PART III A is A CHAPTER I ATLANTIS

When she opened her eyes, she saw sunlight, green leaves and a man's face. She thought: I know what this is. This was the world as she had expected to see it at sixteen-and now she had reached it-and it seemed so simple, so unastonishing, that the thing she felt was like a blessing² pronounced upon the universe by means of three words: But of course.  She was looking up at the face of a man who knelt by her side, and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she would have given her life to see: a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt³. The shape of his mouth was pride, and more: it was as if he took pride in being proud. The angular planes of his cheeks made her think of arrogance⁴, of tension, of scorn-yet the face had none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene⁵ determination and of certainty, and the look of a ruthless innocence⁶ which would not seek forgiveness or grant it. It was a face that had nothing to hide or to escape, a face with no fear of being seen, or of seeing, so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness⁸ of his eyes-he looked as if his faculty⁹ of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous¹⁰ adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world-to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that she was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness-yet she had never been so aware of a man's body. The light cloth of his shirt seemed to stress, rather than hide, the structure of his figure, his skin was suntanned, his body had the hardness, the gaunt, tensile strength, the clean precision of a foundry casting, he looked as if he were poured out of metal, but some dimmed, soft-lustered metal, like an aluminum-copper¹¹ alloy¹², the color of his skin blending with the chestnut-brown of his hair, the loose strands¹⁴ of the hair shading from brown to gold in the sun, and his eyes completing the colors, as the one part of the casting left undimmed and harshly lustrous¹⁵: his eyes were the deep, dark green of light glinting on metal.  He was looking down at her with the faint trace of a smile, it was not a look of discovery, but of familiar contemplation-as if he, too, were seeing the long-expected and the never-doubted.  This was her world, she thought, this was the way men were meant to be and to face their existence-and all the rest of it, all the years of ugliness and struggle were only someone's senseless joke. She smiled at him, as at a fellow conspirator¹⁶, in relief, in deliverance, in radiant mockery of all the things she would never have to consider important again. He smiled in answer, it was the same smile as her own, as if he felt what she felt and knew what she meant.  "We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?" she whispered.  "No, we never had to."  And then, her consciousness returning fully¹⁷, she realized that this man was a total stranger.  She tried to draw away from him, but it was only a faint movement of her head on the grass she felt under her hair. She tried to rise.  A shot of pain across her back threw her down again.  "Don't move, Miss Taggart. You're hurt."  "You know me?" Her voice was impersonal¹⁸ and hard.  "I've known you for many years."  "Have I known you?"  "Yes, I think so."  "What is your name?"  "John Galt."  She looked at him, not moving.  "Why are you frightened?" he asked.  "Because I believe it."  He smiled, as if grasping a full confession¹⁹ of the meaning she attached to his name; the smile held an adversary²⁰'s acceptance of a challenge-and an adult's amusement at the self-deception of a child.  She felt as if she were returning to consciousness after a crash that had shattered more than an airplane. She could not reassemble the pieces now, she could not recall the things she had known about his name, she knew only that it stood for a dark vacuum which she would slowly have to fill. She could not do it now, this man was too blinding a presence, like a spotlight²¹ that would not let her see the shapes strewn hi the outer darkness.  "Was it you that I was following?" she asked.  "Yes."  She glanced slowly around her. She was lying in the grass of a field at the foot of a granite²² drop that came down from thousands of feet away in the blue sky. On the other edge of the field, some crags and pines and the glittering leaves of birch trees hid the space that stretched to a distant wall of encircling mountains. Her plane was not shattered-it was there, a few feet away, flat on its belly²³ in the grass. There was no other plane in sight, no structures, no sign of human habitation.  "What is this valley?" she asked.  He smiled, "The Taggart Terminal."  "What do you mean?"  "You'll find out."  A dim impulse, like the recoil²⁴ of an antagonist²⁵, made her want to check on what strength was left to her. She could move her arms and legs; she could lift her head; she felt a stabbing pain when she breathed deeply; she saw a thin thread of blood running down her stocking.  "Can one get out of this place?" she asked.  His voice seemed earnest, but the glint of the metal-green eyes was a smile: "Actually-no. Temporarily-yes."  She made a movement to rise. He bent²⁶ to lift her, but she gathered her strength in a swift, sudden jolt²⁷ and slipped out of his grasp, struggling to stand up. "I think I can-" she started saying, and collapsed²⁸ against him the instant her feet rested on the ground, a stab of pain shooting up from an ankle that would not hold her.  He lifted her in his arms and smiled. "No, you can't, Miss Taggart," he said, and started off across the field.  She lay still, her arms about him, her head on his shoulder, and she thought: For just a few moments-while this lasts-it is all right to surrender completely-to forget everything and just permit yourself to feel. . . . When had she experienced it before?-she wondered; there had been a moment when these had been the words in her mind, but she could not remember it now. She had known it, once-this feeling of certainty, of the final, the reached, the not-to-be-questioned. But it was new to feel protected, and to feel that it was right to accept the protection, to surrender-right, because this peculiar³⁰ sense of safety was not protection against the future, but against the past, not the protection of being spared from battle, but of having won it, not a protection granted to her weakness, but to her strength. . . . Aware with abnormal intensity³¹ of the pressure of his hands against her body, of the gold and copper threads of his hair, the shadows of his lashes³² on the skin of his face a few inches away from hers, she wondered dimly: Protected, from what? . . . it's he who was the enemy . . . was he?. . . why? . . . She did not know, she could not think of it now. It took an effort to remember that she had had a goal and a motive³³ a few hours ago. She forced herself to recapture it.  "Did you know that I was following you?" she asked.  "No."  "Where is your plane?"  "At the landing field."  "Where is the landing field?"  "On the other side of the valley."  "There was no landing field in this valley, when I looked down, There was no meadow, either. How did it get here?"  He glanced at the sky. "Look carefully. Do you see anything up there?"  She dropped her head back, looking straight into the sky, seeing nothing but the peaceful blue of morning. After a while she distinguished³⁴ a few faint strips of shimmering³⁵ air.  "Heat waves," she said.  "Refractor rays," he answered. "The valley bottom that you saw is a mountain top eight thousand feet high, five miles away from here."  "A . . . what?"  "A mountain top that no flyer would ever choose for a landing.  What you saw was its reflection projected over this valley."  "How?"  "By the same method as a mirage³⁶ on a desert: an image refracted from a layer of heated air."  "How?"  "By a screen of rays calculated against everything-except a courage such as yours."  "What do you mean?"  "I never thought that any plane would attempt to drop within seven hundred feet of the ground. You hit the ray screen. Some of the rays are the kind that kill magnetic motors. Well, that's the second time you beat me: I've never been followed, either."  "Why do you keep that screen?"  "Because this place is private property intended to remain as such."  "What is this place?"  "I'll show it to you, now that you're here, Miss Taggart. I'll answer questions after you've seen it."  She remained silent. She noticed that she had asked questions about every subject, but not about him. It was as if he were a single whole, grasped by her first glance at him, like some irreducible absolute, like an axiom not to be explained any further, as if she knew everything about him by direct perception, and what awaited her now was only the process of identifying her knowledge.  He was carrying her down a narrow trail that went winding³⁸ to the bottom of the valley. On the slopes around them, the tall, dark pyramids of firs stood immovably straight, in masculine simplicity³⁹, like sculpture reduced to an essential form, and they clashed with the complex, feminine, over detailed⁴⁰ lace-work of the birch leaves trembling in the sun.  The leaves let the sunrays fall through to sweep across his hair, across both their faces. She could not see what lay below, beyond the turns of the trail.  Her eyes kept coming back to his face. He glanced down at her once in a while. At first, she looked away, as if she had been caught. Then, as if learning it from him, she held his glance whenever he chose to look down-knowing that he knew what she felt and that he did not hide from her the meaning of his glance.  She knew that his silence was the same confession as her own. He did not hold her in the impersonal manner of a man carrying a wounded woman. It was an embrace, even though she felt no suggestion of it in his bearing; she felt it only by means of her certainty that his whole body was aware of holding hers.  She heard the sound of the waterfall before she saw the fragile thread that fell in broken strips of glitter down the ledges⁴². The sound came through some dim beat in her mind, some faint rhythm that seemed no louder than a struggling memory-but they went past and the beat remained; she listened to the sound of the water, but another sound seemed to grow clearer, rising, not in her mind, but from somewhere among the leaves. The trail turned, and in a sudden clearing she saw a small house on a ledge³⁷ below, with a flash of sun on the pane⁴³ of an open window. In the moment when she knew what experience had once made her want to surrender to the immediate⁴⁴ present-it had been the night in a dusty coach of the Comet, when she had heard the. theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto⁴⁵ for the first time-she knew that she was hearing it now, hearing it rise from the keyboard of a piano, in the clear, sharp chords of someone's powerful, confident touch.  She snapped the question at his face, as if hoping to catch him unprepared: "That's the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley, isn't it?"  "Yes."  "When did he write it?"  "Why don't you ask him that in person?"  "Is he here?"  "It's he who's playing it. That's his house."  "Oh . . . !"  "You'll meet him, later. He'll be glad to speak to you. He knows that his works are the only records you like to play, in the evening, when you are alone."  "How does he know that?"  "I told him."  The look on her face was like a question that would have begun with "How in hell . . . ?"-but she saw the look of his eyes, and she laughed, her laughter giving sound to the meaning of his glance. She could not question anything, she thought, she could not doubt, not now-not with the sound of that music rising triumphantly⁴⁷ through the sun-drenched leaves, the music of release, of deliverance, played as it was intended to be played, as her mind had struggled to hear it in a rocking coach through the beat of wounded wheels-it was this that her mind had seen in the sounds, that night-this valley and the morning sun and-And then she gasped⁴⁹, because the trail had turned and from the height of an open ledge she saw the town on the floor of the valley.  It was not a town, only a cluster of houses scattered⁵¹ at random⁵² from the bottom to the rising steps of the mountains that went on rising above their roofs, enclosing them within an abrupt⁵³, impassable circle.  They were homes, small and new, with naked, angular shapes and the glitter of broad windows. Far in the distance, some structures seemed taller, and the faint coils of smoke above them suggested an industrial district. But close before her, rising on a slender granite column from a ledge below to the level of her eyes, blinding her by its glare, dimming the rest, stood a dollar sign three feet tall, made of solid gold. It hung in space above the town, as its coat-of-arms, its trademark⁵⁴, its beacon-and it caught the sunrays, like some transmitter of energy that sent them in shining blessing to stretch horizontally through the air above the roofs, "What's that?" she gasped, pointing at the sign.  "Oh, that's Francisco's private joke."  "Francisco-who?" she whispered, knowing the answer.  "Francisco d'Anconia."  "Is he here, too?"  "He will be, any day now."  "What do you mean, his joke?"  "He gave that sign as an anniversary present to the owner of this place. And then we all adopted it as our particular emblem⁵⁵. We liked the idea."  "Aren't you the owner of this place?"  "I? No." He glanced down at the foot of the ledge and added, pointing, "There's the owner of this place, coming now."  A car had stopped at the end of a dirt road below, and two men were hurrying up the trail. She could not distinguish their faces; one of them was slender and tall, the other shorter, more muscular. She lost sight of them behind the twists of the trail, as he went on carrying her down to meet them.  She met them when they emerged suddenly from behind a rocky corner a few feet away. The sight of their faces hit her with the abruptness⁵⁷ of a collision.  "Well, I'll be goddamned!" said the muscular man, whom she did not know, staring at her.  She was staring at the tall, distinguished figure of his companion: it was Hugh Akston.  It was Hugh Akston who spoke⁵⁸ first, bowing to her with a courteous⁵⁹ smile of welcome. "Miss Taggart, this is the first time anyone has ever proved me wrong, I didn't know-when I told you you'd never find him -that the next time I saw you, you would be in his arms."  "In whose arms?"  "Why, the inventor of the motor."  She gasped, closing her eyes; this was one connection she knew she should have made. When she opened her eyes, she was looking at Galt, He was smiling, finally, derisively⁶⁰, as if he knew fully what this meant to her.  "It would have served you right if you'd broken your neck!" the muscular man snapped at her, with the anger of concern, almost of affection. "What a stunt⁶¹ to pull-for a person who'd have been admitted here so eagerly, if she'd chosen to come through the front door!"  "Miss Taggart, may I present Midas Mulligan?" said Galt.  "Oh," she said weakly, and laughed; she had no capacity for astonishment⁶² any longer. "Do you suppose I was killed in that crash-and this is some other kind of existence?"  "It is another kind of existence," said Galt. "But as for being killed, doesn't it seem more like the other way around?"  "Oh yes," she whispered, "yes . . ." She smiled at Mulligan. "Where is the front door?"  "Here," he said, pointing to his forehead.  "I've lost the key," she said simply, without resentment⁶³. "I've lost all keys, right now."  "You'll find them. But what in blazes were you doing in that plane?"  "Following."  "Him?" He pointed⁶⁴ at Galt.  "Yes."  "You're lucky to be alive! Are you badly hurt?"  "I don't think so."  "You'll have a few questions to answer, after they patch you up." He turned brusquely, leading the way down to the car, then glanced at Galt. "Well, what do we do now? There's something we hadn't provided for: the first scab."  "The first . . . what?" she asked.  "Skip it," said Mulligan, and looked at Galt. "What do we do?"  "It will be my charge," said Galt. "I will be responsible. You take Quentin Daniels."  "Oh, he's no problem at all. He needs nothing but to get acquainted with the place. He seems to know all the rest."  "Yes. He had practically gone the whole way by himself." He saw her watching him in bewilderment, and said, "There's one thing I must thank you for, Miss Taggart: you did pay me a compliment when you chose Quentin Daniels as my understudy. He was a plausible⁶⁵ one."  "Where is he?" she asked. "Will you tell me what happened?"  "Why, Midas met us at the landing field, drove me to my house and took Daniels with him. I was going to join them for breakfast, but I saw your plane spinning and plunging⁶⁶ for that pasture. I was the closest one to the scene."  "We got here as fast as we could," said Mulligan. "I thought he deserved to get himself killed-whoever was in that plane. I never dreamed that it was one of the only two persons in the whole world whom I'd exempt⁶⁷."  "Who is the other one?" she asked.  "Hank Rearden."  She winced⁶⁸; it was like a sudden blow from another great distance.  She wondered why it seemed to her that Galt was watching her face intently and that she saw an instant's change in his, too brief to define.  They had come to the car. It was a Hammond convertible⁶⁹, its top down, one of the costliest⁷⁰ models, some years old, but kept in the shining trim of efficient handling. Galt placed her cautiously in the back seat and held her in the circle of his arm. She felt a stabbing pain once in a while, but she had no attention to spare for it. She watched the distant houses of the town, as Mulligan pressed the starter and the car moved forward, as they went past the sign of the dollar and a golden ray hit her eyes, sweeping⁷¹ over her forehead.  "Who is the owner of this place?" she asked.  "I am," said Mulligan.  "What is he?" She pointed to Galt.  Mulligan chuckled⁷². "He just works here."  "And you, Dr. Akston?" she asked.  He glanced at Galt, "I'm one of his two fathers, Miss Taggart. The one who didn't betray him."  "Oh!" she said, as another connection fell into place. "Your third pupil?"  "That's right."  "The second assistant bookkeeper!" she moaned suddenly, at one more memory.  "What's that?"  "That's what Dr. Stadler called him. That's what Dr. Stadler told me he thought his third pupil had become."  "He overestimated," said Galt. "I'm much lower than that by the scale of his standards and of his world."  The car had swerved⁷⁴ into a lane rising toward a lonely house that stood on a ridge⁷⁵ above the valley. She saw a man walking down a path, ahead of them, hastening in the direction of the town. He wore blue denim⁷⁶ overalls⁷⁷ and carried a lunchbox. There was something faintly familiar in the swift abruptness of his Galt. As the car went past him, she caught a glimpse of his face-and she jerked backward, her voice rising to a scream from the pain of the movement and from the shock of the sight: "Oh, stop! Stop! Don't let him go!" It was Ellis Wyatt.  The three men laughed, but Mulligan stopped the car. "Oh . . . " she said weakly, in apology, realizing she had forgotten that this was the place from which Wyatt would not vanish.  Wyatt was running toward them: he had recognized her, too. When he seized the edge of the car, to brake his speed, she saw the face and the young, triumphant⁴⁸ smile that she had seen but once before: on the platform of Wyatt Junction⁷⁸.  "Dagny! You, too, at last? One of us?"  "No," said Galt. "Miss Taggart is a castaway."  "What?"  "Miss Taggart's plane crashed. Didn't you see it?"  "Crashed-here?"  "Yes."  "I heard a plane, but I . . ." His look of bewilderment changed to a smile, regretful, amused and friendly. "I see. Oh, hell, Dagny, it's preposterous⁷⁹!"  She was staring at him helplessly, unable to reconnect the past to the present. And helplessly-as one would say to a dead friend, in a dream, the words one regrets having missed the chance to say in life-she said, with the memory of a telephone ringing, unanswered, almost two years ago, the words she had hoped to say if she ever caught sight of him again, "I . . . I tried to reach you."  He smiled gently. "We've been trying to reach you ever since, Dagny.. . . I'll see you tonight. Don't worry, I won't vanish-and I don't think you will, either."  He waved to the others and went off, swinging his lunchbox. She glanced up, as Mulligan started the car, and saw Galt's eyes watching her attentively⁸⁰. Her face hardened, as if in open admission of pain and in defiance⁸¹ of the satisfaction it might give him. "All right," she said. "I see what sort of show you want to put me through the shock of witnessing."  But there was neither cruelty nor pity in his face, only the level look of justice. "Our first rule here, Miss Taggart," he answered, "is that one must always see for oneself."  The car stopped in front of the lonely house. It was built of rough granite blocks, with a sheet of glass for most of its front wall. "I'll send the doctor over," said Mulligan, driving off, while Galt carried her up the path.  "Your house?" she asked.  "Mine." he answered, kicking the door open.  He carried her across the threshold into the glistening⁸² space of his living room, where shafts⁸³ of sunlight hit walls of polished pine. She saw a few pieces of furniture made by hand, a ceiling of bare rafters, an archway open upon a small kitchen with rough shelves, a bare wooden table and the astonishing sight of chromium glittering on an electric stove; the place had the primitive⁸⁴ simplicity of a frontiersman's cabin, reduced to essential necessities, but reduced with a super-modern skill.  He carried her across the sunrays into a small guest room and placed her down on a bed. She noticed a window open upon a long slant⁸⁵ of rocky steps and pines going off into the sky. She noticed small streaks⁸⁷ that looked like inscriptions⁸⁹ cut into the wood of the walls, a few scattered lines that seemed made by different handwritings; she could not distinguish the words. She noticed another door, left half-open; it led to his bedroom.  "Am I a guest here or a prisoner?" she asked.  "The choice will be yours, Miss Taggart."  "I can make no choice when I'm dealing⁹⁰ with a stranger."  "But you're not. Didn't you name a railroad line after me?"  "Oh! . . . Yes . . ." It was the small jolt of another connection falling into place. "Yes, I-" She was looking at the tall figure with the sun-streaked hair, with the suppressed smile in the mercilessly perceptive⁷ eyes-she was seeing the struggle to build her Line and the summer day of the first train's run-she was thinking that if a human figure could be fashioned as an emblem of that Line, this was the figure.  "Yes . . . I did . . . " Then, remembering the rest, she added, "But I named it after an enemy."  He smiled. "That's the contradiction you had to resolve sooner or later, Miss Taggart."  "It was you . . . wasn't it? . . . who destroyed my Line. . . ."  "Why, no. It was the contradiction."  She closed her eyes; in a moment, she asked, "All those stories I heard about you-which of them were true?"  "All of them."  "Was it you who spread them?"  "No. What for? I never had any wish to be talked about."  "But you do know that you've become a legend?"  "Yes."  "The young inventor of the Twentieth Century Motor Company is the one real version of the legend, isn't it?"  "The one that's concretely real-yes."  She could not say it indifferently; there was still a breathless tone and the drop of her voice toward a whisper, when she asked, "The motor . . . the motor I found . . . it was you who made it?"  "Yes."  She could not prevent the jolt of eagerness that threw her head up.  "The secret of transforming energy-" she began, and stopped.  "I could tell it to you in fifteen minutes," he said, in answer to the desperate plea she had not uttered, "but there's no power on earth that can force me to tell it. If you understand this, you'll understand everything that's baffling you."  "That night . . . twelve years ago . . . a spring night when you walked out of a meeting of six thousand murderers-that story is true, isn't it?"  "Yes."  "You told them that you would stop the motor of the world."  "I have."  "What have you done?"  "I've done nothing, Miss Taggart. And that's the whole of my secret."  She looked at him silently for a long moment. He stood waiting, as if he could read her thoughts. "The destroyer-" she said in a tone of wonder and helplessness.  "-the most evil creature that's ever existed," he said in the tone of a quotation⁹¹, and she recognized her own words, "the man who's draining the brains of the world."  "How thoroughly⁹² have you been watching me," she asked, "and for how long?"  It was only an instant's pause, his eyes did not move, but it seemed to her that his glance was stressed, as if in special awareness⁹³ of seeing her, and she caught the sound of some particular intensity in his voice as he answered quietly, "For years."  She closed her eyes, relaxing and giving up. She felt an odd, lighthearted indifference⁹⁴, as if she suddenly wanted nothing but the comfort of surrendering to helplessness.  The doctor who arrived was a gray-haired man with a mild, thoughtful face and a firmly, unobtrusively confident manner.  "Miss Taggart, may I present Dr. Hendricks?" said Galt.  "Not Dr, Thomas Hendricks?" she gasped, with the involuntary rudeness of a child; the name belonged to a great surgeon, who had retired⁹⁵ and vanished six years ago.  "Yes, of course," said Galt.  Dr. Hendricks smiled at her, in answer. "Midas told me that Miss Taggart has to be treated for shock," he said, "not for the one sustained, but for the ones to come."  "I'll leave you to do it," said Galt, "while I go to the market to get supplies for breakfast."  She watched the rapid efficiency of Dr. Hendricks' work, as he examined her injuries. He had brought an object she had never seen before: a portable X-ray machine. She learned that she had torn the cartilage of two ribs⁹⁶, that she had sprained⁹⁷ an ankle, ripped patches of skin off one knee and one elbow, and acquired a few bruises⁹⁸ spread in purple blotches⁹⁹ over her body. By the time Dr. Hendricks' swift, competent hands had wound the bandages and the tight lacings of tape, she felt as if her body were an engine checked by an expert mechanic, and no further care was necessary, "I would advise you to remain in bed, Miss Taggart."  "Oh no! If I'm careful and move slowly, I'll be all right."  "You ought to rest."  "Do you think I can?"  He smiled. "I guess not."  