard the shrill²⁵⁷ laughter of children answering him from behind some windows or crevices²⁵⁸.  Rearden suppressed a swear word. The man looked vapidly²⁵⁹ across the street, frowning a little. The old woman looked on, without reaction. She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.  Dagny had been studying her for some minutes. The swollen shapelessness of the woman's body did not look like the product of age and neglect: it looked as if she was pregnant. This seemed impossible, but glancing closer Dagny saw that her dust-colored hair was not gray and that there were few wrinkles on her face; it was only the vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements that gave her the stamp of senility.  Dagny leaned out and asked, "How old are you?"  The woman looked at her, not in resentment²⁶⁰, but merely as one looks at a pointless question. "Thirty-seven," she answered.  They had driven five former blocks away, when Dagny spoke.  "Hank," she said in terror, "that woman is only two years older than I!"  "Yes."  "God, how did they ever come to such a state?"  He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"  The last thing they saw, as they left the town, was a billboard. A design was still visible on its peeling strips, imprinted²⁶¹ in the dead gray that had once been color. It advertised a washing machine.  In a distant field, beyond the town, they saw the figure of a man moving slowly, contorted by the ugliness of a physical effort beyond the proper use of a human body: he was pushing a plow²⁶² by hand.  They reached the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company two miles and two hours later. They knew, as they climbed the hill, that their quest was useless. A rusted padlock hung on the door of the main entrance, but the huge windows were shattered and the place was open to anyone, to the woodchucks, the rabbits and the dried leaves that lay in drifts inside.  The factory had been gutted long ago. The great pieces of machinery had been moved out by some civilized²⁶³ means-the neat holes of their bases still remained in the concrete of the floor. The rest had gone to random looters. There was nothing left, except refuse which the neediest tramp had found worthless, piles of twisted, rusted scraps, of boards, plaster and glass splinters-and the steel stairways, built to last and lasting²⁶⁴, rising in trim spirals to the roof.  They stopped in the great hall where a ray of light fell diagonally from a gap in the ceiling, and the echoes of their steps rang around them, dying far away in rows of empty rooms. A bird darted from among the steel rafters and went in a hissing²⁶⁵ streak of wings out into the sky, "We'd better look through it, just in case," said Dagny. "You take the shops and I'll take the annexes²⁶⁶. Let's do it as fast as possible."  "I don't like to let you wander around alone. I don't know how safe they are, any of those floors or stairways."  "Oh, nonsense! I can find my way around a factory-or in a wrecking²⁶⁷ crew. Let's get it over with. I want to get out of here."  When she walked through the silent yards-where steel bridges still hung overhead, tracing lines of geometrical perfection across the sky -her only wish was not to see any of it, but she forced herself to look.  It was like having to perform an autopsy²⁶⁹ on the body of one's love. She moved her glance as an automatic searchlight, her teeth clamped tight together. She walked rapidly-there was no necessity to pause anywhere.  It was in a room of what had been the laboratory that she stopped. It was a coil of wire that made her stop. The coil protruded²⁷⁰ from a pile of junk. She had never seen that particular arrangement of wires, yet it seemed familiar, as if it touched the hint of some memory, faint and very distant. She reached for the coil, but could not move it: it seemed to be part of some object buried in the pile.  The room looked as if it had been an experimental laboratory-if she was right in judging the purpose of the torn remnants she saw on the walls: a great many electrical outlets²⁷¹, bits of heavy cable, lead conduits, glass tubing, built-in cabinets without shelves or doors. There was a great deal of glass, rubber, plastic and metal in the junk pile, and dark gray splinters of slate²⁷² that had been a blackboard. Scraps of paper rustled²⁷³ dryly all over the floor. There were also remnants of things which had not been brought here by the owner of that room: popcorn²⁷⁴ wrappers, a whiskey bottle, a confession²⁷⁵ magazine.  She attempted to extricate²⁷⁶ the coil from the scrap pile. It would not move; it was part of some large object. She knelt and began to dig through the junk.  She had cut her hands, she was covered with dust by the time she stood up to look at the object she had cleared. It was the broken remnant of the model of a motor. Most of its parts were missing, but enough was left to convey some idea of its former shape and purpose.  She had never seen a motor of this kind or anything resembling it.  She could not understand the peculiar design of its parts or the functions they were intended to perform.  She examined the tarnished²⁷⁷ tubes and odd-shaped connections. She tried to guess their purpose, her mind going over every type of motor she knew and every possible kind of work its parts could perform.  None fitted the model. It looked like an electric motor, but she could not tell what fuel it was intended to burn. It was not designed for steam, or oil, or anything she could name.  Her sudden gasp was not a sound, but a jolt that threw her at the junk pile. She was on her hands and knees, crawling over the wreckage²⁷⁹, seizing every piece of paper in sight, flinging it away, searching further. Her hands were shaking.  She found part of what she hoped had remained in existence. It was a thin sheaf of typewritten pages clamped together-the remnant of a manuscript. Its beginning and end were gone; the bits of paper left under the clamp showed the thick number of pages it had once contained. The paper was yellowed and dry. The manuscript had been a description of the motor.  From the empty enclosure of the plant's powerhouse, Rearden heard her voice screaming, "Hank!" It sounded like a scream of terror.  He ran in the direction of the voice. He found her standing in the middle of a room, her hands bleeding, her stockings torn, her suit smeared²⁸⁰ with dust, a bunch of papers clutched in her hand.  "Hank, what does this look like?" she asked, pointing at an odd piece of wreckage at her feet; her voice had the intense, obsessed²⁸¹ tone of a person stunned²⁸² by a shock, cut off from reality. "What does it look like?"  "Are you hurt? What happened?"  "No! . . . Oh, never mind, don't look at me! I'm all right. Look at this. Do you know what that is?"  "What did you do to yourself?"  "I had to dig it out of there. I'm all right."  "You're shaking."  "You will, too, in a moment. Hank! Look at it. Just look and tell me what you think it is."  He glanced down, then looked attentively-then he was sitting on the floor, studying the object intently. "It's a queer way to put a motor together," he said, frowning.  "Read this," she said, extending the pages.  He read, looked up and said, "Good God!"  She was sitting on the floor beside him, and for a moment they could say nothing else.  "It was the coil," she said. She felt as if her mind were racing²⁶⁸, she could not keep up with all the things which a sudden blast had opened to her vision, and her words came hurtling against one another. "It was the coil that I noticed first-because I had seen drawings like it, not quite, but something like it, years ago, when I was in school-it was in an old book, it was given up as impossible long, long ago-but I liked to read everything I could find about railroad motors. That book said that there was a time when men were thinking of it-they worked on it, they spent years on experiments, but they couldn't solve it and they gave it up. It was forgotten for generations. I didn't think that any living scientist ever thought of it now. But someone did.  Someone has solved it, now, today! . . . Hank, do you understand?  Those men, long ago, tried to invent a motor that would draw static electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along. They couldn't do it. They gave it up." She pointed at the broken shape. "But there it is."  He nodded. He was not smiling. He sat looking at the remnant, intent on some thought of his own; it did not seem to be a happy thought.  "Hank! Don't you understand what this means? It's the greatest revolution in power motors since the internal-combustion engine-greater than that! It wipes everything out-and makes everything possible. To hell with Dwight Sanders and all of them! Who'll want to look at a Diesel? Who'll want to worry about oil, coal or refueling stations? Do you see what I see? A brand-new locomotive half the size of a single Diesel unit, and with ten times the power. A self-generator, working on a few drops of fuel, with no limits to its energy. The cleanest, swiftest, cheapest means of motion ever devised. Do you see what this will do to our transportation systems and to the country-in about one year?"  There was no spark of excitement in his face. He said slowly, "Who designed it? Why was it left here?"  "We'll find out."  He weighed the pages in his hand reflectively. "Dagny," he asked, "if you don't find the man who made it, will you be able to reconstruct that motor from what is left?"  She took a long moment, then the word fell with a sinking sound: "No."  "Nobody will. He had it all right. It worked-judging by what he writes here. It is the greatest thing I've ever laid eyes on. It was. We can't make it work again. To supply what's missing would take a mind as great as his."  "I'll find him-if I have to drop every other thing I'm doing."  "-and if he's still alive."  She heard the unstated guess in the tone of his voice. "Why do you say it like that?"  "I don't think he is. If he were, would he leave an invention of this kind to rot on a junk pile? Would he abandon an achievement of this size? If he were still alive, you would have had the locomotives with the self-generators years ago. And you wouldn't have had to look for him, because the whole world would know his name by now."  "I don't think this model was made so very long ago."  He looked at the paper of the manuscript and at the rusty tarnish²⁷⁸ of the motor. "About ten years ago, I'd guess. Maybe a little longer."  "We've got to find him or somebody who knew him. This is more important-"  "-than anything owned or manufactured by anyone today. I don't think we'll find him. And if we don't, nobody will be able to repeat his performance. Nobody will rebuild his motor. There's not enough of it left. It's only a lead, an invaluable²⁸³ lead, but it would take the sort of mind that's born once in a century, to complete it. Do you see our present-day motor designers attempting it?"  "No."  "There's not a first-rate designer left. There hasn't been a new idea in motors for years. That's one profession that seems to be dying-or dead."  "Hank, do you know what that motor would have meant, if built?"  He chuckled briefly²⁸⁴. "I'd say: about ten years added to the life of every person in this country-if you consider how many things it would have made easier and cheaper to produce, how many hours of human labor it would have released for other work, and how much more anyone's work would have brought him. Locomotives? What about automobiles²⁸⁵ and ships and airplanes with a motor of this kind? And tractors. And power plants. All hooked to an unlimited²⁸⁶ supply of energy, with no fuel to pay for, except a few pennies' worth to keep the converter going. That motor could have set the whole country in motion and on fire. It would have brought an electric light bulb into every hole, even into the homes of those people we saw down in the valley."  "It would have? It will. I'm going to find the man who made it."  "We'll try."  He rose abruptly, but stopped to glance down at the broken remnant and said, with a chuckle that was not gay, "There was the motor for the John Galt Line."  Then he spoke in the brusque manner of an executive. "First, we'll try to see if we can find their personnel office here. We'll look for their records, if there's any left. We want the names of their research staff and their engineers. I don't know who owns this place now, and I suspect that the owners will be hard to find, or they wouldn't have let it come to this. Then we'll go over every room in the laboratory.  Later, we'll get a few engineers to fly here and comb the rest of the place."  They started out, but she stopped for a moment on the threshold.  "Hank, that motor was the most valuable thing inside this factory," she said, her voice low. "It was more valuable than the whole factory and everything it ever contained. Yet it was passed up and left in the refuse. It was the one thing nobody found worth the trouble of taking."  "That's what frightens me about this," he answered.  The personnel office did not take them long. They found it by the sign which was left on the door, but it was the only thing left. There was no furniture inside, no papers, nothing but the splinters of smashed windows.  They went back to the room of the motor. Crawling on hands and knees, they examined every scrap of the junk that littered the floor.  There was little to find. They put aside the papers that seemed to contain laboratory notes, but none referred to the motor, and there were no pages of the manuscript among them. The popcorn wrappers and the whiskey bottle testified to the kind of invading hordes²⁸⁷ that had rolled through the room, like waves washing the remnants of destruction away to unknown bottoms.  They put aside a few bits of metal that could have belonged to the motor, but these were too small to be of value. The motor looked as if parts of it had been ripped off, perhaps by someone who thought he could put them to some customary use. What had remained was too unfamiliar to interest anybody.  On aching knees, her palms spread flat upon the gritty floor, she felt the anger trembling within her, the hurting, helpless anger that answers the sight of desecration²⁸⁸. She wondered whether someone's diapers hung on a clothesline made of the motor's missing wires-whether its wheels had become a rope pulley over a communal²⁸⁹ well-whether its cylinder was now a pot containing geraniums on the window sill of the sweetheart of the man with the whiskey bottle.  There was a remnant of light on the hill, but a blue haze was moving in upon the valleys, and the red and gold of the leaves was spreading to the sky in strips of sunset.  It was dark when they finished. She rose and leaned against the empty frame of the window for a touch of cool air on her forehead. The sky was dark blue. "It could have set the whole country in motion and on fire." She looked down at the motor. She looked out at the country. She moaned suddenly, hit by a single long shudder, and dropped her head on her arm, standing pressed to the frame of the window.  "What's the matter?" he asked.  She did not answer.  He looked out. Far below, in the valley, in the gathering²⁹⁰ night, there trembled a few pale smears²⁹¹ which were the lights of tallow candles.

