CHAPTER VIII THE EGOIST

"It wasn't real, was it?" said Mr. Thompson.  They stood in front of the radio, as the last sound of Galt's voice had left them. No one had moved through the span of silence; they had stood, looking at the radio, as if waiting. But the radio was now only a wooden box with some knobs and a circle of cloth stretched over an empty loud-speaker.  "We seem to have heard it," said Tinky Holloway.  "We couldn't help it," said Chick Morrison.  Mr. Thompson was sitting on a crate². The pale, oblong smear³ at the level of his elbow was the face of Wesley Mouch, who was seated on the floor. Far behind them, like an island in the vast semi-darkness of the studio space, the drawing room prepared for their broadcast stood deserted⁴ and fully⁵ lighted, a semicircle of empty armchairs under a cobweb of dead microphones in the glare of the floodlights which no one had taken the initiative to turn off.  Mr. Thompson's eyes were darting⁶ over the faces around him, as if in search of some special vibrations⁷ known only to him. The rest of them were trying to do it surreptitiously, each attempting to catch a glimpse of the others without letting them catch his own glance.  "Let me out of here!" screamed a young third-rate assistant, suddenly and to no one in particular.  "Stay put!" snapped Mr. Thompson.  The sound of his own order and the hiccough-moan of the figure immobilized somewhere in the darkness, seemed to help him recapture a familiar version of reality. His head emerged an inch higher from his shoulders.  "Who permitted it to hap-" he began in a rising voice, but stopped; the vibrations he caught were the dangerous panic of the cornered.  "What do you make of it?" he asked, instead. There was no answer.  "Well?" He waited. "Well, say something, somebody!"  "We don't have to believe it, do we?" cried James Taggart, thrusting his face toward Mr. Thompson, in a manner that was almost a threat.  "Do we?" Taggart's face was distorted; his features seemed shapeless; a mustache of small beads¹⁰ sparkled between his nose and mouth.  "Pipe down," said Mr. Thompson uncertainly, drawing a little away from him.  "We don't have to believe it!" Taggart's voice had the flat, insistent¹¹ sound of an effort to maintain a trance. "Nobody's ever said it before! It's just one man! We don't have to believe it!"  "Take it easy," said Mr. Thompson.  "Why is he so sure he's right? Who is he to go against the whole world, against everything ever said for centuries and centuries? Who is he to know? Nobody can be sure! Nobody can know what's right! There isn't any right!"  "Shut up!" yelled Mr. Thompson. "What are you trying to-"  The blast that stopped him was a military march leaping suddenly forth¹² from the radio receiver-the military march interrupted three hours ago, played by the familiar screeches¹³ of a studio record. It took them a few stunned¹⁴ seconds to grasp it, while the cheerful, thumping¹⁵ chords went goose-stepping through the silence, sounding grotesquely¹⁶ irrelevant¹⁷, like the mirth of a half-wit. The station's program director was blindly obeying the absolute that no radio time was ever to be left blank.  "Tell them to cut it off!" screamed Wesley Mouch, leaping to his feet. "It will make the public think that we authorized¹⁸ that speech!"  "You damn fool!" cried Mr. Thompson. "Would you rather have the public think that we didn't?"  Mouch stopped short and his eyes shot to Mr. Thompson with the appreciative¹⁹ glance of an amateur at a master.  "Broadcasts as usual!" ordered Mr. Thompson. "Tell them to go on with whatever programs they'd scheduled for this hour! No special announcements, no explanations! Tell them to go on as if nothing had happened!"  Half a dozen of Chick Morrison's morale²⁰ conditioners went scurrying²¹ off toward telephones.  "Muzzle²² the commentators²³! Don't allow them to comment! Send word to every station in the country! Let the public wonder! Don't let them think that we're worried! Don't let them think that it's important!"  "No!" screamed Eugene Lawson. "No, no, no! We can't give people the impression that we're endorsing²⁵ that speech! It's horrible, horrible, horrible!" Lawson was not in tears, but his voice had the undignified sound of an adult sobbing²⁷ with helpless rage.  "Who's said anything about endorsing it?" snapped Mr. Thompson.  "It's horrible! It's immoral²⁸! It's selfish, heartless, ruthless! It's the most vicious speech ever made! It . . . it will make people demand to be happy!"  "It's only a speech," said Mr. Thompson, not too firmly.  "It seems to me," said Chick Morrison, his voice tentatively helpful, '"that people of nobler spiritual nature, you know what I mean, people of . . . of . . . well, of mystical insight"-he paused, as if waiting to be slapped, but no one moved, so he repeated firmly-"yes, of mystical insight, won't go for that speech. Logic²⁹ isn't everything, after all."  "The workingmen won't go for it," said Tinky Holloway, a bit more helpfully. "He didn't sound like a friend of labor³⁰."  "The women of the country won't go for it," declared Ma Chalmers.  "It is, I believe, an established fact that women don't go for that stuff about the mind. Women have finer feelings. You can count on the women."  "You can count on the scientists," said Dr. Simon Pritchett. They were all pressing forward, suddenly eager to speak, as if they had found a subject they could handle with assurance. "Scientists know better than to believe in reason. He's no friend of the scientists."  "He's no friend of anybody," said Wesley Mouch, recapturing a shade of confidence at the sudden realization³¹, "except maybe of big business."  "No!" cried Mr. Mowen in terror. "No! Don't accuse us! Don't say it! I won't have you say it!"  "What?"  "That . . . that . . . that anybody is a friend of business!"  "Don't let's make a fuss about that speech," said Dr. Floyd Ferris.  "It was too intellectual. Much too intellectual for the common man. It will have no effect. People are too dumb to understand it."  "Yeah," said Mouch hopefully, "that's so."  "In the first place," said Dr. Ferris, encouraged, "people can't think. In the second place, they don't want to."  "In the third place," said Fred Kinnan, "they don't want to starve. And what do you propose to do about that?"  It was as if he had pronounced the question which all of the preceding utterances³⁴ had been intended to stave off. No one answered him, but heads drew faintly deeper into shoulders, and figures drew faintly closer to one another, like a small cluster under the weight of the studio's empty space. The military march boomed through the silence with the inflexible³⁵ gaiety of a grinning skull³⁶.  "Turn it off!" yelled Mr. Thompson, waving at the radio. "Turn that damn thing off!"  Someone obeyed him. But the sudden silence was worse.  "Well?" said Mr. Thompson at last, raising his eyes reluctantly to Fred Kinnan. "What do you think we ought to do?"  "Who, me?" chuckled³⁸ Kinnan. "I don't run this show."  Mr. Thompson slammed his fist down on his knee. "Say something -" he ordered, but seeing Kinnan turn away, added, "somebody!"  There were no volunteers. "What are we to do?" he yelled, knowing that the man who answered would, thereafter, be the man in power.  "What are we to do? Can't somebody tell us what to do?"  "I can!"  It was a woman's voice, but it had the quality of the voice they had heard on the radio. They whirled to Dagny before she had time to step forward from the darkness beyond the group. As she stepped forward, her face frightened them-because it was devoid³⁹ of fear.  "I can," she said, addressing Mr. Thompson. "You're to give up."  "Give up?" he repeated blankly.  "You're through. Don't you see that you're through? What else do you need, after what you've heard? Give up and get out of the way. Leave men free to exist." He was looking at her, neither objecting nor moving. "You're still alive, you're using a human language, you're asking for answers, you're counting on reason-you're still counting on reason, God damn you! You're able to understand. It isn't possible that you haven't understood. There's nothing you can now pretend to hope, to want or gain or grab or reach. There's nothing but destruction ahead, the world's and your own. Give up and get out."  They were listening intently, but as if they did not hear her words, as if they were clinging blindly to a quality she was alone among them to possess: the quality of being alive. There was a sound of exultant⁴¹ laughter under the angry violence of her voice, her face was lifted, her eyes seemed to be greeting some spectacle at an incalculable distance, so that the glowing patch on her forehead did not look like the reflection of a studio spotlight⁴², but of a sunrise.  "You wish to live, don't you? Get out of the way, if you want a chance. Let those who can, take over. He knows what to do. You don't. He is able to create the means of human survival. You aren't."  "Don't listen to her!"  It was so savage⁴³ a cry of hatred⁴⁴ that they drew away from Dr. Robert Stadler, as if he had given voice to the unconfessed within them. His face looked as they feared theirs would look in the privacy of darkness.  "Don't listen to her!" he cried, his eyes avoiding hers, while hers paused on him for a brief, level glance that began as a shock of astonishment⁴⁵ and ended as an obituary⁴⁶. "It's your life or his!"  "Keep quiet, Professor," said Mr. Thompson, brushing him off with the jerk of one hand. Mr. Thompson's eyes were watching Dagny, as if some thought were struggling to take shape inside his skull.  "You know the truth, all of you," she said, "and so do I, and so does every man who's heard John Galt! What else are you waiting for? For proof? He's given it to you. For facts? They're all around you. How many corpses⁴⁷ do you intend to pile up before you renounce⁴⁸ it-your guns, your power, your controls and the whole of your miserable⁴⁹ altruistic⁵⁰ creed⁵¹? Give it up, if you want to live. Give it up, if there's anything left in your mind that's still able to want human beings to remain alive on this earth!"  "But it's treason!" cried Eugene Lawson. "She's talking pure treason!"  "Now, now," said Mr. Thompson. "You don't have to go to extremes."  "Huh?" asked Tinky Holloway.  "But . . . but surely it's outrageous⁵²?" asked Chick Morrison.  "You're not agreeing with her, are you?" asked Wesley Mouch.  "Who's said anything about agreeing?" said Mr. Thompson, his tone surprisingly placid⁵³. "Don't be premature⁵⁴. Just don't you be premature, any of you. There's no harm in listening to any argument, is there?"  "That kind of argument?" asked Wesley Mouch, his finger stabbing again and again in Dagny's direction.  "Any kind," said Mr. Thompson placidly⁵⁵. "We mustn't be intolerant,"  "But it's treason, ruin, disloyalty, selfishness and big-business propaganda!"  "Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Thompson. "We've got to keep an open mind. We've got to give consideration to every one's viewpoint. She might have something there. He knows what to do. We've got to be flexible."  "Do you mean that you're willing to quit?" gasped⁵⁸ Mouch.  "Now don't jump to conclusions," snapped Mr. Thompson angrily.  "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who jump to conclusions. And another thing is ivory-tower intellectuals who stick to some pet theory and haven't any sense of practical reality. At a time like this, we've got to be flexible above all."  He saw a look of bewilderment on all the faces around him, on Dagny's and on the others, though not for the same reasons. He smiled, rose to his feet and turned to Dagny.  "Thank you, Miss Taggart," he said. "Thank you for speaking your mind. That's what I want you to know-that you can trust me and speak to me with full frankness. We're not your enemies, Miss Taggart. Don't pay any attention to the boys-they're upset, but they'll come down to earth. We're not your enemies, nor the country's. Sure, we've made mistakes, we're only human, but we're trying to do our best for the people-that is, I mean, for everybody-in these difficult times. We can't make snap judgments⁶¹ and reach momentous⁶² decisions on the spur of the moment, can we? We've got to consider it, and mull it over, and weigh it carefully. I just want you to remember that we're not anybody's enemies-you realize that, don't you?"  "I've said everything I had to say," she answered, turning away from him, with no clue to the meaning of his words and no strength to attempt to find it. She turned to Eddie Willers, who had watched the men around them with a look of so great an indignation that he seemed paralyzed -as if his brain were crying, "It's evil!" and could not move to any further thought. She jerked her head, indicating the door; he followed her obediently.  Dr. Robert Stadler waited until the door had closed after them, then whirled on Mr. Thompson. "You bloody⁶³ fool! Do you know what you're playing with? Don't you understand that it's life or death? That it's you or him?"  The thin tremor⁶⁴ that ran along Mr. Thompson's lips was a smile of contempt. "It's a funny way for a professor to behave. I didn't think professors ever went to pieces."  "Don't you understand? Don't you see that it's one or the other?"  "And what is it that you want me to do?"  "You must kill him."  It was the fact that Dr. Stadler had not cried it, but had said it in a flat, cold, suddenly and fully conscious voice, that brought a chill moment of silence as the whole room's answer.  "You must find him," said Dr. Stadler, his voice cracking and rising once more. "You must leave no stone unturned till you find him and destroy him! If he lives, he'll destroy all of us! If he lives, we can't!"  "How am I to find him?" asked Mr. Thompson, speaking slowly and carefully.  "I . . . I can tell you. I can give you a lead. Watch that Taggart woman. Set your men to watch every move she makes. She'll lead you to him, sooner or later."  "How do you know that?"  "Isn't it obvious? Isn't it sheer chance that she hasn't deserted you long ago? Don't you have the wits to see that she's one of his kind?"  He did not state what kind.  "Yeah," said Mr. Thompson thoughtfully, "yeah, that's true." He jerked his head up with a smile of satisfaction. "The professor's got something there. Put a tail on Miss Taggart," he ordered, snapping his fingers at Mouch. "Have her tailed day and night. We've got to find him."  "Yes, sir," said Mouch blankly.  "And when you find him," Dr. Stadler asked tensely, "you'll kill him?"  "Kill him, you damn fool? We need him!" cried Mr. Thompson.  Mouch waited, but no one ventured the question that was on everyone's mind, so he made the effort to utter stiffly, "I don't understand you, Mr. Thompson."  "Oh, you theoretical intellectuals!" said Mr. Thompson with exasperation⁶⁶. "What are you all gaping⁶⁷ at? It's simple. Whoever he is, he's a man of action. Besides, he's got a pressure group: he's cornered all the men of brains. He knows what to do. We'll find him and he'll tell us. He'll tell us what to do. He'll make things work. He'll pull us out of the hole."  "Us, Mr. Thompson?"  "Sure. Never mind your theories. We'll make a deal with him."  "With him?"  "Sure. Oh, we'll have to compromise, we'll have to make a few concessions⁶⁸ to big business, and the welfare boys won't like it, but what the hell!-do you know any other way out?"  "But his ideas-"  "Who cares about ideas?"  "Mr. Thompson," said Mouch, choking, "I . . . I'm afraid he's a man who's not open to a deal."  "There's no such thing," said Mr. Thompson.  A cold wind rattled⁷⁰ the broken signs over the windows of abandoned shops, in the street outside the radio station. The city seemed abnormally quiet. The distant rumble⁷¹ of the traffic sounded lower than usual and made the wind sound louder. Empty sidewalks stretched off into the darkness; a few lone⁴⁰ figures stood in whispering clusters under the rare lights.  Eddie Willers did not speak until they were many blocks away from the station. He stopped abruptly⁷², when they reached a deserted square where the public loud-speakers, which no one had thought of turning off, were now broadcasting a domestic comedy-the shrill⁷³ voices of a husband and wife quarreling over Junior's dates-to an empty stretch of pavement enclosed by unlighted house fronts. Beyond the square, a few dots of light, scattered⁷⁴ Vertically⁷⁵ above the twenty fifth-floor limit of the city, suggested a distant, rising form, which was the Taggart Building.  Eddie stopped and pointed⁷⁶ at the building, his finger shaking.  "Dagny!" he cried, then lowered his voice involuntarily. "Dagny," he whispered, "I know him. He . . . he works there . . . there . . ."  He kept pointing at the building with incredulous helplessness. "He works for Taggart Transcontinental . . ."  "I know," she answered; her voice was a lifeless monotone.  "As a track laborer⁷⁸ . . . as the lowest of track laborers⁷⁹ . . ."  "I know."  "I've talked to him . . . I've been talking to him for years . . .in the Terminal cafeteria. . . . He used to ask questions . . . all sorts of questions about the railroad, and I-God, Dagny! was I protecting the railroad or was I helping⁸⁰ to destroy it?"  "Both. Neither. It doesn't matter now."  "I could have staked my life that he loved the railroad!"  "He does."  "But he's destroyed it."  "Yes."  She tightened⁸¹ the collar of her coat and walked on, against a gust⁸² of wind.  "I used to talk to him," he said, after a while. "His face . . . Dagny, it didn't look like any of the others, it . . . it showed that he understood so much. . . . I was glad, whenever I saw him there, in the cafeteria . . . I just talked . . . I don't think I knew that he was asking questions . . . but he was . . . so many questions about the railroad and . . . and about you."  "Did he ever ask you what I look like, when I'm asleep?"  "Yes . . . Yes, he did . . . I'd found you once, asleep in the office, and when I mentioned it, he-" He stopped, as a sudden connection crashed into place in his mind.  She turned to him, in the ray of a street lamp, raising and holding her face in full light for a silent, deliberate moment, as if in answer and confirmation⁸³ of his thought.  He closed his eyes. "Oh God, Dagny!" he whispered.  They walked on in silence.  "He's gone by now, isn't he?" he asked. "From the Taggart Terminal, I mean."  "Eddie," she said, her voice suddenly grim, "if you value his life, don't ever ask that question. You don't want them to find him, do you? Don't give them any leads. Don't ever breathe a word to anyone about having known him. Don't try to find out whether he's still working in the Terminal."  "You don't mean that he's still there?"  "I don't know. I know only that he might be."  "Now?"  "Yes."  "Still?"  "Yes. Keep quiet about it, if you don't want to destroy him."  "I think he's gone. He won't be back. I haven't seen him since . . .since . . ."  "Since when?" she asked sharply.  "The end of May. The night when you left for Utah, remember?" He paused, as the memory of that night's encounter and the full understanding of its meaning struck him together. He said with effort, "1 saw him that night. Not since . . . I've waited for him, in the cafeteria . . . He never came back."  "I don't think he'll let you see him now, he'll keep out of your way. But don't look for him. Don't inquire."  "It's funny. I don't even know what name he used. It was Johnny something or-"  "It was John Galt," she said, with a faint, mirthless chuckle³⁷. "Don't look at the Terminal payroll⁸⁵. The name is still there."  "Just like that? All these years?"  "For twelve years. Just like that."  "And it's still there now?"  "Yes."  After a moment, he said, "It proves nothing, I know. The personnel office hasn't taken a single name off the payroll list since Directive 10-289. If a man quits, they give his name and job to a starving friend of their own, rather than report it to the Unification Board."  "Don't question the personnel office or anyone. Don't call attention to his name. If you or I make any inquiries⁸⁶ about him, somebody might begin to wonder. Don't look for him. Don't make any move in his direction. And if you ever catch sight of him by chance, act as if you didn't know him."  He nodded. After a while, he said, his voice tense and low, "I wouldn't turn him over to them, not even to save the railroad."  "Eddie-"  "Yes?"  "If you ever catch sight of him, tell me."  He nodded.  Two blocks later, he asked quietly, "You're going to quit, one of these days, and vanish, aren't you?"  "Why do you say that?" It was almost a cry.  "Aren't you?"  She did not answer at once; when she did, the sound of despair was present in her voice only in the form of too tight a monotone: "Eddie, if I quit, what would happen to the Taggart trains?"  "There would be no Taggart trains within a week. Maybe less."  "There will be no looters' government within ten days. Then men like Cuffy Meigs will devour⁸⁷ the last of our rails and engines. Should I lose the battle by failing to wait one more moment? How can I let it go-Taggart Transcontinental, Eddie-go forever, when one last effort can still keep it in existence? If I've stood things this long, I can stand them a little longer. Just a little longer. I'm not helping the looters. Nothing can help them now."  "What are they going to do?"  "I don't know. What can they do? They're finished."  "I suppose so."  "Didn't you see them? They're miserable, panic-stricken rats, running for their lives."  "Does it mean anything to them?"  "What?"  "Their lives."  "They're still struggling, aren't they? But they're through and they know it."  "Have they ever acted on what they know?"  "They'll have to. They'll give up. It won't be long. And we'll be here to save whatever's left."  "Mr. Thompson wishes it to be known," said official broadcasts on the morning of November 23, "that there is no cause for alarm. He urges the public not to draw any hasty conclusions. We must preserve our discipline, our morale, our unity⁸⁸ and our sense of broad-minded tolerance⁸⁹. The unconventional speech, which some of you might have heard on the radio last night, was a thought-provoking contribution to our pool of ideas on world problems. We must consider it soberly, avoiding the extremes of total condemnation⁹⁰ or of reckless agreement. We must regard it as one viewpoint out of many in our democratic forum⁹¹ of public opinion, which, as last night has proved, is open to all. The truth, says Mr. Thompson, has many facets⁹². We must remain impartial⁹³."  "They're silent," wrote Chick Morrison, as a summary of its content, across the report from one of the field agents he had sent out on a mission entitled Public Pulse Taking. "They're silent," he wrote across the next report, then across another and another. "Silence," he wrote, with a frown of uneasiness, summing up his report to Mr. Thompson. "People seem to be silent."  The flames that went up to the sky of a winter night and devoured⁹⁴ a home in Wyoming were not seen by the people of Kansas, who watched a trembling red glow on the prairie horizon, made by the flames that went up to devour a farm, and the glow was not reflected by the windows of a street in Pennsylvania, where the twisting red tongues were reflections of the flames that went up to devour a factory. Nobody mentioned, next morning, that those flames had not been set off by chance and that the owners of the three places had vanished. Neighbors observed it without comment-and without astonishment. A few homes were found abandoned in random⁹⁵ corners across the nation, some left locked, shuttered and empty, others open and gutted⁹⁶ of all movable goods-but people watched it in silence and, through the snowdrifts of untended streets in the haze⁹⁷ of pre-morning darkness, went on trudging⁹⁸ to their jobs, a little slower than usual.  Then, on November 27, a speaker at a political meeting in Cleveland was beaten up and had to escape by scurrying down dark alleys⁹⁹. His silent audience had come to sudden life when he had shouted that the cause of all their troubles was their selfish concern with their own troubles.  On the morning of November 29, the workers of a shoe factory in Massachusetts were astonished, on entering their workshop, to find that the foreman was late. But they went to their usual posts and went on with their habitual¹⁰⁰ routine, pulling levers, pressing buttons, feeding leather into automatic cutters, piling boxes on a moving belt, wondering, as the hours went by, why they did not catch sight of the foreman, or the superintendent¹⁰¹, or the general manager, or the company president. It was noon before they discovered that the front offices of the plant were empty.  "You goddamn cannibals!" screamed a woman in the midst of a crowded movie theater, breaking into sudden, hysterical¹⁰² sobs-and the audience showed no sign of astonishment, as if she were screaming for them all.  "There is no cause for alarm," said official broadcasts on December 5. "Mr. Thompson wishes it to be known that he is willing to negotiate with John Galt for the purpose of devising ways and means to achieve a speedy solution of our problems. Mr. Thompson urges the people to be patient. We must not worry, we must not doubt, we must not lose heart."  The attendants of a hospital in Illinois showed no astonishment when a man was brought in, beaten up by his elder brother, who had supported him all his life: the younger man had screamed at the elder, accusing him of selfishness and greed-just as the attendants of a hospital in New York City showed no astonishment at the case of a woman who came in with a fractured jaw¹⁰³: she had been slapped in the face by a total stranger, who had heard her ordering her five-year old son to give his best toy to the children of neighbors.  Chick Morrison attempted a whistle-stop tour to buttress¹⁰⁴ the country's morale by speeches on self-sacrifice for the general welfare. He was stoned at the first of his stops and had to return to Washington.  Nobody had ever granted them the title of "the better men" or, granting it, had paused to grasp that title's meaning, but everybody knew, each in his own community, neighborhood, office or shop and in his own unidentified terms, who would be the men that would now fail to appear at their posts on some coming morning and would silently vanish in search of unknown frontiers-the men whose faces were tighter than the faces around them, whose eyes were more direct, whose energy was more conscientiously¹⁰⁶ enduring-the men who were now slipping away, one by one, from every corner of the country-of the country which was now like the descendant of what had once been regal glory, prostrated¹⁰⁷ by the scourge¹⁰⁸ of hemophilia, losing the best of its blood from a wound not to be healed.  "But we're willing to negotiate!" yelled Mr. Thompson to his assistants, ordering the special announcement to be repeated by all radio stations three times a day. "We're willing to negotiate! He'll hear it! He'll answer!"  Special listeners were ordered to keep watch, day and night, at radio receivers tuned¹⁰⁹ to every known frequency of sound, waiting for an answer from an unknown transmitter. There was no answer.  Empty, hopeless, unfocused faces were becoming more apparent in the streets of the cities, but no one could read their meaning. As some men were escaping with their bodies into the underground of uninhabited regions, so others could only save their souls and were escaping into the underground of their minds-and no power on earth could tell whether their blankly indifferent eyes were shutters¹¹⁰ protecting hidden treasures at the bottom of shafts¹¹² no longer to be mined, or were merely gaping holes of the parasite's emptiness never to be filled.  "I don't know what to do," said the assistant superintendent of an oil refinery¹¹⁴, refusing to accept the job of the superintendent who had vanished-and the agents of the Unification Board were unable to tell whether he lied or not. It was only an edge of precision in the tone of his voice, an absence of apology or shame, that made them wonder whether he was a rebel or a fool. It was dangerous to force the job on either.  "Give us men!" The plea began to hammer progressively louder upon the desk of the Unification Board, from all parts of a country ravaged¹¹⁵ by unemployment, and neither the pleaders nor the Board dared to add the dangerous words which the cry was implying: "Give us men of ability!" There were waiting lines years' long for the jobs of janitors¹¹⁶, greasers, porters and bus boys; there was no one to apply for the jobs of executives, managers, superintendents¹¹⁷, engineers.  The explosions of oil refineries¹¹⁸, the crashes of defective¹¹⁹ airplanes, the break-outs of blast furnaces, the wrecks¹²¹ of colliding trains, and the rumors¹²² of drunken orgies in the offices of newly created executives, made the members of the Board fear the kind of men who did apply for the positions of responsibility.  "Don't despair! Don't give up!" said official broadcasts on December 15, and on every day thereafter, "We will reach an agreement with John Galt. We will get him to lead us. He will solve all our problems. He will make things work. Don't give up! We will get John Galt!"  