She was dressed by the time Galt came back. Dr. Hendricks gave him an account of her condition, adding, "I'll be back to check up, tomorrow."  "Thanks," said Galt. "Send the bill to me."  "Certainly not!" she said indignantly. "I will pay it myself."  The two men glanced at each other, in amusement, as at the boast of a beggar.  "We'll discuss that later," said Galt.  Dr. Hendricks left, and she tried to stand up, limping, catching¹⁰⁰ at the furniture for support. Galt lifted her in his arms, carried her to the kitchen alcove¹⁰¹ and placed her on a chair by the table set for two.  She noticed that she was hungry, at the sight of the coffee pot boiling on the stove, the two glasses of orange juice, the heavy white pottery¹⁰² dishes sparkling in the sun on the polished table top.  "When did you sleep or eat last?" he asked.  "I don't know . . . I had dinner on the train, with-" She shook her head in helplessly bitter amusement: with the tramp, she thought, with a desperate voice pleading for escape from an avenger¹⁰³ who would not pursue or be found-the avenger who sat facing her across the table, drinking a glass of orange juice. "I don't know . . . it seems centuries and continents away."  "How did you happen to be following me?"  "I landed at the Alton airport just as you were taking off. The man there told me that Quentin Daniels had gone with you."  "I remember your plane circling to land. But that was the one and only time when I didn't think of you. I thought you were coming by train."  She asked, looking straight at him, "How do you want me to understand that?"  "What?"  "The one and only time when you didn't think of me."  He held her glance; she saw the faint movement she had noted¹⁰⁴ as typical of him: the movement of his proudly intractable mouth curving into the hint of a smile. "In any way you wish," he answered.  She let a moment pass to underscore her choice by the severity of her face, then asked coldly, in the tone of an enemy's accusation¹⁰⁵, "You knew that I was coming for Quentin Daniels?"  "Yes."  "You got him first and fast, in order not to let me reach him? In order to beat me-knowing fully what sort of beating that would mean for me?"  "Sure."  It was she who looked away and remained silent. He rose to cook the rest of their breakfast. She watched him as he stood at the stove, toasting bread, frying eggs and bacon. There was an easy, relaxed skill about the way he worked, but it was a skill that belonged to another profession; his hands moved with the rapid precision of an engineer pulling the levers of a control board. She remembered suddenly where she had seen as expert and preposterous a performance.  "Is that what you learned from Dr. Akston?" she asked, pointing at the stove.  "That, among other things."  "Did he teach you to spend your time-your time!-" she could not keep the shudder¹⁰⁶ of indignation out of her voice-"on this sort of work?"  "I've spent time on work of much lesser¹⁰⁷ importance."  When he put her plate before her, she asked, "Where did you get that food? Do they have a grocery store here?"  "The best one in the world. It's run by Lawrence Hammond."  "What?"  "Lawrence Hammond, of Hammond Cars. The bacon is from the farm of Dwight Sanders-of Sanders Aircraft. The eggs and the butter from Judge Narragansett-of the Superior Court of the State of Illinois."  She looked at her plate, bitterly, almost as if she were afraid to touch it. "It's the most expensive breakfast I'll ever eat, considering the value of the cook's time and of all those others."  "Yes-from one aspect. But from another, it's the cheapest breakfast you'll ever eat-because no part of it has gone to feed the looters who'll make you pay for it through year after year and leave you to starve in the end."  After a long silence, she asked simply, almost wistfully, "What is it that you're all doing here?"  "Living."  She had never heard that word sound so real, "What is your job?" she asked. "Midas Mulligan said that you work here."  "I'm the handy man, I guess."  "The what?"  "I'm on call whenever anything goes wrong with any of the installations-with the power system, for instance."  She looked at him-and suddenly she tore forward, staring at the electric stove, but fell back on her chair, stopped by pain.  He chuckled. "Yes, that's true-but take it easy or Dr. Hendricks will order you back to bed."  "The power system . . ." she said, choking, "the power system here . . . it's run by means of your motor?"  "Yes."  "It's built? It's working? It's functioning?"  "It has cooked your breakfast."  "I want to see it!"  "Don't bother crippling yourself to look at that stove. It's just a plain electric stove like any other, only about a hundred times cheaper to run.  And that's all you'll have a chance to see, Miss Taggart."  "You promised to show me this valley."  "I'll show it to you. But not the power generator¹⁰⁸."  "Will you take me to see the place now, as soon as we finish?"  "If you wish-and if you're able to move."  "I am."  He got up, went to the telephone and dialed a number. "Hello, Midas? . . . Yes. . . . He did? Yes, she's all right. . . . Will you rent me your car for the day? . . . Thanks. At the usual rate-twenty-five cents, . . . . Can you send it over? . . . Do you happen to have some sort of cane¹⁰⁹? She'll need it. . . . Tonight? Yes, I think so. We will. Thanks."  He hung up. She was staring at him incredulously.  "Did I understand you to say that Mr. Mulligan-who's worth about two hundred million dollars, I believe-is going to charge you twenty-five cents for the use of his car?"  "That's right."  "Good heavens, couldn't he give it to you as a courtesy?"  He sat looking at her for a moment, studying her face, as if deliberately¹¹⁰ letting her see the amusement in his. "Miss Taggart," he said, "we have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind. We come here because we want to rest. But we have certain customs, which we all observe, because they pertain¹¹¹ to the things we need to rest from. So I'll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word 'give'. "  "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right."  He refilled her cup of coffee and extended a package of cigarettes.  She smiled, as she took a cigarette: it bore the sign of the dollar.  "If you're not too tired by evening," he said, "Mulligan has invited us for dinner. He'll have some guests there whom, I think, you'll want to meet."  "Oh, of course! I won't be too tired. I don't think I'll ever feel tired again."  They were finishing breakfast when she saw Mulligan's car stopping in front of the house. The driver leaped out, raced up the path and rushed into the room, not pausing to ring or knock. It took her a moment to realize that the eager, breathless, disheveled young man was Quentin Daniels.  "Miss Taggart," he gasped, "I'm sorry!" The desperate guilt in his voice clashed with the joyous excitement in his face, "I've never broken my word before! There's no excuse for it, I can't ask you to forgive me, and I know that you won't believe it, but the truth is that I-I forgot!"  She glanced at Galt, "I believe you."  "I forgot that I promised to wait, I forgot everything-until a few minutes ago, when Mr. Mulligan told me that you'd crashed here in a plane, and then I knew it was my fault, and if anything had happened to you-oh God, are you all right?"  "Yes. Don't worry. Sit down."  "I don't know how one can forget one's word of honor. I don't know what happened to me."  "I do."  "Miss Taggart, I had been working on it for months, on that one particular hypothesis, and the more I worked, the more hopeless it seemed to become. I'd been in my laboratory for the last two days, trying to solve a mathematical equation that looked impossible. I felt I'd die at that blackboard, but wouldn't give up. It was late at night when he came in. I don't think I even noticed him, not really. He said he wanted to speak to me and I asked him to wait and went right on. I think I forgot his presence. I don't know how long he stood there, watching me, but what I remember is that suddenly his hand reached over, swept all my figures off the blackboard and wrote one brief equation. And then I noticed him! Then I screamed-because it wasn't the full answer to the motor, but it was the way to it, a way I hadn't seen, hadn't suspected, but I knew where it led! I remember I cried, 'How could you know it?'-and he answered, pointing at a photograph of your motor, 'I'm the man who made it in the first place.' And that's the last I remember, Miss Taggart-I mean, the last I remember of my own existence, because after that we talked about static electricity and the conversion¹¹³ of energy and the motor."  "We talked physics all the way down here," said Galt.  "Oh, I remember when you asked me whether I'd go with you," said Daniels, "whether I'd be willing to go and never come back and give up everything . . . Everything? Give up a dead Institute that's crumbling¹¹⁴ back into the jungle, give up my future as a janitor¹¹⁵-slave-by-law, give up Wesley Mouch and Directive 10-289 and sub-animal creatures who crawl on their bellies¹¹⁶, grunting¹¹⁷ that there is no mind! . . . Miss Taggart"-he laughed exultantly-"he was asking me whether I'd give that up to go with him! He had to ask it twice, I couldn't believe it at first, I couldn't believe that any human being would need to be asked or would think of it as a choice. To go? I would have leaped off a skyscraper¹¹⁸ just to follow him-and to hear his formula before we hit the pavement!"  "I don't blame you," she said; she looked at him with a tinge¹¹⁹ of wistfulness that was almost envy. "Besides, you've fulfilled your contract. You've led me to the secret of the motor."  "I'm going to be a janitor here, too," said Daniels, grinning happily.  "Mr. Mulligan said he'd give me the job of janitor-at the power plant. And when I learn, I'll rise to electrician. Isn't he great-Midas Mulligan? That's what I want to be when I reach his age. I want to make money. I want to make millions. I want to make as much as he did!"  "Daniels!" She laughed, remembering the quiet self-control, the strict precision, the stern logic¹²⁰ of the young scientist she had known. "What's the matter with you? Where are you? Do you know what you're saying?"  "I'm here, Miss Taggart-and there's no limit to what's possible here! I'm going to be the greatest electrician in the world and the richest! I'm going to-"  "You're going to go back to Mulligan's house," said Galt, "and sleep for twenty-four hours-or I won't let you near the power plant."  "Yes, sir," said Daniels meekly¹²¹.  The sun had trickled¹²² down the peaks and drawn¹²³ a circle of shining granite and glittering snow to enclose the valley-when they stepped out of the house. She felt suddenly as if nothing existed beyond that circle, and she wondered at the joyous, proud comfort to be found in a sense of the finite, in the knowledge that the field of one's concern lay within the realm of one's sight. She wanted to stretch out her arms over the roofs of the town below, feeling that her fingertips would touch the peaks across. But she could not raise her arms; leaning on a cane with one hand and on Galt's arm with the other, moving her feet by a slow, conscientious¹²⁴ effort, she walked down to the car like a child learning to walk for the first time.  She sat by Galt's side as he drove, skirting the town, to Midas Mulligan's house. It stood on a ridge, the largest house of the valley, the only one built two stories high, an odd combination of fortress¹²⁵ and pleasure resort, with stout¹²⁶ granite walls and broad, open terraces. He stopped to let Daniels off, then drove on up a winding road rising slowly into the mountains.  It was the thought of Mulligan's wealth, the luxurious¹²⁷ car and the sight of Galt's hands on the wheel that made her wonder for the first time whether Galt, too, was wealthy. She glanced at his clothes: the gray slacks and white shirt seemed of a quality intended for long wear; the leather of the narrow belt about his waistline was cracked; the watch on his wrist was a precision instrument, but made of plain stainless¹²⁸ steel. The sole suggestion of luxury was the color of his hair-the strands stirring in the wind like liquid gold and copper.  Abruptly¹²⁹, behind a turn of the road, she saw the green acres of pastures stretching to a distant farmhouse¹³⁰. There were herds¹³¹ of sheep, some horses, the fenced squares of pigpens under the sprawling¹³² shapes of wooden barns and, farther away, a metal hangar of a type that did not belong on a farm, A man in a bright cowboy shirt was hurrying toward them. Galt stopped the car and waved to him, but said nothing in answer to her questioning glance. He let her discover for herself, when the man came closer, that it was Dwight Sanders, "Hello, Miss Taggart," he said, smiling.  She looked silently at his rolled shirt sleeves, at his heavy boots, at the herds of cattle. "So that's all that's left of Sanders Aircraft," she said.  "Why, no. There's that excellent monoplane, my best model, which you flattened¹³³ up in the foothills."  "Oh, you know about that? Yes, it was one of yours. It was a wonderful ship. But I'm afraid I've damaged it pretty badly."  "You ought to have it fixed¹³⁴."  "I think I've ripped the bottom. Nobody can fix it."  "I can."  These were the words and the tone of confidence that she had not heard for years, this was the manner she had given up expecting-but the start of her smile ended in a bitter chuckle⁷³. "How?" she asked. "On a hog¹³⁵ farm?"  "Why, no. At Sanders Aircraft."  "Where is it?"  "Where did you think it was? In that building in New Jersey¹³⁶, which Tinky Holloway's cousin bought from my bankrupt successors by means of a government loan and a tax suspension? In that building where he produced six planes that never left the ground and eight that did, but crashed with forty passengers each?"  "Where is it, then?"  "Wherever I am."  He pointed across the road. Glancing down through the tops of the pine trees, she saw the concrete rectangle of an airfield¹³⁸ on the bottom of the valley.  "We have a few planes here and it's my job to take care of them," he said. "I'm the hog farmer and the airfield attendant. I'm doing quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom I used to buy it. But those men cannot produce airplanes without me-and, without me, they cannot even produce their ham and bacon."  "But you-you have not been designing airplanes, either."  "No, I haven't. And I haven't been manufacturing the Diesel¹³⁹ engines I once promised you. Since the time I saw you last, I have designed and manufactured just one new tractor. I mean, one-I tooled it by hand-no mass production was necessary. But that tractor has cut an eight-hour workday down to four hours on"-the straight line of his arm, extended to point across the valley, moved like a royal scepter; her eyes followed it and she saw the terraced green of hanging gardens on a distant mountainside-"the chicken and dairy farm of Judge Narragansett"-his arm moved slowly to a long, flat stretch of greenish gold at the foot of a canyon¹⁴⁰, then to a band of violent green-"in the wheat fields and tobacco patch of Midas Mulligan"-his arm rose to a granite flank striped by glistening tiers of leaves-"in the orchards¹⁴¹ of Richard Halley."  Her eyes went slowly over the curve his arm had traveled, over and over again, long after the arm had dropped; but she said only, "I see."  "Now do you believe that I can fix your plane?" he asked.  "Yes. But have you seen it?"  "Sure. Midas called two doctors immediately-Hendricks for you, and me for your plane. It can be fixed. But it will be an expensive job."  "How much?"  "Two hundred dollars."  "Two hundred dollars?" she repeated incredulously; the price seemed much too low.  "In gold, Miss Taggart."  "Oh . . . ! Well, where can I buy the gold?"  "You can't," said Galt.  She jerked her head to face him defiantly¹⁴². "No?"  "No. Not where you come from. Your laws forbid it."  "Yours don't?"  "No."  "Then sell it to me. Choose your own rate of exchange. Name any sum you want-in my money."  "What money? You're penniless, Miss Taggart."  "What?" It was a word that a Taggart heiress could not ever expect to hear.  "You're penniless in this valley. You own millions of dollars in Taggart Transcontinental stock-but it will not buy one pound of bacon from the Sanders hog farm."  "I see."  Galt smiled and turned to Sanders. "Go ahead and fix that plane. Miss Taggart will pay for it eventually."  He pressed the starter and drove on, while she sat stiffly straight, asking no questions.  A stretch of violent turquoise¹⁴⁴ blue split the cliffs ahead, ending the road; it took her a second to realize that it was a lake. The motionless water seemed to condense the blue of the sky and the green of the pine-covered mountains into so brilliantly pure a color that it made the sky look a dimmed pale gray. A streak⁸⁶ of boiling foam¹⁴⁶ came from among the pines and went crashing down the rocky steps to vanish in the placid¹⁴⁷ water. A small granite structure stood by the stream.  Galt stopped the car just as a husky man in overalls stepped out to the threshold of the open doorway¹⁴⁸. It was Dick McNamara, who had once been her best contractor¹⁴⁹.  "Good day, Miss Taggart!" he said happily. "I'm glad to see that you weren't hurt badly."  She inclined her head in silent greeting-it was like a greeting to the loss and the pain of the past, to a desolate¹⁵⁰ evening and the desperate face of Eddie Willers telling her the news of this man's disappearance- hurt badly? she thought-I was, but not in the plane crash-on that evening, in an empty office. . . . Aloud, she asked, "What are you doing here? What was it that you betrayed me for, at the worst time possible?"  He smiled, pointing at the stone structure and down at the rocky drop where the tube of a water main went vanishing into the underbrush. "I'm the utilities man," he said. "I take care of the water lines, the power lines and the telephone service."  "Alone?"  "Used to. But we've grown so much in the past year that I've had to hire three men to help me."  "What men? From where?"  "Well, one of them is a professor of economics who couldn't get a job outside, because he taught that you can't consume more than you have produced-one is a professor of history who couldn't get a job because he taught that the inhabitants of slums were not the men who made this country-and one is a professor of psychology¹⁵¹ who couldn't get a job because he taught that men are capable of thinking."  "They work for you as plumbers¹⁵² and linesmen?"  "You'd be surprised how good they are at it."  "And to whom have they abandoned our colleges?"  "To those who're wanted there." He chuckled, "How long ago was it that I betrayed you, Miss Taggart? Not quite three years ago, wasn't it? It's the John Galt Line that I refused to build for you. Where is your Line now? But my lines have grown, in that time, from the couple of miles that Mulligan had built when I took over, to hundreds of miles of pipe and wire, all within the space of this valley."  He saw the swift, involuntary look of eagerness on her face, the look of a competent person's appreciation¹⁵⁵; he smiled, glanced at her companion and said softly, "You know, Miss Taggart, when it comes to the John Galt Line-maybe it's I who've followed it and you who're betraying it."  She glanced at Galt. He was watching her face, but she could read nothing in his.  As they drove on along the edge of the lake, she asked, "You've mapped this route deliberately, haven't you? You're showing me all the men whom"-she stopped, feeling inexplicably¹⁵⁶ reluctant to say it, and said, instead-"whom I have lost?"  "I'm showing you all the men whom I have taken away from you," he answered firmly.  This was the root, she thought, of the guiltlessness of his face: he had guessed and named the words she had wanted to spare him, he had rejected a good will that was not based on his values-and in proud certainty of being right, he had made a boast of that which she had intended as an accusation.  Ahead of them, she saw a wooden pier¹⁵⁷ projecting into the water of the lake. A young woman lay stretched on the sun-flooded planks¹⁵⁸, watching a battery of fishing rods. She glanced up at the sound of the car, then leaped to her feet in a single swift movement, a shade too swift, and ran to the road. She wore slacks, rolled above the knees of her bare legs, she had dark, disheveled hair and large eyes. Galt waved to her.  "Hello, John! When did you get in?" she called.  "This morning," he answered, smiling and driving on.  Dagny jerked her head to look back and saw the glance with which the young woman stood looking after Galt. And even though hopelessness, serenely¹⁵⁹ accepted, was part of the worship in that glance, she experienced a feeling she had never known before: a stab of jealousy¹⁶⁰.  "Who is that?" she asked.  "Our best fishwife. She provides the fish for Hammond's grocery market."  "What else is she?"  "You've noticed that there's a 'what else' for every one of us here?  She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside.  She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind."  The car turned into a narrow path, climbing steeply into a wilderness¹⁶¹ of brush and pine trees. She knew what to expect when she saw a handmade sign nailed to a tree, with an arrow pointing the way: The Buena Esperanza Pass.  It was not a pass, it was a wall of laminated rock with a complex chain of pipes, pumps and valves climbing like a vine up its narrow ledges, but it bore, on its crest¹⁶², a huge wooden sign-and the proud violence of the letters announcing their message to an impassable tangle¹³⁷ of ferns and pine branches, was more characteristic, more familiar than the words: Wyatt Oil.  It was oil that ran in a glittering curve from the mouth of a pipe into a tank at the foot of the wall, as the only confession of the tremendous secret struggle inside the stone, as the unobtrusive purpose of all the intricate machinery¹⁶³-but the machinery did not resemble the installations of an oil derrick, and she knew that she was looking at the unborn secret of the Buena Esperanza Pass, she knew that this was oil drawn out of shale¹⁶⁴ by some method men had considered impossible.  Ellis Wyatt stood on a ridge, watching the glass dial of a gauge¹⁶⁵ imbedded in the rock. He saw the car stopping below, and called, "Hi, Dagny! Be with you in a minute!"  There were two other men working with him: a big, muscular roughneck, at a pump halfway¹⁶⁶ up the wall, and a young boy, by the tank on the ground. The young boy had blond hair and a face with an unusual purity of form. She felt certain that she knew this face, but she could not recall where she had seen it. The boy caught her puzzled glance, grinned and, as if to help her, whistled softly, almost inaudibly the first notes of Halley's Fifth Concerto. It was the young brakeman of the Comet.  She laughed. "It was the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley, wasn't it?"  "Sure," he answered. "But do you think I'd tell that to a scab?"  "A what?"  "What am I paying you for?" asked Ellis Wyatt, approaching; the boy chuckled, darting¹⁶⁷ back to seize the lever he had abandoned for a moment. "It's Miss Taggart who couldn't fire you, if you loafed on the job. I can."  "That's one of the reasons why I quit the railroad, Miss Taggart," said the boy.  "Did you know that I stole him from you?" said Wyatt. "He used to be your best brakeman and now he's my best grease-monkey, but neither one of us is going to hold him permanently¹⁶⁸."  "Who is?"  "Richard Halley. Music. He's Halley's best pupil."  She smiled, "I know, this is a place where one employs nothing but aristocrats¹⁶⁹ for the lousiest kinds of jobs."  "They're all aristocrats, that's true," said Wyatt, "because they know that there's no such thing as a lousy job-only lousy men who don't care to do it."  The roughneck was watching them from above, listening with curiosity. She glanced up at him, he looked like a truck driver, so she asked, "What were you outside? A professor of comparative philology¹⁷⁰, I suppose?"  "No, ma'am," he answered. "I was a truck driver." He added, "But that's not what I wanted to remain."  Ellis Wyatt was looking at the place around them with a kind of youthful pride eager for acknowledgment: it was the pride of a host at a formal reception in a drawing room, and the eagerness of an artist at the opening of his show in a gallery. She smiled and asked, pointing at the machinery, "Shale oil?"  "Uh-huh."  "That's the process which you were working to develop while you were on earth?" She said it involuntarily and she gasped a little at her own words.  He laughed. "While I was in hell-yes. I'm on earth now."  "How much do you produce?"  "Two hundred barrels a day."  A note of sadness came back into her voice: "It's the process by which you once intended to fill five tank-trains a day."  "Dagny," he said earnestly, pointing at his tank, "one gallon of it is worth more than a trainful back there in hell-because this is mine, all of it, every single drop of it, to be spent on nothing but myself." He raised his smudged hand, displaying the greasy¹⁷¹ stains as a treasure, and a black drop on the tip of his finger flashed like a gem¹⁷² in the sun.  "Mine," he said. "Have you let them beat you into forgetting what that word means, what it feels like? You should give yourself a chance to relearn it."  "You're hidden in a hole in the wilderness," she said bleakly¹⁷³, "and you're producing two hundred barrels of oil, when you could have flooded the world with it."  "What for? To feed the looters?"  "No! To earn the fortune you deserve."  "But I'm richer now than I was in the world. What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that's what I'm doing: I'm manufacturing time."  "What do you mean?"  "I'm producing everything I need, I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life. It used to take me five hours to fill that tank. It now takes three. The two I saved are mine-as pricelessly mine as if I moved my grave two further hours away for every five I've got. It's two hours released from one task, to be invested in another-two more hours in which to work, to grow, to move forward. That's the savings¹⁷⁵ account I'm -hoarding. Is there any sort of safety vault¹⁷⁶ that could protect this account in the outside world?"  "But what space do you have for moving forward? Where's your market?"  