1 bracelet   

n.手镯，臂镯

参考例句：

• The jeweler charges lots of money to set diamonds in a bracelet.珠宝匠要很多钱才肯把钻石镶在手镯上。
• She left her gold bracelet as a pledge.她留下她的金手镯作抵押品。

2 bracelets   

n.手镯，臂镯( bracelet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets. 她的手镯在灯光的照射下闪闪发亮。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• On display are earrings, necklaces and bracelets made from jade, amber and amethyst. 展出的有用玉石、琥珀和紫水晶做的耳环、项链和手镯。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

4 bruise   

n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤

参考例句：

• The bruise was caused by a kick.这伤痕是脚踢的。
• Jack fell down yesterday and got a big bruise on his face.杰克昨天摔了一跤，脸上摔出老大一块淤斑。

5 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。

6 beads   

n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链

参考例句：

• a necklace of wooden beads 一条木珠项链
• Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. 他的前额上挂着汗珠。

7 hips   

abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的

参考例句：

• She stood with her hands on her hips. 她双手叉腰站着。
• They wiggled their hips to the sound of pop music. 他们随着流行音乐的声音摇晃着臀部。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 aloofness   

超然态度

参考例句：

• Why should I have treated him with such sharp aloofness? 但我为什么要给人一些严厉，一些端庄呢？ 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说
• He had an air of haughty aloofness. 他有一种高傲的神情。 来自辞典例句

9 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

10 relaxation   

n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐

参考例句：

• The minister has consistently opposed any relaxation in the law.部长一向反对法律上的任何放宽。
• She listens to classical music for relaxation.她听古典音乐放松。

11 reins   

感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带

参考例句：

• She pulled gently on the reins. 她轻轻地拉着缰绳。
• The government has imposed strict reins on the import of luxury goods. 政府对奢侈品的进口有严格的控制手段。

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 buckled   

a. 有带扣的

参考例句：

• She buckled her belt. 她扣上了腰带。
• The accident buckled the wheel of my bicycle. 我自行车的轮子在事故中弄弯了。

14 hem   

n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制

参考例句：

• The hem on her skirt needs sewing.她裙子上的褶边需要缝一缝。
• The hem of your dress needs to be let down an inch.你衣服的折边有必要放长1英寸。

15 ail   

v.生病，折磨，苦恼

参考例句：

• It may provide answers to some of the problems that ail America.这一点可能解答困扰美国的某些问题。
• Seek your sauce where you get your ail.心痛还须心药治。

16 junction   

n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站

参考例句：

• There's a bridge at the junction of the two rivers.两河的汇合处有座桥。
• You must give way when you come to this junction.你到了这个路口必须让路。