Rewards and honors were offered to applicants¹²³ for managerial jobs -then to foremen-then to skilled mechanics-then to any man who would make an effort to deserve a promotion¹²⁴ in rank: wage raises, bonuses, tax exemptions¹²⁵ and a medal devised by Wesley Mouch, to be known as "The Order of Public Benefactors¹²⁶." It brought no results. Ragged¹²⁷ people listened to the offers of material comforts and turned away with lethargic¹²⁸ indifference¹²⁹, as if they had lost the concept of "Value." These, thought the public-pulse-takers with terror, were men who did not care to live-or men who did not care to live on present terms.  "Don't despair! Don't give up! John Galt will solve our problems!" said the radio voices of official broadcasts, traveling through the silence of falling snow into the silence of unheated homes.  "Don't tell them that we haven't got him!" cried Mr. Thompson to his assistants, "But for God's sake tell them to find him!" Squads¹³⁰ of Chick Morrison's boys were assigned to the task of manufacturing rumors: half of them went spreading the story that John Galt was in Washington and in conference with government officials-while the other half went spreading the story that the government would give five hundred thousand dollars as reward for information that would help to find John Galt.  "No, not a clue," said Wesley Mouch to Mr. Thompson, summing up the reports of the special agents who had been sent to check on every man by the name of John Galt throughout the country. "They're a shabby lot. There's a John Galt who's a professor of ornithology¹³¹, eighty years old -there's a retired¹³² greengrocer with a wife and nine children-there's an unskilled railroad laborer who's held the same job for twelve years-and other such trash."  "Don't despair! We will get John Galt!" said official broadcasts in the daytime-but at night, every hour on the hour, by a secret, official order, an appeal was sent from short-wave transmitters into the empty reaches of space: "Calling John Galt! . . . Calling John Galt! . . .Are you listening, John Galt? . . . We wish to negotiate. We wish to confer with you. Give us word on where you can be reached. . . .Do you hear us, John Galt?" There was no answer.  The wads of worthless paper money were growing heavier in the pockets of the nation, but there was less and less for that money to buy. In September, a bushel of wheat had cost eleven dollars; it had cost thirty dollars in November; it had cost one hundred in December; it was now approaching the price of two hundred-while the printing presses of the government treasury¹³³ were running a race with starvation, and losing.  When the workers of a factory beat up their foreman and wrecked¹³⁴ the machinery¹³⁵ in a fit of despair- no action could be taken against them. Arrests were futile¹³⁶, the jails were full, the arresting officers winked¹³⁷ at their prisoners and let them escape on their way to prison-men were going through the motions prescribed for the moment, with no thought of the moment to follow. No action could be taken when mobs of starving people attacked warehouses¹³⁸ on the outskirts¹⁴⁰ of cities. No action could be taken when punitive¹⁴¹ squadrons joined the people they had been sent to punish.  "Are you listening, John Galt? . . . We wish to negotiate. We might meet your terms. . . . Are you listening?"  There were whispered rumors of covered wagons¹⁴² traveling by night through abandoned trails, and of secret settlements armed to resist the attacks of those whom they called the "Indians"-the attacks of any looting savages¹⁴³, be they homeless mobs or government agents. Lights were seen, once in a while, on the distant horizon of a prairie, in the hills, on the ledges¹⁴⁴ of mountains, where no buildings had been known to exist. But no soldiers could be persuaded to investigate the sources of those lights.  On the doors of abandoned houses, on the gates of crumbling¹⁴⁵ factories, on the walls of government buildings, there appeared, once in a while, traced in chalk, in paint, in blood, the curving mark which was the sign of the dollar.  "Can you hear us, John Galt? . . . Send us word. Name your terms. We will meet any terms you set. Can you hear us?" There was no answer.  The shaft¹¹¹ of red smoke that shot to the sky on the night of January 22 and stood abnormally still for a while, like a solemn memorial obelisk¹⁴⁶, then wavered and swept back and forth across the sky, like a searchlight sending some undecipherable message, then went out as abruptly as it had come, marked the end of Rearden Steel-but the inhabitants of the area did not know it. They learned it only on subsequent nights, when they-who had cursed the mills for the smoke, the fumes¹⁴⁷, the soot¹⁴⁸ and the noise-looked out and, instead of the glow pulsating¹⁴⁹ with life on their familiar horizon, they saw a black void.  The mills had been nationalized, as the property of a deserter. The first bearer of the title of "People's Manager," appointed to run the mills, had been a man of the Orren Boyle faction⁶⁵, a pudgy hanger-on of the metallurgical industry, who had wanted nothing but to follow his employees while going through the motions of leading. But at the end of a month, after too many clashes with the workers, too many occasions when his only answer had been that he couldn't help it, too many undelivered orders, too many telephonic pressures from his buddies¹⁵⁰, he had begged to be transferred to some other position. The Orren Boyle faction had been falling apart, since Mr. Boyle had been confined to a rest home, where his doctor had forbidden him any contact with business and had put him to the job of weaving baskets, as a means of occupational therapy. The second "People's Manager" sent to Rearden Steel had belonged to the faction of Cuffy Meigs. He had worn leather leggings and perfumed hair lotions¹⁵¹, he had come to work with a gun on his hip¹⁵², he had kept snapping that discipline was his primary goal and that by God he'd get it or else. The only discernible rule of the discipline had been his order forbidding all questions.  After weeks of frantic¹⁵³ activity on the part of insurance companies, of firemen, of ambulances and of first-aid units, attending to a series of inexplicable¹⁵⁴ accidents-the "People's Manager" had vanished one morning, having sold and shipped to sundry¹⁵⁵ racketeers of Europe and Latin America most of the cranes, the automatic conveyors, the supplies of refractory¹⁵⁶ brick, the emergency power generator¹⁵⁷, and the carpet from what had once been Rearden's office.  No one had been able to untangle the issues in the violent chaos¹⁵⁸ of the next few days-the issues had never been named, the sides had remained unacknowledged, but everyone had known that the bloody encounters between the older workers and the newer had not been driven to such ferocious¹⁵⁹ intensity¹⁶⁰ by the trivial causes that kept setting them off-neither guards nor policemen nor state troopers had been able to keep order for the length of a day-nor could any faction muster¹⁶¹ a candidate willing to accept the post of "People's Manager."  On January 22, the operations of Rearden Steel had been ordered temporarily suspended.  The shaft of red smoke, that night, had been caused by a sixty-year old worker, who had set fire to one of the structures and had been caught in the act, laughing dazedly¹⁶² and staring at the flames. "To avenge¹⁶³ Hank Rearden!" he had cried defiantly¹⁶⁴, tears running down his furnace-tanned face.  Don't let it hurt you like this-thought Dagny, slumped¹⁶⁵ across her desk, over the page of the newspaper where a single brief paragraph announced the "temporary" end of Rearden Steel-don't let it hurt you so much. . . . She kept seeing the face of Hank Rearden, as he had stood at the window of his office, watching a crane move against the sky with a load of green-blue rail. . . . Don't let it hurt him like this -was the plea in her mind, addressed to no one-don't let him hear of it, don't let him know. . . . Then she saw another face, a face with unflinching green eyes, saying to her, in a voice made implacable by the quality of respect for facts: "You'll have to hear about it. . . . You'll hear about every wreck¹²⁰. You'll hear about every discontinued train. . . . Nobody stays in this valley by faking reality in any manner whatever. . . ." Then she sat still, with no sight and no sound in her mind, with nothing but that enormous presence which was pain -until she heard the familiar cry that had become a drug killing¹⁶⁶ all sensations except the capacity to act: "Miss Taggart, we don't know what to do!"-and she shot to her feet to answer.  "The People's State of Guatemala," said the newspapers on January 26, "declines the request of the United States for the loan of a thousand tons of steel."  On the night of February 3, a young pilot was flying his usual route, a weekly-flight from Dallas to New York City. When he reached the empty darkness beyond Philadelphia-in the place where the flames of Rearden Steel had for years been his favorite landmark¹⁶⁷, his greeting in the loneliness of night, the beacon¹⁶⁸ of a living earth-he saw a snow-covered spread, dead-white and phosphorescent in the starlight, a spread of peaks and craters¹⁶⁹ that looked like the surface of the moon. He quit his job, next morning.  Through the frozen nights, over dying cities, knocking in vain at unanswering windows, beating on unechoing walls, rising above the roofs of lightless buildings and the skeletal girders of ruins, the plea went on crying through space, crying to the stationary¹⁷⁰ motion of the stars, to the heatless fire of their twinkling: "Can you hear us, John Galt? Can you hear us?"  "Miss Taggart, we don't know what to do," said Mr. Thompson; he had summoned her to a personal conference on one of his scurrying trips to New York. "We're ready to give in, to meet his terms, to let him take over-but where is he?"  "For the third time," she said, her face and voice shut tight against any fissure¹⁷¹ of emotion, "I do not know where he is. What made you think I did?"  "Well, I didn't know, I had to try . . . I thought, just in case . . .I thought, maybe if you had a way to reach him-"  "I haven't."  "You see, we can't announce, not even by short-wave radio, that we're willing to surrender altogether. People might hear it. But if you had some way to reach him, to let him know that we're ready to give in, to scrap¹⁷² our policies, to do anything he tells us to-"  "I said I haven't."  "If he'd only agree to a conference, just a conference, it wouldn't commit him to anything, would it? We're willing to turn the whole economy over to him-if he'd only tell us when, where, how. If he'd give us some word or sign . . . if he'd answer us . . . Why doesn't he answer?"  "You've heard his speech."  "But what are we to do? We can't just quit and leave the country without any government at all. I shudder¹⁷³ to think what would happen. With the kind of social elements now on the loose-why, Miss Taggart, it's all I can do to keep them in line or we'd have plunder¹⁷⁴ and bloody murder in broad daylight. I don't know what's got into people, but they just don't seem to be civilized¹⁷⁵ any more. We can't quit at a time like this. We can neither quit nor run things any longer. What are we to do, Miss Taggart?"  "Start decontrolling."  "Huh?"  "Start lifting taxes and removing controls."  "Oh, no, no, no! That's out of the question!"  "Out of whose question?"  "I mean, not at this time, Miss Taggart, not at this time. The country isn't ready for it. Personally, I'd agree with you, I'm a freedom loving man, Miss Taggart, I'm not after power-but this is an emergency. People aren't ready for freedom. We've got to keep a strong hand. We can't adopt an idealistic theory, which-"  "Then don't ask me what to do," she said, and rose to her feet.  "But, Miss Taggart-"  "I didn't come here to argue."  She was at the door when he sighed and said, "I hope he's still alive." She stopped. "I hope they haven't done anything rash."  A moment passed before she was able to ask, "Who?" and to make it a word, not a scream.  He shrugged¹⁷⁶, spreading his arms and letting them drop helplessly. "I can't hold my own boys in line any longer. I can't tell what they might attempt to do. There's one clique-the Ferris-Lawson-Meigs faction-that's been after me for over a year to adopt stronger measures. A tougher policy, they mean. Frankly¹⁷⁷, what they mean is: to resort to terror. Introduce the death penalty for civilian¹⁷⁸ crimes, for critics, dissenters¹⁷⁹ and the like. Their argument is that since people won't co-operate, won't act for the public interest voluntarily, we've got to force them to. Nothing will make our system work, they say, but terror. And they may be right, from the look of things nowadays. But Wesley won't go for strong-arm methods; Wesley is a peaceful man, a liberal, and so am I. We're trying to keep the Ferris boys in check, but . . .You see, they're set against any surrender to John Galt. They don't want us to deal with him. They don't want us to find him. I wouldn't put anything past them. If they found him first, they'd-there's no telling what they might do. . . . That's what worries me. Why doesn't he answer? Why hasn't he answered us at all? What if they've found him and killed him? I wouldn't know. . . . So I hoped that perhaps you had some way . . . some means of knowing that he's still alive . . ." His voice trailed off into a question mark.  The whole of her resistance against a rush of liquefying terror went into the effort to keep her voice as stiff as her knees, long enough to say, "I do not know," and her knees stiff enough to carry her out of the room.  From behind the rotted posts of what had once been a corner vegetable stand, Dagny glanced furtively¹⁸⁰ back at the street: the rare lamp posts broke the street into separate islands, she could see a pawnshop in the first patch of light, a saloon in the next, a church in the farthest, and black gaps between them; the sidewalks were deserted; it was hard to tell, but the street seemed empty.  She turned the corner, with deliberately¹⁸² resonant¹⁸³ steps, then stopped abruptly to listen: it was hard to tell whether the abnormal tightness inside her chest was the sound of her own heartbeats, and hard to distinguish it from the sound of distant wheels and from the glassy rustle¹⁸⁴ which was the East River somewhere close by; but she heard no sound of human steps behind her. She jerked her shoulders, it was part-shrug, part-shudder, and she walked faster. A rusty¹⁸⁵ clock in some unlighted cavern¹⁸⁶ coughed out the hour of four A.M.  The fear of being followed did not seem fully real, as no fear could be real to her now. She wondered whether the unnatural¹⁸⁷ lightness of her body was a state of tension or relaxation¹⁸⁸; her body seemed drawn¹⁸⁹ so tightly that she felt as if it were reduced to a single attribute: to the power of motion; her mind seemed inaccessibly¹⁹⁰ relaxed, like a motor set to the automatic control of an absolute no longer to be questioned.  If a naked bullet could feel in mid-flight, this is what it would feel, she thought; just the motion and the goal, nothing else. She thought it vaguely¹⁹¹, distantly, as if her own person were unreal; only the word "naked" seemed to reach her: naked . . . stripped of all concern but for the target . . . for the number "367," the number of a house on the East River, which her mind kept repeating, the number it had so long been forbidden to consider.  Three-sixty-seven-she thought, looking for an invisible shape ahead, among the angular forms of tenements-three-sixty-seven . . .that is where he lives . . . if he lives at all. . . . Her calm, her detachment and the confidence of her steps came from the certainty that this was an if with which she could not exist any longer.  She had existed with it for ten days-and the nights behind her were a single progression that had brought her to this night, as if the momentum¹⁹⁴ now driving her steps were the sound of her own steps still ringing, unanswered, in the tunnels of the Terminal. She had searched for him through the tunnels, she had walked for hours, night after night-the hours of the shift he had once worked-through the underground passages and platforms and shops and every twist of abandoned tracks, asking no questions of anyone, offering no explanations of her presence. She had walked, with no sense of fear or hope, moved by a feeling of desperate loyalty⁵⁶ that was almost a feeling of pride.  The root of that feeling was the moments when she had stopped in sudden astonishment in some dark subterranean¹⁹⁵ corner and had heard the words half-stated in her mind: This is my railroad-as she looked at a vault¹⁹⁶ vibrating to the sound of distant wheels; this is my life-as she felt the clot¹ of tension, which was the stopped and the suspended within herself; this is my love-as she thought of the man who, perhaps, was somewhere in those tunnels. There can be no conflict among these three . . . what am I doubting? . . . what can keep us apart, here, where only he and I belong? . . . Then, recapturing the context of the present, she had walked steadily¹⁹⁷ on, with the sense of the same unbroken loyalty, but the sound of different words: You have forbidden me to look for you, you may damn me, you may choose to discard me . . . but by the right of the fact that I am alive, I must know that you are . . . I must see you this once . . . not to stop, not to speak, not to touch you, only to see. . . . She had not seen him. She had abandoned her search, when she had noticed the curious, wondering glances of the underground workers, following her steps.  She had called a meeting of the Terminal track laborers for the alleged¹⁹⁸ purpose of boosting their morale, she had held the meeting twice, to face all the men in turn-she had repeated the same unintelligible¹⁹⁹ speech, feeling a stab of shame at the empty generalities she uttered and, together, a stab of pride that it did not matter to her any longer-she had looked at the exhausted²⁰⁰, brutalized faces of men who did not care whether they were ordered to work or to listen to meaningless sounds. She had not seen his face among them. "Was everyone present?" she had asked the foreman. "Yeah, I guess so," he had answered indifferently.  She had loitered at the Terminal entrances, watching the men as they came to work. But there were too many entrances to cover and no place where she could watch while remaining unseen-she had stood in the soggy twilight²⁰¹ on a sidewalk glittering with rain, pressed to the wall of a warehouse¹³⁹, her coat collar raised to her cheekbones, raindrops falling off the brim of her hat-she had stood exposed to the sight of the street, knowing that the glances of the men who passed her were glances of recognition and astonishment, knowing that her vigil was too dangerously obvious. If there was a John Galt among them, someone could guess the nature of her quest . . . if there was no John Galt among them . . . if there was no John Galt in the world, she thought, then no danger existed-and no world.  No danger and no world, she thought-as she walked through the streets of the slums toward a house with the number "367," which was or was not his home. She wondered whether this was what one felt while awaiting a verdict of death: no fear, no anger, no concern, nothing but the icy detachment of light without heat or of cognition without values.  A tin can clattered²⁰² from under her toes, and the sound went beating too loudly and too long, as if against the walls of an abandoned city. The streets seemed razed²⁰³ by exhaustion²⁰⁴, not by rest, as if the men inside the walls were not asleep, but had collapsed²⁰⁶. He would be home from work at this hour, she thought . . . if he worked . . . if he still had a home. . . . She looked at the shapes of the slums, at the crumbling plaster, the peeling paint, the fading signboards of failing shops with unwanted goods in unwashed windows, the sagging²⁰⁷ steps unsafe to climb, the clotheslines of garments unfit to wear, the undone²⁰⁸, the unattended, the given up, the incomplete, all the twisted monuments of a losing race against two enemies: "no time" and "no strength" -and she thought that this was the place where he had lived for twelve years, he who possessed²⁰⁹ such extravagant²¹⁰ power to lighten the job of human existence.  Some memory kept struggling to reach her, then came back: its name was Starnesville. She felt the sensation of a shudder. But this is New York City!-she cried to herself in defense²¹¹ of the greatness she had loved; then she faced with unmoving austerity the verdict pronounced by her mind: a city that had left him in these slums for twelve years was damned and doomed²¹² to the future of Starnesville.  Then, abruptly, it ceased to matter; she felt a peculiar²¹³ shock, like the shock of sudden silence, a sense of stillness within her, which she took for a sense of calm: she saw the number "367" above the door of an ancient tenement¹⁹³.  She was calm, she thought, it was only time that had suddenly lost its continuity and had broken her perception into separate snatches: she knew the moment when she saw the number-then the moment when she looked at a list on a board in the moldy²¹⁴ half-light of a doorway²¹⁵ and saw the words "John Galt, 5th, rear" scrawled²¹⁶ in pencil by some illiterate²¹⁷ hand-then the moment when she stopped at the foot of a stairway, glanced up at the vanishing angles of the railing and suddenly leaned against the wall, trembling with terror, preferring not to know-then the moment when she felt the movement of her foot coming to rest on the first of the steps-then a single, unbroken progression of lightness, of rising without effort or doubt or fear, of feeling the twisting installments²¹⁸ of stairway dropping down beneath her unhesitant feet, as if the momentum of her irresistible²¹⁹ rise were coming from the straightness of her body, the poise²²⁰ of her shoulders, the lift of her head and the solemnly exultant certainty that in the moment of ultimate decision, it was not disaster she expected of her life, at the end of a rising stairway she had needed thirty-seven years to climb.  At the top, she saw a narrow hallway, its walls converging²²¹ to an unlighted door. She heard the floorboards creaking in the silence, under her steps. She felt the pressure of her finger on a doorbell and heard the sound of ringing in the unknown space beyond. She waited. She heard the brief crack of a board, but it came from the floor below. She heard the sliding wail²²² of a tugboat somewhere on the river. Then she knew that she had missed some span of time, because her next awareness²²³ was not like a moment of awakening²²⁴, but like a moment of birth: as if two sounds were pulling her out of a void, the sound of a step behind the door and the sound of a lock being turned-but she was not present until the moment when suddenly there was no door before her and the figure standing⁸⁴ on the threshold was John Galt, standing casually²²⁵ in his own doorway, dressed in slacks and shirt, the angle of his waistline slanting²²⁶ faintly against the light behind him.  She knew that his eyes were grasping this moment, then sweeping²²⁷ over its past and its future, that a lightning process of calculation was bringing it into his conscious control-and by the time a fold of his shirt moved with the motion of his breath, he knew the sum-and the sum was a smile of radiant greeting.  She was now unable to move. He seized her arm, he jerked her inside the room, she felt the clinging pressure of his mouth, she felt the slenderness of his body through the suddenly alien stiffness of her coat. She saw the laughter in his eyes, she felt the touch of his mouth again and again, she was sagging in his arms, she was breathing in gasps²²⁸, as if she had not breathed for five flights of stairs, her face was pressed to the angle between his neck and shoulder, to hold him, to hold him with her arms, her hands and the skin of her cheek.  "John . . . you're alive . . ." was all she could say.  He nodded, as if he knew what the words were intended to explain.  Then he picked up her hat that had fallen to the floor, he took off her coat and put it aside, he looked at her slender, trembling figure, a sparkle of approval in his eyes, his hand moving over the tight, high collared, dark blue sweater that gave to her body the fragility of a schoolgirl and the tension of a fighter.  "The next time I see you," he said, "wear a white one. It will look wonderful, too."  She realized that she was dressed as she never appeared in public as she had been dressed at home through the sleepless²²⁹ hours of that night. She laughed, rediscovering the ability to laugh: she had expected his first words to be anything but that.  "If there is a next time," he added calmly.  "What . . . do you mean?"  He went to the door and locked it. "Sit down," he said.  She remained standing, but she took the time to glance at the room she had not noticed: a long, bare garret with a bed in one corner and a gas stove in another, a few pieces of wooden furniture, naked boards stressing the length of the floor, a single lamp burning on a desk, a closed door in the shadows beyond the lamp's circle-and New York City beyond an enormous window, the spread of angular structures and scattered lights, and the shaft of the Taggart Building far in the distance.  "Now listen carefully," he said. "We have about half an hour, I think. I know why you came here. I told you that it would be hard to stand and that you would be likely to break. Don't regret it. You see?-I can't regret it, either. But now, we have to know how to act, from here on. In about half an hour, the looters' agents, who followed you, will be here to arrest me."  "Oh no!" she gasped.  "Dagny, whoever among them had any remnant of human perceptiveness²³⁰ would know that you're not one of them, that you're their last link to me, and would not let you out of his sight-or the sight of his spies."  "I wasn't followed! I watched, I-"  "You wouldn't know how to notice it. Sneaking²³² is one art they're expert at. Whoever followed you is reporting to his bosses right now. Your presence in this district, at this hour, my name on the board downstairs, the fact that I work for your railroad-it's enough even for them to connect."  "Then let's get out of here!"  He shook his head. "They've surrounded the block by now. Your follower²³³ would have every policeman in the district at his immediate²³⁴ call. Now I want you to know what you'll have to do when they come here. Dagny, you have only one chance to save me. If you did not quite understand what I said on the radio about the man in the middle, you'll understand it now. There is no middle for you to take. And you cannot take my side, not so long as we're in their hands. Now you must take their side."  "What?"  "You must take their side, as fully, consistently and loudly as your capacity for deception²³⁵ will permit. You must act as one of them. You must act as my worst enemy. If you do, I'll have a chance to come out of it alive. They need me too much, they'll go to any extreme before they bring themselves to kill me. Whatever they extort²³⁶ from people, they can extort it only through their victims' values - and they have no value of mine to hold over my head, nothing to threaten me with. But if they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack - I mean, physical torture - before my eyes, in less than a week. I am not going to wait for that. At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there."  He said it without emphasis, in the same impersonal²³⁷ tone of practical calculation as the rest. She knew that he meant it and that he was right to mean it: she saw in what manner she alone had the power to succeed at destroying him, where all the power of his enemies would fail. He saw the look of stillness in her eyes, a look of understanding and of horror. He nodded, with a faint smile.  "I don't have to tell you," he said, "that if I do it, it won't be an act of self-sacrifice. I do not care to live on their terms, I do not care to obey them and I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that - and I do not care to exist without values. I don't have to tell you that we owe no morality to those who hold us under a gun. So use every power of deceit you can command, but convince them that you hate me. Then we'll have a chance to remain alive and to escape - I don't know when or how, but I'll know that I'm free to act. Is this understood?"  She forced herself to lift her head, to look straight at him and to nod.  "When they come," he said, "tell them that you had been trying to find me for them, that you became suspicious when you saw my name on your payroll list and that you came here to investigate."  She nodded.  "I will stall about admitting my identity - they might recognize my voice, but I'll attempt to deny it - so that it will be you who'll tell them that I am the John Galt they're seeking."  It took her a few seconds longer, but she nodded, "Afterwards, you'll claim - and accept - that five-hundred-thousand dollar reward they've offered for my capture."  She closed her eyes, then nodded.  "Dagny," he said slowly, "there is no way to serve your own values under their system. Sooner or later, whether you intended it or not, they had to bring you to the point where the only thing you can do for me is to turn against me. Gather your strength and do it - then we'll earn this one half-hour and, perhaps, the future."  I'll do it," she said firmly, and added, "if that is what happens, if ...”  "It will happen. Don't regret it. I won't. You haven't seen the nature of our enemies. You'll see it now. If I have to be the pawn¹⁸¹ in the demonstration²³⁹ that will convince you, I'm willing to be-and to win you from them, once and for all. You didn't want to wait any longer? Oh, Dagny, Dagny, neither did I!"  It was the way he held her, the way he kissed her mouth that made her feel as if every step she had taken, every danger, every doubt, even her treason against him, if it was treason, all of it were giving her an exultant right to this moment. He saw the struggle in her face, the tension of an incredulous protest against herself-and she heard the sound of his voice through the strands²⁴⁰ of her hair pressed to his lips: "Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are."  "At the risk of destroying you?" she whispered.  "You won't. But-yes, even that. You don't think it's indifference, do you? Was it indifference that broke you and brought you here?"  "I-" And then the violence of the truth made her pull his mouth down to hers, then throw the words at his face: "I didn't care whether either one of us lived afterwards, just to see you this once!"  "I would have been disappointed if you hadn't come."  "Do you know what it was like, waiting, fighting it, delaying it one more day, then one more, then-"  He chuckled. "Do I?" he said softly.  Her hand dropped in a helpless gesture: she thought of his ten years. "When I heard your voice on the radio," she said, "when I heard the greatest statement I ever . . . No, I have no right to tell you what I thought of it."  "Why not?"  "You think that I haven't accepted it."  "You will."  "Were you speaking from here?"  "No, from the valley."  "And then you returned to New York?"  "The next morning."  "And you've been here ever since?"  "Yes."  "Have you heard the kind of appeals they're sending out to you every night?"  "Sure."  She glanced slowly about the room, her eyes moving from the towers of the city in the window to the wooden rafters of his ceiling, to the cracked plaster of his walls, to the iron posts of his bed. "You've been here all that time," she said. "You've lived here for twelve years . . .here . . . like this . . ."  "Like this," he said, throwing open the door at the end of the room.  She gasped: the long, light-flooded, windowless space beyond the threshold, enclosed in a shell of softly lustrous²⁴¹ metal, like a small ballroom²⁴² aboard a submarine, was the most efficiently²⁴³ modern laboratory she had ever seen.  "Come in," he said, grinning. "I don't have to keep secrets from you any longer."  It was like crossing the border into a different universe. She looked at the complex equipment sparkling in a bright, diffused²⁴⁵ glow, at the mesh²⁴⁶ of glittering wires, at the blackboard chalked with mathematical formulas, at the long counters of objects shaped by the ruthless discipline of a purpose-then at the sagging boards and crumbling plaster of the garret. Either-or, she thought; this was the choice confronting the world: a human soul in the image of one or of the other.  "You wanted to know where I worked for eleven months out of the year," he said.  "All this," she asked, pointing at the laboratory, "on the salary of”-she pointed at the garret-"of an unskilled laborer?"  "Oh, no! On the royalties²⁴⁷ Midas Mulligan pays me for his powerhouse, for the ray screen, for the radio transmitter and a few other jobs of that kind."  "Then . . . then why did you have to work as a track laborer?"  "Because no money earned in the valley is ever to be spent outside."  "Where did you get this equipment?"  "I designed it. Andrew Stockton's foundry made it." He pointed to an unobtrusive object the size of a radio cabinet in a corner of the room: "There's the motor you wanted," and chuckled at her gasp⁵⁷, at the involuntary jolt²⁴⁸ that threw her forward, "Don't bother studying it, you won't give it away to them now."  She was staring at the shining metal cylinders²⁴⁹ and the glistening²⁵⁰ coils of wire that suggested the rusted²⁵¹ shape resting, like a sacred relic²⁵², in a glass coffin²⁵³ in a vault of the Taggart Terminal.  "It supplies my own electric power for the laboratory," he said. "No one has had to wonder why a track laborer is using such exorbitant²⁵⁴ amounts of electricity."  "But if they ever found this place-"  He gave an odd, brief chuckle. "They won't."  "How long have you been-?"  She stopped; this time, she did not gasp; the sight confronting her could not be greeted by anything except a moment of total inner stillness: on the wall, behind a row of machinery, she saw a picture cut out of a newspaper-a picture of her, in slacks and shirt, standing by the side of the engine at the opening of the John Galt Line, her head lifted, her smile holding the context, the meaning and the sunlight of that day. A moan was her only answer, as she turned to him, but the look on his face matched hers in the picture.  "I was the symbol of what you wanted to destroy in the world," he said, "But you were my symbol of what I wanted to achieve." He pointed at the picture. "This is how men expect to feel about their life once or twice, as an exception, in the course of their lifetime. But I-this is what I chose as the constant and normal."  The look on his face, the serene²⁵⁵ intensity of his eyes and of his mind made it real to her, now, in this moment, in this moment's full context, in this city. When he kissed her, she knew that their arms, holding each other, were holding their greatest triumph, that this was the reality untouched by pain or fear, the reality of Halley's Fifth Concerto²⁵⁶, this was the reward they had wanted, fought for and won.  The doorbell rang.  Her first reaction was to draw back, his-to hold her closer and longer.  When he raised his head, he was smiling. He said only, "Now is the time not to be afraid."  She followed him back to the garret. She heard the door of the laboratory clicking locked behind them.  He held her coat for her silently, he waited until she had tied its belt and had put on her hat-then he walked to the entrance door and opened it.  Three of the four men who entered were muscular figures in military uniforms, each with two guns on his hips²⁵⁷, with broad faces devoid of shape and eyes untouched by perception. The fourth, their leader, was a frail²⁵⁸ civilian with an expensive overcoat, a neat mustache, pale blue eyes and the manner of an intellectual of the public-relations species.  He blinked at Galt, at the room, made a step forward, stopped, made another step and stopped.  "Yes?" said Galt.  "Are . . . are you John Galt?" he asked too loudly.  "That's my name."  "Are you the John Galt?"  "Which one?"  "Did you speak on the radio?"  "When?"  "Don't let him fool you." The metallic²⁵⁹ voice was Dagny's and it was addressed to the leader. "He-is-John-Galt. I shall report the proof to headquarters. You may proceed."  Galt turned to her as to a stranger. "Will you tell me now just who you are and what it was that you wanted here?"  Her face was as blank as the faces of the soldiers. "My name is Dagny Taggart. I wanted to convince myself that you are the man whom the country is seeking."  He turned to the leader. "All right," he said. "I am John Galt-but if you want me to answer you at all, keep your stool pigeon"-he pointed at Dagny-"away from me."  "Mr. Galt!" cried the leader with the sound of an enormous joviality²⁶⁰.  "It is an honor to meet you, an honor and a privilege! Please, Mr. Galt, don't misunderstand us-we're ready to grant you your wishes-no, of course, you don't have to deal with Miss Taggart, if you prefer not to -Miss Taggart was only trying to do her patriotic²⁶¹ duty, but-"  "I said keep her away from me."  "We're not your enemies, Mr. Galt, I assure you we're not your enemies." He turned to Dagny. "Miss Taggart, you have performed an invaluable²⁶² service to the people. You have earned the highest form of public gratitude²⁶³. Permit us to take over from here on." The soothing²⁶⁴ motions of his hands were urging her to stand back, to keep out of Galt's sight.  "Now what do you want?" asked Galt.  "The nation is waiting for you, Mr. Galt. All we want is a chance to dispel²⁶⁵ misapprehensions. Just a chance to co-operate with you." His gloved hand was waving a signal to his three men; the floorboards creaked, as the men proceeded silently to the task of opening drawers and closets; they were searching the room. "The spirit of the nation will revive tomorrow morning, Mr. Galt, when they hear that you have been found."  "What do you want?"  "Just to greet you in the name of the people."  "Am I under arrest?"  "Why think in such old-fashioned terms? Our job is only to escort you safely to the top councils of the national leadership, where your presence is urgently needed." He paused, but got no answer. "The country's top leaders desire to confer with you-just to confer and to reach a friendly understanding."  The soldiers were finding nothing but garments and kitchen utensils²⁶⁷; there were no letters, no books, not even a newspaper, as if the room were the habitation of an illiterate.  "Our objective is only to assist you to assume your rightful place in society, Mr. Galt. You do not seem to realize your own public value."  "I do."  "We are here only to protect you."  "Locked!" declared a soldier, banging his fist against the laboratory door.  The leader assumed an ingratiating smile. "What is behind that door, Mr. Galt?"  "Private property."  "Would you open it, please?"  "No."  The leader spread his hands out in a gesture of pained helplessness.  "Unfortunately, my hands are tied. Orders, you know. We have to enter that room."  "Enter it."  "It's only a formality, a mere¹¹³ formality. There's no reason why things should not be handled amicably²⁶⁸. Won't you please co-operate?"  "I said, no."  "I'm sure you wouldn't want us to resort to any . . . unnecessary means." He got no answer. "We have the authority to break that door down, you know-but, of course, we wouldn't want to do it." He waited, but got no answer. "Force that lock!" he snapped to the soldier.  Dagny glanced at Galt's face. He stood impassively, his head held level, she saw the undisturbed lines of his profile, his eyes directed at the door. The lock was a small, square plate of polished copper²⁶⁹, without keyhole or fixtures²⁷⁰.  The silence and the sudden immobility of the three brutes²⁷¹ were involuntary, while the burglar's tools in the hands of the fourth went grating cautiously against the wood of the door.  The wood gave way easily, and small chips fell down, their thuds magnified by the silence into the rattle⁶⁹ of a distant gun. When the burglar's jimmy attacked the copper plate, they heard a faint rustle behind the door, no louder than the sigh of a weary mind. In another minute, the lock fell out and the door shuddered²⁷² forward the width of an inch.  The soldier jumped back. The leader approached, his steps irregular like hiccoughs, and threw the door open. They faced a black hole of unknown content and unrelieved darkness.  They glanced at one another and at Galt; he did not move; he stood looking at the darkness.  Dagny followed them, when they stepped over the threshold, preceded by the beams of their flashlights. The space beyond was a long shell of metal, empty but for heavy drifts of dust on the floor, an odd, grayish-white dust that seemed to belong among ruins undisturbed for centuries. The room looked dead like an empty skull.  She turned away, not to let them see in her face the scream of the knowledge of what that dust had been a few minutes ago. Don't try to open that door, he had said to her at the entrance to the powerhouse of Atlantis . . . if you tried to break it down, the machinery inside would collapse²⁰⁵ into rubble²⁷³ long before the door would give way. . . . Don't try to open that door-she was thinking, but knew that what she was now seeing was the visual form of the statement: Don't try to force a mind.  The men backed out in silence and went on backing toward the exit door, then stopped uncertainly, one after another, at random points of the garret, as if abandoned by a receding³³ tide.  "Well," said Galt, reaching for his overcoat and turning to the leader, "let's go."  Three floors of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel had been evacuated²⁷⁴ and transformed into an armed camp. Guards with machine guns stood at every turn of the long, velvet²⁷⁵-carpeted corridors. Sentinels with bayonets stood on the landings of the fire-stairways. The elevator doors of the fifty-ninth, sixtieth and sixty-first floors were padlocked; a single door and one elevator were left as sole means of access, guarded by soldiers in full battle regalia. Peculiar-looking men loitered in the lobbies, restaurants and shops of the ground floor: their clothes were too new and too expensive, in unsuccessful imitation of the hotel's usual patrons, a camouflage²⁷⁶ impaired²⁷⁷ by the fact that the clothes were badly fitted to their wearers' husky figures and were further distorted by bulges²⁷⁹ in places where the garments of businessmen have no cause to bulge²⁷⁸, but the garments of gunmen have. Groups of guards with Tommy guns were posted at every entrance and exit of the hotel, as well as at strategic windows of the adjoining streets.  In the center of this camp, on the sixtieth floor, in what was known as the royal suite²⁸⁰ of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, amidst satin drapes, crystal candelabra and sculptured garlands of flowers, John Galt, dressed in slacks and shirt, sat in a brocaded armchair, one leg stretched out on a velvet hassock, his hands crossed behind his head, looking at the ceiling.  This was the posture²⁸¹ in which Mr. Thompson found him, when the four guards, who had stood outside the door of the royal suite since five A.M., opened it at eleven A.M. to admit Mr. Thompson, and locked it again.  Mr. Thompson experienced a brief flash of uneasiness when the click of the lock cut off his escape and left him alone with the prisoner. But he remembered the newspaper headlines and the radio voices, which had been announcing to the country since dawn: "John Galt is found!-John Galt is in New York!-John Galt has joined the people's cause!-John Galt is in conference with the country's leaders, working for a speedy solution of all our problems!"-and he made himself feel that he believed it.  "Well, well, well!" he said brightly, marching up to the armchair.  "So you're the young fellow who's started all the trouble-Oh," he said suddenly, as he got a closer look at the dark green eyes watching him. "Well, I . . . I'm tickled²⁸² pink to meet you, Mr. Galt, just tickled pink." He added, "I'm Mr. Thompson, you know."  "How do you do," said Galt.  Mr. Thompson thudded down on a chair, the brusqueness of the movement suggesting a cheerily businesslike attitude. "Now don't go imagining that you're under arrest or some such nonsense." He pointed at the room. "This is no jail, as you can see. You can see that we'll treat you right. You're a big person, a very big person-and we know it. Just make yourself at home. Ask for anything you please. Fire any flunky that doesn't obey you. And if you take a dislike to any of the army boys outside, just breathe the word-and we'll send another one to replace him."  He paused expectantly. He received no answer.  "The only reason we brought you here is just that we wanted to talk to you. We wouldn't have done it this way, but you left us no choice. You kept hiding. And all we wanted was a chance to tell you that you got us all wrong."  He spread his hands out, palms up, with a disarming²⁸³ smile. Galt's eyes were watching him, without answer.  "That was some speech you made. Boy, are you an orator²⁴⁴! You've done something to the country-I don't know what or why, but you have. People seem to want something you've got. But you thought we'd be dead set against it? That's where you're wrong. We're not. Personally, I think there was plenty in that speech that made sense. Yes, sir, I do. Of course, I don't agree with every word you said-but what the hell, you don't expect us to agree with everything, do you? Differences of opinion-that's what makes horse racing²⁸⁴. Me, I'm always willing to change my mind. I'm open to any argument."  He leaned forward invitingly²⁸⁵. He obtained no answer.  "The world is in a hell of a mess. Just as you said. There, I agree with you. We have a point in common. We can start from that. Something's got to be done about it. All I wanted was-Look," he cried suddenly, "why don't you let me talk to you?"  "You are talking to me."  "I . . . well, that is . . . well, you know what I mean."  "Fully."  "Well? . . . Well, what have you got to say?"  "Nothing."  "Huh?!"  "Nothing."  "Oh, come now!"  "I didn't seek to talk to you."  "But . . . but look! . . . we have things to discuss!"  "I haven't."  "Look," said Mr. Thompson, after a pause, "you're a man of action. A practical man. Boy, are you a practical man! Whatever else I don't quite get about you, I'm sure of that. Now aren't you?"  "Practical? Yes."  "Well, so am I. We can talk straight We can put our cards on the table. Whatever it is you're after, I'm offering you a deal."  "I'm always open to a deal."  "I knew it!" cried Mr. Thompson triumphantly²⁸⁶, slamming his fist down on his own knee. "I told them so-all those fool intellectual theorizers, like Wesley!"  "I'm always open to a deal-with anyone who has a value to offer me."  Mr. Thompson could not tell what made him miss a beat before he answered, "Well, write your own ticket, brother! Write your own ticket!"  "What have you got to offer me?"  "Why-anything."  "Such as?"  "Anything you name. Have you heard our short-wave broadcasts to you?"  "Yes."  "We said we'll meet your terms, any terms. We meant it."  "Have you heard me say on the radio that I have no terms to bargain about? I meant it."  "Oh, but look, you misunderstood us! You thought we'd fight you. But we won't. We're not that rigid²⁸⁸. We're willing to consider any idea. Why didn't you answer our calls and come to a conference?"  "Why should I?"  "Because . . . because we wanted to speak to you in the name of the country."  "I don't recognize your right to speak in the name of the country."  "Now look here, I'm not used to . . . Well, okay, won't you just give me a hearing? Won't you listen?"  "I'm listening."  "The country is in a terrible state. People are starving and giving up, the economy is falling to pieces, nobody is producing any longer. We don't know what to do about it. You do. You know how to make things work. Okay, we're ready to give in. We want you to tell us what to do."  "I told you what to do."  "What?"  "Get out of the way."  "That's impossible! That's fantastic! That's out of the question!"  "You see? I told you we had nothing to discuss."  "Now, wait! Wait! Don't go to extremes! There's always a middle ground. You can't have everything. We aren't . . . people aren't ready for it. You can't expect us to ditch the machinery of State. We've got to preserve the system. But we're willing to amend²⁸⁹ it. We'll modify it any way you wish. We're not stubborn, theoretical dogmatists-we're flexible. We'll do anything you say. We'll give you a free hand. We'll co-operate. We'll compromise. We'll split fifty-fifty. We'll keep the sphere of politics and give you total power over the sphere of economics. We'll turn the production, of the country over to you, we'll make you a present of the entire economy. You'll run it any way you wish, you'll give the orders, you'll issue the directives-and you'll have the organized power of the State at your command to enforce your decisions. We'll stand ready to obey you, all of us, from me on down. In the field of production, we'll do whatever you say. You'll be-you'll be the Economic Dictator of the nation!"  Galt burst out laughing.  It was the simple amusement of the laughter that shocked Mr. Thompson. "What's the matter with you?"  "So that's your idea of a compromise, is it?"  "What's the . . . ? Don't sit there grinning like that! . . . I don't think you understood me. I'm offering you Wesley Mouch's job-and there's nothing bigger that anyone could offer you! . . . You'll be free to do anything you wish. If you don't like controls-repeal them. If you want higher profits and lower wages-decree them. If you want special privileges for the big tycoons-grant them. If you don't like labor unions-dissolve them. If you want a free economy-order people to be free! Play it any way you please. But get things going. Get the country organized. Make people work again. Make them produce. Bring back your own men-the men of brains. Lead us to a peaceful, scientific, industrial age and to prosperity."  "At the point of a gun?"  "Now look, I . . . Now what's so damn funny about it?"  "Will you tell me just one thing: if you're able to pretend that you haven't heard a word I said on the radio, what makes you think I'd be willing to pretend that I haven't said it?"  "I don't know what you mean! I-"  "Skip it. It was just a rhetorical question. The first part of it answers the second."  "Huh?"  "I don't play your kind of games, brother-if you want a translation."  "Do you mean that you're refusing my offer?"  "I am."  "But why?"  "It took me three hours on the radio to tell you why."  "Oh, that's just theory! I'm talking business. I'm offering you the greatest job in the world. Will you tell me what's wrong with it?"  "What I told you, in three hours, was that it won't work."  "You can make it work."  "How?"  Mr. Thompson spread his hands out. "I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't come to you. It's for you to figure out. You're the industrial genius. You can solve anything."  "I said it can't be done."  "You could do it."  "How?"  "Somehow." He heard Galt's chuckle, and added, "Why not? Just tell me why not?"  "Okay, I'll tell you. You want me to be the Economic Dictator?"  "Yes!"  "And you'd obey any order I give?"  "Implicitly²⁹⁰!"  "Then start by abolishing all income taxes."  "Oh, no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that! That's . . . that's not the field of production. That's the field of distribution. How would we pay government employees?"  "Fire your government employees."  "Oh, no! That's politics! That's not economics! You can't interfere²⁹¹ with politics! You can't have everything!"  Galt crossed his legs on the hassock, stretching himself more comfortably in the brocaded armchair. "Want to continue the discussion? Or do you get the point?"  "I only-" He stopped.  "Are you satisfied that I got the point?"  "Look," said Mr. Thompson placatingly²⁹², resuming the edge of his seat. "I don't want to argue. I'm no good at debates. I'm a man of action. Time is short. All I know is that you've got a mind. Just the sort of mind we need. You can do anything. You could make things work if you wanted to."  "All right, put it your own way: I don't want to. I don't want to be an Economic Dictator, not even long enough to issue that order for people to be free-which any rational human being would throw back in my face, because he'd know that his rights are not to be held, given or received by your permission or mine."  "Tell me," said Mr. Thompson, looking at him reflectively, "what is it you're after?"  "I told you on the radio."  "I don't get it. You said that you're out for your own selfish interest -and that, I can understand. But what can you possibly want in the future that you couldn't get right now, from us, handed down to you on a platter? I thought you were an egoist-and a practical man. I offer you a blank check on anything you wish-and you tell me that you don't want it. Why?"  "Because there are no funds behind your blank check."  "What?"  "Because you have no value to offer me."  "I can offer you anything you can ask. Just name it."  "You name it."  "Well, you talked a lot about wealth. If it's money that you want-you couldn't make in three lifetimes what I can hand over to you in a minute, this minute, cash on the barrel. Want a billion dollars-a cool, neat billion dollars?"  "Which I'll have to produce, for you to give me?"  "No, I mean straight out of the public treasury, in fresh, new bills . . . or . . . or even in gold, if you prefer."  "What will it buy me?"  "Oh, look, when the country gets back on its feet-"  "When I put it back on its feet?"  "Well, if what you want is to run things your own way, if it's power that you're after, I'll guarantee you that every man, woman and child in this country will obey your orders and do whatever you wish."  "After I teach them to do it?"  "If you want anything for your own gang-for all those men who've disappeared-jobs, positions, authority, tax exemptions, any special favor at all-just name it and they'll get it."  "After I bring them back?"  "Well, what on earth do you want?"  "What on earth do I need you for?"  "Huh?"  "What have you got to offer me that I couldn't get without you?"  There was a different look in Mr. Thompson's eyes when he drew back, as if cornered, yet looked straight at Galt for the first time and said slowly, "Without me, you couldn't get out of this room, right now."  Galt smiled. "True."  "You wouldn't be able to produce anything. You could be left here to starve."  "True."  "Well, don't you see?" The loudness of homey joviality came back into Mr. Thompson's voice, as if the hint given and received were now to be safely evaded²⁹³ by means of humor. "What I've got to offer you is your life."  "It's not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson," said Galt softly.  Something about his voice made Mr. Thompson jerk to glance at him, then jerk faster to look away: Galt's smile seemed almost gentle.  "Now," said Galt, "do you see what I meant when I said that a zero can't hold a mortgage over life? It's I who'd have to grant you that kind of mortgage-and I don't. The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation²⁹⁴ of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal²⁹⁵ of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive²⁹⁶, the offer not to murder me is not a value."  "Who . . . who's said anything about murdering you?"  "Who's said anything about anything else? If you weren't holding me here at the point of a gun, under threat of death, you wouldn't have a chance to speak to me at all. And that is as much as your guns can accomplish. I don't pay for the removal of threats. I don't buy my life from anyone."  "That's not true," said Mr. Thompson brightly. "If you had a broken leg, you'd pay a doctor to set it."  "Not if he was the one who broke it." He smiled at Mr. Thompson's silence. "I'm a practical man, Mr. Thompson. I don't think it's practical to establish a person whose sole means of livelihood²⁹⁷ is the breaking of my bones. I don't think it's practical to support a protection racket."  Mr. Thompson looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "I don't think you're practical," he said. "A practical man doesn't ignore the facts of reality. He doesn't waste his time wishing things to be different or trying to change them. He takes things as they are. We're holding you. It's a fact. Whether you like it or not, it's a fact. You should act accordingly."  "I am."  "What I mean is, you should co-operate. You should recognize an existing situation, accept it and adjust to it."  "If you had blood poisoning, would you adjust to it or act to change it?"  "Oh, that's different! That's physical!"  "You mean, physical facts are open to correction, but your whims²⁹⁸ are not?"  "Huh?"  "You mean, physical nature can be adjusted to men, but your whims are above the laws of nature, and men must adjust to you?"  "I mean that I hold the upper hand!"  "With a gun in it?"  "Oh, forget about guns! I-"  "I can't forget a fact of reality, Mr. Thompson. That would be impractical²⁹⁹."  "All right, then: I hold a gun. What are you going to do about it?"  "I'll act accordingly. I'll obey you."  "What?"  "I'll do whatever you tell me to."  "Do you mean it?"  "I mean it. Literally³⁰⁰." He saw the eagerness of Mr. Thompson's face ebb³⁰¹ slowly under a look of bewilderment. "I will perform any motion you order me to perform. If you order me to move into the office of an Economic Dictator, I'll move into it. If you order me to sit at a desk, I will sit at it. If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue."  "Oh, but I don't know what directives to issue!"  "I don't, either."  There was a long pause.  "Well?" said Galt. "What are your orders?"  "I want you to save the economy of the country!"  "I don't know how to save it."  "I want you to find a way!"  "I don't know how to find it."  "I want you to think!"  "How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?"  Mr. Thompson looked at him silently-and Galt saw, in the tightened lips, in the jutting³⁰² chin, in the narrowed eyes, the look of an adolescent bully³⁰³ about to utter that philosophical³⁰⁴ argument which is expressed by the sentence: I'll bash your teeth in. Galt smiled, looking straight at him, as if hearing the unspoken sentence and underscoring it. Mr. Thompson looked away.  "No," said Galt, "you don't want me to think. When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment⁶⁰, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend. You want him to become a robot. I shall comply."  Mr. Thompson sighed. "I don't get it," he said in a tone of genuine helplessness. "Something's off and I can't figure it out. Why should you ask for trouble? With a brain like yours-you can beat anybody. I'm no match for you, and you know it. Why don't you pretend to join us, then gain control and outsmart me?"  "For the same reason that makes you offer it: because you'd win."  "Huh?"  "Because it's the attempt of your betters to beat you on your terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries. Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? Sure, I could pretend-and I wouldn't save your economy or your system, nothing will save them now-but I'd perish and what you'd win would be what you've always won in the past: a postponement³⁰⁶, one more stay of execution, for another year-or month-bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me. That's all you're after and that is the length of your range. A month? You'd settle for a week-on the unchallenged absolute that there will always be another victim to find. But you've found your last victim-the one who refuses to play his historical part. The game is up, brother."  "Oh, that's just theory!" snapped Mr. Thompson, a little too sharply; his eyes were roving about the room, in the manner of a substitute for pacing; he glanced at the door, as if longing³⁰⁷ to escape. "You say that if we don't give up the system, we'll perish?" he asked.  "Yes."  "Then, since we're holding you, you will perish with us?"  "Possibly."  "Don't you want to live?"  "Passionately³⁰⁹." He saw the snap of a spark in Mr. Thompson's eyes and smiled. "I'll tell you more: I know that I want to live much more intensely than you do. I know that that's what you're counting on. I know that you, in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it. And because I want it so much, I will accept no substitute."  Mr. Thompson jumped to his feet. "That's not true!" he cried. "My not wanting to live-it's not true! Why do you talk like that?" He stood, his limbs drawn faintly together, as if against a sudden chill. "Why do you say such things? I don't know what you mean." He backed a few steps away. "And it's not true that I'm a gunman. I'm not. I don't intend to harm you. I never intended to harm anybody. I want people to like me. I want to be your friend . . . I want to be your friend!" he cried to the space at large.  Galt's eyes were watching him, without expression, giving him no clue to what they were seeing, except that they were seeing it.  Mr. Thompson jerked suddenly into bustling³¹⁰, unnecessary motions, as if he were in a hurry, "I've got to run along," he said. "I . . . I have so many appointments. We'll talk about it some more. Think it over. Take your time. I'm not trying to high-pressure you. Just relax, take it easy and make yourself at home. Ask for anything you like-food, drinks, cigarettes, the best of anything." He waved his hand at Galt's garments. "I'm going to order the most expensive tailor in the city to make some decent clothes for you. I want you to get used to the best. I want you to be comfortable and . . . Say," he asked, a little too casually, "have you got any family? Any relatives you'd like to see?"  "No."  "Any friends?"  "No."  "Have you got a sweetheart?"  "No."  "It's just that I wouldn't want you to get lonesome. We can let you have visitors, any visitor you name, if there's anyone you care for."  "There isn't"  Mr. Thompson paused at the door, turned to look at Galt for a moment and shook his head. "I can't figure you out," he said. "I just can't figure you out."  Galt smiled, shrugged and answered, "Who is John Galt?"  A whirling mesh of sleet³¹¹ hung over the entrance of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, and the armed guards looked oddly, desolately³¹² helpless in the circle of light: they stood hunched³¹³, heads down, hugging their guns for warmth-as if, were they to release all the spitting violence of their bullets at the storm, it would not bring comfort to their bodies.  From across the street, Chick Morrison, the Morale Conditioner-on his way to a conference on the fifty-ninth floor-noted³¹⁴ that the rare, lethargic passers-by were not taking the trouble to glance at the guards, as they did not take the trouble to glance at the soggy headlines of a pile of unsold newspapers on the stand of a ragged, shivering vendor³¹⁵: "John Galt Promises Prosperity."  Chick Morrison shook his head uneasily: six days of front-page stories-about the united efforts of the country's leaders working with John Galt to shape new policies-had brought no results. People were moving, he observed, as if they did not care to see anything around them. No one took any notice of his existence, except a ragged old woman who stretched out her hand to him silently, as he approached the lights of the entrance; he hurried past, and only drops of sleet fell on the gnarled, naked palm.  It was his memory of the streets that gave a jagged sound to Chick Morrison's voice, when he spoke³⁰⁵ to a circle of faces in Mr. Thompson's room on the fifty-ninth floor. The look of the faces matched the sound of his voice.  "It doesn't seem to work," he said, pointing to a pile of reports from his public-pulse-takers. "All the press releases about our collaborating³¹⁶ with John Galt don't seem to make any difference. People don't care. They don't believe a word of it. Some of them say that he'll never collaborate³¹⁷ with us. Most of them don't even believe that we've got him. I don't know what's happened to people. They don't believe anything any more." He sighed. "Three factories went out of business in Cleveland, day before yesterday. Five factories closed in Chicago yesterday. In San Francisco-"  "I know, I know," snapped Mr. Thompson, tightening³¹⁸ the muffler around his throat: the building's furnace had gone out of order.  "There's no choice about it: he's got to give in and take over. He's got to!"  Wesley Mouch glanced at the ceiling. "Don't ask me to talk to him again," he said, and shuddered. "I've tried. One can't talk to that man."  "I . . . I can't, Mr. Thompson!" cried Chick Morrison, in answer to the stop of Mr. Thompson's roving glance. "I'll resign, if you want me to! I can't talk to him again! Don't make me!"  "Nobody can talk to him," said Dr. Floyd Ferris. "It's a waste of time. He doesn't hear a word you say."  Fred Kinnan chuckled. "You mean, he hears too much, don't you? And what's worse, he answers it."  "Well, why don't you try it again?" snapped Mouch. "You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don't you try to persuade him?"  "I know better," said Kinnan. "Don't fool yourself, brother. Nobody's going to persuade him. I won't try it twice. . . . Enjoyed it?" he added, with a look of astonishment. "Yeah . . . yeah, I guess I did."  "What's the matter with you? Are you falling for him? Are you letting him win you over?"  "Me?" Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly. "What use would he have for me? I'll be the first one to go down the drain when he wins. . . . It's only"-he glanced wistfully up at the ceiling-"it's only that he's a man who talks straight."  "He won't win!" snapped Mr. Thompson. "It's out of the question!"  There was a long pause.  "There are hunger riots in West Virginia," said Wesley Mouch. "And the farmers in Texas have-"  "Mr. Thompson!" said Chick Morrison desperately³¹⁹. "Maybe . . .maybe we could let the public see him . . . at a mass rally . . . or maybe on TV . . . just see him, just so they'd believe that we've really got him. . . . It would give people hope, for a while . . . it would give us a little time. . . ."  "Too dangerous," snapped Dr. Ferris. "Don't let him come anywhere near the public. There's no limit to what he'll permit himself to do."  "He's got to give in," said Mr. Thompson stubbornly. "He's got to join us. One of you must-"  "No!" screamed Eugene Lawson. "Not me! I don't want to see him at all! Not once! I don't want to have to believe it!"  "What?" asked James Taggart; his voice had a note of dangerously reckless mockery; Lawson did not answer. "What are you scared of?" The contempt in Taggart's voice sounded abnormally stressed, as if the sight of someone's greater fear were tempting⁹ him to defy his own. "What is it you're scared to believe, Gene²⁴?"  "I won't believe it! I won't!" Lawson's voice was half-snarl, half whimper. "You can't make me lose my faith in humanity! You shouldn't permit such a man to be possible! A ruthless egoist who-"  "You're a fine bunch of intellectuals, you are," said Mr. Thompson scornfully. "I thought you could talk to him in his own lingo-but he's scared the lot of you. Ideas? Where are your ideas now? Do something! Make him join us! Win him over!"  "Trouble is, he doesn't want anything," said Mouch. "What can we offer a man who doesn't want anything?"  "You mean," said Kinnan, "what can we offer a man who wants to live?"  "Shut up!" screamed James Taggart. "Why did you say that? What made you say it?"  "What made you scream?" asked Kinnan.  "Keep quiet, all of you!" ordered Mr. Thompson. "You're fine at fighting one another, but when it comes to fighting a real man-"  "So he's got you, too?" yelled Lawson.  "Aw, pipe down," said Mr. Thompson wearily. "He's the toughest bastard³²⁰ I've ever been up against. You wouldn't understand that. He's as hard as they come . . ." The faintest tinge³²¹ of admiration³²² crept into his voice. "As hard as they come . . ."  "There are ways to persuade tough bastards," drawled Dr. Ferris casually, "as I've explained to you."  "No!" cried Mr. Thompson. "No! Shut up! I won't listen to you! I won't hear of it!" His hands moved frantically³²³, as if struggling to dispel something he would not name. "I told him . . . that that's not true . . . that we're not . . . that I'm not a . . . " He shook his head violently, as if his own words were some unprecedented³²⁴ form of danger. "No, look, boys, what I mean is, we've got to be practical . . . and cautious. Damn cautious. We've got to handle it peacefully. We can't afford to antagonize him or . . . or harm him. We don't dare take any chances on . . . anything happening to him. Because . . . because, if he goes, we go. He's our last hope. Make no mistake about it. If he goes, we perish. You all know it." His eyes swept over the faces around him: they knew it.  The sleet of the following morning fell down on front-page stories announcing that a constructive³²⁵, harmonious³²⁶ conference between John Galt and the country's leaders, on the previous afternoon, had produced "The John Galt Plan," soon to be announced. The snowflakes of the evening fell down upon the furniture of an apartment house whose front wall had collapsed-and upon a crowd of men waiting silently at the closed cashier's window of a plant whose owner had vanished.  "The farmers of South Dakota," Wesley Mouch reported to Mr. Thompson, next morning, "are marching on the state capital, burning every government building on their way, and every home worth more than ten thousand dollars."  "California's blown to pieces," he reported in the evening. "There's a civil war going on there-if that's what it is, which nobody seems to be sure of. They've declared that they're seceding³²⁷ from the union, but nobody knows who's now in power. There's armed fighting all over the state, between a 'People's Party,' led by Ma Chalmers and her soybean cult⁵⁹ of Orient-admirers-and something called 'Back to God,' led by some former oil-field owners."  "Miss Taggart!" moaned Mr. Thompson, when she entered his hotel room next morning, in answer to his summons. "What are we going to do?"  He wondered why he had once felt that she possessed some reassuring³²⁸ kind of energy. He was looking at a blank face that seemed composed, but the composure became disquieting³²⁹ when one noticed that it lasted for minute after minute, with no change of expression, no sign of feeling. Her face had the same look as all the others, he thought, except for something in the set of the mouth that suggested endurance.  "I trust you, Miss Taggart. You've got more brains than all my boys," he pleaded. "You've done more for the country than any of them-it's you who found him for us. What are we to do? With everything falling to pieces, he's the only one who can lead us out of this mess-but he won't. He refuses. He simply refuses to lead. I've never seen anything like it: a man who has no desire to command. We beg him to give orders-and he answers that he wants to obey them! It's preposterous³³⁰!"  "It is."  "What do you make of it? Can you figure him out?"  "He's an arrogant³³¹ egoist," she said. "He's an ambitious adventurer. He's a man of unlimited³³² audacity³³³ who's playing for the biggest stakes in the world."  It was easy, she thought. It would have been difficult in that distant time when she had regarded language as a tool of honor, always to be used as if one were under oath-an oath of allegiance to reality and to respect for human beings. Now it was only a matter of making sounds, inarticulate sounds addressed to inanimate objects unrelated to such concepts as reality, human or honor. It had been easy, that first morning, to report to Mr. Thompson how she had traced John Galt to his home. It had been easy to watch Mr. Thompson's gulping³³⁴ smiles and his repeated cries of "That's my girl!" uttered with glances of triumph at his assistants, the triumph of a man whose judgment in trusting her had been vindicated³³⁵. It had been easy to express an angry hatred for Galt-"I used to agree with his ideas, but I won't let him destroy my railroad!"-and to hear Mr. Thompson say, "Don't you worry, Miss Taggart! We'll protect you from him!"  It had been easy to assume a look of cold shrewdness and to remind Mr. Thompson of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward, her voice clear and cutting, like the sound of an adding machine punching out the sum of a bill. She had seen an instant's pause in Mr. Thompson's facial muscles, then a brighter, broader smile-like a silent speech declaring that he had not expected it, but was delighted to know what made her tick and that it was the kind of ticking he understood.  "Of course, Miss Taggart! Certainly! That reward is yours-all yours! The check will be sent to you, in full!"  It had been easy, because she had felt as if she were in some dreary³³⁶ non-world, where her words and actions were not facts any longer-not reflections of reality, but only distorted postures³³⁷ in one of those side-show mirrors that project deformity for the perception of beings whose consciousness is not to be treated as consciousness. Thin, single and hot, like the burning pressure of a wire within her, like a needle selecting her course, was her only concern: the thought of his safety. The rest was a blur³³⁸ of shapeless dissolution, half-acid, half fog.  But this-she thought with a shudder-was the state in which they lived, all those people whom she had never understood, this was the state they desired, this rubber reality, this task of pretending, distorting, deceiving, with the credulous⁷⁷ stare of some Mr. Thompson's panic-bleary eyes as one's only purpose and reward. Those who desired this state-she wondered-did they want to live?  "The biggest stakes in the world, Miss Taggart?" Mr. Thompson was asking her anxiously. "What is it? What does he want?"  "Reality. This earth."  "I don't know quite what you mean, but . . . Look, Miss Taggart, if you think you can understand him, would you . . . would you try to speak to him once more?"  She felt as if she heard her own voice, many light-years away, crying that she would give her life to see him-but in this room, she heard the voice of a meaningless stranger saying coldly, "No, Mr. Thompson, I wouldn't. I hope I'll never have to see him again."  "I know that you can't stand him, and I can't say I blame you, but couldn't you just try to-"  "I tried to reason with him, the night I found him. I heard nothing but insults in return. I think he resents me more than he'd resent anyone else. He won't forgive me the fact that it was I who trapped him. I'd be the last person to whom he would surrender."  "Yeah . . . yeah, that's true. . . . Do you think he will ever surrender?"  The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillating way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and see them kill him?-should she say that he would, and see them hold onto their power till they destroyed the world?  "He will," she said firmly. "He'll give in, if you treat him right. He's too ambitious to refuse power. Don't let him escape, but don't threaten him-or harm him. Fear won't work. He's impervious³³⁹ to fear."  "But what if . . . I mean, with the way things are collapsing³⁴⁰ . . .what if he holds out too long?"  "He won't. He's too practical for that. By the way, are you letting him hear any news about the state of the country?"  "Why . . . no."  "I would suggest that you let him have copies of your confidential³⁴¹ reports. He'll see that it won't be long now."  "That's a good idea! A very good idea! . . . You know, Miss Taggart," he said suddenly, with the sound of some desperate clinging hi his voice, "I feel better whenever I talk to you. It's because I trust you. I don't trust anybody around me. But you-you're different. You're solid."  She was looking unflinchingly straight at him. "Thank you, Mr. Thompson," she said.  It had been easy, she thought-until she walked out into the street and noticed that under her coat, her blouse was sticking damply to her shoulder blades. Were she able to feel-she thought as she walked through the concourse of the Terminal-she would know that the heavy indifference she now felt for her railroad was hatred. She could not get rid of the feeling that she was running nothing but freight trains: the passengers, to her, were not living or human. It seemed senseless to waste such enormous effort on preventing catastrophes³⁴², on protecting the mi safety of trains carrying nothing but inanimate objects. She looked at the faces in the Terminal: if he were to die, she thought, to be murdered by the rulers of their system, that these might continue to eat, sleep and travel-would she work to provide them with trains? If she were to scream for their help, would one of them rise to his defense? Did they want him to live, they who had heard him?  The check for five hundred thousand dollars was delivered to her office, that afternoon; it was delivered with a bouquet³⁴³ of flowers from Mr. Thompson. She looked at the check and let it flutter down to her desk: it meant nothing and made her feel nothing, not even a suggestion of guilt³⁴⁴. It was a scrap of paper, of no greater significance than the ones in the office wastebasket. Whether it could buy a diamond necklace or the city dump or the last of her food, made no difference. It would never be spent. It was not a token of value and nothing it purchased could be a value. But this-she thought-this inanimate indifference was the permanent state of the people around her, of men who had no purpose and no passion. This was the state of a non-valuing soul; those who chose it-she wondered-did they want to live?  The lights were out of order in the hall of the apartment house, when she came home that evening, numb¹⁹² with exhaustion-and she did not notice the envelope at her feet until she switched on the light in her foyer. It was a blank, sealed envelope that had been slipped under her door. She picked it up-and then, within a moment, she was laughing soundlessly, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the floor, not to move off that spot, not to do anything but stare at the note written by a hand she knew, the hand that had written its last message on the calendar above the city.  The note said: Dagny: Sit tight. Watch them. When he'll need our help, call me at OR 6-5693. F.  The newspapers of the following morning admonished³⁴⁵ the public not to believe the rumors that there was any trouble in the Southern states. The confidential reports, sent to Mr. Thompson, stated that armed fighting had broken out between Georgia and Alabama, for the possession of a factory manufacturing electrical equipment-a factory cut off by the fighting and by blasted railroad tracks from any source of raw materials.  "Have you read the confidential reports I sent you?" moaned Mr. Thompson, that evening, facing Galt once more. He was accompanied by James Taggart, who had volunteered to meet the prisoner for the first time.  Galt sat on a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He seemed erect³⁴⁶ and relaxed, together. They could not decipher the expression on his face, except that it showed no sign of apprehension²⁶⁶.  "I have," he answered.  "There's not much time left," said Mr. Thompson.  "There isn't."  "Are you going to let such things go on?"  "Are you?"  "How can you be so sure you're right?" cried James Taggart; his voice was not loud, but it had the intensity of a cry. "How can you take it upon yourself, at a terrible time like this, to stick to your own ideas at the risk of destroying the whole world?"  "Whose ideas should I consider safer to follow?"  "How can you be sure you're right? How can you know? Nobody can be sure of his knowledge! Nobody! You're no better than anyone else!"  "Then why do you want me?"  "How can you gamble with other people's lives? How can you permit yourself such a selfish luxury as to hold out, when people need you?"  "You mean: when they need my ideas?"  "Nobody is fully right or wrong! There isn't any black or white! You don't have a monopoly on truth!"  There was something wrong in Taggart's manner-thought Mr. Thompson, frowning-some odd, too personal resentment³⁴⁷, as if it were not a political issue that he had come here to solve.  "If you had any sense of responsibility," Taggart was saying, "you wouldn't dare take such a chance on nothing but your own judgment! You would join us and consider some ideas other than your own and admit that we might be right, too! You would help us with our plans! You would-"  Taggart went on speaking with feverish³⁴⁸ insistence³⁴⁹, but Mr. Thompson could not tell whether Galt was listening: Galt had risen and was pacing the room, not in a manner of restlessness, but in the casual manner of a man enjoying the motion of his own body. Mr. Thompson noted the lightness of the steps, the straight spine³⁵⁰, the flat stomach, the relaxed shoulders. Galt walked as if he were both unconscious of his body and tremendously conscious of his pride in it. Mr. Thompson glanced at James Taggart, at the sloppy³⁵¹ posture of a tall figure slumped in ungainly self-distortion, and caught him watching Galt's movements with such hatred that Mr. Thompson sat up, fearing it would become audible in the room. But Galt was not looking at Taggart.  ". . . your conscience!" Taggart was saying. "I came here to appeal to your conscience! How can you value your mind above thousands of human lives? People are perishing and-Oh, for Christ's sake," he snapped, "stop pacing!"  Galt stopped. "Is this an order?"  "No, no!" said Mr. Thompson hastily. "It's not an order. We don't want to give you orders. . . . Take it easy, Jim."  Galt resumed his pacing. "The world is collapsing," said Taggart, his eyes following Galt irresistibly³⁵². "People are perishing-and it's you who could save them! Does it matter who's right or wrong? You should join us, even if you think we're wrong, you should sacrifice your mind to save them!"  "By what means will I then save them?"  "Who do you think you are?" cried Taggart.  Galt stopped. "You know it."  "You're an egoist!"  "I am."  "Do you realize what sort of egoist you are?"  "Do you?" asked Galt, looking straight at him.  It was the slow withdrawal of Taggart's body into the depth of his armchair, while his eyes were holding Galt's, that made Mr. Thompson unaccountably afraid of the next moment.  "Say," Mr. Thompson interrupted in a brightly casual voice, "what sort of cigarette are you smoking?"  Galt turned to him and smiled. "I don't know."  "Where did you get it?"  "One of your guards brought me a package of them. He said some man asked him to give it to me as a present. . . . Don't worry," he added, "your boys have put it through every kind of test. There were no hidden messages. It was just a present from an anonymous³⁵³ admirer."  The cigarette between Galt's fingers bore the sign of the dollar.  James Taggart was no good at the job of persuasion³⁵⁴, Mr. Thompson concluded. But Chick Morrison, whom he brought the next day, did no better.  "I . . . I'll just throw myself on your mercy, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison with a frantic smile. "You're right. I'll concede that you're right-and all I can appeal to is your pity. Deep down in my heart, I can't believe that you're a total egoist who feels no pity for the people." He pointed to a pile of papers he had spread on a table.  "Here's a plea signed by ten thousand schoolchildren, begging you to join us and save them. Here's a plea from a home for the crippled.  Here's a petition sent by the ministers of two hundred different faiths-Here's an appeal from the mothers of the country. Read them."  "Is this an order?"  "No!" cried Mr. Thompson. "It's not an order!"  Galt remained motionless, not extending his hand for the papers.  "These are just plain, ordinary people, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison in a tone intended to project their abject³⁵⁵ humility³⁵⁶. "They can't tell you what to do. They wouldn't know. They're merely begging you. They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are so intelligent and strong, can't you take pity on them? Can't you help them?"  "By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?"  "They may be wrong, but they don't know any better!"  "But I, who do, should obey them?"  "I can't argue, Mr. Galt. I'm just begging for your pity. They're suffering. I'm begging you to pity those who suffer. I'm . . . Mr. Galt," he asked, noticing that Galt was looking off at the distance beyond the window and that his eyes were suddenly implacable, "what's the matter? What are you thinking of?"  "Hank Rearden."  "Uh . . . why?"  "Did they feel any pity for Hank Rearden?"  "Oh, but that's different! He-"  "Shut up," said Galt evenly.  "I only-"  "Shut up!" snapped Mr. Thompson. "Don't mind him, Mr. Galt. He hasn't slept for two nights. He's scared out of his wits."  Dr. Floyd Ferris, next day, did not seem to be scared-but it was worse, thought Mr. Thompson. He observed that Galt remained silent and would not answer Ferris at all.  "It's the question of moral responsibility that you might not have studied sufficiently³⁵⁷, Mr. Galt," Dr. Ferris was drawling in too airy, too forced a tone of casual informality. "You seem to have talked on the radio about nothing but sins of commission. But there are also the sins of omission³⁵⁸ to consider. To fail to save a life is as immoral as to murder. The consequences are the same-and since we must judge actions by their consequences, the moral responsibility is the same. . . . For instance, in view of the desperate shortage of food, it has been suggested that it might become necessary to issue a directive ordering that every third one of all children under the age of ten and of all adults over the age of sixty be put to death, to secure the survival of the rest. You wouldn't want this to happen, would you? You can prevent it. One word from you would prevent it. If you refuse and all those people are executed-it will be your fault and your moral responsibility!"  "You're crazy!" screamed Mr. Thompson, recovering from shock and leaping to his feet. "Nobody's ever suggested any such thing! Nobody's ever considered it! Please, Mr. Galt! Don't believe him! He doesn't mean it!"  "Oh yes, he does," said Galt. "Tell the bastard to look at me, then look in the mirror, then ask himself whether I would ever think that my moral stature³⁵⁹ is at the mercy of his actions."  "Get out of here!" cried Mr. Thompson, yanking Ferris to his feet.  "Get out! Don't let me hear another squeak³⁶⁰ out of you!" He flung the door open and pushed Ferris at the startled face of a guard outside.  Turning to Galt, he spread his arms and let them drop with a gesture of drained helplessness. Galt's face was expressionless.  "Look," said- Mr. Thompson pleadingly, "isn't there anybody who can talk to you?"  "There's nothing to talk about."  "We've got to. We've got to convince you. Is there anyone you'd want to talk to?"  "No."  "I thought maybe . . . it's because she talks-used to talk-like you, at times . . . maybe if I sent Miss Dagny Taggart to tell you-"  "That one? Sure, she used to talk like me. She's my only failure. I thought she was the kind who belonged on my side. But she double crossed me, to keep her railroad. She'd sell her soul for her railroad. Send her in, if you want me to slap her face."  "No, no, no! You don't have to see her, if that's how you feel. I don't want to waste more time on people who rub you the wrong way. . . .Only . . . only if it's not Miss Taggart, I don't know whom to pick. . . . If . . . if I could find somebody you'd be willing to consider or . . ."  "I've changed my mind," said Galt. "There is somebody I'd like to speak to."  "Who?" cried Mr. Thompson eagerly.  "Dr. Robert Stadler."  Mr. Thompson emitted a long whistle and shook his head apprehensively³⁶¹. "That one is no friend of yours," he said in a tone of honest warning.  "He's the one I want to see."  "Okay, if you wish. If you say so. Anything you wish. I'll have him here tomorrow morning."  