He chuckled. "Market? I now work for use, not for profit-my use, not the looters' profit. Only those who add to my life, not those who devour¹⁷⁷ it, are my market. Only those who produce, not those who consume, can ever be anybody's market. I deal with the life-givers, not with the cannibals. If my oil takes less effort to produce, I ask less of the men to whom I trade it for the things I need. I add an extra span of time to their lives with every gallon of my oil that they burn. And since they're men like me, they keep inventing faster ways to make the things they make-so every one of them grants me an added minute, hour or day with the bread I buy from them, with the clothes, the lumber¹⁵⁴, the metal"-he glanced at Galt-"an added year with every month of electricity I purchase. That's our market and that's how it works for us-but that was not the way it worked in the outer world. Down what drain were they poured out there, our days, our lives and our energy?  Into what bottomless, futureless sewer¹⁷⁸ of the unpaid-for? Here, we trade achievements, not failures-values, not needs. We're free of one another, yet we all grow together. Wealth, Dagny? What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish. Look-" He pointed at a plant fighting upward from under the weight of a rock-a long, gnarled stem, contorted by an unnatural¹⁷⁹ struggle, with drooping¹⁸⁰, yellow remnants of unformed leaves and a single green shoot thrust upward to the sun with the desperation of a last, spent, inadequate¹⁸² effort. "That's what they're doing to us back there in hell. Do you see me submitting to it?"  "No," she whispered.  "Do you see him submitting?" He pointed at Galt.  "God, no!"  "Then don't be astonished by anything you see in this valley."  She remained silent when they drove on. Galt said nothing.  On a distant mountainside, in the dense¹⁴⁵ green of a forest, she saw a pine tree slanting¹⁸³ down suddenly, tracing a curve, like the hand of a clock, then crashing abruptly out of sight. She knew that it was a manmade motion.  "Who's the lumberjack around here?" she asked.  "Ted¹ Nielsen."  The road was relaxing into wider curves and gentler grades, among the softer shapes of hillsides. She saw a rust¹⁸¹-brown slope patched by two squares of unmatching green: the dark, dusty green of potato plants, and the pale, greenish-silver of cabbages, A man in a red shirt was riding a small tractor, cutting weeds, "Who's the cabbage tycoon¹⁸⁴?" she asked.  "Roger Marsh¹⁸⁵."  She closed her eyes. She thought of the weeds that were climbing up the steps of a closed factory, over its lustrous tile front, a few hundred miles away, beyond the mountains.  The road was descending¹⁸⁶ to the bottom of the valley. She saw the roofs of the town straight below, and the small, shining spot of the dollar sign in the distance at the other end. Galt stopped the car in front of the first structure on a ledge above the roofs, a brick building with a faint tinge of red trembling over its smokestack. It almost shocked her to see so logical a sign as "Stockton Foundry" above its door.  When she walked, leaning on her cane, out of the sunlight into the dank gloom of the building, the shock she felt was part sense of anachronism, part homesickness. This was the industrial East which, in the last few hours, had seemed to be centuries behind her. This was the old, the familiar, the loved sight of reddish billows rising to steel rafters, of sparks shooting in sunbursts from invisible sources, of sudden flames streaking¹⁸⁷ through a black fog, of sand molds glowing with white metal. The fog hid the walls of the structure, dissolving its size-and for a moment, this was the great, dead foundry at Stockton, Colorado, it was Nielsen Motors . . . it was Rearden Steel.  "Hi, Dagny!"  The smiling face that approached her out of the fog was Andrew Stockton's, and she saw a grimy hand extended to her with a gesture of confident pride, as if it held all of her moment's vision on its palm.  She clasped the hand. "Hello," she said softly, not knowing whether she was greeting the past or the future. Then she shook her head and added, "How come you're not planting potatoes or making shoes around here? You've actually remained in your own profession."  "Oh, Calvin Atwood of the Atwood Light and Power Company of New York City is making the shoes. Besides, my profession is one of the oldest and most immediately needed anywhere. Still, I had to fight for it. I had to ruin a competitor, first."  "What?"  He grinned and pointed to the glass door of a sun-flooded room.  "There's my ruined competitor," he said.  She saw a young man bent over a long table, working on a complex model for the mold of a drill head. He had the slender, powerful hands of a concert pianist and the grim face of a surgeon concentrating on his task.  "He's a sculptor," said Stockton. "When I came here, he and his partner had a sort of combination hand-forge and repair shop. I opened a real foundry, and took all their customers away from them. The boy couldn't do the kind of job I did, it was only a part-time business for him, anyway-sculpture is his real business-so he came to work for me. He's making more money now, in shorter hours, than he used to make in his own foundry. His partner was a chemist, so he went into agriculture and he's produced a chemical fertilizer that's doubled some of the crops around here-did you mention potatoes?-potatoes, in particular."  "Then somebody could put you out of business, too?"  "Sure. Any time. I know one man who could and probably will, when he gets here. But, boy!-I'd work for him as a cinder¹⁸⁸ sweeper. He'd blast through this valley like a rocket. He'd triple everybody's production."  "Who's that?"  "Hank Rearden."  "Yes . . ." she whispered, "Oh yes!"  She wondered what had made her say it with such immediate certainty. She felt, simultaneously¹⁸⁹, that Hank Rearden's presence in this valley was impossible-and that this was his place, peculiarly his, this was the place of his youth, of his start, and, together, the place he had been seeking all his life, the land he had struggled to reach, the goal of his tortured battle. . . . It seemed to her that the spirals of flame tinged¹⁹⁰ fog were drawing time into an odd circle-and while a dim thought went floating through her mind like the streamer of an unfollowed sentence: To hold an unchanging youth is to reach, at the end, the vision with which one started-she heard the voice of a tramp in a diner, saying, "John Galt found the fountain of youth which he wanted to bring down to men. Only he never came back . . . because he found that it couldn't be brought down."  A sheaf of sparks went up in the depth of the fog-and she saw the broad back of a foreman whose arm made the sweeping gesture of a signal, directing some invisible task. He jerked his head to snap an order-she caught a glimpse of his profile-and she caught her breath.  Stockton saw it, chuckled and called into the fog: "Hey, Ken⁴¹! Come here! Here's an old friend of yours!"  She looked at Ken Danagger as he approached them. The great industrialist¹⁹¹, whom she had tried so desperately¹⁹² to hold to his desk, was now dressed in smudged overalls.  "Hello, Miss Taggart. I told you we'd soon meet again."  Her head dropped, as if in assent¹⁹³ and in greeting, but her hand bore down heavily upon her cane, for a moment, while she stood reliving their last encounter: the tortured hour of waiting, then the gently distant face at the desk and the tinkling¹⁹⁴ of a glass-paneled door closing upon a stranger.  It was so brief a moment that two of the men before her could take it only as a greeting-but it was at Galt that she looked when she raised her head, and she saw him looking at her as if he knew what she felt-she saw him seeing in her face the realization¹⁹⁵ that it was he who had walked out of Danagger's office, that day. His face gave her nothing in answer: it had that look of respectful severity with which a man stands before the fact that the truth is the truth.  "I didn't expect it," she said softly, to Danagger. "I never expected to see you again."  Danagger was watching her as if she were a promising¹⁹⁶ child he had once discovered and was now affectionately amused to watch. "I know," he said. "But why are you so shocked?"  "I . . . oh, it's just that it's preposterous!" She pointed at his clothes.  "What's wrong with it?"  "Is this, then, the end of your road?"  "Hell, no! The beginning."  "What are you aiming at?"  "Mining. Not coal, though. Iron."  "Where?"  He pointed toward the mountains. "Right here. Did you ever know Midas Mulligan to make a bad investment? You'd be surprised what one can find in that stretch of rock, if one knows how to look. That's what I've been doing-looking."  "And if you don't find any iron ore?"  He shrugged¹⁹⁷. "There's other things to do. I've always been short on time in my life, never on what to use it for."  She glanced at Stockton with curiosity. "Aren't you training a man who could become your most dangerous competitor?"  "That's the only sort of men I like to hire. Dagny, have you lived too long among the looters? Have you come to think that one man's ability is a threat to another?"  "Oh no! But I thought I was almost the only one left who didn't think that."  "Any man who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me-the foulest¹⁹⁸ man on earth, more contemptible¹⁹⁹ than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought and-say, what are you laughing at?"  She was listening to him with an eager, incredulous smile. "It's so startling to hear," she said, "because it's so right!"  "What else can one think?"  She chuckled softly. "You know, when I was a child, I expected every businessman to think it."  "And since then?"  "Since then, I've learned not to expect it."  "But it's right, isn't it?"  "I've learned not to expect the right."  "But it stands to reason, doesn't it?"  "I've given up expecting reason."  "That's what one must never give up," said Ken Danagger.  They had returned to the car and had started down the last, descending curves of the road, when she glanced at Galt and he turned to her at once, as if he had expected it.  "It was you in Danagger's office that day, wasn't it?" she asked.  "Yes."  "Did you know, then, that I was waiting outside?"  "Yes."  "Did you know what it was like, to wait behind that closed door?"  She could not name the nature of the glance with which he looked at her. It was not pity, because she did not seem to be its object; it was the kind of glance with which one looks at suffering, but it was not her suffering that he seemed to be seeing.  "Oh yes," he answered quietly, almost lightly.  The first shop to rise by the side of the valley's single street was like the sudden sight of an open theater: a frame box without front wall, its stage set in the bright colors of a musical comedy-with red cubes, green circles, gold triangles, which were bins²⁰⁰ of tomatoes, barrels of lettuce²⁰¹, pyramids of oranges, and a spangled backdrop where the sun hit shelves of metal containers. The name on the marquee said; Hammond Grocery Market. A distinguished man in shirt sleeves, with a stern profile and gray temples, was weighing a chunk²⁰² of butter for an attractive young woman who stood at the counter, her posture²⁰³ light as a show girl's, the skirt of her cotton dress swelling²⁰⁴ faintly in the wind, like a dance costume. Dagny smiled involuntarily, even though the man was Lawrence Hammond.  The shops were small one-story structures, and as they moved past her, she caught familiar names on their signs, like headings on the pages of a book riffled by the car's motion: Mulligan General Store-Atwood Leather Goods-Nielsen Lumber-then the sign of the dollar above the door of a small brick factory with the inscription⁸⁸: Mulligan Tobacco Company. "Who's the Company, besides Midas Mulligan?" she asked. "Dr. Akston," he answered.  There were few passers-by, some men, fewer women, and they walked with purposeful swiftness, as if bound on specific errands. One after another, they stopped at the sight of the car, they waved to Galt and they looked at her with the unastonished curiosity of recognition.  "Have I been expected here for a long time?" she asked, "You still are," he answered.  On the edge of the road, she saw a structure made of glass sheets held together by a wooden framework, but for one instant it seemed to her that it was only a frame for the painting of a woman-a tall, fragile woman with pale blond hair and a face of such beauty that it seemed veiled by distance, as if the artist had been merely able to suggest it, not to make it quite real. In the next instant the woman moved her head-and Dagny realized that there were people at the tables inside the structure, that it was a cafeteria, that the woman stood behind the counter, and that she was Kay Ludlow, the movie star who, once seen, could never be forgotten; the star who had retired and vanished five years ago, to be replaced by girls of indistinguishable names and interchangeable faces. But at the shock of the realization, Dagny thought of the sort of movies that were now being made-and then she felt that the glass cafeteria was a cleaner use for Kay Ludlow's beauty than a role in a picture glorifying²⁰⁶ the commonplace for possessing no glory.  The building that came next was a small, squat²⁰⁷ block of rough granite, sturdy, solid, neatly²⁰⁸ built, the lines of its rectangular bulk as severely²⁰⁹ precise as the creases²¹⁰ of a formal garment-but she saw, like an instant's ghost, the long streak of a skyscraper rising into the coils of Chicago's fog, the skyscraper that had once borne the sign she now saw written in gold letters above a modest pine-wood door: Mulligan Bank.  Galt slowed the car while moving past the bank, as if placing the motion in some special italics.  A small brick structure came next, bearing the sign: Mulligan Mint.  "A mint?" she asked. "What's Mulligan doing with a mint?" Galt reached into his pocket and dropped two small coins into the palm of her hand. They were miniature disks of shining gold, smaller than pennies, the kind that had not been in circulation since the days of Nat Taggart; they bore the head of the Statue of Liberty on one side, the words "United States of America-One Dollar" on the other, but the dates stamped upon them were of the past two years.  "That's the money we use here," he said. "It's minted by Midas Mulligan."  "But . . . on whose authority?"  "That's stated on the coin-on both sides of it."  "What do you use for small change?"  "Mulligan mints that, too, in silver. We don't accept any other currency in this valley. We accept nothing but objective values."  She was studying the coins. "This looks like . . . like something from the first morning in the age of my ancestors."  He pointed at the valley, "Yes, doesn't it?"  She sat looking at the two thin, delicate, almost weightless drops of gold in the palm of her hand, knowing that the whole of the Taggart Transcontinental system had rested upon them, that this had been the keystone supporting all the keystones, all the arches, all the girders of the Taggart track, the Taggart Bridge, the Taggart Building. . . . She shook her head and slipped the coins back into his hand.  "You're not making it easier for me," she said, her voice low.  "I'm making it as hard as possible."  "Why don't you say it? Why don't you tell me all the things you want me to learn?"  The gesture of his arm pointed at the town, at the road behind them.  "What have I been doing?" he asked.  They drove on in silence. After a while, she asked, in the tone of a dryly statistical²¹¹ inquiry²¹², "How much of a fortune has Midas Mulligan amassed²¹³ in this valley?"  He pointed ahead. "Judge for yourself."  The road was winding through stretches of unleveled soil toward the homes of the valley. The homes were not lined along a street, they were spread at irregular intervals²¹⁴ over the rises and hollows of the ground, they were small and simple, built of local materials, mostly of granite and pine, with a prodigal²¹⁵ ingenuity²¹⁶ of thought and a tight economy of physical effort. Every house looked as if it had been put up by the labor¹¹² of one man, no two houses were alike, and the only quality they had in common was the stamp of a mind grasping a problem and solving it. Galt pointed out a house, once in a while, choosing the names she knew-and it sounded to her like a list of quotations²¹⁷ from the richest stock exchange in the world, or like a roll call of honor: "Ken Danagger . . . Ted Nielsen . . . Lawrence Hammond . . . Roger Marsh . . . Ellis Wyatt . . . Owen Kellogg . . . Dr. Akston."  The home of Dr. Akston was the last, a small cottage with a large terrace, lifted on the crest of a wave against the rising walls of the mountains. The road went past it and climbed on into the coils of an ascending²¹⁸ grade. The pavement shrank to a narrow path between two walls of ancient pines, their  tall, straight trunks pressing against it like a grim colonnade²¹⁹, their branches meeting above, swallowing the path into sudden silence and twilight²²⁰. There were no marks of wheels on the thin strip of earth, it looked unused and forgotten, a few minutes and a few turns seemed to take the car miles away from human habitation-  and then there was nothing to break the pressure of the stillness but a rare wedge of sunlight cutting across the trunks in the depth of the forest once in a while.  The sudden sight of a house on the edge of the path struck her like the shock of an unexpected sound: built in loneliness, cut off from all ties to human existence, it looked like the secret retreat of some great defiance or sorrow. It was the humblest home of the valley, a log cabin beaten in dark streaks by the tears of many rains, only its great windows withstanding the storms with the smooth, shining, untouched serenity²²² of glass.  "Whose house is . . . Oh!"-she caught her breath and jerked her head away. Above the door, hit by a ray of sun, its design blurred²²³ and worn, battered²²⁴ smooth by the winds of centuries, hung the silver coat of-arms of Sebastian d'Anconia.  As if in deliberate answer to her involuntary movement of escape, Galt stopped the car in front of the house. For a moment, they held each other's eyes: her glance was a question, his a command, her face had a defiant¹⁴³ frankness, his an unrevealing severity; she understood his purpose, but not his motive. She obeyed. Leaning on her cane, she stepped out of the car, then stood erect²²⁵, facing the house.  She looked at the silver crest that had come from a marble palace in Spain to a shack²²⁶ in the Andes to a log cabin in Colorado-the crest of the men who would not submit. The door of the cabin was locked, the sun did not reach into the glazed²²⁷ darkness beyond the windows, and pine branches hung outstretched above the roof like arms spread in protection, in compassion²²⁸, in solemn blessing. With no sound but the snap of a twig²²⁹ or the ring of a drop falling somewhere in the forest through long stretches of moments, the silence seemed to hold all the pain that had been hidden here, but never given voice. She stood, listening with a gentle, resigned, unlamenting respect: Let's see who'll do greater honor, you-to Nat Taggart, or I-to Sebastian d'Anconia. . . .  Dagny! Help me to remain. To refuse. Even though he's right! . . .  She turned to look at Galt, knowing that he was the man against whom she had had no help to offer. He sat at the wheel of the car, he had not followed her or moved to assist her, as if he had wanted her to acknowledge the past and had respected the privacy of her lonely salute²³⁰. She noticed that he still sat as she had left him, his forearm leaning against the wheel at the same angle, the fingers of his hand hanging down in the same sculptured position. His eyes were watching her, but that was all she could read in his face: that he had watched her intently, without moving.  When she was seated beside him once more, he said, "That was the first man I took away from you."  She asked, her face stern, open and quietly defiant, "How much do you know about that?"  "Nothing that he told me in words. Everything that the tone of his voice told me whenever he spoke of you."  She inclined her head. She had caught the sound of suffering in the faintest exaggeration of evenness in his voice.  He pressed the starter, the motor's explosion blasted the story contained in the silence, and they drove on., The path widened a little, streaming toward a pool of sunlight ahead.  She saw a brief glitter of wires among the branches, as they drove out into a clearing. An unobtrusive little structure stood against a hillside, on a rising slant of rocky ground. It was a simple cube of granite, the size of a toolshed, it had no windows, no apertures²³¹ of any kind, only a door of polished steel and a complex set of wire antennae²³² branching out from the roof. Galt was driving past, leaving it unnoticed, when she asked with a sudden start, "What's that?"  She saw the faint break of his smile. "The powerhouse."  "Oh, stop, please!"  He obeyed, backing the car to the foot of the hillside. It was her first few steps up the rocky incline that stopped her, as if there were no need to move forward, no further place to rise-and she stood as in the moment when she had opened her eyes on the earth of the valley, a moment uniting her beginning to her goal.  She stood looking up at the structure, her consciousness surrendered to a single sight and a single, wordless emotion-but she had always known that an emotion was a sum totaled by an adding machine of the mind, and what she now felt was the instantaneous total of the thoughts she did not have to name, the final sum of a long progression, like a voice telling her by means of a feeling: If she had held onto Ouentin Daniels, with no hope of a chance to use the motor, for the sole sake of knowing that achievement had not died on earth-if, like a weighted diver sinking in an ocean of mediocrity, under the pressure of men with gelatin eyes, rubber voices, spiral-shaped convictions, noncommittal souls and non-committing hands, she had held, as her life line and oxygen tube, the thought of a superlative achievement of the human mind-if, at the sight of the motor's remnant, in a sudden gasp⁵⁰ of suffocation²³³, as a last protest from his corruption-eaten lungs, Dr. Stadler had cried for something, not to look down at, but up to, and this had been the cry, the longing²³⁴ and the fuel of her life-if she had moved, drawn by the hunger of her youth for a sight of clean, hard, radiant competence-then here it was before her, reached and done, the power of an incomparable mind given shape in a net of wires sparkling peacefully under a summer sky, drawing an incalculable power out of space into the secret interior of a small stone hovel.  She thought of this structure, half the size of a boxcar, replacing the power plants of the country, the enormous conglomerations of steel, fuel and effort-she thought of the current flowing from this structure, lifting ounces, pounds, tons of strain from the shoulders of those who would make it or use it, adding hours, days and years of liberated²³⁵ time to their lives, be it an extra moment to lift one's head from one's task and glance at the sunlight, or an extra pack of cigarettes bought with the money saved from one's electric bill, or an hour cut from the workday of every factory using power, or a month's journey through the whole, open width of the world, on a ticket paid for by one day of one's labor, on a train pulled by the power of this motor-with all the energy of that weight, that strain, that time replaced and paid for by the energy of a single mind who had known how to make connections of wire follow the connections of his thought. But she knew that there was no meaning in motors or factories or trains, that their only meaning was in man's enjoyment²³⁶ of his life, which they served-and that her swelling admiration²³⁷ at the sight of an achievement was for the man from whom it came, for the power and the radiant vision within him which had seen the earth as a place of enjoyment and had known that the work of achieving one's happiness was the purpose, the sanction and the meaning of life.  The door of the structure was a straight, smooth sheet of stainless steel, softly lustrous and bluish in the sun. Above it, cut in the granite, as the only feature of the building's rectangular austerity, there stood an inscription: I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.  She turned to Galt. He stood beside her; he had followed her, he had known that this salute was his. She was looking at the inventor of the motor, but what she saw was the easy, casual figure of a workman in his natural setting and function-she noted the uncommon²³⁸ lightness of his posture, a weightless way of standing²²¹ that showed an expert control of the use of his body-a tall body in simple garments: a thin shirt, light slacks, a belt about a slender waistline-and loose hair made to glitter like metal by the current of a sluggish²³⁹ wind. She looked at him as she had looked at his structure.  Then she knew that the first two sentences they had said to each other still hung between them, filling the silence-that everything said since, had been said over the sound of those words, that he had known it, had held it, had not let her forget it. She was suddenly aware that they were alone; it was an awareness that stressed the fact, permitting no further implication, yet holding the full meaning of the unnamed in that special stress. They were alone in a silent forest, at the foot of a structure that looked like an ancient temple-and she knew what rite⁴⁶ was the proper form of worship to be offered on an altar of that kind.  She felt a sudden pressure at the base of her throat, her head leaned back a little, no more than to feel the faint shift of a current against her hair, but it was as if she were lying back in space, against the wind, conscious of nothing but his legs and the shape of his mouth. He stood watching her, his face still but for the faint movement of his eyelids²⁴⁰ drawing narrow as if against too strong a light. It was like the beat of three instants-this was the first-and in the next, she felt a stab of ferocious²⁴¹ triumph at the knowledge that his effort and his struggle were harder to endure than hers-and, then he moved his eyes and raised his head to look at the inscription on the temple.  She let him look at it for a moment, almost as an act of condescending²⁴² mercy to an adversary struggling to refuel his strength, then she asked, with a note of imperious pride in her voice, pointing at the inscription, "What's that?"  "It's the oath that was taken by every person in this valley, but you."  She said, looking at the words, "This has always been my own rule of living."  "I know it."  "But I don't think that yours is the way to practice it."  "Then you'll have to learn which one of us is wrong."  She walked up to the steel door of the structure, with a sudden confidence faintly stressed in the movements of her body, a mere²⁰⁵ hint of stress, no more than her awareness of the power she held by means of his pain-and she tried, asking no permission, to turn the knob of the door. But the door was locked, and she felt no tremor²⁴³ under the pressure of her hand, as if the lock were poured and sealed to the stone with the solid steel of the sheet.  "Don't try to open that door, Miss Taggart." He approached her, his steps a shade too slow, as if stressing his knowledge of her awareness of every step. "No amount of physical force will do it," he said. "Only a thought can open that door. If you tried to break it down by means of the best explosives in the world, the machinery inside would collapse²⁹ into rubble²⁴⁴ long before the door would give way. But reach the thought which it requires-and the secret of the motor will be yours, as well as"-it was the first break she had heard in his voice-"as well as any other secret you might wish to know." He faced her for a moment, as if leaving himself open to her full understanding, then smiled oddly, quietly at some thought of his own, and added, "I'll show you how it's done."  He stepped back. Then, standing still, his face raised to the words carved in the stone, he repeated them slowly, evenly, as if taking that oath once more. There was no emotion in his voice, nothing but the spaced clarity of the sounds he pronounced with full knowledge of their meaning-but she knew that she was witnessing the most solemn moment it would ever be given her to witness, she was seeing a man's naked soul and the cost it had paid to utter these words, she was hearing an echo of the day when he had pronounced that oath for the first time and with full knowledge of the years ahead-she knew what manner of man had stood up to face six thousand others on a dark spring night and why they had been afraid of him, she knew that this was the birth and the core of all the things that had happened to the world in the twelve years since, she knew that this was of far greater import than the motor hidden inside the structure-she knew it, to the sound of a man's voice pronouncing in self-reminder and rededication: "I swear by my life . . . and my love of it . . . that I will never live for the sake of another man . . . nor ask another man . . . to live . . . for mine."  It did not startle her, it seemed unastonishing and almost unimportant, that at the end of the last sound, she saw the door opening slowly, without human touch, moving inward upon a growing strip of darkness.  In the moment when an electric light went on inside the structure, he seized the knob and pulled the door shut, its lock clicking sealed once more.  "It's a sound lock," he said; his face was serene. "That sentence is the combination of sounds needed to open it. I don't mind telling you this secret-because I know that you won't pronounce those words until you mean them the way I intended them to be meant."  She inclined her head. "I won't."  She followed him down to the car, slowly, feeling suddenly too exhausted²⁴⁵ to move. She fell back against the seat, closing her eyes, barely hearing the sound of the starter. The accumulated strain and shock of her sleepless²⁴⁶ hours hit her at once, breaking through the barrier of the tension her nerves had held to delay it. She lay still, unable to think, to react or to struggle, drained of all emotions but one.  She did not speak. She did not open her eyes until the car stopped in front of his house.  "You'd better rest," he said, "and go to sleep right now, if you want to attend Mulligan's dinner tonight."  She nodded obediently. She staggered to the house, avoiding his help. She made an effort to tell him, "I'll be all right," then to escape to the safety of her room and last long enough to close the door.  She collapsed, face down, on the bed. It was not the mere fact of physical exhaustion²⁴⁷. It was the sudden monomania of a sensation too complete to endure. While the strength of her body was gone, while her mind had lost the faculty of consciousness, a single emotion drew on her remnants of energy, of understanding, of judgment²⁴⁸, of control, leaving her nothing to resist it with or to direct it, making her unable to desire, only to feel, reducing her to a mere sensation-a static sensation without start or goal. She kept seeing his figure in her mind-his figure as he had stood at the door of the structure-she felt nothing else, no wish, no hope, no estimate of her feeling, no name for it, no relation to herself-there was no entity²⁴⁹ such as herself, she was not a person, only a function, the function of seeing him, and the sight was its own meaning and purpose, with no further end to reach.  Her face buried in the pillow, she recalled dimly, as a faint sensation, the moment of her take-off from the floodlighted strip of the Kansas airfield. She felt the beat of the engine, the streak of accelerating motion gathering²⁵⁰ power in a straight-line run to a single goal-and in the moment when the wheels left the ground, she was asleep.  The floor of the valley was like a pool still reflecting the glow of the sky, but the light was thickening from gold to copper, the shores were fading and the peaks were smoke-blue-when they drove to Mulligan's house.  There was no trace of exhaustion left in her bearing and no remnant of violence. She had awakened²⁵¹ at sundown; stepping out of her room, she had found Galt waiting, sitting idly motionless in the light of a lamp. He had glanced up at her; she had stood in the doorway, her face composed, her hair smooth, her posture relaxed and confident -she had looked as she would have looked on the threshold of her office in the Taggart Building, but for the slight angle of her body leaning on a cane. He had sat looking at her for a moment, and she had wondered why she had felt certain that this was the image he was seeing-he was seeing the doorway of her office, as if it were a sight long-imagined and long-forbidden.  She sat beside him in the car, feeling no desire to speak, knowing that neither of them could conceal²⁵² the meaning of their silence. She watched a few lights come up in the distant homes of the valley, then the lighted windows of Mulligan's house on the ledge ahead. She asked, "Who will be there?"  "Some of your last friends," he answered, "and some of my first."  Midas Mulligan met them at the door. She noticed that his grim, square face was not as harshly expressionless as she had thought: he had a look of satisfaction, but satisfaction could not soften²⁵³ his features, it merely struck them like flint and sent sparks of humor to glitter faintly in the corners of his eyes, a humor that was shrewder, more demanding, yet warmer than a smile.  He opened the door of his house, moving his arm a shade more slowly than normal, giving an imperceptibly solemn emphasis to his gesture.  Walking into the living room, she faced seven men who rose to their feet at her entrance.  "Gentlemen-Taggart Transcontinental," said Midas Mulligan.  He said it smiling, but only half-jesting; some quality in his voice made the name of the railroad sound as it would have sounded in the days of Nat Taggart, as a sonorous²⁵⁴ title of honor.  She inclined her head, slowly, in acknowledgment to the men before her, knowing that these were the men whose standards of value and honor were the same as her own, the men who recognized the glory of that title as she recognized it, knowing with a sudden stab of wistfulness how much she had longed for that recognition through all her years.  Her eyes moved slowly, in greeting, from face to face: Ellis Wyatt-Ken Danagger-Hugh Akston-Dr. Hendricks-Quentin Daniels- Mulligan's voice pronounced the names of the two others: "Richard Halley-Judge Narragansett."  The faint smile on Richard Halley's face seemed to tell her that they had known each other for years-as, in her lonely evenings by the side of her phonograph, they had. The austerity of Judge Narragansett's white-haired figure reminded her that she had once heard him described as a marble statue-a blindfolded²⁵⁵ marble statue; it was the kind of figure that had vanished from the courtrooms of the country when the gold coins had vanished from the country's hands.  "You have belonged here for a long time, Miss Taggart," said Midas Mulligan. "This was not the way we expected you to come, but-welcome home."  No!-she wanted to answer, but heard herself answering softly, "Thank you."  "Dagny, how many years is it going to take you to learn to be yourself?" It was Ellis Wyatt, grasping her elbow, leading her to a chair, grinning at her look of helplessness, at the struggle between a smile and a tightening²⁵⁶ resistance in her face. "Don't pretend that you don't understand us. You do."  "We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell-we show. We do not claim-we prove. It is not your obedience²⁵⁷ that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw-we can help you to name it, but not to accept it-the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."  "I feel as if I know it," she answered simply, "and more: I feel as if I've always known it, but never found it, and now I'm afraid, not afraid to hear it, just afraid that it's coming so close."  Akston smiled. "What does this look like to you, Miss Taggart?" He pointed around the room.  "This?" She laughed suddenly, looking at the faces of the men against the golden sunburst of rays filling the great windows. "This looks like . . . You know, I never hoped to see any of you again, I wondered at times how much I'd give for just one more glimpse or one more word-and now-now this is like that dream you imagine in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from all the past centuries, the great men you would like to meet."  "Well, that's one clue to the nature of our secret," said Akston.  "Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth."  "I know," she whispered.  "And if you met those great men in heaven," asked Ken Danagger, "what would you want to say to them?"  "Just . . . just 'hello,' I guess."  "That's not all," said Danagger. "There's something you'd want to hear from them. I didn't know it, either, until I saw him for the first time"-he pointed to Galt-"and he said it to me, and then I knew what it was that I had missed all my life. Miss Taggart, you'd want them to look at you and to say, 'Well done' " She dropped her head and nodded silently, head down, not to let him see the sudden spurt²⁵⁸ of tears to her eyes. "All right, then: Well done, Dagny!-well done-too well-and now it's time for you to rest from that burden which none of us should ever have had to carry."  "Shut up," said Midas Mulligan, looking at her bowed head with anxious concern.  But she raised her head, smiling. "Thank you," she said to Danagger.  "If you talk about resting, then let her rest," said Mulligan. "She's had too much for one day."  "No." She smiled. "Go ahead, say it-whatever it is."  "Later," said Mulligan.  It was Mulligan and Akston who served dinner, with Quentin Daniels to help them. They served it on small silver trays, to be placed on the arms of the chairs-and they all sat about the room, with the fire of the sky fading in the windows and sparks of electric light glittering in the wine glasses. There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity; she noted the costly²⁵⁹ furniture, carefully chosen for comfort, bought somewhere at a time when luxury had still been an art. There were no superfluous²⁶⁰ objects, but she noticed a small canvas by a great master of the Renaissance²⁶¹, worth a fortune, she noticed an Oriental rug of a texture²⁶² and color that belonged under glass in a museum. This was Mulligan's concept of wealth, she thought-the wealth of selection, not of accumulation.  Quentin Daniels sat on the floor, with his tray on his lap; he seemed completely at home, and he glanced up at her once in a while, grinning like an impudent²⁶³ kid brother who had beaten her to a secret she had not discovered. He had preceded her into the valley by some ten minutes, she thought, but he was one of them, while she was still a stranger.  Galt sat aside, beyond the circle of lamplight, on the arm of Dr. Akston's chair. He had not said a word, he had stepped back and turned her over to the others, and he sat watching it as a spectacle in which he had no further part to play. But her eyes kept coming back to him, drawn by the certainty that the spectacle was of his choice and staging, that he had set it in motion long ago, and that all the others knew it as she knew it.  She noticed another person who was intensely aware of Galt's presence: Hugh Akston glanced up at him once in a while, involuntarily, almost surreptitiously, as if struggling not to confess the loneliness of a long separation. Akston did not speak to him, as if taking his presence for granted. But once, when Galt bent forward and a strand¹³ of hair fell down across his face, Akston reached over and brushed it back, his hand lingering for an imperceptible instant on his pupil's forehead: it was the only break of emotion he permitted himself, the only greeting; it was the gesture of a father.  She found herself talking to the men around her, relaxing in lighthearted comfort. No, she thought, what she felt was not strain, it was a dim astonishment at the strain which she should, but did not, feel; the abnormality of it was that it seemed so normal and simple.  She was barely aware of her questions, as she spoke to one man after another, but their answers were printing a record in her mind, moving sentence by sentence to a goal.  "The Fifth Concerto?" said Richard Halley, in answer to her question. "I wrote it ten years ago. We call it the Concerto of Deliverance. Thank you for recognizing it from a few notes whistled in the  night. . . . Yes, I know about that. . . . Yes, since you knew my work, you would know, when you heard it, that this Concerto said everything I had been struggling to say and reach. It's dedicated²⁶⁴ to him." He pointed to Galt. "Why, no, Miss Taggart, I haven't given up music, What makes you think so? I've written more in the last ten years than in any other period of my life. I will play it for you, any of it, when you come to my house. . . . No, Miss Taggart, it will not be published outside. Not a note of it will be heard beyond these mountains."  "No, Miss Taggart, I have not given up medicine," said Dr. Hendricks, in answer to her question. "I have spent the last six years on research. I have discovered a method to protect the blood vessels²⁶⁵ of the brain from that fatal rupture²⁶⁶ which is known as a brain stroke. It will remove from human existence the terrible threat of sudden paralysis²⁶⁷. . . . No, not a word of my method will be heard outside."  "The law, Miss Taggart?" said Judge Narragansett. "What law? I did not give it up-it has ceased to exist. But I am still working in the profession I had chosen, which was that of serving the cause of justice. . . . No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists. . . . Yes, I am continuing in my profession. I am writing a treatise²⁶⁸ on the philosophy of law, I shall demonstrate that humanity's darkest evil, the most destructive horror machine among all the devices of men, is non-objective law. . . . No, Miss Taggart, my treatise will not be published outside."  "My business, Miss Taggart?" said Midas Mulligan. "My business is blood transfusion-and I'm still doing it. My job is to feed a life-fuel into the plants that are capable of growing. But ask Dr. Hendricks whether any amount of blood will save a body that refuses to function, a rotten hulk that expects to exist without effort. My blood bank is gold. Gold is a fuel that will perform wonders, but no fuel can work where there is no motor. . . . No, I haven't given up. I merely got fed up with the job of running a slaughter²⁶⁹ house, where one drains blood out of healthy living beings and pumps it into gutless half-corpses."  "Given up?" said Hugh Akston. "Check your premises²⁷¹, Miss Taggart. None of us has given up. It is the world that has. . . . What is wrong with a philosopher running a roadside diner? Or a cigarette factory, as I am doing now? All work is an act of philosophy. And when men will learn to consider productive work-and that which is its source-as the standard of their moral values, they will reach that state of perfection which is the birthright they lost. . . . The source of work? Man's mind, Miss Taggart, man's reasoning mind. I am writing a book on this subject, defining a moral philosophy that I learned from my own pupil. . . . Yes, it could save the world. . . . No, it will not be published outside."  "Why?" she cried. "Why? What are you doing, all of you?"  "We are on strike," said John Galt.  They all turned to him, as if they had been waiting for his voice and for that word. She heard the empty beat of time within her, which was the sudden silence of the room, as she looked at him across a span of lamplight. He sat slouched casually²⁷² on the arm of a chair, leaning forward, his forearm across his knees, his hand hanging down idly-and it was the faint smile on his face that gave to his words the deadly sound of the irrevocable: "Why should this seem so startling? There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable-except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike."  She did not move, except for the fingers of one hand that moved slowly up her cheek to her temple.  "Through all the ages," he said, "the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist²⁷³ to exploiter-every form of iniquity²⁷⁴: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation-every form of torture: from sneers²⁷⁵ to rack to firing squad-have been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which-in chains, in dungeons²⁷⁶, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders-some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive. Through all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation²⁷⁷ humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality²⁷⁸ to practice-it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction-only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human, and only the sum of such moments permitted them to continue to exist. It was the man of the mind who taught them to bake their bread, to heal their wounds, to forge their weapons and to build the jails into which they threw him. He was the man of extravagant²⁷⁹ energy-and reckless generosity-who knew that stagnation is not man's fate, that impotence is not his nature, that the ingenuity of his mind is his noblest and most joyous power-and in service to that love of existence he was alone to feel, he went on working, working at any price, working for his despoilers, for his jailers, for his torturers, paying with his life for the privilege of saving theirs. This was his glory and his guilt-that he let them teach him to feel guilty of his glory, to accept the part of a sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelligence, to perish on the altars of the brutes²⁸⁰. The tragic²⁸² joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected²⁸³, it was always man whom they immolated²⁸⁴ and the animal whom they enshrined. It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol²⁸⁵ of instinct and the idol of force-the mystics and the kings-the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-and the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power. The defenders²⁸⁷ of man's soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defenders of man's body were concerned with his stomach-but both were united against his mind. Yet no one, not the lowest of humans, is ever able fully to renounce²⁸⁸ his brain. No one has ever believed in the irrational²⁸⁹; what they do believe in is the unjust.  “Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit him to confess. When he preaches contradictions, he does so in the knowledge that someone will accept the burden of the impossible, someone will make it work for him at the price of his own suffering or life; destruction is the price of any contradiction. It is the victims who made injustice²⁹⁰ possible. It is the men of reason who made it possible for the rule of the brute²⁸¹ to work. The despoiling²⁹¹ of reason has been the motive of every anti-reason creed²⁹² on earth. The despoiling of ability has been the purpose of every creed that preached self-sacrifice. The despoilers have always known it. We haven't. The time has come for us to see. What we are now asked to worship, what had once been dressed as God or king, is the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent²⁹³. This is the new ideal, the goal to aim at, the purpose to live for, and all men are to be rewarded according to how close they approach it. This is the age of the common man, they tell us-a title which any man may claim to the extent of such distinction as he has managed not to achieve. He will rise to a rank of nobility by means of the effort he has failed to make, he will be honored for such virtue²⁹⁴ as he has not displayed, and he will be paid for the goods which he did not produce. But we-we, who must atone²⁹⁵ for the guilt of ability-we will work to support him as he orders, with his pleasure as our only reward. Since we have the most to contribute, we will have the least to say. Since we have the better capacity to think, we will not be permitted a thought of our own. Since we have the judgment to act, we will not be permitted an action of our choice. We will work under directives and controls, issued by those who are incapable²⁹⁶ of working. They will dispose of our energy, because they have none to offer, and of our product, because they can't produce. Do you say that this is impossible, that it cannot be made to work? They know it, but it is you who don't-and they are counting on you not to know it. They are counting on you to go on, to work to the limit of the inhuman²⁹⁷ and to feed them while you last-and when you collapse, there will be another victim starting out and feeding them, while struggling to survive-and the span of each succeeding victim will be shorter, and while you'll die to leave them a railroad, your last descendant-in-spirit will die to leave them a loaf of bread.  This does not worry the looters of the moment. Their plan-like all the plans of all the royal looters of the past-is only that the loot shall last their lifetime. It has always lasted before, because in one generation they could not run out of victims. But this time-it will not last. The victims are on strike. We are on strike against martyrdom-and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours-and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please. But, for once, they will have to believe it and to exist-without our help. And, once and for all, they will learn the meaning of their creed. That creed has lasted for centuries solely²⁹⁸ by the sanction of the victims-by means of the victims' acceptance of punishment for breaking a code impossible to practice. But that code was intended to be broken. It is a code that thrives not on those who observe it, but on those who don't, a morality kept in existence not by virtue of its saints, but by the grace of its sinners. We have decided²⁹⁹ not to be sinners any longer. We have ceased breaking that moral code. We shall blast it out of existence forever by the one method that it can't withstand: by obeying it. We are obeying it. We are complying. In dealing with our fellow men, we are observing their code of values to the letter and sparing them all the evils they denounce. The mind is evil? We have withdrawn³⁰⁰ the works of our minds from society, and not a single idea of ours is to be known or used by men. Ability is a selfish evil that leaves no chance to those who are less able? We have withdrawn from the competition and left all chances open to incompetents³⁰¹. The pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil? We do not seek to make fortunes any longer. It is evil to earn more than one's bare sustenance³⁰²? We take nothing but the lowliest jobs and we produce, by the effort of our muscles, no more than we consume for our immediate needs-with not a penny nor an inventive thought left over to harm the world. It is evil to succeed, since success is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? We have ceased burdening the weak with our ambition and have left them free to prosper³⁰³ without us. It is evil to be an employer? We have no employment to offer. It is evil to own property? We own nothing. It is evil to enjoy one's existence in this world? There is no form of enjoyment that we seek from their world, and-this was hardest for us to attain³⁰⁴-what we now feel for their world is that emotion which they preach as an ideal: indifference-the blank-the zero-the mark of death. . . .We are giving men everything they've professed³⁰⁵ to want and to seek as virtue for centuries. Now let them see whether they want it."  "It was you who started this strike?" she asked.  "I did."  He got up, he stood, hands in pockets, his face in the light-and she saw him smile with the easy, effortless, implacable amusement of certainty.  "We've heard so much about strikes," he said, "and about the dependence³⁰⁶ of the uncommon man upon the common. We've heard it shouted that the industrialist is a parasite³⁰⁷, that his workers support him, create his wealth, make his luxury possible-and what would happen to him if they walked out? Very well. I propose to show to the world who depends on whom, who supports whom, who is the source of wealth, who makes whose livelihood³⁰⁸ possible and what happens to whom when who walks out."  The windows were now sheets of darkness, reflecting the dots of lighted cigarettes. He picked a cigarette from a table beside him, and in the flare³⁰⁹ of a match she saw the brief sparkle of gold, the dollar sign, between his fingers.  "I quit and joined him and went on strike," said Hugh Akston, "because I could not share my profession with men who claim that the qualification of an intellectual consists of denying the existence of the intellect. People would not employ a plumber¹⁵³ who'd attempt to prove his professional excellence³¹⁰ by asserting that there's no such thing as plumbing-but, apparently³¹¹, the same standards of caution are not considered necessary in regard to philosophers. I learned from my own pupil, however, that it was I who made this possible. When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought-it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise²⁷⁰, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia, A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis³¹² and tolerates no tolerance³¹³. In the same manner and for the same reason as a banker may not accept and pass counterfeit³¹⁴ money, granting it the sanction, honor and prestige of his bank, just as he may not grant the counterfeiter's demand for tolerance of a mere difference of opinion-so I may not grant the title of philosopher to Dr. Simon Pritchett or compete with him for the minds of men. Dr. Pritchett has nothing to deposit to the account of philosophy, except his declared intention to destroy it. He seeks to cash in-by means of denying it-on the power of reason among men. He seeks to stamp the mint-mark of reason upon the plans of his looting masters. He seeks to use the prestige of philosophy to purchase the enslavement of thought. But that prestige is an account which can exist only so long as I am there to sign the checks. Let him do it without me. Let him-and those who entrust³¹⁵ to him their children's minds-have exactly that which they demand: a world of intellectuals without intellect and of thinkers who proclaim that they cannot think. I am conceding it. I am complying. And when they see the absolute reality of their non-absolute world, I will not be there and it will not be I who will pay the price of their contradictions."  "Dr. Akston quit on the principle of sound banking," said Midas Mulligan. "I quit on the principle of love. Love is the ultimate form of recognition one grants to superlative values. It was the Hunsacker case that made me quit-that case when a court of law ordered that I honor, as first right to my depositors' funds, the demand of those who would offer proof that they had no right to demand it. I was ordered to hand out money earned by men, to a worthless rotter whose only claim consisted of his inability to earn it. I was born on a farm. I knew the meaning of money. I had dealt with many men in my life. I had watched them grow. I had made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man. The kind who never asked you for faith, hope and charity, but offered you facts, proof and profit. Did you know that I invested in Hank Rearden's business at the time when he was rising, when he had just beaten his way out of Minnesota to buy the steel mills in Pennsylvania? Well, when I looked at that court order on my desk, I had a vision. I saw a picture, and I saw it so clearly that it changed the looks of everything for me. I saw the bright face and the eyes of young Rearden, as he'd been when I'd met him first. I saw him lying at the foot of an altar, with his blood running down into the earth-and what stood on that altar was Lee Hunsacker, with the mucus-filled eyes, whining³¹⁶ that he'd never had a chance. . . . It's strange how simple things become, once you see them clearly. It wasn't hard for me to close the bank and go: I kept seeing, for the first time in my life, what it was that I had lived for and loved."  She looked at Judge Narragansett. "You quit over the same case, didn't you?"  "Yes," said Judge Narragansett. "I quit when the court of appeals reversed my ruling. The purpose for which I had chosen my work, was my resolve to be a guardian³¹⁷ of justice. But the laws they asked me to enforce made me the executor of the vilest³¹⁸ injustice conceivable. I was asked to use force to violate the rights of disarmed³¹⁹ men, who came before me to seek my protection for their rights. Litigants³²⁰ obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct, which they both accept. Now I saw that one man was to be bound by it, but the other was not, one was to obey a rule, the other was to assert an arbitrary wish-his need-and the law was to stand on the side of the wish. Justice was to consist of upholding the unjustifiable. I quit-because I could not have borne to hear the words 'Your Honor' addressed to me by an honest man."  Her eyes moved slowly to Richard Halley, as if she were both pleading and afraid to hear his story. He smiled.  "I would have forgiven men for my struggle," said Richard Halley. "It was their view of my success that I could not forgive. I had felt no hatred³²¹ in all the years when they rejected me. If my work was new, I had to give them time to learn, if I took pride in being first to break a trail to a height of my own, I had no right to complain if others were slow to follow. That was what I had told myself through all those years -except on some nights, when I could neither wait nor believe any longer, when I cried 'why?' but found no answer. Then, on the night when they chose to cheer me, I stood before them on the stage of a theater, thinking that this was the moment I had struggled to reach, wishing to feel it, but feeling nothing. I was seeing all the other nights behind me, hearing the 'why?' which still had no answer-and their cheers seemed as empty as their snubs. If they had said, 'Sorry to be so late, thank you for waiting-I would have asked for nothing else and they could have had anything I had to give them. But what I saw in their faces, and in the way they spoke when they crowded to praise me, was the thing I had heard being preached to artists-only I had never believed that anyone human could mean it. They seemed to say that they owed me nothing, that their deafness had provided me with a moral goal, that it had been my duty to struggle, to suffer, to bear-for their sake-whatever sneers, contempt, injustice, torture they chose to inflict³²² upon me, to bear it in order to teach them to enjoy my work, that this was their rightful due and my proper purpose. And then I understood the nature of the looter-in-spirit, a thing I had never been able to conceive. I saw them reaching into my soul, just as they reach into Mulligan's pocket, reaching to expropriate the value of my person, just as they reach to expropriate his wealth-I saw the impertinent malice³²³ of mediocrity boastfully holding up its own emptiness as an abyss to be filled by the bodies of its betters-I saw them seeking, just as they seek to feed on Mulligan's money, to feed on those hours when I wrote my music and on that which made me write it, seeking to gnaw³²⁴ their way to self-esteem by extorting³²⁵ from me the admission that they were the goal of my music, so that precisely³²⁶ by reason of my achievement, it would not be they who'd acknowledge my value, but I who would bow to theirs. . . . It was that night that I took the oath never to let them hear another note of mine. The streets were empty when I left that theater, I was the last one to leave-and I saw a man whom I had never seen before, waiting for me in the light of a lamppost. He did not have to tell me much. But the concerto I dedicated to him is called the Concerto of Deliverance."  She looked at the others. "Please tell me your reasons," she said, with a faint stress of firmness in her voice, as if she were taking a beating, but wished to take it to the end.  "I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate³²⁷, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout³²⁸ the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate³²⁹ the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything-except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant³³⁰ selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.' That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards-never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle³³¹ my mind-yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards³³², that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled³³³. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it-and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."  "I quit," said Ellis Wyatt, "because I didn't wish to serve as the cannibals' meal and to do the cooking, besides."  "I discovered," said Ken Danagger, "that the men I was fighting were impotent. The shiftless, the purposeless, the irresponsible, the irrational-it was not I who needed them, it was not theirs to dictate terms to me, it was not mine to obey demands. I quit, to let them discover it, too."  "I quit," said Quentin Daniels, "because, if there are degrees of damnation, the scientist who places his mind in the service of brute force is the longest-range murderer on earth."  They were silent. She turned to Galt. "And you?" she asked. "You were first. What made you come to it?"  He chuckled, "My refusal to be born with any original sin."  "What do you mean?"  "I have never felt guilty of my ability. I have never felt guilty of my mind. I have never felt guilty of being a man. I accepted no unearned guilt, and thus was free to earn and to know my own value. Ever since I can remember, I had felt that I would kill the man who'd claim that I exist for the sake of his need-and I had known that this was the highest moral feeling. That night, at the Twentieth Century meeting, when I heard an unspeakable evil being spoken in a tone of moral righteousness, I saw the root of the world's tragedy, the key to it and the solution. I saw what had to be done. I went out to do it."  "And the motor?" she asked. "Why did you abandon it? Why did you leave it to the Starnes heirs?"  "It was their- father's property. He paid me for it. It was made on his time. But I knew that it would be of no benefit to them and that no one would ever hear of it again. It was my first experimental model. Nobody but me or my equivalent could have been able to complete it or even to grasp what it was. And I knew that no equivalent of mine would come near that factory from then on."  "You knew the kind of achievement your motor represented?"  "Yes."  "And you knew you were leaving it to perish?"  "Yes." He looked off into the darkness beyond the windows and chuckled softly, but it was not a sound of amusement. "I looked at my motor for the last tune¹⁷⁴, before I left. I thought of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of natural resources-and of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of seizing the factories-and of the men who claim that machines condition their brains. Well, there was the motor to condition them, and there it remained as just exactly what it is without man's mind-as a pile of metal scraps³³⁴ and wires, going to rust. You have been thinking of the great service which that motor could have rendered to mankind, if it had been put into production. I think that on the day when men understand the meaning of its fate in that factory's junk heap-it will have rendered a greater one."  "Did you expect to see that day, when you left it?"  "No."  "Did you expect a chance to rebuild it elsewhere?"  "No."  "And you were willing to let it remain in a junk heap?"  "For the sake of what that motor meant to me," he said slowly, "I had to be willing to let it crumble³³⁵ and vanish forever"-he looked straight at her and she heard the steady, unhesitant, uninflected ruthlessness of his voice-"just as you will have to be willing to let the rail of Taggart Transcontinental crumble and vanish."  She held his eyes, her head was lifted, and she said softly, in the tone of a proudly open plea, "Don't make me answer you now."  "I won't. We'll tell you whatever you wish to know. We won't urge you to make a decision." He added, and she was shocked by the sudden gentleness of his voice, "I said that that kind of indifference toward a world which should have been ours was the hardest thing to attain. I know. We've all gone through it."  She looked at the quiet, impregnable room, and at the light-the light that came from his motor-on the faces of men who were the most serene and confident gathering she had ever attended.  "What did you do, when you walked out of the Twentieth Century?" she asked.  "I went out to become a flame-spotter. I made it my job to watch for those bright flares³³⁶ in the growing night of savagery³³⁷, which were the men of ability, the men of the mind-to watch their course, their struggle and their agony-and to pull them out, when I knew that they had seen enough."  "What did you tell them to make them abandon everything?"  "I told them that they were right."  In answer to the silent question of her glance, he added, "I gave them the pride they did not know they had. I gave them the words to identify it. I gave them that priceless possession which they had missed, had longed for, yet had not known they needed: a moral sanction. Did you call me the destroyer and the hunter of men? I was the walking delegate of this strike, the leader of the victims' rebellion, the defender²⁸⁶ of the oppressed, the disinherited, the exploited-and when I use these words, they have, for once, a literal meaning."  "Who were the first to follow you?"  He let a moment pass, in deliberate emphasis, then answered, "My two best friends. You know one of them. You know, perhaps better than anyone else, what price he paid for it. Our own teacher, Dr. Akston, was next. He joined us within one evening's conversation. William Hastings, who had been my boss in the research laboratory of Twentieth Century Motors, had a hard time, fighting it out with himself. It took him a year. But he joined. Then Richard Halley. Then Midas Mulligan."  "-who took fifteen minutes," said Mulligan.  She turned to him. "It was you who established this valley?"  "Yes," said Mulligan. "It was just my own private retreat, at first. I bought it years ago, I bought miles of these mountains, section by section, from ranchers and cattlemen who didn't know what they owned. The valley is not listed on any map. I built this house, when I decided to quit. I cut off all possible avenues of approach, except one road-and it's camouflaged³³⁸ beyond anyone's power to discover-and I stocked this place to be self-supporting, so that I could live here for the rest of my life and never have to see the face of a looter. When I heard that John had got Judge Narragansett, too, I invited the Judge to come here. Then we asked Richard Halley to join us. The others remained outside, at first."  "We had no rules of any kind," said Galt, "except one. When a man took our oath, it meant a single commitment: not to work in his own profession, not to give to the world the benefit of his mind.  Each of us carried it out in any manner he chose. Those who had money, retired to live on their savings. Those who had to work, took the lowest jobs they could find. Some of us had been famous; others-like that young brakeman of yours, whom Halley discovered-were stopped by us before they had set out to get tortured. But we did not give up our minds or the work we loved. Each of us continued in his real profession, in whatever manner and spare time he could manage-but he did it secretly, for his own sole benefit, giving nothing to men, sharing nothing. We were scattered all over the country, as the outcasts we had always been, only now we accepted our parts with conscious intention. Our sole relief were the rare occasions when we could see one another.  “We found that we liked to meet-in order to be reminded that human beings still existed. So we came to set aside one month a year to spend in this valley-to rest, to live in a rational world, to bring our real work out of hiding, to trade our achievements-here, where achievements meant payment, not expropriation. Each of us built his own house here, at his own expense-for one month of life out of twelve. It made the eleven easier to bear."  "You see, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston, "man is a social being, but not in the way the looters preach."  "It's the destruction of Colorado that started the growth of this valley," said Midas Mulligan. "Ellis Wyatt and the others came to live here permanently, because they had to hide. Whatever part of their wealth they could salvage³³⁹, they converted into gold or machines, as I had, and they brought it here. There were enough of us to develop the place and to create jobs for those who had had to earn their living outside. We have now reached the stage where most of us can live here full time. The valley is almost self-supporting-and as to the goods that we can't yet produce, I purchase them from the outside through a pipe line of my own. It's a special agent, a man who does not let my money reach the looters. We are not a state here, not a society of any kind-we're just a voluntary association of men held together by nothing but every man's self-interest. I own the valley and I sell the land to the others, when they want it. Judge Narragansett is to act as our arbiter³⁴⁰, in case of disagreements. He hasn't had to be called upon, as yet. They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be surprised how easy it is-when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade. The time is approaching when all of us will have to be called to live here-because the world is falling apart so fast that it will soon be starving. But we will be able to support ourselves in this valley."  "The world is crashing faster than we expected," said Hugh Akston.  "Men are stopping and giving up. Your frozen trains, the gangs of raiders, the deserters, they're men who've never heard of us, and they're not part of our strike, they are acting³⁴¹ on their own-it's the natural response of whatever rationality is still left in them-it's the same kind of protest as ours."  "We started with no time limit in view," said Galt. "We did not know whether we'd live to see the liberation of the world or whether we'd have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations.  We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live. But now we think that we will see, and soon, the day of our victory and of our return."  "When?" she whispered.  "When the code of the looters has collapsed."  He saw her looking at him, her glance half-question, half-hope, and he added, "When the creed of self-immolation has run, for once, its undisguised course-when men find no victims ready to obstruct³⁴² the path of justice and to deflect³⁴³ the fall of retribution on themselves-when the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not willing any longer-when men see that neither their hearts nor their muscles can save them, but the mind they damned is not there to answer then: screams for help-when they collapse as they must, as men without mind-when they have no pretense³⁴⁴ of authority left, no remnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way to obtain it-when they collapse and the road is clear-then we'll come back to rebuild the world."  The Taggart Terminal, she thought; she heard the words beating through the numbness³⁴⁵ of her mind, as the sum of a burden she had not had time to weigh. This was the Taggart Terminal, she thought, this room, not the giant concourse in New York-this was her goal, the end of track, the point beyond the curve of the earth where the two straight lines of rail met and vanished, drawing her forward-as they had drawn Nathaniel Taggart-this was the goal Nathaniel Taggart had seen in the distance and this was the point still holding the straight-line glance of his lifted head above the spiral motion of men in the granite concourse. It was for the sake of this that she had dedicated herself to the rail of Taggart Transcontinental, as to the body of a spirit yet to be found. She had found it, everything she had ever wanted, it was here in this room, reached and hers-but the price was that net of rail behind her, the rail that would vanish, the bridges that would crumble, the signal lights that would go out. . . . And yet . . . Everything I had ever wanted, she thought-looking away from the figure of a man with sun-colored hair and implacable eyes.  "You don't have to answer us now."  She raised her head; he was watching her as if he had followed the steps in her mind.  "We never demand agreement," he said. "We never tell anyone more than he is ready to hear You are the first person who has learned our secret ahead of time. But you're here and you had to know. Now you know the exact nature of the choice you'll have to make. If it seems hard, it's because you still think that it does not have to be one or the other. You will learn that it does."  "Will you give me time?"  "Your time is not ours to give. Take your time. You alone can decide what you'll choose to do, and when. We know the cost of that decision. We've paid it. That you've come here might now make it easier for you-or harder."  "Harder," she whispered.  "I know."  He said it, his voice as low as hers, with the same sound of being forced past one's breath, and she missed an instant of time, as in the stillness after a blow, because she felt that this-not the moments when he had carried her in his arms down the mountainside, but this meeting of their voices-had been the closest physical contact between them.  A full moon stood in the sky above the valley, when they drove back to his house; it stood like a flat, round lantern without rays, with a haze³⁴⁶ of light hanging in space, not reaching the ground, and the illumination seemed to come from the abnormal white brightness of the soil. In the unnatural stillness of sight without color, the earth seemed veiled by a film of distance, its shapes did not merge⁵⁶ into a landscape, but went slowly flowing past, like the print of a photograph on a cloud.  She noticed suddenly that she was smiling. She was looking down at the houses of the valley. Their lighted windows were dimmed by a bluish cast, the outlines of their walls were dissolving, long bands of mist were coiling among them in torpid³⁴⁷, unhurried waves. It looked like a city sinking under water.  "What do they call this place?" she asked.  "I call it Mulligan's Valley," he said. "The others call it Galt's Gulch³⁴⁸."  "I'd call it-" but she did not finish.  He glanced at her. She knew what he saw in her face. He turned away. She saw a faint movement of his lips, like the release of a breath that he was forcing to function. She dropped her glance, her arm falling against the side of the car, as if her hand were suddenly too heavy for the weakness in the crook³⁴⁹ of her elbow.  The road grew darker, as it went higher, and pine branches met over their heads. Above a slant of rock moving to meet them, she saw the moonlight on the windows of his house. Her head fell back against the seat and she lay still, losing awareness of the car, feeling only the motion that carried her forward, watching the glittering drops of water in the pine branches, which were the stars.  When the car stopped, she did not permit herself to know why she did not look at him as she stepped, out. She did not know that she stood still for an instant, looking up at the dark windows. She did not hear him approach; but she felt the impact of his hands with shocking intensity, as if it were the only awareness she could now experience.  He lifted her in his arms and started slowly up the path to the house.  He walked, not looking at her, holding her tight, as if trying to hold a progression of time, as if his arms were still locked over the moment when he had lifted her against his chest. She felt his steps as if they were a single span of motion to a goal and as if each step were a separate moment in which she dared not think of the next.  Her head was close to his, his hair brushing her cheek, and she knew that neither of them would move his face that one breath closer. It was a sudden, stunned³⁵⁰ state of quiet drunkenness, complete in itself, their hair mingled³⁵¹ like the rays of two bodies in space that had achieved their meeting, she saw that he walked with his eyes closed, as if even sight would now be an intrusion.  He entered the house, and as he moved across the living room, he did not look to his left and neither did she, but she knew that both of them were seeing the door on his left that led to his bedroom. He walked the length of the darkness to the wedge of moonlight that fell across the guest-room bed, he placed her down upon it, she felt an instant's pause of his hands still holding her shoulder and waistline, and when his hands left her body, she knew that the moment was over.  He stepped back and pressed a switch, surrendering the room to the harshly public glare of light. He stood still, as if demanding that she look at him, his face expectant and stern.  "Have you forgotten that you wanted to shoot me on sight?" he asked.  It was the unprotected stillness of his figure that made it real. The shudder that threw her upright was like a cry of terror and denial; but she held his glance and answered evenly, "That's true. I did."  "Then stand by it."  Her voice was low, its intensity was both a surrender and a scornful reproach: "You know better than that, don't you?"  He shook his head. "No. I want you to remember that that had been your wish. You were right, in the past. So long as you were part of the outer world, you had to seek to destroy me. And of the two courses now open to you, one will lead you to the day when you will find yourself forced to do it." She did not answer, she sat looking down, he saw the strands of her hair swing jerkily as she shook her head in desperate protest. "You are my only danger. You are the only person who could deliver me to my enemies. If you remain with them, you will. Choose that, if you wish, but choose it with full knowledge. Don't answer me now. But until you do"-the stress of severity in his voice was the sound of effort directed against himself-"remember that I know the meaning of either answer."  "As fully as I do?" she whispered.  "As fully."  He turned to go, when her eyes fell suddenly upon the inscriptions she had noticed, and forgotten, on the walls of the room.  They were cut into the polish of the wood, still showing the force of the pencil's pressure in the hands that had made them, each in his own violent writing: "You'll get over it-Ellis Wyatt" "It will be all right by morning-Ken Danagger" "It's worth it-Roger Marsh."  There were others, "What is that?" she asked.  He smiled. "This is the room where they spent their first night in the valley. The first night is the hardest. It's the last pull of the break with one's memories, and the worst. I let them stay here, so they can call for me, if they want me. I speak to them, if they can't sleep.  Most of them can't. But they're free of it by morning. . . . They've all gone through this room. Now they call it the torture chamber³⁵² or the anteroom-because everyone has to enter the valley through my house."  He turned to go, he stopped on the threshold and added: "This is the room I never intended you to occupy. Good night, Miss Taggart."