17 defiantly   

adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地

参考例句：

• Braving snow and frost, the plum trees blossomed defiantly. 红梅傲雪凌霜开。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 vile   

adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的

参考例句：

• Who could have carried out such a vile attack?会是谁发起这么卑鄙的攻击呢？
• Her talk was full of vile curses.她的话里充满着恶毒的咒骂。

19 loathe   

v.厌恶，嫌恶

参考例句：

• I loathe the smell of burning rubber.我厌恶燃着的橡胶散发的气味。
• You loathe the smell of greasy food when you are seasick.当你晕船时，你会厌恶油腻的气味。

20 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。

21 lashing   

n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥

参考例句：

• The speaker was lashing the crowd. 演讲人正在煽动人群。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The rain was lashing the windows. 雨急打着窗子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

22 abject   

adj.极可怜的，卑屈的

参考例句：

• This policy has turned out to be an abject failure.这一政策最后以惨败而告终。
• He had been obliged to offer an abject apology to Mr.Alleyne for his impertinence.他不得不低声下气，为他的无礼举动向艾莱恩先生请罪。

23 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。

24 sneak   

vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行

参考例句：

• He raised his spear and sneak forward.他提起长矛悄悄地前进。
• I saw him sneak away from us.我看见他悄悄地从我们身边走开。

25 pretense   

n.矫饰，做作，借口

参考例句：

• You can't keep up the pretense any longer.你无法继续伪装下去了。
• Pretense invariably impresses only the pretender.弄虚作假欺骗不了真正的行家。

26 evasion   

n.逃避，偷漏(税)

参考例句：

• The movie star is in prison for tax evasion.那位影星因为逃税而坐牢。
• The act was passed as a safeguard against tax evasion.这项法案旨在防止逃税行为。

27 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

28 shred   

v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少

参考例句：

• There is not a shred of truth in what he says.他说的全是骗人的鬼话。
• The food processor can shred all kinds of vegetables.这架食品加工机可将各种蔬菜切丝切条。

29 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。

30 attentiveness   

[医]注意

参考例句：

• They all helped one another with humourous attentiveness. 他们带着近于滑稽的殷勤互相周旋。 来自辞典例句
• Is not attentiveness the nature of, even the function of, Conscious? 专注不正是大我意识的本质甚或活动吗？ 来自互联网

31 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。

32 serenity   

n.宁静，沉着，晴朗

参考例句：

• Her face,though sad,still evoked a feeling of serenity.她的脸色虽然悲伤，但仍使人感觉安详。
• She escaped to the comparative serenity of the kitchen.她逃到相对安静的厨房里。

33 joyous   

adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的

参考例句：

• The lively dance heightened the joyous atmosphere of the scene.轻快的舞蹈给这场戏渲染了欢乐气氛。
• They conveyed the joyous news to us soon.他们把这一佳音很快地传递给我们。

34 whim   

n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想

参考例句：

• I bought the encyclopedia on a whim.我凭一时的兴致买了这本百科全书。
• He had a sudden whim to go sailing today.今天他突然想要去航海。

35 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

36 attainment   

n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣

参考例句：

• We congratulated her upon her attainment to so great an age.我们祝贺她高寿。
• The attainment of the success is not easy.成功的取得并不容易。

37 fumbling   

n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理

参考例句：

• If he actually managed to the ball instead of fumbling it with an off-balance shot. 如果他实际上设法拿好球而不是fumbling它。50-balance射击笨拙地和迅速地会开始他的岗位移动，经常这样结束。
• If he actually managed to secure the ball instead of fumbling it awkwardly an off-balance shot. 如果他实际上设法拿好球而不是fumbling它。50-50提议有时。他从off-balance射击笨拙地和迅速地会开始他的岗位移动，经常这样结束。

38 malice   

n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋

参考例句：

• I detected a suggestion of malice in his remarks.我觉察出他说的话略带恶意。
• There was a strong current of malice in many of his portraits.他的许多肖像画中都透着一股强烈的怨恨。

39 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

40 gruel   

n.稀饭，粥

参考例句：

• We had gruel for the breakfast.我们早餐吃的是粥。
• He sat down before the fireplace to eat his gruel.他坐到壁炉前吃稀饭。

41 gratitude   

adj.感激，感谢

参考例句：

• I have expressed the depth of my gratitude to him.我向他表示了深切的谢意。
• She could not help her tears of gratitude rolling down her face.她感激的泪珠禁不住沿着面颊流了下来。

42 lone   

adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的

参考例句：

• A lone sea gull flew across the sky.一只孤独的海鸥在空中飞过。
• She could see a lone figure on the deserted beach.她在空旷的海滩上能看到一个孤独的身影。

43 pricking   

刺，刺痕，刺痛感

参考例句：

• She felt a pricking on her scalp. 她感到头皮上被扎了一下。
• Intercostal neuralgia causes paroxysmal burning pain or pricking pain. 肋间神经痛呈阵发性的灼痛或刺痛。

44 shriek   

v./n.尖叫，叫喊

参考例句：

• Suddenly he began to shriek loudly.突然他开始大声尖叫起来。
• People sometimes shriek because of terror,anger,or pain.人们有时会因为恐惧，气愤或疼痛而尖叫。

45 cargo   

n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物

参考例句：

• The ship has a cargo of about 200 ton.这条船大约有200吨的货物。
• A lot of people discharged the cargo from a ship.许多人从船上卸下货物。

46 fumbled   

（笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下

参考例句：

• She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. 她在她口袋里胡乱摸找手帕。
• He fumbled about in his pockets for the ticket. 他（瞎）摸着衣兜找票。

47 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。

48 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

49 dime   

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角

参考例句：

• A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
• The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

50 deserted   

adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的

参考例句：

• The deserted village was filled with a deathly silence.这个荒废的村庄死一般的寂静。
• The enemy chieftain was opposed and deserted by his followers.敌人头目众叛亲离。

51 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

52 gasp   

n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说

参考例句：

• She gave a gasp of surprise.她吃惊得大口喘气。
• The enemy are at their last gasp.敌人在做垂死的挣扎。

53 gasped   

v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要

参考例句：

• She gasped at the wonderful view. 如此美景使她惊讶得屏住了呼吸。
• People gasped with admiration at the superb skill of the gymnasts. 体操运动员的高超技艺令人赞叹。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

54 tar   

n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于

参考例句：

• The roof was covered with tar.屋顶涂抹了一层沥青。
• We use tar to make roads.我们用沥青铺路。

55 astonishment   

n.惊奇，惊异

参考例句：

• They heard him give a loud shout of astonishment.他们听见他惊奇地大叫一声。
• I was filled with astonishment at her strange action.我对她的奇怪举动不胜惊异。

56 gaily   

adv.欢乐地，高兴地

参考例句：

• The children sing gaily.孩子们欢唱着。
• She waved goodbye very gaily.她欢快地挥手告别。

57 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

58 freckles   

n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She had a wonderful clear skin with an attractive sprinkling of freckles. 她光滑的皮肤上有几处可爱的小雀斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• When she lies in the sun, her face gets covered in freckles. 她躺在阳光下时，脸上布满了斑点。 来自《简明英汉词典》

59 champagne   

n.香槟酒；微黄色

参考例句：

• There were two glasses of champagne on the tray.托盘里有两杯香槟酒。
• They sat there swilling champagne.他们坐在那里大喝香槟酒。

60 fleas   

n.跳蚤( flea的名词复数 )；爱财如命；没好气地（拒绝某人的要求）

参考例句：

• The dog has fleas. 这条狗有跳蚤。
• Nothing must be done hastily but killing of fleas. 除非要捉跳蚤，做事不可匆忙。 来自《简明英汉词典》

61 eloquently   

adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地)