That evening, dining with Wesley Mouch in his own suite, Mr. Thompson glared angrily at a glass of tomato juice placed before him. "What? No grapefruit juice?" he snapped; his doctor had prescribed grapefruit juice as protection against an epidemic³⁶² of colds.  "No grapefruit juice," said the waiter, with an odd kind of emphasis.  "Fact is," said Mouch bleakly³⁶³, "that a gang of raiders attacked a train at the Taggart Bridge on the Mississippi. They blew up the track and damaged the bridge. Nothing serious. It's being repaired-but all traffic is held up and the trains from Arizona can't get through."  "That's ridiculous! Aren't there any other-?" Mr. Thompson stopped; he knew that there were no other railroad bridges across the Mississippi.  After a moment, he spoke up in a staccato voice. "Order army detachments to guard the bridge. Day and night. Tell them to pick their best men for it. If anything happened to that bridge-"  He did not finish; he sat hunched, staring down at the costly³⁶⁴ china plates and the delicate hors d'oeuvres before him. The absence of so prosaic³⁶⁵ a commodity as grapefruit juice had suddenly made real to him, for the first time, what it was that would happen to the city of New York if anything happened to the Taggart Bridge.  "Dagny," said Eddie Willers, that evening, "the bridge is not the only problem." He snapped on her desk lamp which, in forced concentration on her work, she had neglected to turn on at the approach of dusk. "No transcontinental trains can leave San Francisco. One of the fighting factions³⁶⁶ out there-I don't know which one-has seized our terminal and imposed a 'departure tax' on trains. Meaning that they're holding trains for ransom³⁶⁷. Our terminal manager has quit. Nobody knows what to do there now."  "I can't leave New York," she answered stonily³⁶⁸.  "I know," he said softly. "That's why it's I who'll go there to straighten things out. At least, to find a man to put in charge."  "No! I don't want you to. It's too dangerous. And what for? It doesn't matter now. There's nothing to save."  "It's still Taggart Transcontinental. I'll stand by it, Dagny, wherever you go, you'll always be able to build a railroad. I couldn't. I don't even want to make a new start. Not any more. Not after what I've seen. You should. I can't. Let me do what I can."  "Eddie! Don't you want-" She stopped, knowing that it was useless.  "All right, Eddie. If you wish."  "I'm flying to California tonight. I've arranged for space on an army plane. . . . I know that you will quit as soon as . . . as soon as you can leave New York. You might be gone by the time I return. When you're ready, just go. Don't worry about me. Don't wait to tell me. Go as fast as you can. I . . . I'll say good-bye to you, now."  She rose to her feet. They stood facing each other; in the dim half light of the office, the picture of Nathaniel Taggart hung on the wall between them. They were both seeing the years since- that distant day when they had first learned to walk down the track of a railroad. He inclined his head and held it lowered for a long moment.  She extended her hand. "Good-bye, Eddie."  He clasped her hand firmly, not looking down at his fingers; he was looking at her face.  He started to go, but stopped, turned to her and asked, his voice low, but steady, neither as plea nor as despair, but as a last gesture of conscientious¹⁰⁵ clarity to close a long ledger³⁶⁹, "Dagny . . . did you know . . .how I felt about you?"  "Yes," she said softly, realizing in this moment that she had known it wordlessly for years, "I knew it."  "Good-bye, Dagny."  The faint rumble of an underground train went through the walls of the building and swallowed the sound of the door closing after him.  It was snowing, next morning, and melting drops were like an icy, cutting touch on the temples of Dr. Robert Stadler, as he walked down the long corridor of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, toward the door of the royal suite. Two husky men walked by his sides; they were from the department of Morale Conditioning, but did not trouble to hide what method of conditioning they would welcome a chance to employ, "Just remember Mr. Thompson's orders," one of them told him contemptuously. "One wrong squawk out of you-and you'll regret it, brother."  It was not the snow on his temples-thought Dr. Stadler-it was a burning pressure, it had been there since that scene, last night, when he had screamed to Mr. Thompson that he could not see John Galt. He had screamed in blind terror, begging a circle of impassive faces not to make him do it, sobbing that he would do anything but that. The faces had not condescended³⁷⁰ to argue or even to threaten him; they had merely given him orders. He had spent a sleepless night, telling himself that he would not obey; but he was walking toward that door. The burning pressure on his temples and the faint, dizzying nausea³⁷¹ of unreality came from the fact that he could not recapture the sense of being Dr. Robert Stadler. He noticed the metallic gleam of the bayonets held by the guards at the door, and the sound of a key being turned in a lock. He found himself walking forward and heard the door being locked behind him.  Across the long room, he saw John Galt sitting on the window sill, a tall, slender figure in slacks and shirt, one leg slanting down to the floor, the other bent³⁷², his hands clasping his knee, his head of sun-streaked hair raised against a spread of gray sky-and suddenly Dr. Stadler saw the figure of a young boy sitting on the porch-railing of his home, near the campus of the Patrick Henry University, with the sun on the chestnut³⁷³ hair of a head lifted against a spread of summer blue, and he heard the passionate³⁰⁸ intensity of his own voice saying twenty-two years ago: "The only sacred value in the world, John, is the human mind, the inviolate³⁷⁴ human mind . . ." -and he cried to that boy's figure, across the room and across the years: "I couldn't help it, John! I couldn't help it!"  He gripped the edge of a table between them, for support and as a protective barrier, even though the figure on the window sill had not moved. "I didn't bring you to this!" he cried. "I didn't mean to! I couldn't help it! It's not what I intended! . . . John! I'm not to blame for it! I'm not! I never had a chance against them! They own the world! They left me no place in it! . . . What's reason to them? What's science? You don't know how deadly they are! You don't understand them! They don't think! They're mindless animals moved by irrational³⁷⁵ feelings-by their greedy, grasping, blind, unaccountable feelings! They seize whatever they want, that's all they know: that they want it, regardless of cause, effect or logic-they want it, the bloody, grubbing pigs! . . . The mind? Don't you know how futile it is, the mind, against those mindless hordes³⁷⁶? Our weapons are so helplessly, laughably childish: truth, knowledge, reason, values, rights! Force is all they know, force, fraud and plunder! . , , John! Don't look at me like that! What could I do against their fists? I had to live, didn't I? It wasn't for myself-it was for the future of science! I had to be left alone, I had to be protected, I had to make terms with them-there's no way to live except on their terms-there isn't!-do you hear me?-there isn't! . . . What did you want me to do? Spend my life begging for jobs? Begging my inferiors for funds and endowments? Did you want my work to depend on the mercy of the ruffians who have a knack³⁷⁷ for making money? I had no time to compete with them for money or markets or any of their miserable material pursuit! Was that your idea of justice-that they should spend their money on liquor, yachts and women, while the priceless hours of my life were wasted for lack of scientific equipment? Persuasion? How could I persuade them? What language could I speak to men who don't think? . . . You don't know how lonely I was, how starved for some spark of intelligence! How lonely and tired and helpless! Why should a mind like mine have to bargain with ignorant fools? They'd never contribute a penny to science! Why shouldn't they be forced? It wasn't you that I wanted to force! That gun was not aimed at the intellect! It wasn't aimed at men like you and me, only at mindless materialists! . . . Why do you look at me that way? I had no choice! There isn't any choice except to beat them at their own game! Oh yes, it is their game, they set the rules! What do we count, the few who can think? We can only hope to get by, unnoticed-and to trick them into serving our aims! . . . Don't you know how noble a purpose it was-my vision of the future of science? Human knowledge set free of material bonds! An unlimited end unrestricted by means! I am not a traitor³⁷⁸, John! I'm not! I was serving the cause of the mind! What I saw ahead, what I wanted, what I felt, was not to be measured in their miserable dollars! I wanted a laboratory! I needed it! What do I care where it came from or how? I could do so much! I could reach such heights!  “Don't you have any pity? I wanted it! . . . What if they had to be forced? Who are they to think, anyway? Why did you teach them to rebel? It would have worked, if you hadn't withdrawn³⁷⁹ them! It would have worked, I tell you! It wouldn't be-like this! . . . Don't accuse me! We can't be guilty . . . all of us . . . for centuries. . . . We can't be so totally wrong! . . . We're not to be damned! We had no choice! There is no other way to live on earth! . . . Why don't you answer me? What are you seeing? Are you thinking of that speech you made? I don't want to think of it! It was only logic! One can't live by logic! Do you hear me? . . . Don't look at me! You're asking the impossible! Men can't exist your way! You permit no moments of weakness, you don't allow for human frailties³⁸⁰ or human feelings! What do you want of us? Rationality twenty-four hours a day, with no loophole, no rest, no escape? . . . Don't look at me, God damn you! I'm not afraid of you any longer! Do you hear me? I am not afraid! Who are you to blame me, you miserable failure? Here's where your road has brought you! Here you are, caught, helpless, under guard, to be killed by those brutes at any moment-and you dare to accuse me of being impractical! Oh yes, you're going to be killed! You won't win! You can't be allowed to win! You are the man who has to be destroyed!"  Dr, Stadler's gasp was a muffled³⁸¹ scream, as if the immobility of the figure on the window sill had served as a silent reflector and had suddenly made him see the full meaning of his own words.  "No!" moaned Dr. Stadler, moving his head from side to side, to escape the unmoving green eyes. "No! . . . No! . . . No!"  Galt's voice had the same unbending austerity as his eyes: "You have said everything I wanted to say to you."  Dr. Stadler banged his fists against the door; when it was opened, he ran out of the room.  * * *  For three days, no one entered Galt's suite except the guards who brought his meals. Early on the evening of the fourth day, the door opened to admit Chick Morrison with two companions. Chick Morrison was dressed in dinner clothes, and his smile was nervous, but a shade more confident than usual. One of his companions was a valet. The other was a muscular man whose face seemed to clash with his tuxedo³⁸²: it was a stony³⁸³ face with sleepy eyelids³⁸⁴, pale, darting eyes and a prizefighter's broken nose; his skull was shaved except for a patch of faded blond curls on top; he kept his right hand in the pocket of his trousers.  "You will please dress, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison persuasively³⁸⁵, pointing to the door of the bedroom, where a closet had been filled with expensive garments which Galt had not chosen to wear. "You will please put on your dinner clothes." He added, "This is an order, Mr. Galt."  Galt walked silently into the bedroom. The three men followed. Chick Morrison sat on the edge of a chair, starting and discarding one cigarette after another. The valet went through too many too courteous³⁸⁶ motions, helping Galt to dress, handing him his shirt studs, holding his coat. The muscular man stood in a corner, his hand in his pocket. No one said a word.  "You will please co-operate, Mr. Galt," said Chick Morrison, when Galt was ready, and indicated the door with a courtly gesture of invitation to proceed.  So swiftly that no one could catch the motion of his hand, the muscular man was holding Galt's arm and pressing an invisible gun against his ribs³⁸⁷. "Don't make any false moves," he said in an expressionless voice.  "I never do," said Galt.  Chick Morrison opened the door. The valet stayed behind. The three figures in dinner clothes walked silently down the hall to the elevator.  They remained silent in the elevator, the clicks of the flashing numbers above the door marking their downward progress.  The elevator stopped on the mezzanine floor. Two armed soldiers preceded them and two others followed, as they walked through the long, dim corridors. The corridors were deserted except for armed sentinels posted at the turns. The muscular man's right arm was linked to Galt's left; the gun remained invisible to any possible observer. Galt felt the small pressure of the muzzle against his side; the pressure was expertly maintained: not to be felt as an impediment and not to be forgotten for a moment.  The corridor led to a wide, closed doorway. The soldiers seemed to melt away into the shadows, when Chick Morrison's hand touched the doorknob. It was his hand that opened the door, but the sudden contrast of light and sound made it seem as if the door were flung open by an explosion: the light came from three hundred bulbs in the blazing chandeliers of the grand ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel; the sound was the applause of five hundred people.  Chick Morrison led the way to the speakers' table raised on a platform above the tables filling the room. The people seemed to know, without announcement, that of the two figures following him, it was the tall, slender man with the gold-copper hair that they were applauding. His face had the same quality as the voice they had heard on the radio : calm, confident-and out of reach.  The seat reserved for Galt was the place of honor in the center of the long table, with Mr. Thompson waiting for him at his right and the muscular man slipping skillfully into the seat at his left, not relinquishing³⁸⁸ his arm or the pressure of the muzzle. The jewels on the naked shoulders of women carried the glitter of the chandeliers to the shadows of the tables crowded against the distant walls; the severe black-and white of the men's figures rescued the room's style of solemnly regal luxury from the discordant³⁸⁹ slashes³⁹⁰ made by news cameras, microphones and a dormant³⁹¹ array of television equipment. The crowd was on its feet, applauding. Mr. Thompson was smiling and watching Galt's face, with the eager, anxious look of an adult waiting for a child's reaction to a spectacularly generous gift. Galt sat facing the ovation³⁹², neither ignoring it nor responding.  "The applause you are hearing," a radio announcer was yelling into a microphone in a corner of the room, "is in greeting to John Galt, who has just taken his place at the speakers' table! Yes, my friends, John Galt in person-as those of you who can find a television set will have a chance to see for yourself in a short while!"  I must remember where I am-thought Dagny, clenching³⁹³ her fists under the tablecloth³⁹⁴, in the obscurity of a side table. It was hard to maintain a sense of double reality in the presence of Galt, thirty feet away from her. She felt that no danger or pain could exist in the world so long as she could see his face-and, simultaneously³⁹⁵, an icy terror, when she looked at those who held him in their power, when she remembered the blind irrationality³⁹⁶ of the event they were staging. She fought to keep her facial muscles rigid, not to betray herself by a smile of happiness or by a scream of panic.  She wondered how his eyes had been able to find her in that crowd. She had seen the brief pause of his glance, which no one else could notice; the glance had been more than a kiss, it had been a handshake of approval and support.  He did not glance again in her direction. She could not force herself to look away. It was startling to see him in evening clothes and more startling still that he wore them so naturally; he made them look like a work uniform of honor; his figure suggested the kind of banquet, in the days of a distant past, where he would have been receiving an industrial award. Celebrations-she remembered her own words, with a stab of longing-should be only for those who have something to celebrate.  She turned away. She struggled not to look at him too often, not to attract the attention of her companions. She had been placed at a table prominent enough to display her to the assembly, but obscure enough to keep her out of the line of Galt's sight, along with those who had incurred³⁹⁷ Galt's disfavor: with Dr. Ferris and Eugene Lawson.  Her brother Jim, she noted, had been placed closer to the platform; she could see his sullen³⁹⁸ face among the nervous figures of Tinky Holloway, Fred Kinnan, Dr. Simon Pritchett. The tortured faces strung out above the speakers' table were not succeeding in their efforts to hide that they looked like men enduring an ordeal³⁹⁹; the calm of Galt's face seemed radiant among them; she wondered who was prisoner here and who was master. Her glance moved slowly down the line-up of his table: Mr. Thompson, Wesley Mouch, Chick Morrison, some generals, some members of the Legislature and, preposterously⁴⁰⁰, Mr. Mowen chosen as a bribe⁴⁰¹ to Galt, as a symbol of big business. She glanced about the room, looking for the face of Dr. Stadler; he was not present.  The voices filling the room were like a fever chart, she thought; they kept darting too high and collapsing into patches of silence; the occasional spurts⁴⁰² of someone's laughter broke off, incompleted, and attracted the shuddering⁴⁰³ turn of the heads at the neighboring tables. The faces were drawn and twisted by the most obvious and least dignified²⁶ form of tension: by forced smiles. These people-she thought-knew, not by means of their reason, but by means of their panic, that this banquet was the ultimate climax⁴⁰⁴ and the naked essence of their world. They knew that neither their God nor their guns could make this celebration mean what they were struggling to pretend it meant.  She could not swallow the food that was placed before her; her throat seemed closed by a rigid convulsion. She noticed that the others at her table were also merely pretending to eat. Dr. Ferris was the only one whose appetite seemed unaffected.  When she saw a slush of ice cream in a crystal bowl before her, she noticed the sudden silence of the room and heard the screeching⁴⁰⁵ of the television machinery being dragged forward for action. Now-she thought, with a sinking sense of expectation, and knew that the same question mark was on every mind in the room. They were all staring at Galt. His face did not move or change.  No one had to call for silence, when Mr. Thompson waved to an announcer: the room did not seem to breathe.  "Fellow citizens," the announcer cried into a microphone, "of this country and of any other that's able to listen-from the grand ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel in New York City, we are bringing you the inauguration⁴⁰⁶ of the John Galt Plan!"  A rectangle of tensely bluish light appeared on the wall behind the speakers' table-a television screen to project for the guests the images which the country was now to see.  "The John Galt Plan for Peace, Prosperity and Profit!" cried the announcer, while a shivering picture of the ballroom sprang into view on the screen. "The dawn of a new age! The product of a harmonious collaboration⁴⁰⁷ between the humanitarian⁴⁰⁸ spirit of our leaders and the scientific genius of John Galt! If your faith in the future has been undermined by vicious rumors, you may now see for yourself our happily united family of leadership! . . . Ladies and gentlemen"-as the television camera swooped⁴⁰⁹ down to the speakers' table, and the stupefied face of Mr. Mowen filled the screen-"Mr. Horace Bussby Mowen, the American Industrialist⁴¹⁰!" The camera moved to an aged³² collection of facial muscles shaped in imitation of a smile. "General of the Array Whittington S. Thorpe!" The camera, like an eye at a police line-up, moved from face to scarred face-scarred by the ravages⁴¹¹ of fear, of evasion⁴¹², of despair, of uncertainty⁴¹³, of self-loathing, of guilt. "Majority Leader of the National Legislature, Mr. Lucian Phelps! . . . Mr. Wesley Mouch! . . . Mr. Thompson!" The camera paused on Mr. Thompson; he gave a big grin to the nation, then turned and looked off screen, to his left, with an air of triumphant²⁸⁷ expectancy⁴¹⁴. "Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said solemnly, "John Galt!"  Good God!-thought Dagny-what are they doing? From the screen, the face of John Galt was looking at the nation, the face without pain or fear or guilt, implacable by virtue⁴¹⁵ of serenity⁴¹⁶, invulnerable by virtue of self-esteem. This face-she thought-among those others?  Whatever it is that they're planning, she thought, it's undone-nothing more can or has to be said-there's the product of one code and of the other, there's the choice, and whoever is human will know it.  "Mr. Galt's personal secretary," said the announcer, while the camera blurred⁴¹⁷ hastily past the next face and went on. "Mr. Clarence 'Chick' Morrison . . . Admiral Homer Dawley . . . Mr.-"  She looked at the faces around her, wondering: Did they see the contrast? Did they know it? Did they see him? Did they want him to be real?  "This banquet," said Chick Morrison, who had taken over as master of ceremonies, "is in honor of the greatest figure of our time, the ablest producer, the man of the 'know-how,' the new leader of our economy-John Galt! If you have heard his extraordinary radio speech, you can have no doubt that he can make things work. Now he is here to tell you that he will make them work for you. If you have been misled by those old-fashioned extremists who claimed that he would never join us, that no merger⁴¹⁸ is possible between his way of life and ours, that it's either one or the other-tonight's event will prove to you that anything can be reconciled and united!"  Once they have seen him-thought Dagny-can they wish to look at anybody else? Once they know that he is possible, that this is what man can be, what else can they want to seek? Can they now feel any desire except to achieve in their souls what he has achieved in his? Or are they going to be stopped by the fact that the Mouches, the Morrisons, the Thompsons of the world had not chosen to achieve it? Are they going to regard the Mouches as the human and him as the impossible?  The camera was roving over the ballroom, flashing to the screen and to the country the faces of the prominent guests, the faces of the tensely watchful⁴¹⁹ leaders and-once in a while-the face of John Galt. He looked as if his perceptive²³¹ eyes were studying the men outside this room, the men who were seeing him across the country; one could not tell whether he was listening: no reaction altered the composure of his face.  "I am proud to pay tribute tonight," said the leader of the Legislature, the next speaker, "to the greatest economic organizer the world has ever discovered, the most gifted administrator⁴²⁰, the most brilliant planner-John Galt, the man who will save us! I am here to thank him in the name of the people!"  This-thought Dagny, with a sickened amusement-was the spectacle of the sincerity⁴²¹ of the dishonest. The most fraudulent part of the fraud was that they meant it. They were offering Galt the best that their view of existence could offer, they were trying to tempt⁸ him with that which was their dream of life's highest fulfillment: this spread of mindless adulation, the unreality of this enormous pretense-approval without standards, tribute without content, honor without causes, admiration without reasons, love without a code of values.  "We have discarded all our petty differences," Wesley Mouch was now saying into the microphone, "all partisan⁴²² opinions, all personal interests and selfish views-in order to serve under the selfless leadership of John Galt!"  Why are they listening?-thought Dagny. Don't they see the hallmark of death in those faces, and the hallmark of life in his? Which state do they wish to choose? Which state do they seek for mankind? . . . She looked at the faces in the ballroom. They were nervously⁴²³ blank; they showed nothing but the sagging weight of lethargy and the staleness of a chronic⁴²⁴ fear. They were looking at Galt and at Mouch, as if unable to perceive any difference between them or to feel concern if a difference existed, their empty, uncritical, unvaluing stare declaring: "Who am I to know?" She shuddered, remembering his sentence: "The man who declares, ‘Who am I to know?' is declaring, 'Who am I to live?' " Did they care to live?-she thought. They did not seem to care even for the effort of raising that question. . . . She saw a few faces who seemed to care. They were looking at Galt with a desperate plea, with a wistfully tragic⁴²⁵ admiration-and with hands lying limply on the tables before them. These were the men who saw what he was, who lived in frustrated⁴²⁶ longing for his world-but tomorrow, if they saw him being murdered before them, their hands would hang as limply and their eyes would look away, saying, "Who am I to act?"  "Unity of action and purpose," said Mouch, "will bring us to a happier world. . . ."  Mr. Thompson leaned toward Galt and whispered with an amiable⁴²⁷ smile, "You'll have to say a few words to the country, later on, after me. No, no, not a long speech, just a sentence or two, no more. Just 'hello, folks' or something like that, so they'll recognize your voice." The faintly stressed pressure of the "secretary's" muzzle against Galt's side added a silent paragraph. Galt did not answer.  "The John Galt Plan," Wesley Mouch was saying, "will reconcile all conflicts. It will protect the property of the rich and give a greater share to the poor. It will cut down the burden of your taxes and provide you with more government benefits. It will lower prices and raise wages. It will give more freedom to the individual and strengthen the bonds of collective obligations. It will combine the efficiency of free enterprise with the generosity⁴²⁸ of a planned economy."  Dagny observed some faces-it took her an effort fully to believe it-who were looking at Galt with hatred. Jim was one of them, she noted. When the image of Mouch held the screen, these faces were relaxed in bored contentment, which was not pleasure, but the comfort of license⁴²⁹, of knowing that nothing was demanded of them and nothing was firm or certain. When the camera flashed the image of Galt, their lips grew tight and their features were sharpened by a look of peculiar caution. She felt with sudden certainty that they feared the precision of his face, the unyielding clarity of his features, the look of being an entity²³⁸, a look of asserting existence. They hate him for being himself-she thought, feeling a touch of cold horror, as the nature of their souls became real to her-they hate him for his capacity to live. Do they want to live?-she thought in self-mockery. Through the stunned numbness⁴³⁰ of her mind, she remembered the sound of his sentence: "The desire not to be anything, is the desire not to be."  It was now Mr. Thompson who was yelling into the microphone in his briskest and folksiest manner: "And I say to you: kick them in the teeth, all those doubters who're spreading disunity and fear! They told you that John Galt would never join us, didn't they? Well, here he is, in person, of his own free choice, at this table and at the head of our State! Ready, willing and able to serve the people's cause! Don't you ever again, any of you, start doubting or running or giving up! Tomorrow is here today-and what a tomorrow! With three meals a day for everyone on earth, with a car in every garage, and with electric power given free, produced by some sort of a motor the like of which we've never seen! And all you have to do is just be patient a little while longer! Patience, faith and unity-that's the recipe for progress! We must stand united among ourselves and united with the rest of the world, as a great big happy family, all working for the good of all! We have found a leader who will beat the record of our richest and busiest past! It's his love for mankind that has made him come here-to serve you, protect you and take care of you! He has heard your pleas and has answered the call of our common human duty! Every man is his brother's keeper! No man is an island unto himself! And now you will hear his voice-now you will hear his own message! . . . 'Ladies and gentlemen," he said solemnly, "John Galt-to the collective family of mankind!"  The camera moved to Galt. He remained still for a moment. Then, with so swift and expert a movement that his secretary's hand was unable to match it, he rose to his feet, leaning sidewise, leaving the pointed gun momentarily exposed to the sight of the world-then, standing straight, facing the cameras, looking at all his invisible viewers, he said: "Get the hell out of my way!"