1 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。

2 blessing   

n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿

参考例句：

• The blessing was said in Hebrew.祷告用了希伯来语。
• A double blessing has descended upon the house.双喜临门。

3 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。

4 arrogance   

n.傲慢，自大

参考例句：

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

5 serene   

adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的

参考例句：

• He has entered the serene autumn of his life.他已进入了美好的中年时期。
• He didn't speak much,he just smiled with that serene smile of his.他话不多，只是脸上露出他招牌式的淡定的微笑。

6 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

7 perceptive   

adj.知觉的，有洞察力的，感知的

参考例句：

• This is a very perceptive assessment of the situation.这是一个对该情况的极富洞察力的评价。
• He is very perceptive and nothing can be hidden from him.他耳聪目明，什么事都很难瞒住他。

8 perceptiveness   

n.洞察力强，敏锐，理解力

参考例句：

• Her strength as a novelist lies in her perceptiveness and compassion. 她作为小说家的实力在于她的洞察力和同情心。 来自互联网

9 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

10 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。

11 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

12 alloy   

n.合金，(金属的)成色

参考例句：

• The company produces titanium alloy.该公司生产钛合金。
• Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin.青铜是铜和锡的合金。

13 strand   

vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地）

参考例句：

• She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.她把一缕散发夹到了耳后。
• The climbers had been stranded by a storm.登山者被暴风雨困住了。

14 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》

15 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。

16 conspirator   

n.阴谋者，谋叛者

参考例句：

• We started abusing him,one conspirator after another adding his bitter words.我们这几个预谋者一个接一个地咒骂他，恶狠狠地骂个不停。
• A conspirator is not of the stuff to bear surprises.谋反者是经不起惊吓的。

17 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

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

18 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。

19 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。

20 adversary   

adj.敌手，对手

参考例句：

• He saw her as his main adversary within the company.他将她视为公司中主要的对手。
• They will do anything to undermine their adversary's reputation.他们会不择手段地去损害对手的名誉。

21 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。

22 granite   

adj.花岗岩，花岗石

参考例句：

• They squared a block of granite.他们把一块花岗岩加工成四方形。
• The granite overlies the older rocks.花岗岩躺在磨损的岩石上面。

23 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

24 recoil   

vi.退却，退缩，畏缩

参考例句：

• Most people would recoil at the sight of the snake.许多人看见蛇都会向后退缩。
• Revenge may recoil upon the person who takes it.报复者常会受到报应。

25 antagonist   

n.敌人，对抗者，对手

参考例句：

• His antagonist in the debate was quicker than he.在辩论中他的对手比他反应快。
• The thing is to know the nature of your antagonist.要紧的是要了解你的对手的特性。

26 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。

27 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。

28 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。

29 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

30 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。

31 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。

32 lashes   

n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥

参考例句：

• Mother always lashes out food for the children's party. 孩子们聚会时，母亲总是给他们许多吃的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Never walk behind a horse in case it lashes out. 绝对不要跟在马后面，以防它突然猛踢。 来自《简明英汉词典》

33 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。

34 distinguished   

adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的

参考例句：

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

35 shimmering   

v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The sea was shimmering in the sunlight. 阳光下海水波光闪烁。
• The colours are delicate and shimmering. 这些颜色柔和且闪烁微光。 来自辞典例句

36 mirage   

n.海市蜃楼，幻景

参考例句：

• Perhaps we are all just chasing a mirage.也许我们都只是在追逐一个幻想。
• Western liberalism was always a mirage.西方自由主义永远是一座海市蜃楼。

37 ledge   

n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁

参考例句：

• They paid out the line to lower him to the ledge.他们放出绳子使他降到那块岩石的突出部分。
• Suddenly he struck his toe on a rocky ledge and fell.突然他的脚趾绊在一块突出的岩石上，摔倒了。

38 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

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

39 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

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

40 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

41 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

42 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

43 pane   

n.窗格玻璃，长方块

参考例句：

• He broke this pane of glass.他打破了这块窗玻璃。
• Their breath bloomed the frosty pane.他们呼出的水气，在冰冷的窗玻璃上形成一层雾。

44 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

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

45 concerto   

n.协奏曲

参考例句：

• The piano concerto was well rendered.钢琴协奏曲演奏得很好。
• The concert ended with a Mozart violin concerto.音乐会在莫扎特的小提琴协奏曲中结束。

46 rite   

n.典礼，惯例，习俗

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite.这个节日起源于宗教仪式。
• Most traditional societies have transition rites at puberty.大多数传统社会都为青春期的孩子举行成人礼。

47 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

48 triumphant   

adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的

参考例句：

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

49 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》

50 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。

51 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。

52 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。

53 abrupt   

adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的

参考例句：

• The river takes an abrupt bend to the west.这河突然向西转弯。
• His abrupt reply hurt our feelings.他粗鲁的回答伤了我们的感情。

54 trademark   

n.商标；特征；vt.注册的…商标

参考例句：

• The trademark is registered on the book of the Patent Office.该商标已在专利局登记注册。
• The trademark of the pen was changed.这钢笔的商标改了。

55 emblem   

n.象征，标志；徽章

参考例句：

• Her shirt has the company emblem on it.她的衬衫印有公司的标记。
• The eagle was an emblem of strength and courage.鹰是力量和勇气的象征。

56 merge   

v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体

参考例句：

• I can merge my two small businesses into a large one.我可以将我的两家小商店合并为一家大商行。
• The directors have decided to merge the two small firms together.董事们已决定把这两家小商号归并起来。

57 abruptness   

n. 突然，唐突

参考例句：

• He hid his feelings behind a gruff abruptness. 他把自己的感情隐藏在生硬鲁莽之中。
• Suddenly Vanamee returned to himself with the abruptness of a blow. 伐那米猛地清醒过来，象挨到了当头一拳似的。

58 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。

59 courteous   

adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的

参考例句：

• Although she often disagreed with me,she was always courteous.尽管她常常和我意见不一，但她总是很谦恭有礼。
• He was a kind and courteous man.他为人友善，而且彬彬有礼。

60 derisively   

adv. 嘲笑地，嘲弄地

参考例句：

• This answer came derisively from several places at the same instant. 好几个人都不约而同地以讥讽的口吻作出回答。
• The others laughed derisively. 其余的人不以为然地笑了起来。

61 stunt   

n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长

参考例句：

• Lack of the right food may stunt growth.缺乏适当的食物会阻碍发育。
• Right up there is where the big stunt is taking place.那边将会有惊人的表演。

62 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。

63 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。

64 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。

65 plausible   

adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的

参考例句：

• His story sounded plausible.他说的那番话似乎是真实的。
• Her story sounded perfectly plausible.她的说辞听起来言之有理。

66 plunging   

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

参考例句：

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

67 exempt   

adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者

参考例句：

• These goods are exempt from customs duties.这些货物免征关税。
• He is exempt from punishment about this thing.关于此事对他已免于处分。

68 winced   

赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

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

69 convertible   

adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车

参考例句：

• The convertible sofa means that the apartment can sleep four.有了这张折叠沙发，公寓里可以睡下4个人。
• That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了。

70 costliest   

adj.昂贵的( costly的最高级 )；代价高的；引起困难的；造成损失的

参考例句：

• At 81 billion dollars, Katrina is the costliest natural disaster in American history. “卡特里娜”飓风造成了近810亿美圆的损失，是美国历史上最严重的自然灾难之一。 来自互联网
• Senator John Kerry has proposed a tax on the costliest health plans sold by insurance companies. 参议员约翰？克里(JohnKerry)已经提议对保险公司销售的高价值的保险计划征税。 来自互联网

71 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

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

72 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。

73 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。

74 swerved   

v.（使）改变方向，改变目的( swerve的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She swerved sharply to avoid a cyclist. 她猛地急转弯，以躲开一个骑自行车的人。
• The driver has swerved on a sudden to avoid a file of geese. 为了躲避一队鹅，司机突然来个急转弯。 来自《简明英汉词典》

75 ridge   

n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭

参考例句：

• We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
• The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。

76 denim   

n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤

参考例句：

• She wore pale blue denim shorts and a white denim work shirt.她穿着一条淡蓝色的斜纹粗棉布短裤，一件白粗布工作服上衣。
• Dennis was dressed in denim jeans.丹尼斯穿了一条牛仔裤。

77 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。

78 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。

79 preposterous   

adj.荒谬的，可笑的

参考例句：

• The whole idea was preposterous.整个想法都荒唐透顶。
• It would be preposterous to shovel coal with a teaspoon.用茶匙铲煤是荒谬的。

80 attentively   

adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神

参考例句：

• She listened attentively while I poured out my problems. 我倾吐心中的烦恼时，她一直在注意听。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She listened attentively and set down every word he said. 她专心听着，把他说的话一字不漏地记下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

81 defiance   

n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗

参考例句：

• He climbed the ladder in defiance of the warning.他无视警告爬上了那架梯子。
• He slammed the door in a spirit of defiance.他以挑衅性的态度把门砰地一下关上。

82 glistening   

adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Her eyes were glistening with tears. 她眼里闪着晶莹的泪花。
• Her eyes were glistening with tears. 她眼睛中的泪水闪着柔和的光。 来自《用法词典》