参考例句：

• I was toasted by him most eloquently at the dinner. 进餐时他口若悬河地向我祝酒。
• The poet eloquently expresses the sense of lost innocence. 诗人动人地表达了失去天真的感觉。

62 eloquent   

adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• These ruins are an eloquent reminder of the horrors of war.这些废墟形象地提醒人们不要忘记战争的恐怖。

63 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。

64 screeching   

v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫

参考例句：

• Monkeys were screeching in the trees. 猴子在树上吱吱地叫着。
• the unedifying sight of the two party leaders screeching at each other 两党党魁狺狺对吠的讨厌情景

65 buzzer   

n.蜂鸣器；汽笛

参考例句：

• The buzzer went off at eight o'clock.蜂鸣器在8点钟时响了。
• Press the buzzer when you want to talk.你想讲话的时候就按蜂鸣器。

66 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

• They were united in their insistence that she should go to college.他们一致坚持她应上大学。
• His insistence upon strict obedience is correct.他坚持绝对服从是对的。

67 awakening   

n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的

参考例句：

• the awakening of interest in the environment 对环境产生的兴趣
• People are gradually awakening to their rights. 人们正逐渐意识到自己的权利。

68 streak   

n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动

参考例句：

• The Indians used to streak their faces with paint.印第安人过去常用颜料在脸上涂条纹。
• Why did you streak the tree?你为什么在树上刻条纹？

69 steadfast   

adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的

参考例句：

• Her steadfast belief never left her for one moment.她坚定的信仰从未动摇过。
• He succeeded in his studies by dint of steadfast application.由于坚持不懈的努力他获得了学业上的成功。

70 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

71 jewelry   

n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝

参考例句：

• The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
• Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。

72 skyscrapers   

n.摩天大楼

参考例句：

• A lot of skyscrapers in Manhattan are rising up to the skies. 曼哈顿有许多摩天大楼耸入云霄。
• On all sides, skyscrapers rose like jagged teeth. 四周耸起的摩天大楼参差不齐。

73 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

• A man comes round regularly collecting scrap.有个男人定时来收废品。
• Sell that car for scrap.把那辆汽车当残品卖了吧。

74 buffalo   

n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛

参考例句：

• Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
• The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。

75 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

76 streaks   

n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹

参考例句：

• streaks of grey in her hair 她头上的绺绺白发
• Bacon has streaks of fat and streaks of lean. 咸肉中有几层肥的和几层瘦的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

77 whine   

v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣

参考例句：

• You are getting paid to think,not to whine.支付给你工资是让你思考而不是哀怨的。
• The bullet hit a rock and rocketed with a sharp whine.子弹打在一块岩石上，一声尖厉的呼啸，跳飞开去。

78 filthy   

adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
• You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发，然后再去买张新的。

79 plumbing   

n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究

参考例句：

• She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche. 她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。
• They're going to have to put in new plumbing. 他们将需要安装新的水管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

80 clogged   

（使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞

参考例句：

• The narrow streets were clogged with traffic. 狭窄的街道上交通堵塞。
• The intake of gasoline was stopped by a clogged fuel line. 汽油的注入由于管道阻塞而停止了。

81 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。

82 stinking   

adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• I was pushed into a filthy, stinking room. 我被推进一间又脏又臭的屋子里。
• Those lousy, stinking ships. It was them that destroyed us. 是的！就是那些该死的蠢猪似的臭飞船！是它们毁了我们。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

83 camouflage   

n./v.掩饰，伪装

参考例句：

• The white fur of the polar bear is a natural camouflage.北极熊身上的白色的浓密软毛是一种天然的伪装。
• The animal's markings provide effective camouflage.这种动物身上的斑纹是很有效的伪装。

84 gaudy   

adj.华而不实的；俗丽的

参考例句：

• She was tricked out in gaudy dress.她穿得华丽而俗气。
• The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.浮华的蝴蝶却相信花是应该向它道谢的。

85 tinkling   

n.丁当作响声

参考例句：

• I could hear bells tinkling in the distance. 我能听到远处叮当铃响。
• To talk to him was like listening to the tinkling of a worn-out musical-box. 跟他说话，犹如听一架老掉牙的八音盒子丁冬响。 来自英汉文学

86 reverently   

adv.虔诚地

参考例句：

• He gazed reverently at the handiwork. 他满怀敬意地凝视着这件手工艺品。
• Pork gazed at it reverently and slowly delight spread over his face. 波克怀着愉快的心情看着这只表，脸上慢慢显出十分崇敬的神色。

87 brooks   

n.小溪( brook的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Brooks gave the business when Haas caught him with his watch. 哈斯抓到偷他的手表的布鲁克斯时，狠狠地揍了他一顿。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Ade and Brooks exchanged blows yesterday and they were severely punished today. 艾德和布鲁克斯昨天打起来了，今天他们受到严厉的惩罚。 来自《简明英汉词典》

88 gulp   

vt.吞咽，大口地吸（气）；vi.哽住；n.吞咽

参考例句：

• She took down the tablets in one gulp.她把那些药片一口吞了下去。
• Don't gulp your food,chew it before you swallow it.吃东西不要狼吞虎咽，要嚼碎了再咽下去。

89 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。

90 sullen   

adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的

参考例句：

• He looked up at the sullen sky.他抬头看了一眼阴沉的天空。
• Susan was sullen in the morning because she hadn't slept well.苏珊今天早上郁闷不乐，因为昨晚没睡好。

91 sullenly   

不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地

参考例句：

• 'so what?" Tom said sullenly. “那又怎么样呢？”汤姆绷着脸说。
• Emptiness after the paper, I sIt'sullenly in front of the stove. 报看完，想不出能找点什么事做，只好一人坐在火炉旁生气。

92 cuff   

n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口

参考例句：

• She hoped they wouldn't cuff her hands behind her back.她希望他们不要把她反铐起来。
• Would you please draw together the snag in my cuff?请你把我袖口上的裂口缝上好吗？

93 ashtrays   

烟灰缸( ashtray的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A simple question: why are there ashtrays in a no-smoking restaurant? 问题是：一个禁止吸烟的餐厅为什么会有烟灰缸呢？
• Avoid temptation by throwing away all cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays. 把所有的香烟，打火机，和烟灰缸扔掉以避免引诱。

94 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

95 smelting   

n.熔炼v.熔炼，提炼（矿石）( smelt的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a method of smelting iron 一种炼铁方法
• Fire provided a means of smelting ores. 火提供了熔炼矿石的手段。 来自辞典例句

96 riddle   

n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜

参考例句：

• The riddle couldn't be solved by the child.这个谜语孩子猜不出来。
• Her disappearance is a complete riddle.她的失踪完全是一个谜。

97 industrialists   

n.工业家，实业家( industrialist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This deal will offer major benefits to industrialists and investors. 这笔交易将会让实业家和投资者受益匪浅。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The government has set up a committee of industrialists and academics to advise it. 政府已成立了一个实业家和学者的委员会来为其提供建议。 来自《简明英汉词典》

98 blighted   

adj.枯萎的，摧毁的

参考例句：

• Blighted stems often canker.有病的茎往往溃烂。
• She threw away a blighted rose.她把枯萎的玫瑰花扔掉了。

99 gape   

v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视

参考例句：

• His secretary stopped taking notes to gape at me.他的秘书停止了记录，目瞪口呆地望着我。
• He was not the type to wander round gaping at everything like a tourist.他不是那种像个游客似的四处闲逛、对什么都好奇张望的人。

100 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。

101 chuckle   

vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑

参考例句：

• He shook his head with a soft chuckle.他轻轻地笑着摇了摇头。
• I couldn't suppress a soft chuckle at the thought of it.想到这个，我忍不住轻轻地笑起来。