1 clot   

n.凝块；v.使凝成块

参考例句：

• Platelets are one of the components required to make blood clot.血小板是血液凝固的必须成分之一。
• The patient's blood refused to clot.病人的血液无法凝结。

2 crate   

vt.(up)把…装入箱中；n.板条箱，装货箱

参考例句：

• We broke open the crate with a blow from the chopper.我们用斧头一敲就打开了板条箱。
• The workers tightly packed the goods in the crate.工人们把货物严紧地包装在箱子里。

3 smear   

v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑

参考例句：

• He has been spreading false stories in an attempt to smear us.他一直在散布谎言企图诽谤我们。
• There's a smear on your shirt.你衬衫上有个污点。

4 deserted   

adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的

参考例句：

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

5 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。

6 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

7 vibrations   

n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动

参考例句：

• We could feel the vibrations from the trucks passing outside. 我们可以感到外面卡车经过时的颤动。
• I am drawn to that girl; I get good vibrations from her. 我被那女孩吸引住了，她使我产生良好的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 tempt   

vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣

参考例句：

• Nothing could tempt him to such a course of action.什么都不能诱使他去那样做。
• The fact that she had become wealthy did not tempt her to alter her frugal way of life.她有钱了，可这丝毫没能让她改变节俭的生活习惯。

9 tempting   

a.诱人的, 吸引人的

参考例句：

• It is tempting to idealize the past. 人都爱把过去的日子说得那么美好。
• It was a tempting offer. 这是个诱人的提议。

10 beads   

n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链

参考例句：

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

11 insistent   

adj.迫切的，坚持的

参考例句：

• There was an insistent knock on my door.我听到一阵急促的敲门声。
• He is most insistent on this point.他在这点上很坚持。

12 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

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

13 screeches   

n.尖锐的声音( screech的名词复数 )v.发出尖叫声( screech的第三人称单数 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫

参考例句：

• The boy's screeches brought his mother. 男孩的尖叫声招来了他母亲。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The woman's screeches brought the police. 这个妇女的尖叫声招来了警察。 来自辞典例句

14 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。

15 thumping   

adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持

参考例句：

• Her heart was thumping with emotion. 她激动得心怦怦直跳。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He was thumping the keys of the piano. 他用力弹钢琴。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

16 grotesquely   

adv. 奇异地,荒诞地

参考例句：

• Her arched eyebrows and grotesquely powdered face were at once seductive and grimly overbearing. 眉棱棱着，在一脸的怪粉上显出妖媚而霸道。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• Two faces grotesquely disfigured in nylon stocking masks looked through the window. 2张戴尼龙长袜面罩的怪脸望着窗外。

17 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。

18 authorized   

a.委任的，许可的

参考例句：

• An administrative order is valid if authorized by a statute.如果一个行政命令得到一个法规的认可那么这个命令就是有效的。

19 appreciative   

adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的

参考例句：

• She was deeply appreciative of your help.她对你的帮助深表感激。
• We are very appreciative of their support in this respect.我们十分感谢他们在这方面的支持。

20 morale   

n.道德准则，士气，斗志

参考例句：

• The morale of the enemy troops is sinking lower every day.敌军的士气日益低落。
• He tried to bolster up their morale.他尽力鼓舞他们的士气。

21 scurrying   

v.急匆匆地走( scurry的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• We could hear the mice scurrying about in the walls. 我们能听见老鼠在墙里乱跑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• We were scurrying about until the last minute before the party. 聚会开始前我们一直不停地忙忙碌碌。 来自辞典例句

22 muzzle   

n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默

参考例句：

• He placed the muzzle of the pistol between his teeth.他把手枪的枪口放在牙齿中间。
• The President wanted to muzzle the press.总统企图遏制新闻自由。

23 commentators   

n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员

参考例句：

• Sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 体育解说员翻来覆去说着同样的词语，真叫人腻烦。
• Television sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 电视体育解说员说来说去就是那么几句话，令人厌烦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

24 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

25 endorsing   

v.赞同( endorse的现在分词 )；在（尤指支票的）背面签字；在（文件的）背面写评论；在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品

参考例句：

• Yet Communist leaders are also publicly endorsing religion in an unprecedented way. 不过，共产党领导层对宗教信仰的公开认可也是以前不曾有过的。 来自互联网
• Connecticut Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman is endorsing Republican Senator John McCain. 康涅狄格州独立派参议员约瑟夫。列波曼将会票选共和议员约翰。麦凯恩。 来自互联网

26 dignified   

a.可敬的，高贵的

参考例句：

• Throughout his trial he maintained a dignified silence. 在整个审讯过程中，他始终沉默以保持尊严。
• He always strikes such a dignified pose before his girlfriend. 他总是在女友面前摆出这种庄严的姿态。

27 sobbing   

<主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的

参考例句：

• I heard a child sobbing loudly. 我听见有个孩子在呜呜地哭。
• Her eyes were red with recent sobbing. 她的眼睛因刚哭过而发红。

28 immoral   

adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的

参考例句：

• She was questioned about his immoral conduct toward her.她被询问过有关他对她的不道德行为的情况。
• It is my belief that nuclear weapons are immoral.我相信使核武器是不邪恶的。

29 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。

30 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。

31 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。

32 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

33 receding   

v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题

参考例句：

• Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht. 游艇的灯光渐去渐远，他拼命划水追赶。 来自辞典例句
• Sounds produced by vehicles receding from us seem lower-pitched than usual. 渐渐远离我们的运载工具发出的声似乎比平常的音调低。 来自辞典例句

34 utterances   

n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论

参考例句：

• John Maynard Keynes used somewhat gnomic utterances in his General Theory. 约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在其《通论》中用了许多精辟言辞。 来自辞典例句
• Elsewhere, particularly in his more public utterances, Hawthorne speaks very differently. 在别的地方，特别是在比较公开的谈话里，霍桑讲的话则完全不同。 来自辞典例句

35 inflexible   

adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的

参考例句：

• Charles was a man of settled habits and inflexible routine.查尔斯是一个恪守习惯、生活规律不容打乱的人。
• The new plastic is completely inflexible.这种新塑料是完全不可弯曲的。

36 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

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

37 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。

38 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。

39 devoid   

adj.全无的，缺乏的

参考例句：

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

40 lone   

adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的

参考例句：

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

41 exultant   

adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的

参考例句：

• The exultant crowds were dancing in the streets.欢欣的人群在大街上跳起了舞。
• He was exultant that she was still so much in his power.他仍然能轻而易举地摆布她，对此他欣喜若狂。

42 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。

43 savage   

adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人

参考例句：

• The poor man received a savage beating from the thugs.那可怜的人遭到暴徒的痛打。
• He has a savage temper.他脾气粗暴。

44 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。

45 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。

46 obituary   

n.讣告，死亡公告；adj.死亡的

参考例句：

• The obituary records the whole life of the deceased.讣文记述了这位死者的生平。
• Five days after the letter came,he found Andersen s obituary in the morning paper.收到那封信五天后，他在早报上发现了安德森的讣告。

47 corpses   

n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The living soldiers put corpses together and burned them. 活着的战士把尸体放在一起烧了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Overhead, grayish-white clouds covered the sky, piling up heavily like decaying corpses. 天上罩满了灰白的薄云，同腐烂的尸体似的沉沉的盖在那里。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

48 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。

49 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

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

50 altruistic   

adj.无私的，为他人着想的

参考例句：

• It is superficial to be altruistic without feeling compassion.无慈悲之心却说利他，是为表面。
• Altruistic spirit should be cultivated by us vigorously.利他的精神是我们应该努力培养的。

51 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。

52 outrageous   

adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的

参考例句：

• Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
• Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。

53 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。

54 premature   

adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的

参考例句：

• It is yet premature to predict the possible outcome of the dialogue.预言这次对话可能有什么结果为时尚早。
• The premature baby is doing well.那个早产的婴儿很健康。

55 placidly   

adv.平稳地，平静地

参考例句：

• Hurstwood stood placidly by, while the car rolled back into the yard. 当车子开回场地时，赫斯渥沉着地站在一边。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• The water chestnut floated placidly there, where it would grow. 那棵菱角就又安安稳稳浮在水面上生长去了。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

56 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

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

57 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。

58 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》

59 cult   

n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜

参考例句：

• Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书，但有一定的崇拜者。
• The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。

60 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。

61 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。

62 momentous   

adj.重要的，重大的

参考例句：

• I am deeply honoured to be invited to this momentous occasion.能应邀出席如此重要的场合，我深感荣幸。
• The momentous news was that war had begun.重大的新闻是战争已经开始。

63 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

64 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。

65 faction   

n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争

参考例句：

• Faction and self-interest appear to be the norm.派系之争和自私自利看来非常普遍。
• I now understood clearly that I was caught between the king and the Bunam's faction.我现在完全明白自己已陷入困境，在国王与布纳姆集团之间左右为难。

66 exasperation   

n.愤慨

参考例句：

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

67 gaping   

adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大

参考例句：

• Ahead of them was a gaping abyss. 他们前面是一个巨大的深渊。
• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

68 concessions   

n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权

参考例句：

• The firm will be forced to make concessions if it wants to avoid a strike. 要想避免罢工，公司将不得不作出一些让步。
• The concessions did little to placate the students. 让步根本未能平息学生的愤怒。

69 rattle   

v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓

参考例句：

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

70 rattled   

慌乱的，恼火的

参考例句：

• The truck jolted and rattled over the rough ground. 卡车嘎吱嘎吱地在凹凸不平的地面上颠簸而行。
• Every time a bus went past, the windows rattled. 每逢公共汽车经过这里，窗户都格格作响。

71 rumble   

n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说

参考例句：

• I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.我听到远处雷声隆隆。
• We could tell from the rumble of the thunder that rain was coming.我们根据雷的轰隆声可断定，天要下雨了。

72 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。

73 shrill   

adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫

参考例句：

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

74 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。

75 vertically   

adv.垂直地

参考例句：

• Line the pages for the graph both horizontally and vertically.在这几页上同时画上横线和竖线，以便制作图表。
• The human brain is divided vertically down the middle into two hemispheres.人脑从中央垂直地分为两半球。

76 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。

77 credulous   

adj.轻信的，易信的

参考例句：

• You must be credulous if she fooled you with that story.连她那种话都能把你骗倒，你一定是太容易相信别人了。
• Credulous attitude will only make you take anything for granted.轻信的态度只会使你想当然。

78 laborer   

n.劳动者，劳工

参考例句：

• Her husband had been a farm laborer.她丈夫以前是个农场雇工。
• He worked as a casual laborer and did not earn much.他当临时工，没有赚多少钱。

79 laborers   

n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工

参考例句：

• Laborers were trained to handle 50-ton compactors and giant cranes. 工人们接受操作五十吨压土机和巨型起重机的训练。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. 雇佣劳动完全是建立在工人的自相竞争之上的。 来自英汉非文学 - 共产党宣言

80 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

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

81 tightened   

收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧

参考例句：

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

82 gust   

n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发

参考例句：

• A gust of wind blew the front door shut.一阵大风吹来，把前门关上了。
• A gust of happiness swept through her.一股幸福的暖流流遍她的全身。

83 confirmation   

n.证实，确认，批准

参考例句：

• We are waiting for confirmation of the news.我们正在等待证实那个消息。
• We need confirmation in writing before we can send your order out.给你们发送订购的货物之前，我们需要书面确认。

84 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。

85 payroll   

n.工资表，在职人员名单，工薪总额

参考例句：

• His yearly payroll is $1.2 million.他的年薪是120万美元。
• I can't wait to get my payroll check.我真等不及拿到我的工资单了。

86 inquiries   

n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听

参考例句：

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

87 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。

88 unity   

n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调

参考例句：

• When we speak of unity,we do not mean unprincipled peace.所谓团结，并非一团和气。
• We must strengthen our unity in the face of powerful enemies.大敌当前，我们必须加强团结。

89 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。

90 condemnation   

n.谴责; 定罪

参考例句：

• There was widespread condemnation of the invasion. 那次侵略遭到了人们普遍的谴责。
• The jury's condemnation was a shock to the suspect. 陪审团宣告有罪使嫌疑犯大为震惊。