83 shafts   

n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等）

参考例句：

• He deliberately jerked the shafts to rock him a bit. 他故意的上下颠动车把，摇这个老猴子几下。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• Shafts were sunk, with tunnels dug laterally. 竖井已经打下，并且挖有横向矿道。 来自辞典例句

84 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。

85 slant   

v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向

参考例句：

• The lines are drawn on a slant.这些线条被画成斜线。
• The editorial had an antiunion slant.这篇社论有一种反工会的倾向。

86 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？

87 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》

88 inscription   

n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文

参考例句：

• The inscription has worn away and can no longer be read.铭文已磨损，无法辨认了。
• He chiselled an inscription on the marble.他在大理石上刻碑文。

89 inscriptions   

（作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记

参考例句：

• Centuries of wind and rain had worn away the inscriptions on the gravestones. 几个世纪的风雨已磨损了墓碑上的碑文。
• The inscriptions on the stone tablet have become blurred with the passage of time. 年代久了，石碑上的字迹已经模糊了。

90 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

91 quotation   

n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情

参考例句：

• He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
• The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。

92 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

93 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

94 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。

95 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

96 ribs   

n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹

参考例句：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• Make a small incision below the ribs. 在肋骨下方切开一个小口。

97 sprained   

v.&n. 扭伤

参考例句：

• I stumbled and sprained my ankle. 我摔了一跤，把脚脖子扭了。
• When Mary sprained her ankles, John carried her piggyback to the doctors. 玛丽扭伤了足踝，约翰驮她去看医生。

98 bruises   

n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was covered with bruises after falling off his bicycle. 他从自行车上摔了下来，摔得浑身伤痕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The pear had bruises of dark spots. 这个梨子有碰伤的黑斑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

99 blotches   

n.（皮肤上的）红斑，疹块( blotch的名词复数 )；大滴 [大片]（墨水或颜色的）污渍

参考例句：

• His skin was covered with unsightly blotches. 他的皮肤上长满了难看的疹块。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His face was covered in red blotches, seemingly a nasty case of acne. 他满脸红斑，像是起了很严重的粉刺。 来自辞典例句

100 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

101 alcove   

n.凹室

参考例句：

• The bookcase fits neatly into the alcove.书架正好放得进壁凹。
• In the alcoves on either side of the fire were bookshelves.火炉两边的凹室里是书架。

102 pottery   

n.陶器，陶器场

参考例句：

• My sister likes to learn art pottery in her spare time.我妹妹喜欢在空余时间学习陶艺。
• The pottery was left to bake in the hot sun.陶器放在外面让炎热的太阳烘晒焙干。

103 avenger   

n. 复仇者

参考例句：

• "Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. “我乃西班牙海黑衣侠盗，汤姆 - 索亚。
• Avenger's Shield-0.26 threat per hit (0.008 threat per second) 飞盾-0.26仇恨每击（0.08仇恨每秒）

104 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。

105 accusation   

n.控告，指责，谴责

参考例句：

• I was furious at his making such an accusation.我对他的这种责备非常气愤。
• She knew that no one would believe her accusation.她知道没人会相信她的指控。

106 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。

107 lesser   

adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地

参考例句：

• Kept some of the lesser players out.不让那些次要的球员参加联赛。
• She has also been affected,but to a lesser degree.她也受到波及，但程度较轻。

108 generator   

n.发电机，发生器

参考例句：

• All the while the giant generator poured out its power.巨大的发电机一刻不停地发出电力。
• This is an alternating current generator.这是一台交流发电机。

109 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

110 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。

111 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。

112 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。

113 conversion   

n.转化，转换，转变

参考例句：

• He underwent quite a conversion.他彻底变了。
• Waste conversion is a part of the production process.废物处理是生产过程的一个组成部分。

114 crumbling   

adj.摇摇欲坠的

参考例句：

• an old house with crumbling plaster and a leaking roof 一所灰泥剥落、屋顶漏水的老房子
• The boat was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty. 这条船停泊在一个摇摇欲坠的石灰岩码头边。

115 janitor   

n.看门人，管门人

参考例句：

• The janitor wiped on the windows with his rags.看门人用褴褛的衣服擦着窗户。
• The janitor swept the floors and locked up the building every night.那个看门人每天晚上负责打扫大楼的地板和锁门。

116 bellies   

n.肚子( belly的名词复数 )；腹部；（物体的）圆形或凸起部份；腹部…形的

参考例句：

• They crawled along on their bellies. 他们匍匐前进。
• starving children with huge distended bellies 鼓着浮肿肚子的挨饿儿童

117 grunting   

咕哝的，呼噜的

参考例句：

• He pulled harder on the rope, grunting with the effort. 他边用力边哼声，使出更大的力气拉绳子。
• Pigs were grunting and squealing in the yard. 猪在院子里哼哼地叫个不停。

118 skyscraper   

n.摩天大楼

参考例句：

• The skyscraper towers into the clouds.那幢摩天大楼高耸入云。
• The skyscraper was wrapped in fog.摩天楼为雾所笼罩。

119 tinge   

vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息

参考例句：

• The maple leaves are tinge with autumn red.枫叶染上了秋天的红色。
• There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.她声音中流露出一丝忧伤。

120 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

121 meekly   

adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地

参考例句：

• He stood aside meekly when the new policy was proposed. 当有人提出新政策时，他唯唯诺诺地站 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He meekly accepted the rebuke. 他顺从地接受了批评。 来自《简明英汉词典》

122 trickled   

v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动

参考例句：

• Blood trickled down his face. 血从他脸上一滴滴流下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The tears trickled down her cheeks. 热泪一滴滴从她脸颊上滚下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

123 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。

124 conscientious   

adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的

参考例句：

• He is a conscientious man and knows his job.他很认真负责，也很懂行。
• He is very conscientious in the performance of his duties.他非常认真地履行职责。

125 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。

127 luxurious   

adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的

参考例句：

• This is a luxurious car complete with air conditioning and telephone.这是一辆附有空调设备和电话的豪华轿车。
• The rich man lives in luxurious surroundings.这位富人生活在奢侈的环境中。

128 stainless   

adj.无瑕疵的，不锈的

参考例句：

• I have a set of stainless knives and forks.我有一套不锈钢刀叉。
• Before the recent political scandal,her reputation had been stainless.在最近的政治丑闻之前，她的名声是无懈可击的。

129 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。

130 farmhouse   

n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房）

参考例句：

• We fell for the farmhouse as soon as we saw it.我们对那所农舍一见倾心。
• We put up for the night at a farmhouse.我们在一间农舍投宿了一夜。

131 herds   

兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众

参考例句：

• Regularly at daybreak they drive their herds to the pasture. 每天天一亮他们就把牲畜赶到草场上去。
• There we saw herds of cows grazing on the pasture. 我们在那里看到一群群的牛在草地上吃草。

132 sprawling   

adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着）

参考例句：

• He was sprawling in an armchair in front of the TV. 他伸开手脚坐在电视机前的一张扶手椅上。
• a modern sprawling town 一座杂乱无序拓展的现代城镇

133 flattened   

[医]（水）平扁的，弄平的

参考例句：

• She flattened her nose and lips against the window. 她把鼻子和嘴唇紧贴着窗户。
• I flattened myself against the wall to let them pass. 我身体紧靠着墙让他们通过。

134 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。

135 hog   

n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占

参考例句：

• He is greedy like a hog.他像猪一样贪婪。
• Drivers who hog the road leave no room for other cars.那些占着路面的驾驶员一点余地都不留给其他车辆。

136 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。

137 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

138 airfield   

n.飞机场

参考例句：

• The foreign guests were motored from the airfield to the hotel.用车把外宾从机场送到旅馆。
• The airfield was seized by enemy troops.机场被敌军占领。

139 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。

140 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

141 orchards   

（通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They turned the hills into orchards and plains into granaries. 他们把山坡变成了果园，把平地变成了粮仓。
• Some of the new planted apple orchards have also begun to bear. 有些新开的苹果园也开始结苹果了。

142 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》

143 defiant   

adj.无礼的，挑战的

参考例句：

• With a last defiant gesture,they sang a revolutionary song as they were led away to prison.他们被带走投入监狱时，仍以最后的反抗姿态唱起了一支革命歌曲。
• He assumed a defiant attitude toward his employer.他对雇主采取挑衅的态度。

144 turquoise   

n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的

参考例句：

• She wore a string of turquoise round her neck.她脖子上戴着一串绿宝石。
• The women have elaborate necklaces of turquoise.那些女人戴着由绿松石制成的精美项链。

145 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

146 foam   

v./n.泡沫，起泡沫

参考例句：

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

147 placid   

adj.安静的，平和的

参考例句：

• He had been leading a placid life for the past eight years.八年来他一直过着平静的生活。
• You should be in a placid mood and have a heart-to- heart talk with her.你应该心平气和的好好和她谈谈心。

148 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

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

149 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

150 desolate   

adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂

参考例句：

• The city was burned into a desolate waste.那座城市被烧成一片废墟。
• We all felt absolutely desolate when she left.她走后，我们都觉得万分孤寂。

151 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

152 plumbers   

n.管子工，水暖工( plumber的名词复数 )；[美][口]（防止泄密的）堵漏人员

参考例句：

• Plumbers charge by the hour for their work. 水管工人的工作是以小时收费的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Plumbers, carpenters, and other workmen finished the new house quickly. 管道工、木工及其他工匠很快完成了这幢新房子。 来自辞典例句

153 plumber   

n.(装修水管的)管子工

参考例句：

• Have you asked the plumber to come and look at the leaking pipe?你叫管道工来检查漏水的管子了吗？
• The plumber screwed up the tap by means of a spanner.管子工用板手把龙头旋紧。

154 lumber   

n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动

参考例句：

• The truck was sent to carry lumber.卡车被派出去运木材。
• They slapped together a cabin out of old lumber.他们利用旧木料草草地盖起了一间小屋。

155 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。

156 inexplicably   

adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是

参考例句：

• Inexplicably, Mary said she loved John. 真是不可思议，玛丽说她爱约翰。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Inexplicably, she never turned up. 令人不解的是，她从未露面。 来自辞典例句

157 pier   

n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱

参考例句：

• The pier of the bridge has been so badly damaged that experts worry it is unable to bear weight.这座桥的桥桩破损厉害，专家担心它已不能负重。
• The ship was making towards the pier.船正驶向码头。

158 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。

159 serenely   

adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地

参考例句：

• The boat sailed serenely on towards the horizon.小船平稳地向着天水交接处驶去。
• It was a serenely beautiful night.那是一个宁静美丽的夜晚。

160 jealousy   

n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌

参考例句：

• Some women have a disposition to jealousy.有些女人生性爱妒忌。
• I can't support your jealousy any longer.我再也无法忍受你的嫉妒了。

161 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。

162 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。

163 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。

164 shale   

n.页岩，泥板岩

参考例句：

• We can extract oil from shale.我们可以从页岩中提取石油。
• Most of the rock in this mountain is shale.这座山上大部分的岩石都是页岩。

165 gauge   

v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器

参考例句：

• Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
• It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。

166 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

167 darting   

v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔

参考例句：

• Swallows were darting through the clouds. 燕子穿云急飞。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Swallows were darting through the air. 燕子在空中掠过。 来自辞典例句

168 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

169 aristocrats   

n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

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

170 philology   

n.语言学；语文学

参考例句：

• Philology would never be of much use to you.语文学对你不会有很大用途。
• In west,the philology is attached to the linguistics.在西方，文语文学则附属于语言学。

171 greasy   

adj. 多脂的，油脂的

参考例句：

• He bought a heavy-duty cleanser to clean his greasy oven.昨天他买了强力清洁剂来清洗油污的炉子。
• 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。

172 gem   

n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel

参考例句：

• The gem is beyond my pocket.这颗宝石我可买不起。
• The little gem is worth two thousand dollars.这块小宝石价值两千美元。

173 bleakly   

无望地，阴郁地，苍凉地

参考例句：

• The windows of the house stared bleakly down at her. 那座房子的窗户居高临下阴森森地对着她。
• He stared at me bleakly and said nothing. 他阴郁地盯着我，什么也没说。

174 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

175 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

176 vault   

n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室

参考例句：

• The vault of this cathedral is very high.这座天主教堂的拱顶非常高。
• The old patrician was buried in the family vault.这位老贵族埋在家族的墓地里。

177 devour   

v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷

参考例句：

• Larger fish devour the smaller ones.大鱼吃小鱼。
• Beauty is but a flower which wrinkle will devour.美只不过是一朵，终会被皱纹所吞噬。

178 sewer   

n.排水沟，下水道

参考例句：

• They are tearing up the street to repair a sewer. 他们正挖开马路修下水道。
• The boy kicked a stone into the sewer. 那个男孩把一石子踢进了下水道。

179 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

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

180 drooping   

adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词

参考例句：

• The drooping willows are waving gently in the morning breeze. 晨风中垂柳袅袅。
• The branches of the drooping willows were swaying lightly. 垂柳轻飘飘地摆动。

181 rust   

n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退

参考例句：

• She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
• The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。

182 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

183 slanting   

倾斜的，歪斜的

参考例句：

• The rain is driving [slanting] in from the south. 南边潲雨。
• The line is slanting to the left. 这根线向左斜了。

184 tycoon   

n.有钱有势的企业家，大亨

参考例句：

• The tycoon is on the verge of bankruptcy.那名大亨濒临破产的边缘。
• The tycoon has many servants to minister to his needs.那位大亨有很多人服侍他。

185 marsh   

n.沼泽，湿地

参考例句：

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

186 descending   

n. 下行 adj. 下降的

参考例句：

• The results are expressed in descending numerical order . 结果按数字降序列出。
• The climbers stopped to orient themselves before descending the mountain. 登山者先停下来确定所在的位置，然后再下山。

187 streaking   

n.裸奔（指在公共场所裸体飞跑）v.快速移动( streak的现在分词 )；使布满条纹

参考例句：

• Their only thought was of the fiery harbingers of death streaking through the sky above them. 那个不断地在空中飞翔的死的恐怖把一切别的感觉都赶走了。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• Streaking is one of the oldest tricks in the book. 裸奔是有书面记载的最古老的玩笑之一。 来自互联网

188 cinder   

n.余烬，矿渣

参考例句：

• The new technology for the preparation of superfine ferric oxide from pyrite cinder is studied.研究了用硫铁矿烧渣为原料，制取超细氧化铁红的新工艺。
• The cinder contains useful iron,down from producing sulphuric acid by contact process.接触法制硫酸的矿渣中含有铁矿。

189 simultaneously   

adv.同时发生地，同时进行地

参考例句：

• The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
• The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。

190 tinged   

v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• memories tinged with sadness 略带悲伤的往事
• white petals tinged with blue 略带蓝色的白花瓣

191 industrialist   

n.工业家，实业家

参考例句：

• The industrialist's son was kidnapped.这名实业家的儿子被绑架了。
• Mr.Smith was a wealthy industrialist,but he was not satisfied with life.史密斯先生是位富有的企业家，可他对生活感到不满意。

192 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。

193 assent   

v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可

参考例句：

• I cannot assent to what you ask.我不能应允你的要求。
• The new bill passed by Parliament has received Royal Assent.议会所通过的新方案已获国王批准。

194 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

195 realization   

n.实现；认识到，深刻了解

参考例句：

• We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们将乐意为它的实现而竭尽全力。
• He came to the realization that he would never make a good teacher.他逐渐认识到自己永远不会成为好老师。

196 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。

197 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》

198 foulest   

adj.恶劣的( foul的最高级 )；邪恶的；难闻的；下流的

参考例句：

• Most of the foremen abused the workmen in the foulest languages. 大多数的工头用极其污秽的语言辱骂工人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. 男人中最讨人厌的是酒鬼。 来自辞典例句

199 contemptible   

adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的

参考例句：

• His personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.他气貌不扬，言语粗俗。
• That was a contemptible trick to play on a friend.那是对朋友玩弄的一出可鄙的把戏。

200 bins   

n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 )；宽口箱（如面包箱，垃圾箱等）v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Garbage from all sources was deposited in bins on trolleys. 来自各方的垃圾是装在手推车上的垃圾箱里的。 来自辞典例句
• Would you be pleased at the prospect of its being on sale in dump bins? 对于它将被陈列在倾销箱中抛售这件事，你能欣然接受吗？ 来自辞典例句

201 lettuce   

n.莴苣；生菜

参考例句：

• Get some lettuce and tomatoes so I can make a salad.买些莴苣和西红柿，我好做色拉。
• The lettuce is crisp and cold.莴苣松脆爽口。

202 chunk   

n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量）

参考例句：

• They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
• The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。

203 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。

204 swelling   

n.肿胀

参考例句：

• Use ice to reduce the swelling. 用冰敷消肿。
• There is a marked swelling of the lymph nodes. 淋巴结处有明显的肿块。

205 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

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

206 glorifying   

赞美( glorify的现在分词 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣

参考例句：

• I had no intention of either glorifying or belittling Christianity, merely the desire to understand it. 我并没有赞扬基督教或蔑视它的立意，我所想的只是了解它。
• You are glorifying a rather mediocre building. 你正在美化一栋普普通通的建筑。

207 squat   

v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的

参考例句：

• For this exercise you need to get into a squat.在这次练习中你需要蹲下来。
• He is a squat man.他是一个矮胖的男人。

208 neatly   

adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地

参考例句：

• Sailors know how to wind up a long rope neatly.水手们知道怎样把一条大绳利落地缠好。
• The child's dress is neatly gathered at the neck.那孩子的衣服在领口处打着整齐的皱褶。

209 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

210 creases   

（使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹

参考例句：

• She smoothed the creases out of her skirt. 她把裙子上的皱褶弄平。
• She ironed out all the creases in the shirt. 她熨平了衬衣上的所有皱褶。

211 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。

212 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

213 amassed   

v.积累，积聚( amass的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He amassed a fortune from silver mining. 他靠开采银矿积累了一笔财富。
• They have amassed a fortune in just a few years. 他们在几年的时间里就聚集了一笔财富。 来自《简明英汉词典》

214 intervals   

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

参考例句：

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

215 prodigal   

adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的

参考例句：

• He has been prodigal of the money left by his parents.他已挥霍掉他父母留下的钱。
• The country has been prodigal of its forests.这个国家的森林正受过度的采伐。

216 ingenuity   

n.别出心裁；善于发明创造

参考例句：

• The boy showed ingenuity in making toys.那个小男孩做玩具很有创造力。
• I admire your ingenuity and perseverance.我钦佩你的别出心裁和毅力。

217 quotations   

n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价

参考例句：

• The insurance company requires three quotations for repairs to the car. 保险公司要修理这辆汽车的三家修理厂的报价单。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These quotations cannot readily be traced to their sources. 这些引语很难查出出自何处。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

218 ascending   

adj.上升的，向上的

参考例句：

• Now draw or trace ten dinosaurs in ascending order of size.现在按照体型由小到大的顺序画出或是临摹出10只恐龙。

219 colonnade   

n.柱廊

参考例句：

• This colonnade will take you out of the palace and the game.这条柱廊将带你离开宫殿和游戏。
• The terrace was embraced by the two arms of the colonnade.平台由两排柱廊环抱。

220 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

221 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。

222 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。

223 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》

224 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。

225 erect   

n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的

参考例句：

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

226 shack   

adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚

参考例句：

• He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.在走到他的茅棚以前，他不得不坐在地上歇了五次。
• The boys made a shack out of the old boards in the backyard.男孩们在后院用旧木板盖起一间小木屋。

227 glazed   

adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神

参考例句：

• eyes glazed with boredom 厌倦无神的眼睛
• His eyes glazed over at the sight of her. 看到她时，他的目光就变得呆滞。 来自《简明英汉词典》