102 chuckled   

轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She chuckled at the memory. 想起这件事她就暗自发笑。
• She chuckled softly to herself as she remembered his astonished look. 想起他那惊讶的表情，她就轻轻地暗自发笑。

103 pal   

n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友

参考例句：

• He is a pal of mine.他是我的一个朋友。
• Listen,pal,I don't want you talking to my sister any more.听着，小子，我不让你再和我妹妹说话了。

104 suite   

n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员

参考例句：

• She has a suite of rooms in the hotel.她在那家旅馆有一套房间。
• That is a nice suite of furniture.那套家具很不错。

105 gravy   

n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快

参考例句：

• You have spilled gravy on the tablecloth.你把肉汁泼到台布上了。
• The meat was swimming in gravy.肉泡在浓汁之中。

106 chuckling   

轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I could hear him chuckling to himself as he read his book. 他看书时，我能听见他的轻声发笑。
• He couldn't help chuckling aloud. 他忍不住的笑了出来。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子

107 slumped   

大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的过去式和过去分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下]

参考例句：

• Sales have slumped this year. 今年销售量锐减。
• The driver was slumped exhausted over the wheel. 司机伏在方向盘上，疲惫得睡着了。

108 blurred   

v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离

参考例句：

• She suffered from dizziness and blurred vision. 她饱受头晕目眩之苦。
• Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears. 他们那种慢吞吞、含糊不清的声音在他听起来却很悦耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

109 devoid   

adj.全无的，缺乏的

参考例句：

• He is completely devoid of humour.他十分缺乏幽默。
• The house is totally devoid of furniture.这所房子里什么家具都没有。

110 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

111 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

112 impractical   

adj.不现实的，不实用的，不切实际的

参考例句：

• He was hopelessly impractical when it came to planning new projects.一到规划新项目，他就完全没有了实际操作的能力。
• An entirely rigid system is impractical.一套完全死板的体制是不实际的。

113 hue   

n.色度；色调；样子

参考例句：

• The diamond shone with every hue under the sun.金刚石在阳光下放出五颜六色的光芒。
• The same hue will look different in different light.同一颜色在不同的光线下看起来会有所不同。

114 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

115 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

116 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》

117 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。

118 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。

119 spotlight   

n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目

参考例句：

• This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
• The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。

120 niche   

n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等)

参考例句：

• Madeleine placed it carefully in the rocky niche. 玛德琳小心翼翼地把它放在岩石壁龛里。
• The really talented among women would always make their own niche.妇女中真正有才能的人总是各得其所。

121 sloppy   

adj.邋遢的，不整洁的

参考例句：

• If you do such sloppy work again,I promise I'll fail you.要是下次作业你再马马虎虎，我话说在头里，可要给你打不及格了。
• Mother constantly picked at him for being sloppy.母亲不断地批评他懒散。

122 sagging   

下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度

参考例句：

• The morale of the enemy troops is continuously sagging. 敌军的士气不断低落。
• We are sagging south. 我们的船正离开航线向南漂流。

123 posture   

n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势

参考例句：

• The government adopted an uncompromising posture on the issue of independence.政府在独立这一问题上采取了毫不妥协的态度。
• He tore off his coat and assumed a fighting posture.他脱掉上衣，摆出一副打架的架势。

124 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。

125 sipping   

v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She sat in the sun, idly sipping a cool drink. 她坐在阳光下懒洋洋地抿着冷饮。
• She sat there, sipping at her tea. 她坐在那儿抿着茶。

126 awed   

adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The audience was awed into silence by her stunning performance. 观众席上鸦雀无声，人们对他出色的表演感到惊叹。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I was awed by the huge gorilla. 那只大猩猩使我惊惧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

127 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

128 discomfort   

n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便

参考例句：

• One has to bear a little discomfort while travelling.旅行中总要忍受一点不便。
• She turned red with discomfort when the teacher spoke.老师讲话时她不好意思地红着脸。

129 nagging   

adj.唠叨的，挑剔的；使人不得安宁的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的现在分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责

参考例句：

• Stop nagging—I'll do it as soon as I can. 别唠叨了—我会尽快做的。
• I've got a nagging pain in my lower back. 我后背下方老是疼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

130 prospect   

n.前景，前途；景色，视野

参考例句：

• This state of things holds out a cheerful prospect.事态呈现出可喜的前景。
• The prospect became more evident.前景变得更加明朗了。

131 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

132 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

133 impatience   

n.不耐烦，急躁

参考例句：

• He expressed impatience at the slow rate of progress.进展缓慢，他显得不耐烦。
• He gave a stamp of impatience.他不耐烦地跺脚。

134 torment   

n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠

参考例句：

• He has never suffered the torment of rejection.他从未经受过遭人拒绝的痛苦。
• Now nothing aggravates me more than when people torment each other.没有什么东西比人们的互相折磨更使我愤怒。

135 scrambling   

v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Scrambling up her hair, she darted out of the house. 她匆忙扎起头发，冲出房去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She is scrambling eggs. 她正在炒蛋。 来自《简明英汉词典》

136 austere   

adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的

参考例句：

• His way of life is rather austere.他的生活方式相当简朴。
• The room was furnished in austere style.这间屋子的陈设都很简单朴素。

137 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

138 visualized   

直观的，直视的

参考例句：

• I had visualized scientists as bearded old men. 我曾经把科学家想像成长满胡子的老人。
• "I visualized mangled and inadequate branches for my fires. 我想像中出现了砍得乱七八糟的树枝子，供不上壁炉烧的。 来自名作英译部分

139 loathed   

v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢

参考例句：

• Baker loathed going to this red-haired young pup for supplies. 面包师傅不喜欢去这个红头发的自负的傻小子那里拿原料。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! 因此，他厌恶不幸的自我尤胜其它！ 来自英汉文学 - 红字

140 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。

141 pertain   

v.(to)附属，从属；关于；有关；适合，相称

参考例句：

• His remark did not pertain to the question.他的话同这个问题不相干。
• It does not pertain to you to instruct him.你不适合教训他。

142 flicker   

vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现

参考例句：

• There was a flicker of lights coming from the abandoned house.这所废弃的房屋中有灯光闪烁。
• At first,the flame may be a small flicker,barely shining.开始时，光辉可能是微弱地忽隐忽现，几乎并不灿烂。

143 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。

144 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》

145 silhouette   

n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓

参考例句：

• I could see its black silhouette against the evening sky.我能看到夜幕下它黑色的轮廓。
• I could see the silhouette of the woman in the pickup.我可以见到小卡车的女人黑色半身侧面影。

146 clatter   

v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声

参考例句：

• The dishes and bowls slid together with a clatter.碟子碗碰得丁丁当当的。
• Don't clatter your knives and forks.别把刀叉碰得咔哒响。

147 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。

148 overalls   

n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣

参考例句：

• He is in overalls today.他今天穿的是工作裤。
• He changed his overalls for a suit.他脱下工装裤，换上了一套西服。

149 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。

150 amalgamated   

v.（使）（金属）汞齐化( amalgamate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）合并；联合；结合

参考例句：

• The company has now amalgamated with another local firm. 这家公司现在已与当地一家公司合并了。
• Those two organizations have been amalgamated into single one. 那两个组织已合并为一个组织。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

151 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

152 deftly   

adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地

参考例句：

• He deftly folded the typed sheets and replaced them in the envelope. 他灵巧地将打有字的纸折好重新放回信封。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• At last he had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. 这一下终于让他发现了她的兴趣所在，于是他熟练地继续谈这个话题。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

153 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。

154 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

155 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

156 lug   

n.柄，突出部，螺帽；(英）耳朵；（俚）笨蛋；vt.拖，拉，用力拖动

参考例句：

• Nobody wants to lug around huge suitcases full of clothes.谁都不想拖着个装满衣服的大箱子到处走。
• Do I have to lug those suitcases all the way to the station?难道非要我把那些手提箱一直拉到车站去吗？