91 forum   

n.论坛，讨论会

参考例句：

• They're holding a forum on new ways of teaching history.他们正在举行历史教学讨论会。
• The organisation would provide a forum where problems could be discussed.这个组织将提供一个可以讨论问题的平台。

92 facets   

n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面

参考例句：

• The question had many facets. 这个问题是多方面的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A fully cut brilliant diamond has 68 facets. 经过充分切刻的光彩夺目的钻石有68个小平面。 来自《简明英汉词典》

93 impartial   

adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的

参考例句：

• He gave an impartial view of the state of affairs in Ireland.他对爱尔兰的事态发表了公正的看法。
• Careers officers offer impartial advice to all pupils.就业指导员向所有学生提供公正无私的建议。

94 devoured   

吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光

参考例句：

• She devoured everything she could lay her hands on: books, magazines and newspapers. 无论是书、杂志，还是报纸，只要能弄得到，她都看得津津有味。
• The lions devoured a zebra in a short time. 狮子一会儿就吃掉了一匹斑马。

95 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。

96 gutted   

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

参考例句：

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

97 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。

98 trudging   

vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• There was a stream of refugees trudging up the valley towards the border. 一队难民步履艰难地爬上山谷向着边境走去。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Two mules well laden with packs were trudging along. 两头骡子驮着沉重的背包，吃力地往前走。 来自辞典例句

99 alleys   

胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径

参考例句：

• I followed him through a maze of narrow alleys. 我紧随他穿过一条条迂迴曲折的窄巷。
• The children lead me through the maze of alleys to the edge of the city. 孩子们领我穿过迷宫一般的街巷，来到城边。

100 habitual   

adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的

参考例句：

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

101 superintendent   

n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长

参考例句：

• He was soon promoted to the post of superintendent of Foreign Trade.他很快就被擢升为对外贸易总监。
• He decided to call the superintendent of the building.他决定给楼房管理员打电话。

102 hysterical   

adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的

参考例句：

• He is hysterical at the sight of the photo.他一看到那张照片就异常激动。
• His hysterical laughter made everybody stunned.他那歇斯底里的笑声使所有的人不知所措。

103 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

104 buttress   

n.支撑物；v.支持

参考例句：

• I don't think they have any buttress behind them.我认为他们背后没有什么支持力量。
• It was decided to buttress the crumbling walls.人们决定建造扶壁以支撑崩塌中的墙。

105 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。

106 conscientiously   

adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实

参考例句：

• He kept silent,eating just as conscientiously but as though everything tasted alike. 他一声不吭，闷头吃着，仿佛桌上的饭菜都一个味儿。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She discharged all the responsibilities of a minister conscientiously. 她自觉地履行部长的一切职责。 来自《简明英汉词典》

107 prostrated   

v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力

参考例句：

• He was prostrated by the loss of his wife. 他因丧妻而忧郁。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• They prostrated themselves before the emperor. 他们拜倒在皇帝的面前。 来自《简明英汉词典》

108 scourge   

n.灾难，祸害；v.蹂躏

参考例句：

• Smallpox was once the scourge of the world.天花曾是世界的大患。
• The new boss was the scourge of the inefficient.新老板来了以后，不称职的人就遭殃了。

109 tuned   

adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• The resort is tuned in to the tastes of young and old alike. 这个度假胜地适合各种口味，老少皆宜。
• The instruments should be tuned up before each performance. 每次演出开始前都应将乐器调好音。 来自《简明英汉词典》

110 shutters   

百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门

参考例句：

• The shop-front is fitted with rolling shutters. 那商店的店门装有卷门。
• The shutters thumped the wall in the wind. 在风中百叶窗砰砰地碰在墙上。

111 shaft   

n.(工具的)柄，杆状物

参考例句：

• He was wounded by a shaft.他被箭击中受伤。
• This is the shaft of a steam engine.这是一个蒸汽机主轴。

112 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

113 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。

114 refinery   

n.精炼厂，提炼厂

参考例句：

• They built a sugar refinery.他们建起了一座榨糖厂。
• The purpose of oil refinery is to refine crude petroleum.炼油厂的主要工作是提炼原油。

115 ravaged   

毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫

参考例句：

• a country ravaged by civil war 遭受内战重创的国家
• The whole area was ravaged by forest fires. 森林火灾使整个地区荒废了。

116 janitors   

n.看门人( janitor的名词复数 )；看管房屋的人；锅炉工

参考例句：

• The janitors were always kicking us out. 守卫总是将～踢出去。 来自互联网
• My aim is to be one of the best janitors in the world. 我的目标是要成为全世界最好的守门人。 来自互联网

117 superintendents   

警长( superintendent的名词复数 )； （大楼的）管理人； 监管人； （美国）警察局长

参考例句：

• Unlike their New York counterparts, Portland school superintendents welcomed McFarlane. 这一次，地点是在波特兰。
• But superintendents and principals have wide discretion. 但是，地方领导和校长有自由裁量权。

118 refineries   

精炼厂( refinery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The efforts on closedown and suspension of small sugar refineries, small saccharin refineries and small paper mills are also being carried out in steps. 关停小糖厂、小糖精厂、小造纸厂的工作也已逐步展开。
• Hence the sitting of refineries is at a distance from population centres. 所以，炼油厂的厂址总在远离人口集中的地方。

119 defective   

adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的

参考例句：

• The firm had received bad publicity over a defective product. 该公司因为一件次品而受到媒体攻击。
• If the goods prove defective, the customer has the right to compensation. 如果货品证明有缺陷， 顾客有权索赔。

120 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

121 wrecks   

n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉

参考例句：

• The shores are strewn with wrecks. 海岸上满布失事船只的残骸。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• My next care was to get together the wrecks of my fortune. 第二件我所关心的事就是集聚破产后的余财。 来自辞典例句

122 rumors   

n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷

参考例句：

• Rumors have it that the school was burned down. 有谣言说学校给烧掉了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Rumors of a revolt were afloat. 叛变的谣言四起。 来自《简明英汉词典》

123 applicants   

申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were over 500 applicants for the job. 有500多人申请这份工作。
• He was impressed by the high calibre of applicants for the job. 求职人员出色的能力给他留下了深刻印象。

124 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

125 exemptions   

n.（义务等的）免除( exemption的名词复数 )；免（税）；（收入中的）免税额

参考例句：

• The exemptions for interpretive rules, policy statements, and procedural rules have just been discussed. 有关解释性规则、政策说明和程序规则的免责我们刚刚讨论过。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法
• A: The regulation outlines specific exemptions for some WPM. 答：该规定概述了某些木质包装材料的特定的例外情形。 来自互联网

126 benefactors   

n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人

参考例句：

• I rate him among my benefactors. 我认为他是我的一个恩人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We showed high respect to benefactors. 我们对捐助者表达了崇高的敬意。 来自辞典例句

127 ragged   

adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的

参考例句：

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

128 lethargic   

adj.昏睡的，懒洋洋的

参考例句：

• He felt too miserable and lethargic to get dressed.他心情低落无精打采，完全没有心思穿衣整装。
• The hot weather made me feel lethargic.炎热的天气使我昏昏欲睡。

129 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。

130 squads   

n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍

参考例句：

• Anti-riot squads were called out to deal with the situation. 防暴队奉命出动以对付这一局势。 来自辞典例句
• Three squads constitute a platoon. 三个班组成一个排。 来自辞典例句

131 ornithology   

n.鸟类学

参考例句：

• He found his vocation in ornithology.他发现自己适于专攻鸟类学。
• His main interests are botany and ornithology.他主要对植物学和鸟类学感兴趣。

132 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。

133 treasury   

n.宝库；国库，金库；文库

参考例句：

• The Treasury was opposed in principle to the proposals.财政部原则上反对这些提案。
• This book is a treasury of useful information.这本书是有价值的信息宝库。

134 wrecked   

adj.失事的，遇难的

参考例句：

• the hulk of a wrecked ship 遇难轮船的残骸
• the salvage of the wrecked tanker 对失事油轮的打捞

135 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。

136 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

137 winked   

v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮

参考例句：

• He winked at her and she knew he was thinking the same thing that she was. 他冲她眨了眨眼，她便知道他的想法和她一样。
• He winked his eyes at her and left the classroom. 他向她眨巴一下眼睛走出了教室。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

138 warehouses   

仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The whisky was taken to bonded warehouses at Port Dundee. 威士忌酒已送到邓迪港的保稅仓库。
• Row upon row of newly built warehouses line the waterfront. 江岸新建的仓库鳞次栉比。

139 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

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

140 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

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

141 punitive   

adj.惩罚的，刑罚的

参考例句：

• They took punitive measures against the whole gang.他们对整帮人采取惩罚性措施。
• The punitive tariff was imposed to discourage tire imports from China.该惩罚性关税的征收是用以限制中国轮胎进口的措施。

142 wagons   

n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车

参考例句：

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

143 savages   

未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 )

参考例句：

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

144 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

145 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。

146 obelisk   

n.方尖塔

参考例句：

• The obelisk was built in memory of those who died for their country.这座方尖塔是为了纪念那些为祖国献身的人而建造的。
• Far away on the last spur,there was a glittering obelisk.远处，在最后一个山峦上闪烁着一个方尖塔。

147 fumes   

n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体

参考例句：

• The health of our children is being endangered by exhaust fumes. 我们孩子们的健康正受到排放出的废气的损害。
• Exhaust fumes are bad for your health. 废气对健康有害。

148 soot   

n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟

参考例句：

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

149 pulsating   

adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动

参考例句：

• Lights were pulsating in the sky. 天空有闪烁的光。
• Spindles and fingers moved so quickly that the workshop seemed to be one great nervously-pulsating machine. 工作很紧张，全车间是一个飞快的转轮。 来自子夜部分

150 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

151 lotions   

n.洗液，洗剂，护肤液( lotion的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Do not use lotions or oils to lubricate the skin. 不要用润肤剂或油类来润滑皮肤。 来自辞典例句
• They were experts at preserving the bodies of the dead by embalming them with special lotions. 他们具有采用特种药物洗剂防止尸体腐烂的专门知识。 来自辞典例句

152 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

153 frantic   

adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的

参考例句：

• I've had a frantic rush to get my work done.我急急忙忙地赶完工作。
• He made frantic dash for the departing train.他发疯似地冲向正开出的火车。

154 inexplicable   

adj.无法解释的，难理解的

参考例句：

• It is now inexplicable how that development was misinterpreted.当时对这一事态发展的错误理解究竟是怎么产生的，现在已经无法说清楚了。
• There are many things which are inexplicable by science.有很多事科学还无法解释。

155 sundry   

adj.各式各样的，种种的

参考例句：

• This cream can be used to treat sundry minor injuries.这种药膏可用来治各种轻伤。
• We can see the rich man on sundry occasions.我们能在各种场合见到那个富豪。

156 refractory   

adj.倔强的，难驾驭的

参考例句：

• He is a very refractory child.他是一个很倔强的孩子。
• Silicate minerals are characteristically refractory and difficult to break down.硅酸盐矿物的特点是耐熔和难以分离。

157 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。

158 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

159 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。

160 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。

161 muster   

v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册

参考例句：

• Go and muster all the men you can find.去集合所有你能找到的人。
• I had to muster my courage up to ask him that question.我必须鼓起勇气向他问那个问题。

162 dazedly   

头昏眼花地，眼花缭乱地，茫然地

参考例句：

• Chu Kuei-ying stared dazedly at her mother for a moment, but said nothing. 朱桂英怔怔地望着她母亲，不作声。 来自子夜部分
• He wondered dazedly whether the term after next at his new school wouldn't matter so much. 他昏头昏脑地想，不知道新学校的第三个学期是不是不那么重要。

163 avenge   

v.为...复仇，为...报仇

参考例句：

• He swore to avenge himself on the mafia.他发誓说要向黑手党报仇。
• He will avenge the people on their oppressor.他将为人民向压迫者报仇。

164 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》

165 slumped   

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

参考例句：

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

166 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

167 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

168 beacon   

n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔

参考例句：

• The blink of beacon could be seen for miles.灯塔的光亮在数英里之外都能看见。
• The only light over the deep black sea was the blink shone from the beacon.黑黢黢的海面上唯一的光明就只有灯塔上闪现的亮光了。

169 craters   

n.火山口( crater的名词复数 )；弹坑等

参考例句：

• Small meteorites have left impact craters all over the planet's surface. 这个行星的表面布满了小块陨石留下的撞击坑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The battlefield was full of craters made by exploding shells. 战场上布满弹坑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

170 stationary   

adj.固定的，静止不动的

参考例句：

• A stationary object is easy to be aimed at.一个静止不动的物体是容易瞄准的。
• Wait until the bus is stationary before you get off.你要等公共汽车停稳了再下车。

171 fissure   

n.裂缝；裂伤

参考例句：

• Though we all got out to examine the fissure,he remained in the car.我们纷纷下车察看那个大裂缝，他却呆在车上。
• Ground fissure is the main geological disaster in Xi'an city construction.地裂缝是西安市主要的工程地质灾害问题。

172 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

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

173 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。

174 plunder   

vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠

参考例句：

• The thieves hid their plunder in the cave.贼把赃物藏在山洞里。
• Trade should not serve as a means of economic plunder.贸易不应当成为经济掠夺的手段。

175 civilized   

a.有教养的，文雅的

参考例句：

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

176 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》

177 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

178 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。

179 dissenters   

n.持异议者，持不同意见者( dissenter的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He attacked the indulgence shown to religious dissenters. 他抨击对宗教上持不同政见者表现出的宽容。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• (The dissenters would have allowed even more leeway to the Secretary.) （持异议者还会给行政长官留有更多的余地。） 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法

180 furtively   

adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地

参考例句：

• At this some of the others furtively exchanged significant glances. 听他这样说，有几个人心照不宣地彼此对望了一眼。
• Remembering my presence, he furtively dropped it under his chair. 后来想起我在，他便偷偷地把书丢在椅子下。

181 pawn   

n.典当，抵押，小人物，走卒；v.典当，抵押

参考例句：

• He is contemplating pawning his watch.他正在考虑抵押他的手表。
• It looks as though he is being used as a political pawn by the President.看起来他似乎被总统当作了政治卒子。

182 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。

183 resonant   

adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的

参考例句：

• She has a resonant voice.她的嗓子真亮。
• He responded with a resonant laugh.他报以洪亮的笑声。

184 rustle   

v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声

参考例句：

• She heard a rustle in the bushes.她听到灌木丛中一阵沙沙声。
• He heard a rustle of leaves in the breeze.他听到树叶在微风中发出的沙沙声。

185 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

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

186 cavern   

n.洞穴，大山洞

参考例句：

• The cavern walls echoed his cries.大山洞的四壁回响着他的喊声。
• It suddenly began to shower,and we took refuge in the cavern.天突然下起雨来，我们在一个山洞里避雨。

187 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。

188 relaxation   

n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐

参考例句：

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

189 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。

190 inaccessibly   

Inaccessibly

参考例句：

• At ordinary times we also get together inaccessibly in Beijing. 平时我们在北京也难得聚一次。 来自互联网

191 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

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

192 numb   

adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木

参考例句：

• His fingers were numb with cold.他的手冻得发麻。
• Numb with cold,we urged the weary horses forward.我们冻得发僵，催着疲惫的马继续往前走。

193 tenement   

n.公寓；房屋

参考例句：

• They live in a tenement.他们住在廉价公寓里。
• She felt very smug in a tenement yard like this.就是在个这样的杂院里，她觉得很得意。

194 momentum   

n.动力，冲力，势头；动量

参考例句：

• We exploit the energy and momentum conservation laws in this way.我们就是这样利用能量和动量守恒定律的。
• The law of momentum conservation could supplant Newton's third law.动量守恒定律可以取代牛顿第三定律。

195 subterranean   

adj.地下的，地表下的

参考例句：

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

196 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。

197 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

198 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

199 unintelligible   

adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的

参考例句：

• If a computer is given unintelligible data, it returns unintelligible results.如果计算机得到的是难以理解的数据，它给出的也将是难以理解的结果。
• The terms were unintelligible to ordinary folk.这些术语一般人是不懂的。

200 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。

201 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。

202 clattered   

发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He dropped the knife and it clattered on the stone floor. 他一失手，刀子当啷一声掉到石头地面上。
• His hand went limp and the knife clattered to the ground. 他的手一软，刀子当啷一声掉到地上。

203 razed   

v.彻底摧毁，将…夷为平地( raze的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The village was razed to the ground . 这座村庄被夷为平地。
• Many villages were razed to the ground. 许多村子被夷为平地。 来自《简明英汉词典》

204 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。

205 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。

206 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。

207 sagging   

下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度

参考例句：

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

208 undone   

a.未做完的，未完成的

参考例句：

• He left nothing undone that needed attention.所有需要注意的事他都注意到了。

209 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

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

210 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。

211 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

212 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

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

213 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。

214 moldy   

adj.发霉的

参考例句：

• She chucked the moldy potatoes in the dustbin.她把发霉的土豆扔进垃圾箱。
• Oranges can be kept for a long time without going moldy.橙子可以存放很长时间而不腐烂。

215 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。

216 scrawled   

乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I tried to read his directions, scrawled on a piece of paper. 我尽量弄明白他草草写在一片纸上的指示。
• Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take it -- I got more." 汤姆在他的写字板上写了几个字：“请你收下吧，我多得是哩。”

217 illiterate   

adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲

参考例句：

• There are still many illiterate people in our country.在我国还有许多文盲。
• I was an illiterate in the old society,but now I can read.我这个旧社会的文盲，今天也认字了。

218 installments   

部分( installment的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The first two installments were pretty close together in 1980. 第一次和节二次提款隔得很近，都是在1980年提的。
• You have an installments sales contract. 你已经订立了一份分期付款的买卖契约了。

219 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

220 poise   

vt./vi. 平衡，保持平衡；n.泰然自若，自信

参考例句：

• She hesitated briefly but quickly regained her poise.她犹豫片刻，但很快恢复了镇静。
• Ballet classes are important for poise and grace.芭蕾课对培养优雅的姿仪非常重要。

221 converging   

adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集

参考例句：

• Plants had gradually evolved along diverging and converging pathways. 植物是沿着趋异和趋同两种途径逐渐演化的。 来自辞典例句
• This very slowly converging series was known to Leibniz in 1674. 这个收敛很慢的级数是莱布尼茨在1674年得到的。 来自辞典例句

222 wail   

vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸

参考例句：

• Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里，一位老太太伤心地哭起来。
• One of the small children began to wail with terror.小孩中的一个吓得大哭起来。

223 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。

224 awakening   

n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的

参考例句：

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

225 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。

226 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。

227 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？

228 gasps   

v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要

参考例句：

• He leant against the railing, his breath coming in short gasps. 他倚着栏杆，急促地喘气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• My breaths were coming in gasps. 我急促地喘起气来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

229 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。

230 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

231 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。

232 sneaking   

a.秘密的，不公开的

参考例句：

• She had always had a sneaking affection for him. 以前她一直暗暗倾心于他。
• She ducked the interviewers by sneaking out the back door. 她从后门偷偷溜走，躲开采访者。

233 follower   

n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒

参考例句：

• He is a faithful follower of his home football team.他是他家乡足球队的忠实拥护者。
• Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。

234 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。

235 deception   

n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计

参考例句：

• He admitted conspiring to obtain property by deception.他承认曾与人合谋骗取财产。
• He was jailed for two years for fraud and deception.他因为诈骗和欺诈入狱服刑两年。

236 extort   

v.勒索，敲诈，强要

参考例句：

• The blackmailer tried to extort a large sum of money from him.勒索者企图向他勒索一大笔钱。
• They absolutely must not harm the people or extort money from them.严格禁止坑害勒索群众。

237 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。

238 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。

239 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

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

240 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》

241 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。

242 ballroom   

n.舞厅

参考例句：

• The boss of the ballroom excused them the fee.舞厅老板给他们免费。
• I go ballroom dancing twice a week.我一个星期跳两次交际舞。

243 efficiently   

adv.高效率地，有能力地

参考例句：

• The worker oils the machine to operate it more efficiently.工人给机器上油以使机器运转更有效。
• Local authorities have to learn to allocate resources efficiently.地方政府必须学会有效地分配资源。

244 orator   

n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• The orator gestured vigorously while speaking.这位演讲者讲话时用力地做手势。

245 diffused   

散布的，普及的，扩散的

参考例句：

• A drop of milk diffused in the water. 一滴牛奶在水中扩散开来。
• Gases and liquids diffused. 气体和液体慢慢混合了。

246 mesh   

n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络

参考例句：

• Their characters just don't mesh.他们的性格就是合不来。
• This is the net having half inch mesh.这是有半英寸网眼的网。

247 royalties   

特许权使用费

参考例句：

• I lived on about £3,000 a year from the royalties on my book. 我靠着写书得来的每年约3，000英镑的版税生活。 来自辞典例句
• Payments shall generally be made in the form of royalties. 一般应采取提成方式支付。 来自经济法规部分

248 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。

249 cylinders   

n.圆筒( cylinder的名词复数 )；圆柱；汽缸；（尤指用作容器的）圆筒状物

参考例句：

• They are working on all cylinders to get the job finished. 他们正在竭尽全力争取把这工作干完。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• That jeep has four cylinders. 那辆吉普车有4个汽缸。 来自《简明英汉词典》

250 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》

251 rusted   

v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

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

252 relic   

n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物

参考例句：

• This stone axe is a relic of ancient times.这石斧是古代的遗物。
• He found himself thinking of the man as a relic from the past.他把这个男人看成是过去时代的人物。

253 coffin   

n.棺材，灵柩

参考例句：

• When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
• The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。

254 exorbitant   

adj.过分的；过度的

参考例句：

• More competition should help to drive down exorbitant phone charges.更多的竞争有助于降低目前畸高的电话收费。
• The price of food here is exorbitant. 这儿的食物价格太高。

255 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。

256 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。

257 hips   

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

参考例句：

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

258 frail   

adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的

参考例句：

• Mrs. Warner is already 96 and too frail to live by herself.华纳太太已经九十六岁了，身体虚弱，不便独居。
• She lay in bed looking particularly frail.她躺在床上，看上去特别虚弱。

259 metallic   

adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的

参考例句：

• A sharp metallic note coming from the outside frightened me.外面传来尖锐铿锵的声音吓了我一跳。
• He picked up a metallic ring last night.昨夜他捡了一个金属戒指。

260 joviality   

n.快活

参考例句：

• However, there is an air of joviality in the sugar camps. 然而炼糖营房里却充满着热气腾腾的欢乐气氛。 来自辞典例句
• Immediately he noticed the joviality of Stane's manner. 他随即注意到史丹兴高采烈的神情。 来自辞典例句

261 patriotic   

adj.爱国的，有爱国心的

参考例句：

• His speech was full of patriotic sentiments.他的演说充满了爱国之情。
• The old man is a patriotic overseas Chinese.这位老人是一位爱国华侨。