228 compassion   

n.同情，怜悯

参考例句：

• He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
• Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。

229 twig   

n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解

参考例句：

• He heard the sharp crack of a twig.他听到树枝清脆的断裂声。
• The sharp sound of a twig snapping scared the badger away.细枝突然折断的刺耳声把獾惊跑了。

230 salute   

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

参考例句：

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

231 apertures   

n.孔( aperture的名词复数 )；隙缝；（照相机的）光圈；孔径

参考例句：

• These apertures restrict the amount of light that can reach the detector. 这些光阑将会限制到达探测器的光线的总量。 来自互联网
• The virtual anode formation time and propagation velocity at different pressure with different apertures are investigated. 比较了在不同气压和空心阴极孔径下虚阳极的形成时间和扩展速度。 来自互联网

232 antennae   

n.天线；触角

参考例句：

• Sometimes a creature uses a pair of antennae to swim.有时某些动物使用其一对触须来游泳。
• Cuba's government said that Cubans found watching American television on clandestine antennae would face three years in jail.古巴政府说那些用秘密天线收看美国电视的古巴人将面临三年监禁。

233 suffocation   

n.窒息

参考例句：

• The greatest dangers of pyroclastic avalanches are probably heat and suffocation. 火成碎屑崩落的最大危害可能是炽热和窒息作用。 来自辞典例句
• The room was hot to suffocation. 房间热得闷人。 来自辞典例句

234 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。

235 liberated   

a.无拘束的，放纵的

参考例句：

• The city was liberated by the advancing army. 军队向前挺进，解放了那座城市。
• The heat brings about a chemical reaction, and oxygen is liberated. 热量引起化学反应，释放出氧气。

236 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。

237 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。

238 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

239 sluggish   

adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的

参考例句：

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

240 eyelids   

n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色

参考例句：

• She was so tired, her eyelids were beginning to droop. 她太疲倦了，眼睑开始往下垂。
• Her eyelids drooped as if she were on the verge of sleep. 她眼睑低垂好像快要睡着的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

241 ferocious   

adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的

参考例句：

• The ferocious winds seemed about to tear the ship to pieces.狂风仿佛要把船撕成碎片似的。
• The ferocious panther is chasing a rabbit.那只凶猛的豹子正追赶一只兔子。

242 condescending   

adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的

参考例句：

• He has a condescending attitude towards women. 他对女性总是居高临下。
• He tends to adopt a condescending manner when talking to young women. 和年轻女子说话时，他喜欢摆出一副高高在上的姿态。

243 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。

244 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。

245 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。

246 sleepless   

adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的

参考例句：

• The situation gave her many sleepless nights.这种情况害她一连好多天睡不好觉。
• One evening I heard a tale that rendered me sleepless for nights.一天晚上，我听说了一个传闻，把我搞得一连几夜都不能入睡。

247 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。

248 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

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

249 entity   

n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物

参考例句：

• The country is no longer one political entity.这个国家不再是一个统一的政治实体了。
• As a separate legal entity,the corporation must pay taxes.作为一个独立的法律实体，公司必须纳税。

250 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。

251 awakened   

v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到

参考例句：

• She awakened to the sound of birds singing. 她醒来听到鸟的叫声。
• The public has been awakened to the full horror of the situation. 公众完全意识到了这一状况的可怕程度。 来自《简明英汉词典》

252 conceal   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽

参考例句：

• He had to conceal his identity to escape the police.为了躲避警方，他只好隐瞒身份。
• He could hardly conceal his joy at his departure.他几乎掩饰不住临行时的喜悦。

253 soften   

v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和

参考例句：

• Plastics will soften when exposed to heat.塑料适当加热就可以软化。
• This special cream will help to soften up our skin.这种特殊的护肤霜有助于使皮肤变得柔软。

254 sonorous   

adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇

参考例句：

• The sonorous voice of the speaker echoed round the room.那位演讲人洪亮的声音在室内回荡。
• He has a deep sonorous voice.他的声音深沉而洪亮。

255 blindfolded   

v.（尤指用布）挡住（某人）的视线( blindfold的过去式 )；蒙住（某人）的眼睛；使不理解；蒙骗

参考例句：

• The hostages were tied up and blindfolded. 人质被捆绑起来并蒙上了眼睛。
• They were each blindfolded with big red handkerchiefs. 他们每个人的眼睛都被一块红色大手巾蒙住了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

256 tightening   

上紧，固定，紧密

参考例句：

• Make sure the washer is firmly seated before tightening the pipe. 旋紧水管之前，检查一下洗衣机是否已牢牢地固定在底座上了。
• It needs tightening up a little. 它还需要再收紧些。

257 obedience   

n.服从，顺从

参考例句：

• Society has a right to expect obedience of the law.社会有权要求人人遵守法律。
• Soldiers act in obedience to the orders of their superior officers.士兵们遵照上级军官的命令行动。

258 spurt   

v.喷出；突然进发；突然兴隆

参考例句：

• He put in a spurt at the beginning of the eighth lap.他进入第八圈时便开始冲刺。
• After a silence, Molly let her anger spurt out.沉默了一会儿，莫莉的怒气便迸发了出来。

259 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

260 superfluous   

adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的

参考例句：

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

261 renaissance   

n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴

参考例句：

• The Renaissance was an epoch of unparalleled cultural achievement.文艺复兴是一个文化上取得空前成就的时代。
• The theme of the conference is renaissance Europe.大会的主题是文艺复兴时期的欧洲。

262 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

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

263 impudent   

adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的

参考例句：

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

264 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

265 vessels   

n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人

参考例句：

• The river is navigable by vessels of up to 90 tons. 90 吨以下的船只可以从这条河通过。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• All modern vessels of any size are fitted with radar installations. 所有现代化船只都有雷达装置。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

266 rupture   

n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂

参考例句：

• I can rupture a rule for a friend.我可以为朋友破一次例。
• The rupture of a blood vessel usually cause the mark of a bruise.血管的突然破裂往往会造成外伤的痕迹。

267 paralysis   

n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症)

参考例句：

• The paralysis affects his right leg and he can only walk with difficulty.他右腿瘫痪步履维艰。
• The paralysis affects his right leg and he can only walk with difficulty.他右腿瘫痪步履维艰。

268 treatise   

n.专著；(专题)论文

参考例句：

• The doctor wrote a treatise on alcoholism.那位医生写了一篇关于酗酒问题的论文。
• This is not a treatise on statistical theory.这不是一篇有关统计理论的论文。

269 slaughter   

n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀

参考例句：

• I couldn't stand to watch them slaughter the cattle.我不忍看他们宰牛。
• Wholesale slaughter was carried out in the name of progress.大规模的屠杀在维护进步的名义下进行。

270 premise   

n.前提；v.提论，预述

参考例句：

• Let me premise my argument with a bit of history.让我引述一些史实作为我立论的前提。
• We can deduce a conclusion from the premise.我们可以从这个前提推出结论。

271 premises   

n.建筑物，房屋

参考例句：

• According to the rules,no alcohol can be consumed on the premises.按照规定，场内不准饮酒。
• All repairs are done on the premises and not put out.全部修缮都在家里进行，不用送到外面去做。

272 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。

273 materialist   

n. 唯物主义者

参考例句：

• Promote materialist dialectics and oppose metaphysics and scholasticism. 要提倡唯物辩证法，反对形而上学和烦琐哲学。
• Whoever denies this is not a materialist. 谁要是否定这一点，就不是一个唯物主义者。

274 iniquity   

n.邪恶；不公正

参考例句：

• Research has revealed that he is a monster of iniquity.调查结果显示他是一个不法之徒。
• The iniquity of the transaction aroused general indignation.这笔交易的不公引起了普遍的愤怒。

275 sneers   

讥笑的表情（言语）( sneer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You should ignore their sneers at your efforts. 他们对你的努力所作的讥笑你不要去理会。
• I felt that every woman here sneers at me. 我感到这里的每一个女人都在嘲笑我。

276 dungeons   

n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The captured rebels were consigned to the dungeons. 抓到的叛乱分子被送进了地牢。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He saw a boy in fetters in the dungeons. 他在地牢里看见一个戴着脚镣的男孩。 来自辞典例句

277 stagnation   

n. 停滞

参考例句：

• Poor economic policies led to a long period of stagnation and decline. 糟糕的经济政策道致了长时间的经济萧条和下滑。
• Motion is absolute while stagnation is relative. 运动是绝对的，而静止是相对的。

278 brutality   

n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮

参考例句：

• The brutality of the crime has appalled the public. 罪行之残暴使公众大为震惊。
• a general who was infamous for his brutality 因残忍而恶名昭彰的将军

279 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

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

280 brutes   

兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性

参考例句：

• They're not like dogs; they're hideous brutes. 它们不像狗，是丑陋的畜牲。
• Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. 突然，他的鼻尖闻到了老鼠的霉臭味。 来自英汉文学

281 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

282 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

283 ERECTED   

adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立

参考例句：

• A monument to him was erected in St Paul's Cathedral. 在圣保罗大教堂为他修了一座纪念碑。
• A monument was erected to the memory of that great scientist. 树立了一块纪念碑纪念那位伟大的科学家。

284 immolated   

v.宰杀…作祭品( immolate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The Aztecs immolated human victims. 阿兹特克人牺牲真人来祭祀。 来自互联网
• Several members immolated themselves in Tiananmen Square, an incident that Falun Gong claims was fabricated. 几个学员在天安门广场自焚，法轮功认为这个事件是编造的。 来自互联网

285 idol   

n.偶像，红人，宠儿

参考例句：

• As an only child he was the idol of his parents.作为独子，他是父母的宠儿。
• Blind worship of this idol must be ended.对这个偶像的盲目崇拜应该结束了。

286 defender   

n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人

参考例句：

• He shouldered off a defender and shot at goal.他用肩膀挡开防守队员，然后射门。
• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。

287 defenders   

n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者

参考例句：

• The defenders were outnumbered and had to give in. 抵抗者寡不敌众，只能投降。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• After hard fighting,the defenders were still masters of the city. 守军经过奋战仍然控制着城市。 来自《简明英汉词典》

288 renounce   

v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系

参考例句：

• She decided to renounce the world and enter a convent.她决定弃绝尘世去当修女。
• It was painful for him to renounce his son.宣布与儿子脱离关系对他来说是很痛苦的。

289 irrational   

adj.无理性的，失去理性的

参考例句：

• After taking the drug she became completely irrational.她在吸毒后变得完全失去了理性。
• There are also signs of irrational exuberance among some investors.在某些投资者中是存在非理性繁荣的征象的。

290 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

291 despoiling   

v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的现在分词 )

参考例句：

292 creed   

n.信条；信念，纲领

参考例句：

• They offended against every article of his creed.他们触犯了他的每一条戒律。
• Our creed has always been that business is business.我们的信条一直是公私分明。

293 incompetent   

adj.无能力的，不能胜任的

参考例句：

• He is utterly incompetent at his job.他完全不能胜任他的工作。
• He is incompetent at working with his hands.他动手能力不行。

294 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。

295 atone   

v.赎罪，补偿

参考例句：

• He promised to atone for his crime.他承诺要赎自己的罪。
• Blood must atone for blood.血债要用血来还。

296 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

297 inhuman   

adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的

参考例句：

• We must unite the workers in fighting against inhuman conditions.我们必须使工人们团结起来反对那些难以忍受的工作条件。
• It was inhuman to refuse him permission to see his wife.不容许他去看自己的妻子是太不近人情了。

298 solely   

adv.仅仅，唯一地

参考例句：

• Success should not be measured solely by educational achievement.成功与否不应只用学业成绩来衡量。
• The town depends almost solely on the tourist trade.这座城市几乎完全靠旅游业维持。

299 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。

300 withdrawn   

vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出

参考例句：

• Our force has been withdrawn from the danger area.我们的军队已从危险地区撤出。
• All foreign troops should be withdrawn to their own countries.一切外国军队都应撤回本国去。

301 incompetents   

n.无能力的，不称职的，不胜任的( incompetent的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Idiots and other incompetents need someone to look after them. 白痴和其他弱智者需人照料他们。 来自辞典例句
• Capacity-to-contract issues generally involve minors, mental incompetents, intoxicated persons and drug addicts. 缔约能力问题通常包括未成年人，精神不健全人，醉酒者及药瘾者。 来自互联网

302 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

303 prosper   

v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣

参考例句：

• With her at the wheel,the company began to prosper.有了她当主管，公司开始兴旺起来。
• It is my earnest wish that this company will continue to prosper.我真诚希望这家公司会继续兴旺发达。

304 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

305 professed   

公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的

参考例句：

• These, at least, were their professed reasons for pulling out of the deal. 至少这些是他们自称退出这宗交易的理由。
• Her manner professed a gaiety that she did not feel. 她的神态显出一种她并未实际感受到的快乐。

306 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。

307 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

308 livelihood   

n.生计，谋生之道

参考例句：

• Appropriate arrangements will be made for their work and livelihood.他们的工作和生活会得到妥善安排。
• My father gained a bare livelihood of family by his own hands.父亲靠自己的双手勉强维持家计。

309 flare   

v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发

参考例句：

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

310 excellence   

n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德

参考例句：

• His art has reached a high degree of excellence.他的艺术已达到炉火纯青的地步。
• My performance is far below excellence.我的表演离优秀还差得远呢。

311 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。

312 antithesis   

n.对立；相对

参考例句：

• The style of his speech was in complete antithesis to mine.他和我的讲话方式完全相反。
• His creation was an antithesis to academic dogmatism of the time.他的创作与当时学院派的教条相对立。

313 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

314 counterfeit   

vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的

参考例句：

• It is a crime to counterfeit money.伪造货币是犯罪行为。
• The painting looked old but was a recent counterfeit.这幅画看上去年代久远，实际是最近的一幅赝品。

315 entrust   

v.信赖，信托，交托

参考例句：

• I couldn't entrust my children to strangers.我不能把孩子交给陌生人照看。
• They can be entrusted to solve major national problems.可以委托他们解决重大国家问题。

316 whining   

n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚

参考例句：

• That's the way with you whining, puny, pitiful players. 你们这种又爱哭、又软弱、又可怜的赌棍就是这样。
• The dog sat outside the door whining (to be let in). 那条狗坐在门外狺狺叫着（要进来）。

317 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

318 vilest   

adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的

参考例句：

319 disarmed   

v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 )；使息怒

参考例句：

• Most of the rebels were captured and disarmed. 大部分叛乱分子被俘获并解除了武装。
• The swordsman disarmed his opponent and ran him through. 剑客缴了对手的械，并对其乱刺一气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

320 litigants   

n.诉讼当事人( litigant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Litigants of the two parties may reconcile of their own accord. 双方当事人可以自行和解。 来自口语例句
• The litigants may appeal against a judgment or a ruling derived from the retrial. 当事人可就重审案件的判决或裁定进行上诉。 来自口语例句

321 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。

322 inflict   

vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担

参考例句：

• Don't inflict your ideas on me.不要把你的想法强加于我。
• Don't inflict damage on any person.不要伤害任何人。

323 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。

324 gnaw   

v.不断地啃、咬；使苦恼，折磨

参考例句：

• Dogs like to gnaw on a bone.狗爱啃骨头。
• A rat can gnaw a hole through wood.老鼠能啃穿木头。

325 extorting   

v.敲诈( extort的现在分词 )；曲解

参考例句：

• Corrupt government officials were extorting money from him. 腐败的政府官员向他敲诈钱财。 来自辞典例句
• He's been charged with extorting protection money from the shopkeepers. 他被指控对店主敲诈勒索保护费。 来自互联网

326 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

327 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。

328 spout   

v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱

参考例句：

• Implication in folk wealth creativity and undertaking vigor spout.蕴藏于民间的财富创造力和创业活力喷涌而出。
• This acts as a spout to drain off water during a rainstorm.在暴风雨季，这东西被用作喷管来排水。

329 dictate   

v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令

参考例句：

• It took him a long time to dictate this letter.口述这封信花了他很长时间。
• What right have you to dictate to others?你有什么资格向别人发号施令？

330 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

331 stifle   

vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止

参考例句：

• She tried hard to stifle her laughter.她强忍住笑。
• It was an uninteresting conversation and I had to stifle a yawn.那是一次枯燥无味的交谈，我不得不强忍住自己的呵欠。

332 wards   

区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态

参考例句：

• This hospital has 20 medical [surgical] wards. 这所医院有 20 个内科[外科]病房。
• It was a big constituency divided into three wards. 这是一个大选区，下设三个分区。

333 throttled   

v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制

参考例句：

• He throttled the guard with his bare hands. 他徒手掐死了卫兵。
• The pilot got very low before he throttled back. 飞行员减速之前下降得很低。 来自《简明英汉词典》

334 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。

335 crumble   

vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁

参考例句：

• Opposition more or less crumbled away.反对势力差不多都瓦解了。
• Even if the seas go dry and rocks crumble,my will will remain firm.纵然海枯石烂，意志永不动摇。

336 flares   

n.喇叭裤v.（使）闪耀( flare的第三人称单数 )；（使）（船舷）外倾；（使）鼻孔张大；（使）（衣裙、酒杯等）呈喇叭形展开

参考例句：

• The side of a ship flares from the keel to the deck. 船舷从龙骨向甲板外倾。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He's got a fiery temper and flares up at the slightest provocation. 他是火爆性子，一点就着。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

337 savagery   

n.野性

参考例句：

• The police were shocked by the savagery of the attacks.警察对这些惨无人道的袭击感到震惊。
• They threw away their advantage by their savagery to the black population.他们因为野蛮对待黑人居民而丧失了自己的有利地位。

338 camouflaged   

v.隐蔽( camouflage的过去式和过去分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰

参考例句：

• We camouflaged in the bushes and no one saw us. 我们隐藏在灌木丛中没有被人发现。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• They camouflaged in bushes. 他们隐蔽在灌木丛中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

339 salvage   

v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救

参考例句：

• All attempts to salvage the wrecked ship failed.抢救失事船只的一切努力都失败了。
• The salvage was piled upon the pier.抢救出的财产被堆放在码头上。

340 arbiter   

n.仲裁人，公断人

参考例句：

• Andrew was the arbiter of the disagreement.安德鲁是那场纠纷的仲裁人。
• Experiment is the final arbiter in science.实验是科学的最后仲裁者。

341 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

342 obstruct   

v.阻隔，阻塞(道路、通道等)；n.阻碍物，障碍物

参考例句：

• He became still more dissatisfied with it and secretly did everything in his power to obstruct it.他对此更不满意，尽在暗里使绊子。
• The fallen trees obstruct the road.倒下的树将路堵住了。

343 deflect   

v.(使)偏斜，(使)偏离，(使)转向

参考例句：

• Never let a little problem deflect you.决不要因一点小问题就半途而废。
• They decided to deflect from the original plan.他们决定改变原计划。

344 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。

345 numbness   

n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆

参考例句：

• She was fighting off the numbness of frostbite. 她在竭力摆脱冻僵的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sometimes they stay dead, causing' only numbness. 有时，它们没有任何反应，只会造成麻木。 来自时文部分

346 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。

347 torpid   

adj.麻痹的，麻木的，迟钝的

参考例句：

• He just walked and his mind drifted slowly like a torpid stream.他只是埋头走，脑袋里思想都凝滞了，有如一汪流不动的溪水。
• Even when he was awake he was completely torpid.他醒着的时候也完全麻木不动。

348 gulch   

n.深谷，峡谷

参考例句：

• The trail ducks into a narrow gulch.这条羊肠小道突然下到一个狭窄的峡谷里。
• This is a picture of California Gulch.这是加利福尼亚峡谷的图片。

349 crook   

v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处)

参考例句：

• He demanded an apology from me for calling him a crook.我骂他骗子，他要我向他认错。
• She was cradling a small parcel in the crook of her elbow.她用手臂挎着一个小包裹。

350 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。

351 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

352 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。