157 dubiously   

adv.可疑地，怀疑地

参考例句：

• "What does he have to do?" queried Chin dubiously. “他有什么心事？”琴向觉民问道，她的脸上现出疑惑不解的神情。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• He walked out fast, leaving the head waiter staring dubiously at the flimsy blue paper. 他很快地走出去，撇下侍者头儿半信半疑地瞪着这张薄薄的蓝纸。 来自辞典例句

158 shrouded   

v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密

参考例句：

• The hills were shrouded in mist . 这些小山被笼罩在薄雾之中。
• The towers were shrouded in mist. 城楼被蒙上薄雾。 来自《简明英汉词典》

159 honeymoon   

n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月

参考例句：

• While on honeymoon in Bali,she learned to scuba dive.她在巴厘岛度蜜月时学会了带水肺潜水。
• The happy pair are leaving for their honeymoon.这幸福的一对就要去度蜜月了。

160 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

161 retrench   

v.节省，削减

参考例句：

• Shortly afterwards,cuts in defence spending forced the aerospace industry to retrench.不久之后，国防开支的削减迫使航空航天业紧缩开支。
• Inflation has forced us to retrench.因通货膨胀我们不得不紧缩开支。

162 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

163 competence   

n.能力，胜任，称职

参考例句：

• This mess is a poor reflection on his competence.这种混乱情况说明他难当此任。
• These are matters within the competence of the court.这些是法院权限以内的事。

164 jolt   

v.（使）摇动，（使）震动，（使）颠簸

参考例句：

• We were worried that one tiny jolt could worsen her injuries.我们担心稍微颠簸一下就可能会使她的伤势恶化。
• They were working frantically in the fear that an aftershock would jolt the house again.他们拼命地干着，担心余震可能会使房子再次受到震动。

165 haze   

n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊

参考例句：

• I couldn't see her through the haze of smoke.在烟雾弥漫中，我看不见她。
• He often lives in a haze of whisky.他常常是在威士忌的懵懂醉意中度过的。

166 reassured   

adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The captain's confidence during the storm reassured the passengers. 在风暴中船长的信念使旅客们恢复了信心。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The doctor reassured the old lady. 医生叫那位老妇人放心。 来自《简明英汉词典》

167 reassuring   

a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的

参考例句：

• He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 他轻拍了一下她的肩膀让她放心。
• With a reassuring pat on her arm, he left. 他鼓励地拍了拍她的手臂就离开了。

168 commuter   

n.(尤指市郊之间)乘公交车辆上下班者

参考例句：

• Police cordoned off the road and diverted commuter traffic. 警察封锁了道路并分流交通。
• She accidentally stepped on his foot on a crowded commuter train. 她在拥挤的通勤列车上不小心踩到了他的脚。

169 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

• We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。
• He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

170 wrench   

v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受

参考例句：

• He gave a wrench to his ankle when he jumped down.他跳下去的时候扭伤了足踝。
• It was a wrench to leave the old home.离开这个老家非常痛苦。

171 alley   

n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路

参考例句：

• We live in the same alley.我们住在同一条小巷里。
• The blind alley ended in a brick wall.这条死胡同的尽头是砖墙。

172 plank   

n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目

参考例句：

• The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
• They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。

173 demolished   

v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
• They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来，为了不让拆除他们的房子，他们一直在进行最后的努力。

174 planks   

（厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点

参考例句：

• The house was built solidly of rough wooden planks. 这房子是用粗木板牢固地建造的。
• We sawed the log into planks. 我们把木头锯成了木板。

175 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

176 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

177 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

178 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。

179 Flared   

adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The match flared and went out. 火柴闪亮了一下就熄了。
• The fire flared up when we thought it was out. 我们以为火已经熄灭，但它突然又燃烧起来。

180 flaring   

a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的

参考例句：

• A vulgar flaring paper adorned the walls. 墙壁上装饰着廉价的花纸。
• Goebbels was flaring up at me. 戈塔尔当时已对我面呈愠色。

181 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。

182 lighter   

n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级

参考例句：

• The portrait was touched up so as to make it lighter.这张画经过润色，色调明朗了一些。
• The lighter works off the car battery.引燃器利用汽车蓄电池打火。

183 cowardice   

n.胆小，怯懦

参考例句：

• His cowardice reflects on his character.他的胆怯对他的性格带来不良影响。
• His refusal to help simply pinpointed his cowardice.他拒绝帮助正显示他的胆小。

184 hypocrisy   

n.伪善，虚伪

参考例句：

• He railed against hypocrisy and greed.他痛斥伪善和贪婪的行为。
• He accused newspapers of hypocrisy in their treatment of the story.他指责了报纸在报道该新闻时的虚伪。

185 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。

186 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

187 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。

188 spouted   

adj.装有嘴的v.（指液体）喷出( spout的过去式和过去分词 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水

参考例句：

• The broken pipe spouted water all over the room. 破裂的水管喷了一屋子的水。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The lecturer spouted for hours. 讲师滔滔不绝地讲了几个小时。 来自《简明英汉词典》

189 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

190 undertaking   

n.保证，许诺，事业

参考例句：

• He gave her an undertaking that he would pay the money back with in a year.他向她做了一年内还钱的保证。
• He is too timid to venture upon an undertaking.他太胆小，不敢从事任何事业。

191 installment   

n.(instalment)分期付款；(连载的)一期

参考例句：

• I shall soon pay the last installment of my debt.不久我将偿付我的最后一期债款。
• He likes to buy things on the installment plan.他喜欢用分期付款法购买货物。

192 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

193 scrapped   

废弃(scrap的过去式与过去分词)； 打架

参考例句：

• This machine is so old that it will soon have to be scrapped. 这架机器太旧，快报废了。
• It had been thought that passport controls would be scrapped. 人们曾认为会放开护照管制。

194 bum   

n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨

参考例句：

• A man pinched her bum on the train so she hit him.在火车上有人捏她屁股，她打了那人。
• The penniless man had to bum a ride home.那个身无分文的人只好乞求搭车回家。

195 exhaustion   

n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述

参考例句：

• She slept the sleep of exhaustion.她因疲劳而酣睡。
• His exhaustion was obvious when he fell asleep standing.他站着睡着了，显然是太累了。

196 casually   

adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地

参考例句：

• She remarked casually that she was changing her job.她当时漫不经心地说要换工作。
• I casually mentioned that I might be interested in working abroad.我不经意地提到我可能会对出国工作感兴趣。

197 strap   

n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎

参考例句：

• She held onto a strap to steady herself.她抓住拉手吊带以便站稳。
• The nurse will strap up your wound.护士会绑扎你的伤口。

198 appraisal   

n.对…作出的评价；评价，鉴定，评估

参考例句：

• What's your appraisal of the situation?你对局势是如何评估的？
• We need to make a proper appraisal of his work.对于他的工作我们需要做出适当的评价。

199 regain   

vt.重新获得，收复，恢复

参考例句：

• He is making a bid to regain his World No.1 ranking.他正为重登世界排名第一位而努力。
• The government is desperate to regain credibility with the public.政府急于重新获取公众的信任。

200 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

201 enamel   

n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质

参考例句：

• I chipped the enamel on my front tooth when I fell over.我跌倒时门牙的珐琅质碰碎了。
• He collected coloured enamel bowls from Yugoslavia.他藏有来自南斯拉夫的彩色搪瓷碗。

202 billboard   

n.布告板，揭示栏，广告牌

参考例句：

• He ploughed his energies into his father's billboard business.他把精力投入到父亲的广告牌业务中。
• Billboard spreads will be simpler and more eye-catching.广告牌广告会比较简单且更引人注目。