262 invaluable   

adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的

参考例句：

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

263 gratitude   

adj.感激，感谢

参考例句：

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

264 soothing   

adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的

参考例句：

• Put on some nice soothing music.播放一些柔和舒缓的音乐。
• His casual, relaxed manner was very soothing.他随意而放松的举动让人很快便平静下来。

265 dispel   

vt.驱走，驱散，消除

参考例句：

• I tried in vain to dispel her misgivings.我试图消除她的疑虑，但没有成功。
• We hope the programme will dispel certain misconceptions about the disease.我们希望这个节目能消除对这种疾病的一些误解。

266 apprehension   

n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑

参考例句：

• There were still areas of doubt and her apprehension grew.有些地方仍然存疑，于是她越来越担心。
• She is a girl of weak apprehension.她是一个理解力很差的女孩。

267 utensils   

器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物

参考例句：

• Formerly most of our household utensils were made of brass. 以前我们家庭用的器皿多数是用黄铜做的。
• Some utensils were in a state of decay when they were unearthed. 有些器皿在出土时已经残破。

268 amicably   

adv.友善地

参考例句：

• Steering according to the wind, he also framed his words more amicably. 他真会看风使舵，口吻也马上变得温和了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The couple parted amicably. 这对夫妻客气地分手了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

269 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。

270 fixtures   

（房屋等的）固定装置( fixture的名词复数 )； 如（浴盆、抽水马桶）； 固定在某位置的人或物； （定期定点举行的）体育活动

参考例句：

• The insurance policy covers the building and any fixtures contained therein. 保险单为这座大楼及其中所有的设施保了险。
• The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided. 固定设备已经卖了，钱也分了。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

271 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

272 shuddered   

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

参考例句：

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

273 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。

274 evacuated   

撤退者的

参考例句：

• Police evacuated nearby buildings. 警方已将附近大楼的居民疏散。
• The fireman evacuated the guests from the burning hotel. 消防队员把客人们从燃烧着的旅馆中撤出来。

275 velvet   

n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的

参考例句：

• This material feels like velvet.这料子摸起来像丝绒。
• The new settlers wore the finest silk and velvet clothing.新来的移民穿着最华丽的丝绸和天鹅绒衣服。

276 camouflage   

n./v.掩饰，伪装

参考例句：

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

277 impaired   

adj.受损的；出毛病的；有（身体或智力）缺陷的v.损害，削弱( impair的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Much reading has impaired his vision. 大量读书损害了他的视力。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• His hearing is somewhat impaired. 他的听觉已受到一定程度的损害。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

278 bulge   

n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀

参考例句：

• The apple made a bulge in his pocket.苹果把他口袋塞得鼓了起来。
• What's that awkward bulge in your pocket?你口袋里那块鼓鼓囊囊的东西是什么？

279 bulges   

膨胀( bulge的名词复数 )； 鼓起； （身体的）肥胖部位； 暂时的激增

参考例句：

• His pocket bulges with apples. 他的衣袋装着苹果鼓了起来。
• He bulges out of his black T-shirt. 他的肚子在黑色T恤衫下鼓鼓地挺着。

280 suite   

n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员

参考例句：

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

281 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。

282 tickled   

（使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐

参考例句：

• We were tickled pink to see our friends on television. 在电视中看到我们的一些朋友，我们高兴极了。
• I tickled the baby's feet and made her laugh. 我胳肢孩子的脚，使她发笑。

283 disarming   

adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒

参考例句：

• He flashed her a disarming smile. 他朝她笑了一下，让她消消气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We will agree to disarming troops and leaving their weapons at military positions. 我们将同意解除军队的武装并把武器留在军事阵地。 来自辞典例句

284 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

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

285 invitingly   

adv. 动人地

参考例句：

• Her lips pouted invitingly. 她挑逗地撮起双唇。
• The smooth road sloped invitingly before her. 平展的山路诱人地倾斜在她面前。

286 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。

287 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。

288 rigid   

adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的

参考例句：

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

289 amend   

vt.修改，修订，改进；n.[pl.]赔罪，赔偿

参考例句：

• The teacher advised him to amend his way of living.老师劝他改变生活方式。
• You must amend your pronunciation.你必须改正你的发音。

290 implicitly   

adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地

参考例句：

• Many verbs and many words of other kinds are implicitly causal. 许多动词和许多其他类词都蕴涵着因果关系。
• I can trust Mr. Somerville implicitly, I suppose? 我想，我可以毫无保留地信任萨莫维尔先生吧？

291 interfere   

v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰

参考例句：

• If we interfere, it may do more harm than good.如果我们干预的话，可能弊多利少。
• When others interfere in the affair,it always makes troubles. 别人一卷入这一事件，棘手的事情就来了。

292 placatingly   

参考例句：

• He smiled placatingly and tucked the bills away in his pocket. 冯云卿陪着笑脸说，就把那些票据收起来。 来自子夜部分

293 evaded   

逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出

参考例句：

• For two weeks they evaded the press. 他们有两周一直避而不见记者。
• The lion evaded the hunter. 那狮子躲开了猎人。

294 negation   

n.否定；否认

参考例句：

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

295 withdrawal   

n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销

参考例句：

• The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
• They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。

296 incentive   

n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机

参考例句：

• Money is still a major incentive in most occupations.在许多职业中，钱仍是主要的鼓励因素。
• He hasn't much incentive to work hard.他没有努力工作的动机。

297 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。

298 WHIMS   

虚妄，禅病

参考例句：

• The mate observed regretfully that he could not account for that young fellow's whims. 那位伙伴很遗憾地说他不能说出那年轻人产生怪念头的原因。
• The rest she had for food and her own whims. 剩下的钱她用来吃饭和买一些自己喜欢的东西。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

299 impractical   

adj.不现实的，不实用的，不切实际的

参考例句：

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

300 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

301 ebb   

vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态

参考例句：

• The flood and ebb tides alternates with each other.涨潮和落潮交替更迭。
• They swam till the tide began to ebb.他们一直游到开始退潮。

302 jutting   

v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出

参考例句：

• The climbers rested on a sheltered ledge jutting out from the cliff. 登山者在悬崖的岩棚上休息。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The soldier saw a gun jutting out of some bushes. 那士兵看见丛林中有一枝枪伸出来。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

303 bully   

n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮

参考例句：

• A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
• The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。

304 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

305 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。

306 postponement   

n.推迟

参考例句：

• He compounded with his creditors for a postponement of payment. 他与债权人达成协议延期付款。
• Rain caused the postponement of several race-meetings. 几次赛马大会因雨延期。

307 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。

308 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。

309 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

310 bustling   

adj.喧闹的

参考例句：

• The market was bustling with life. 市场上生机勃勃。
• This district is getting more and more prosperous and bustling. 这一带越来越繁华了。

311 sleet   

n.雨雪；v.下雨雪，下冰雹

参考例句：

• There was a great deal of sleet last night.昨夜雨夹雪下得真大。
• When winter comes,we get sleet and frost.冬天来到时我们这儿会有雨夹雪和霜冻。

312 desolately   

荒凉地，寂寞地

参考例句：

• He knows the truth and it's killing him,'she thought desolately. 他已经明白了，并且非常难过，"思嘉凄凉地思忖着。
• At last, the night falling, they returned desolately to Hamelin. 最后，夜幕来临，他们伤心地回到了哈默林镇。

313 hunched   

（常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的

参考例句：

• He sat with his shoulders hunched up. 他耸起双肩坐着。
• Stephen hunched down to light a cigarette. 斯蒂芬弓着身子点燃一支烟。

314 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。

315 vendor   

n.卖主；小贩

参考例句：

• She looked at the vendor who cheated her the other day with distaste.她厌恶地望着那个前几天曾经欺骗过她的小贩。
• He must inform the vendor immediately.他必须立即通知卖方。

316 collaborating   

合作( collaborate的现在分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• Joe is collaborating on the work with a friend. 乔正与一位朋友合作做那件工作。
• He was not only learning from but also collaborating with Joseph Thomson. 他不仅是在跟约瑟福？汤姆逊学习，而且也是在和他合作。

317 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。

318 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。

319 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。

320 bastard   

n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子

参考例句：

• He was never concerned about being born a bastard.他从不介意自己是私生子。
• There was supposed to be no way to get at the bastard.据说没有办法买通那个混蛋。

321 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。

322 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。

323 frantically   

ad.发狂地, 发疯地

参考例句：

• He dashed frantically across the road. 他疯狂地跑过马路。
• She bid frantically for the old chair. 她发狂地喊出高价要买那把古老的椅子。

324 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

325 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

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

326 harmonious   

adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的

参考例句：

• Their harmonious relationship resulted in part from their similar goals.他们关系融洽的部分原因是他们有着相似的目标。
• The room was painted in harmonious colors.房间油漆得色彩调和。

327 seceding   

v.脱离，退出( secede的现在分词 )

参考例句：

328 reassuring   

a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的

参考例句：

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

329 disquieting   

adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme. 非洲前线的消息极其令人不安。 来自英汉文学
• That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon. 那一带地方一向隐隐约约使人感到心神不安甚至在下午耀眼的阳光里也一样。 来自辞典例句

330 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。

331 arrogant   

adj.傲慢的，自大的

参考例句：

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

332 unlimited   

adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的

参考例句：

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

333 audacity   

n.大胆，卤莽，无礼

参考例句：

• He had the audacity to ask for an increase in salary.他竟然厚着脸皮要求增加薪水。
• He had the audacity to pick pockets in broad daylight.他竟敢在光天化日之下掏包。

334 gulping   

v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住

参考例句：

• She crawled onto the river bank and lay there gulping in air. 她爬上河岸，躺在那里喘着粗气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• And you'll even feel excited gulping down a glass. 你甚至可以感觉到激动下一杯。 来自互联网

335 vindicated   

v.澄清（某人/某事物）受到的责难或嫌疑( vindicate的过去式和过去分词 )；表明或证明（所争辩的事物）属实、正当、有效等；维护

参考例句：

• I have every confidence that this decision will be fully vindicated. 我完全相信这一决定的正确性将得到充分证明。
• Subsequent events vindicated the policy. 后来的事实证明那政策是对的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

336 dreary   

adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的

参考例句：

• They live such dreary lives.他们的生活如此乏味。
• She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事。

337 postures   

姿势( posture的名词复数 )； 看法； 态度； 立场

参考例句：

• Modern consciousness has this great need to explode its own postures. 现代意识很有这种摧毁本身姿态的需要。
• They instinctively gathered themselves into more tidy postures. 她们本能地恢复了端庄的姿态。

338 blur   

n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚

参考例句：

• The houses appeared as a blur in the mist.房子在薄雾中隐隐约约看不清。
• If you move your eyes and your head,the picture will blur.如果你的眼睛或头动了，图像就会变得模糊不清。

339 impervious   

adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的

参考例句：

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

340 collapsing   

压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂

参考例句：

• Rescuers used props to stop the roof of the tunnel collapsing. 救援人员用支柱防止隧道顶塌陷。
• The rocks were folded by collapsing into the center of the trough. 岩石由于坍陷进入凹槽的中心而发生褶皱。

341 confidential   

adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的

参考例句：

• He refused to allow his secretary to handle confidential letters.他不让秘书处理机密文件。
• We have a confidential exchange of views.我们推心置腹地交换意见。

342 catastrophes   

n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难

参考例句：

• Two of history's worst natural catastrophes occurred in 1970. 1970年发生了历史上最严重两次自然灾害。 来自辞典例句
• The Swiss deposits contain evidence of such catastrophes. 瑞士的遗址里还有这种灾难的证据。 来自辞典例句

343 bouquet   

n.花束，酒香

参考例句：

• This wine has a rich bouquet.这种葡萄酒有浓郁的香气。
• Her wedding bouquet consisted of roses and ivy.她的婚礼花篮包括玫瑰和长春藤。

344 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。

345 admonished   

v.劝告( admonish的过去式和过去分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责

参考例句：

• She was admonished for chewing gum in class. 她在课堂上嚼口香糖，受到了告诫。
• The teacher admonished the child for coming late to school. 那个孩子迟到，老师批评了他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

346 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。

347 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。

348 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

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

349 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

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

350 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

351 sloppy   

adj.邋遢的，不整洁的

参考例句：

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

352 irresistibly   

adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地

参考例句：

• 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。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He was irresistibly attracted by her charm. 他不能自已地被她的魅力所吸引。 来自《简明英汉词典》

353 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

354 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

355 abject   

adj.极可怜的，卑屈的

参考例句：

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

356 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

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

357 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

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

358 omission   

n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长

参考例句：

• The omission of the girls was unfair.把女孩排除在外是不公平的。
• The omission of this chapter from the third edition was a gross oversight.第三版漏印这一章是个大疏忽。

359 stature   

n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材

参考例句：

• He is five feet five inches in stature.他身高5英尺5英寸。
• The dress models are tall of stature.时装模特儿的身材都较高。

360 squeak   

n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another squeak out of you!我不想再听到你出声！
• We won the game,but it was a narrow squeak.我们打赢了这场球赛，不过是侥幸取胜。

361 apprehensively   

adv.担心地

参考例句：

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

362 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

363 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。

364 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。

365 prosaic   

adj.单调的，无趣的

参考例句：

• The truth is more prosaic.真相更加乏味。
• It was a prosaic description of the scene.这是对场景没有想象力的一个描述。

366 factions   

组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The gens also lives on in the "factions." 氏族此外还继续存在于“factions〔“帮”〕中。 来自英汉非文学 - 家庭、私有制和国家的起源
• rival factions within the administration 政府中的对立派别

367 ransom   

n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救

参考例句：

• We'd better arrange the ransom right away.我们最好马上把索取赎金的事安排好。
• The kidnappers exacted a ransom of 10000 from the family.绑架者向这家人家勒索10000英镑的赎金。

368 stonily   

石头地，冷酷地

参考例句：

• She stared stonily at him for a minute. 她冷冷地盯着他看了片刻。
• Proudly lined up on a long bench, they stonily awaited their victims. 轿夫们把花炮全搬出来，放在门房里供人们赏鉴。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

369 ledger   

n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿

参考例句：

• The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.那个年轻人点头应诺，然后又埋头写起分类帐。
• She is a real accountant who even keeps a detailed household ledger.她不愧是搞财务的，家庭分类账记得清楚详细。

370 condescended   

屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲

参考例句：

• We had to wait almost an hour before he condescended to see us. 我们等了几乎一小时他才屈尊大驾来见我们。
• The king condescended to take advice from his servants. 国王屈驾向仆人征求意见。

371 nausea   

n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶)

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕期常有恶心的现象。
• He experienced nausea after eating octopus.吃了章鱼后他感到恶心。

372 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。

373 chestnut   

n.栗树，栗子

参考例句：

• We have a chestnut tree in the bottom of our garden.我们的花园尽头有一棵栗树。
• In summer we had tea outdoors,under the chestnut tree.夏天我们在室外栗树下喝茶。

374 inviolate   

adj.未亵渎的，未受侵犯的

参考例句：

• The constitution proclaims that public property shall be inviolate.宪法宣告公共财产不可侵犯。
• They considered themselves inviolate from attack.他们认为自己是不可侵犯的。

375 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。

376 hordes   

n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落

参考例句：

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

377 knack   

n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法

参考例句：

• He has a knack of teaching arithmetic.他教算术有诀窍。
• Making omelettes isn't difficult,but there's a knack to it.做煎蛋饼并不难，但有窍门。

378 traitor   

n.叛徒，卖国贼

参考例句：

• The traitor was finally found out and put in prison.那个卖国贼终于被人发现并被监禁了起来。
• He was sold out by a traitor and arrested.他被叛徒出卖而被捕了。

379 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。

380 frailties   

n.脆弱( frailty的名词复数 )；虚弱；（性格或行为上的）弱点；缺点

参考例句：

• The fact indicates the economic frailties of this type of farming. 这一事实表明，这种类型的农业在经济上有其脆弱性。 来自辞典例句
• He failed therein to take account of the frailties of human nature--the difficulties of matrimonial life. 在此，他没有考虑到人性的种种弱点--夫妻生活的种种难处。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

381 muffled   

adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己）

参考例句：

• muffled voices from the next room 从隔壁房间里传来的沉闷声音
• There was a muffled explosion somewhere on their right. 在他们的右面什么地方有一声沉闷的爆炸声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

382 tuxedo   

n.礼服，无尾礼服

参考例句：

• Well,you have your own tuxedo.噢，你有自己的燕尾服。
• Have I told you how amazing you look in this tuxedo?我告诉过你穿这件燕尾服看起来很棒吗？

383 stony   

adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的

参考例句：

• The ground is too dry and stony.这块地太干，而且布满了石头。
• He listened to her story with a stony expression.他带着冷漠的表情听她讲经历。

384 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》

385 persuasively   

adv.口才好地；令人信服地

参考例句：

• Students find that all historians argue reasonably and persuasively. 学生们发现所有的历史学家都争论得有条有理，并且很有说服力。 来自辞典例句
• He spoke a very persuasively but I smelled a rat and refused his offer. 他说得头头是道，但我觉得有些可疑，于是拒绝了他的建议。 来自辞典例句

386 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。

387 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。

388 relinquishing   

交出，让给( relinquish的现在分词 )； 放弃

参考例句：

• The international relinquishing of sovereignty would have to spring from the people. 在国际间放弃主权一举要由人民提出要求。
• We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 我们很明白，没有人会为了废除权力而夺取权力。 来自英汉文学

389 discordant   

adj.不调和的

参考例句：

• Leonato thought they would make a discordant pair.里奥那托认为他们不适宜作夫妻。
• For when we are deeply mournful discordant above all others is the voice of mirth.因为当我们极度悲伤的时候，欢乐的声音会比其他一切声音都更显得不谐调。

390 slashes   

n.（用刀等）砍( slash的名词复数 )；（长而窄的）伤口；斜杠；撒尿v.挥砍( slash的第三人称单数 )；鞭打；割破；削减

参考例句：

• They report substantial slashes in this year's defense outlays. 他们报道今年度国防经费的大量削减。 来自辞典例句
• Inmates suffered injuries ranging from stab wounds and slashes to head trauma. 囚犯们有的被刺伤，有的被砍伤，而有的头部首创，伤势不一而足。 来自互联网

391 dormant   

adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的

参考例句：

• Many animals are in a dormant state during winter.在冬天许多动物都处于睡眠状态。
• This dormant volcano suddenly fired up.这座休眠火山突然爆发了。

392 ovation   

n.欢呼，热烈欢迎，热烈鼓掌

参考例句：

• The hero received a great ovation from the crowd. 那位英雄受到人群的热烈欢迎。
• The show won a standing ovation. 这场演出赢得全场起立鼓掌。

393 clenching   

v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I'll never get used to them, she thought, clenching her fists. 我永远也看不惯这些家伙，她握紧双拳，心里想。 来自飘（部分）
• Clenching her lips, she nodded. 她紧闭着嘴唇，点点头。 来自辞典例句

394 tablecloth   

n.桌布，台布

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth.他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。
• She smoothed down a wrinkled tablecloth.她把起皱的桌布熨平了。

395 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。

396 irrationality   

n. 不合理，无理性

参考例句：

• Such stoppages as are observed in practice are thus attributed to mistakes or even irrationality. 在实际情况中看到的这些停工，要归因于失误或甚至是非理性的东西。
• For all its harshness and irrationality, it is the only world we've got. 尽管它严酷而又不合理，它终究是我们具有的唯一的世界。

397 incurred   

[医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式

参考例句：

• She had incurred the wrath of her father by marrying without his consent 她未经父亲同意就结婚，使父亲震怒。
• We will reimburse any expenses incurred. 我们将付还所有相关费用。

398 sullen   

adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的

参考例句：

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

399 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

400 preposterously   

adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地

参考例句：

• That is a preposterously high price! 那价格高得出奇！ 来自辞典例句

401 bribe   

n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通

参考例句：

• He tried to bribe the policeman not to arrest him.他企图贿赂警察不逮捕他。
• He resolutely refused their bribe.他坚决不接受他们的贿赂。

402 spurts   

短暂而突然的活动或努力( spurt的名词复数 )； 突然奋起

参考例句：

• Great spurts of gas shoot out of the sun. 太阳气体射出形成大爆发。
• Spurts of warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. 阵阵温热的雨点拍打在他们脸上。

403 shuddering   

v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动

参考例句：

• 'I am afraid of it,'she answered, shuddering. “我害怕，”她发着抖，说。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• She drew a deep shuddering breath. 她不由得打了个寒噤，深深吸了口气。 来自飘（部分）

404 climax   

n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点

参考例句：

• The fifth scene was the climax of the play.第五场是全剧的高潮。
• His quarrel with his father brought matters to a climax.他与他父亲的争吵使得事态发展到了顶点。

405 screeching   

v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫

参考例句：

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

406 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。

407 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

408 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

409 swooped   

俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The aircraft swooped down over the buildings. 飞机俯冲到那些建筑物上方。
• The hawk swooped down on the rabbit and killed it. 鹰猛地朝兔子扑下来，并把它杀死。

410 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。

411 ravages   

劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹

参考例句：

• the ravages of war 战争造成的灾难
• It is hard for anyone to escape from the ravages of time. 任何人都很难逃避时间的摧残。

412 evasion   

n.逃避，偷漏(税)

参考例句：

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

413 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

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

414 expectancy   

n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额

参考例句：

• Japanese people have a very high life expectancy.日本人的平均寿命非常长。
• The atomosphere of tense expectancy sobered everyone.这种期望的紧张气氛使每个人变得严肃起来。

415 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。

416 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。

417 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》

418 merger   

n.企业合并，并吞

参考例句：

• Acceptance of the offer is the first step to a merger.对这项提议的赞同是合并的第一步。
• Shareholders will be voting on the merger of the companies.股东们将投票表决公司合并问题。

419 watchful   

adj.注意的，警惕的

参考例句：

• The children played under the watchful eye of their father.孩子们在父亲的小心照看下玩耍。
• It is important that health organizations remain watchful.卫生组织保持警惕是极为重要的。

420 administrator   

n.经营管理者，行政官员

参考例句：

• The role of administrator absorbed much of Ben's energy.行政职务耗掉本很多精力。
• He has proved himself capable as administrator.他表现出管理才能。

421 sincerity   

n.真诚，诚意；真实

参考例句：

• His sincerity added much more authority to the story.他的真诚更增加了故事的说服力。
• He tried hard to satisfy me of his sincerity.他竭力让我了解他的诚意。

422 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

423 nervously   

adv.神情激动地，不安地

参考例句：

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

424 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

425 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。

426 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

427 amiable   

adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的

参考例句：

• She was a very kind and amiable old woman.她是个善良和气的老太太。
• We have a very amiable companionship.我们之间存在一种友好的关系。

428 generosity   

n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为

参考例句：

• We should match their generosity with our own.我们应该像他们一样慷慨大方。
• We adore them for their generosity.我们钦佩他们的慷慨。

429 license   

n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许

参考例句：

• The foreign guest has a license on the person.这个外国客人随身携带执照。
• The driver was arrested for having false license plates on his car.司机由于使用假车牌而被捕。

430 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