203 bleached   

漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的

参考例句：

• His hair was bleached by the sun . 他的头发被太阳晒得发白。
• The sun has bleached her yellow skirt. 阳光把她的黄裙子晒得褪色了。

204 lustrous   

adj.有光泽的；光辉的

参考例句：

• Mary has a head of thick,lustrous,wavy brown hair.玛丽有一头浓密、富有光泽的褐色鬈发。
• This mask definitely makes the skin fair and lustrous.这款面膜可以异常有用的使肌肤变亮和有光泽。

205 billboards   

n.广告牌( billboard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Large billboards have disfigured the scenery. 大型告示板已破坏了景色。 来自辞典例句
• Then, put the logo in magazines and on billboards without telling anyone what it means. 接着我们把这个商标刊在杂志和广告看板上，却不跟任何人透漏它的涵意。 来自常春藤生活英语杂志-2006年4月号

206 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。

207 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

208 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。

209 ledges   

n.（墙壁，悬崖等）突出的狭长部分( ledge的名词复数 )；（平窄的）壁架；横档；（尤指）窗台

参考例句：

• seabirds nesting on rocky ledges 海鸟在岩架上筑巢
• A rusty ironrod projected mournfully from one of the window ledges. 一个窗架上突出一根生锈的铁棒，真是满目凄凉。 来自辞典例句

210 rusted   

v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I can't get these screws out; they've rusted in. 我无法取出这些螺丝，它们都锈住了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• My bike has rusted and needs oil. 我的自行车生锈了，需要上油。 来自《简明英汉词典》

211 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。

212 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。

213 tremor   

n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震

参考例句：

• There was a slight tremor in his voice.他的声音有点颤抖。
• A slight earth tremor was felt in California.加利福尼亚发生了轻微的地震。

214 contraction   

n.缩略词，缩写式，害病

参考例句：

• The contraction of this muscle raises the lower arm.肌肉的收缩使前臂抬起。
• The forces of expansion are balanced by forces of contraction.扩张力和收缩力相互平衡。

215 accomplices   

从犯，帮凶，同谋( accomplice的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was given away by one of his accomplices. 他被一个同伙出卖了。
• The chief criminals shall be punished without fail, those who are accomplices under duress shall go unpunished and those who perform deeds of merIt'shall be rewarded. 首恶必办， 胁从不问，立功受奖。

216 shameful   

adj.可耻的，不道德的

参考例句：

• It is very shameful of him to show off.他向人炫耀自己，真不害臊。
• We must expose this shameful activity to the newspapers.我们一定要向报社揭露这一无耻行径。

217 crooked   

adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He crooked a finger to tell us to go over to him.他弯了弯手指，示意我们到他那儿去。
• You have to drive slowly on these crooked country roads.在这些弯弯曲曲的乡间小路上你得慢慢开车。

218 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。

219 tottering   

adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠

参考例句：

• the tottering walls of the castle 古城堡摇摇欲坠的墙壁
• With power and to spare we must pursue the tottering foe. 宜将剩勇追穷寇。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

220 diesel   

n.柴油发动机，内燃机

参考例句：

• We experimented with diesel engines to drive the pumps.我们试着用柴油机来带动水泵。
• My tractor operates on diesel oil.我的那台拖拉机用柴油开动。

221 reclaim   

v.要求归还，收回；开垦

参考例句：

• I have tried to reclaim my money without success.我没能把钱取回来。
• You must present this ticket when you reclaim your luggage.当你要取回行李时，必须出示这张票子。

222 inquiries   

n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听

参考例句：

• He was released on bail pending further inquiries. 他获得保释，等候进一步调查。
• I have failed to reach them by postal inquiries. 我未能通过邮政查询与他们取得联系。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

223 diesels   

柴油( diesel的名词复数 )； 柴油机机车（或船等）

参考例句：

• The diesels roared, the conductors jumped aboard, and off the train went. 内燃机发出轰鸣声，列车员跳上车厢，火车开走了。
• The diesels catch and roar, a welcome sound. 柴油机开动，发生了怒吼，这是令人鼓舞的声音。

224 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

225 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

226 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。

227 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

228 cylinder   

n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸

参考例句：

• What's the volume of this cylinder?这个圆筒的体积有多少？
• The cylinder is getting too much gas and not enough air.汽缸里汽油太多而空气不足。

229 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

230 slab   

n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上

参考例句：

• This heavy slab of oak now stood between the bomb and Hitler.这时笨重的橡木厚板就横在炸弹和希特勒之间了。
• The monument consists of two vertical pillars supporting a horizontal slab.这座纪念碑由两根垂直的柱体构成，它们共同支撑着一块平板。

231 chunks   

厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分

参考例句：

• a tin of pineapple chunks 一罐菠萝块
• Those chunks of meat are rather large—could you chop them up a bIt'smaller? 这些肉块相当大，还能再切小一点吗？

232 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。

233 slanted   

有偏见的； 倾斜的

参考例句：

• The sun slanted through the window. 太阳斜照进窗户。
• She had slanted brown eyes. 她有一双棕色的丹凤眼。

234 punctured   

v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气

参考例句：

• Some glass on the road punctured my new tyre. 路上的玻璃刺破了我的新轮胎。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A nail on the road punctured the tyre. 路上的钉子把车胎戳穿了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

235 vertical   

adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置

参考例句：

• The northern side of the mountain is almost vertical.这座山的北坡几乎是垂直的。
• Vertical air motions are not measured by this system.垂直气流的运动不用这种系统来测量。

236 gutted   

adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏

参考例句：

• Disappointed? I was gutted! 失望？我是伤心透了！
• The invaders gutted the historic building. 侵略者们将那幢历史上有名的建筑洗劫一空。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

237 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

238 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

239 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

240 sockets   

n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴

参考例句：

• All new PCs now have USB sockets. 新的个人计算机现在都有通用串行总线插孔。
• Make sure the sockets in your house are fingerproof. 确保你房中的插座是防触电的。 来自超越目标英语 第4册

241 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》

242 fortress   

n.堡垒，防御工事

参考例句：

• They made an attempt on a fortress.他们试图夺取这一要塞。
• The soldier scaled the wall of the fortress by turret.士兵通过塔车攀登上了要塞的城墙。

243 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

244 shuffling   

adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• Don't go shuffling along as if you were dead. 别像个死人似地拖着脚走。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Some one was shuffling by on the sidewalk. 外面的人行道上有人拖着脚走过。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

245 swollen   

adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀

参考例句：

• Her legs had got swollen from standing up all day.因为整天站着，她的双腿已经肿了。
• A mosquito had bitten her and her arm had swollen up.蚊子叮了她，她的手臂肿起来了。

246 soot   

n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟

参考例句：

• Soot is the product of the imperfect combustion of fuel.煤烟是燃料不完全燃烧的产物。
• The chimney was choked with soot.烟囱被煤灰堵塞了。

247 propped   

支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He sat propped up in the bed by pillows. 他靠着枕头坐在床上。
• This fence should be propped up. 这栅栏该用东西支一支。

248 porcelain   

n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的

参考例句：

• These porcelain plates have rather original designs on them.这些瓷盘的花纹很别致。
• The porcelain vase is enveloped in cotton.瓷花瓶用棉花裹着。

249 wilted   

（使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The flowers wilted in the hot sun. 花在烈日下枯萎了。
• The romance blossomed for six or seven months, and then wilted. 那罗曼史持续六七个月之后就告吹了。

250 ragged   

adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的

参考例句：

• A ragged shout went up from the small crowd.这一小群人发出了刺耳的喊叫。
• Ragged clothing infers poverty.破衣烂衫意味着贫穷。

251 savages   

未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There're some savages living in the forest. 森林里居住着一些野人。
• That's an island inhabited by savages. 那是一个野蛮人居住的岛屿。

252 waddled   

v.（像鸭子一样）摇摇摆摆地走( waddle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A family of ducks waddled along the river bank. 一群鸭子沿河岸摇摇摆摆地走。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The stout old man waddled across the road. 那肥胖的老人一跩一跩地穿过马路。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

253 darted   

v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔

参考例句：

• The lizard darted out its tongue at the insect. 蜥蜴伸出舌头去吃小昆虫。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The old man was displeased and darted an angry look at me. 老人不高兴了，瞪了我一眼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

254 furtive   

adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的

参考例句：

• The teacher was suspicious of the student's furtive behaviour during the exam.老师怀疑这个学生在考试时有偷偷摸摸的行为。
• His furtive behaviour aroused our suspicion.他鬼鬼祟祟的行为引起了我们的怀疑。

255 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。

256 creek   

n.小溪，小河，小湾

参考例句：

• He sprang through the creek.他跳过小河。
• People sunbathe in the nude on the rocks above the creek.人们在露出小溪的岩石上裸体晒日光浴。

257 shrill   

adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫

参考例句：

• Whistles began to shrill outside the barn.哨声开始在谷仓外面尖叫。
• The shrill ringing of a bell broke up the card game on the cutter.刺耳的铃声打散了小汽艇的牌局。

258 crevices   

n.（尤指岩石的）裂缝，缺口( crevice的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• It has bedded into the deepest crevices of the store. 它已钻进了店里最隐避的隙缝。 来自辞典例句
• The wind whistled through the crevices in the rock. 风呼啸着吹过岩石的缝隙。 来自辞典例句

259 vapidly   

adv.乏味地；无滋味地；无趣味地；无生气地

参考例句：

260 resentment   

n.怨愤，忿恨

参考例句：

• All her feelings of resentment just came pouring out.她一股脑儿倾吐出所有的怨恨。
• She cherished a deep resentment under the rose towards her employer.她暗中对她的雇主怀恨在心。

261 imprinted   

v.盖印（imprint的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The terrible scenes were indelibly imprinted on his mind. 那些恐怖场面深深地铭刻在他的心中。
• The scene was imprinted on my mind. 那个场面铭刻在我的心中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

262 plow   

n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough

参考例句：

• At this time of the year farmers plow their fields.每年这个时候农民们都在耕地。
• We will plow the field soon after the last frost.最后一场霜过后，我们将马上耕田。

263 civilized   

a.有教养的，文雅的

参考例句：

• Racism is abhorrent to a civilized society. 文明社会憎恶种族主义。
• rising crime in our so-called civilized societies 在我们所谓文明社会中日益增多的犯罪行为

264 lasting   

adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持

参考例句：

• The lasting war debased the value of the dollar.持久的战争使美元贬值。
• We hope for a lasting settlement of all these troubles.我们希望这些纠纷能获得永久的解决。

265 hissing   

n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The steam escaped with a loud hissing noise. 蒸汽大声地嘶嘶冒了出来。
• His ears were still hissing with the rustle of the leaves. 他耳朵里还听得萨萨萨的声音和屑索屑索的怪声。 来自汉英文学 - 春蚕

266 annexes   

并吞( annex的名词复数 )； 兼并； 强占； 并吞（国家、地区等）； 附加物，附属建筑( annexe的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Annexes to this Agreement are an integral part of this Agreement. 本协定的附件为本协定的组成部分。
• Annexes 1 to 2 form the integral part of the Contract. 附件一至二将作为本合同的有效组成部分。

267 wrecking   

破坏

参考例句：

• He teed off on his son for wrecking the car. 他严厉训斥他儿子毁坏了汽车。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Instead of wrecking the valley, the waters are put to use making electricity. 现在河水不但不在流域内肆疟，反而被人们用来生产电力。 来自辞典例句

268 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

• I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
• The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。

269 autopsy   

n.尸体解剖；尸检

参考例句：

• They're carrying out an autopsy on the victim.他们正在给受害者验尸。
• A hemorrhagic gut was the predominant lesion at autopsy.尸检的主要发现是肠出血。

270 protruded   

v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The child protruded his tongue. 那小孩伸出舌头。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The creature's face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. 那人的脑袋似乎向前突出，那是因为身子佝偻的缘故。 来自英汉文学

271 outlets   

n.出口( outlet的名词复数 )；经销店；插座；廉价经销店

参考例句：

• The dumping of foreign cotton blocked outlets for locally grown cotton. 外国棉花的倾销阻滞了当地生产的棉花的销路。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They must find outlets for their products. 他们必须为自己的产品寻找出路。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

272 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

273 rustled   

v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He rustled his papers. 他把试卷弄得沙沙地响。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Leaves rustled gently in the breeze. 树叶迎着微风沙沙作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

274 popcorn   

n.爆米花

参考例句：

• I like to eat popcorn when I am watching TV play at home.当我在家观看电视剧时，喜欢吃爆米花。
• He still stood behind his cash register stuffing his mouth with popcorn.他仍站在收银机后，嘴里塞满了爆米花。

275 confession   

n.自白，供认，承认

参考例句：

• Her confession was simply tantamount to a casual explanation.她的自白简直等于一篇即席说明。
• The police used torture to extort a confession from him.警察对他用刑逼供。

276 extricate   

v.拯救，救出；解脱

参考例句：

• How can we extricate the firm from this trouble?我们该如何承救公司脱离困境呢？
• She found it impossible to extricate herself from the relationship.她发现不可能把自己从这种关系中解脱出来。

277 tarnished   

（通常指金属）（使）失去光泽，（使）变灰暗( tarnish的过去式和过去分词 )； 玷污，败坏

参考例句：

• The mirrors had tarnished with age. 这些镜子因年深日久而照影不清楚。
• His bad behaviour has tarnished the good name of the school. 他行为不轨，败坏了学校的声誉。

278 tarnish   

n.晦暗，污点；vt.使失去光泽；玷污

参考例句：

• The affair could tarnish the reputation of the prime minister.这一事件可能有损首相的名誉。
• Stainless steel products won't tarnish.不锈钢产品不会失去光泽。

279 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

280 smeared   

弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上

参考例句：

• The children had smeared mud on the walls. 那几个孩子往墙上抹了泥巴。
• A few words were smeared. 有写字被涂模糊了。

281 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。

282 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。

283 invaluable   

adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的

参考例句：

• A computer would have been invaluable for this job.一台计算机对这个工作的作用会是无法估计的。
• This information was invaluable to him.这个消息对他来说是非常宝贵的。

284 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

285 automobiles   

n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后，就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上，汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

286 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。

287 hordes   

n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落

参考例句：

• There are always hordes of tourists here in the summer. 夏天这里总有成群结队的游客。
• Hordes of journalists jostled for position outside the conference hall. 大群记者在会堂外争抢位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》

288 desecration   

n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱

参考例句：

• Desecration, and so forth, and lectured you on dignity and sanctity. 比如亵渎神圣等。想用尊严和神圣不可侵犯之类的话来打动你们。
• Desecration: will no longer break stealth. 亵渎：不再消除潜行。

289 communal   

adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的

参考例句：

• There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
• The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。

290 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。

291 smears   

污迹( smear的名词复数 )； 污斑； （显微镜的）涂片； 诽谤

参考例句：

• His evidence was a blend of smears, half truths and downright lies. 他的证词里掺杂着诽谤、部份的事实和彻头彻尾的谎言。
• Anything written with a soft pencil smears easily. 用软铅笔写成的东西容易污成一片。