He had asked her that in the past often enough; they had, with the odd irregular rhythm of their intensities15 and avoidances, exchanged ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool intervals16, washed like figures traced in sea-sand. It had ever been the mark of their talk that the oldest allusions17 in it required but a little dismissal and reaction to come out again, sounding for the hour as new. She could thus at present meet his enquiry quite freshly and patiently. “Oh yes, I’ve repeatedly thought, only it always seemed to me of old that I couldn’t quite make up my mind. I thought of dreadful things, between which it was difficult to choose; and so must you have done.”
“Rather! I feel now as if I had scarce done anything else. I appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of nothing but dreadful things. A great many of them I’ve at different times named to you, but there were others I couldn’t name.”
“They were too, too dreadful?”
“Too, too dreadful—some of them.”
She looked at him a minute, and there came to him as he met it, an inconsequent sense that her eyes, when one got their full clearness, were still as beautiful as they had been in youth, only beautiful with a strange cold light—a light that somehow was a part of the effect, if it wasn’t rather a part of the cause, of the pale hard sweetness of the season and the hour. “And yet,” she said at last, “there are horrors we’ve mentioned.”
It deepened the strangeness to see her, as such a figure in such a picture, talk of “horrors,” but she was to do in a few minutes something stranger yet—though even of this he was to take the full measure but afterwards—and the note of it already trembled. It was, for the matter of that, one of the signs that her eyes were having again the high flicker18 of their prime. He had to admit, however, what she said. “Oh yes, there were times when we did go far.” He caught himself in the act of speaking as if it all were over. Well, he wished it were; and the consummation depended for him clearly more and more on his friend.
But she had now a soft smile. “Oh far—!”
She was frail20 and ancient and charming as she continued to look at him, yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. “Do you consider that we went far?”
“Why I thought it the point you were just making—that we had looked most things in the face.”
“Including each other?” She still smiled. “But you’re quite right. We’ve had together great imaginations, often great fears; but some of them have been unspoken.”
“Then the worst—we haven’t faced that. I could face it, I believe, if I knew what you think it. I feel,” he explained, “as if I had lost my power to conceive such things.” And he wondered if he looked as blank as he sounded. “It’s spent.”
“Then why do you assume,” she asked, “that mine isn’t?”
“Because you’ve given me signs to the contrary. It isn’t a question for you of conceiving, imagining, comparing. It isn’t a question now of choosing.” At last he came out with it. “You know something I don’t. You’ve shown me that before.”
These last words had affected22 her, he made out in a moment, exceedingly, and she spoke21 with firmness. “I’ve shown you, my dear, nothing.”
He shook his head. “You can’t hide it.”
“You admitted it months ago, when I spoke of it to you as of something you were afraid I should find out. Your answer was that I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t, and I don’t pretend I have. But you had something therefore in mind, and I see now how it must have been, how it still is, the possibility that, of all possibilities, has settled itself for you as the worst. This,” he went on, “is why I appeal to you. I’m only afraid of ignorance to-day—I’m not afraid of knowledge.” And then as for a while she said nothing: “What makes me sure is that I see in your face and feel here, in this air and amid these appearances, that you’re out of it. You’ve done. You’ve had your experience. You leave me to my fate.”
Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decision to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal25, though still, with a small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. “It would be the worst,” she finally let herself say. “I mean the thing I’ve never said.”
“More monstrous. Isn’t that what you sufficiently27 express,” she asked, “in calling it the worst?”
Marcher thought. “Assuredly—if you mean, as I do, something that includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable.”
“It would if it should happen,” said May Bartram. “What we’re speaking of, remember, is only my idea.”
“It’s your belief,” Marcher returned. “That’s enough for me. I feel your beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you give me no more light on it, you abandon me.”
“No, no!” she repeated. “I’m with you—don’t you see?—still.” And as to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair—a movement she seldom risked in these days—and showed herself, all draped and all soft, in her fairness and slimness. “I haven’t forsaken28 you.”
It was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, and had the success of the impulse not, happily, been great, it would have touched him to pain more than to pleasure. But the cold charm in her eyes had spread, as she hovered29 before him, to all the rest of her person, so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth. He couldn’t pity her for that; he could only take her as she showed—as capable even yet of helping30 him. It was as if, at the same time, her light might at any instant go out; wherefore he must make the most of it. There passed before him with intensity31 the three or four things he wanted most to know; but the question that came of itself to his lips really covered the others. “Then tell me if I shall consciously suffer.”
It confirmed the authority he imputed33 to her, and it produced on him an extraordinary effect. “Well, what’s better than that? Do you call that the worst?”
“You think nothing is better?” she asked.
She seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered, though still with the dawn of a prospect34 of relief. “Why not, if one doesn’t know?” After which, as their eyes, over his question, met in a silence, the dawn deepened, and something to his purpose came prodigiously35 out of her very face. His own, as he took it in, suddenly flushed to the forehead, and he gasped36 with the force of a perception to which, on the instant, everything fitted. The sound of his gasp37 filled the air; then he became articulate. “I see—if I don’t suffer!”
In her own look, however, was doubt. “You see what?”
“Why what you mean—what you’ve always meant.”
She again shook her head. “What I mean isn’t what I’ve always meant. It’s different.”
“It’s something new?”
She hung back from it a little. “Something new. It’s not what you think. I see what you think.”
His divination38 drew breath then; only her correction might be wrong. “It isn’t that I am a blockhead?” he asked between faintness and grimness. “It isn’t that it’s all a mistake?”
“A mistake?” she pityingly echoed. That possibility, for her, he saw, would be monstrous; and if she guaranteed him the immunity39 from pain it would accordingly not be what she had in mind. “Oh no,” she declared; “it’s nothing of that sort. You’ve been right.”
Yet he couldn’t help asking himself if she weren’t, thus pressed, speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should be most in a hole if his history should prove all a platitude40. “Are you telling me the truth, so that I shan’t have been a bigger idiot than I can bear to know? I haven’t lived with a vain imagination, in the most besotted illusion? I haven’t waited but to see the door shut in my face?”
She shook her head again. “However the case stands that isn’t the truth. Whatever the reality, it is a reality. The door isn’t shut. The door’s open,” said May Bartram.
“Then something’s to come?”
She waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him. “It’s never too late.” She had, with her gliding41 step, diminished the distance between them, and she stood nearer to him, close to him, a minute, as if still charged with the unspoken. Her movement might have been for some finer emphasis of what she was at once hesitating and deciding to say. He had been standing42 by the chimney-piece, fireless and sparely adorned43, a small perfect old French clock and two morsels44 of rosy45 Dresden constituting all its furniture; and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him waiting, grasped it a little as for support and encouragement. She only kept him waiting, however; that is he only waited. It had become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid to him that she had something more to give him; her wasted face delicately shone with it—it glittered almost as with the white lustre46 of silver in her expression. She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately47 soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape48 the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the less, was that what he had expected failed to come to him. Something else took place instead, which seemed to consist at first in the mere49 closing of her eyes. She gave way at the same instant to a slow fine shudder50, and though he remained staring—though he stared in fact but the harder—turned off and regained51 her chair. It was the end of what she had been intending, but it left him thinking only of that.
“Well, you don’t say—?”
She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk back strangely pale. “I’m afraid I’m too ill.”
“Too ill to tell me?” it sprang up sharp to him, and almost to his lips, the fear she might die without giving him light. He checked himself in time from so expressing his question, but she answered as if she had heard the words.
“Don’t you know—now?”
“‘Now’—?” She had spoken as if some difference had been made within the moment. But her maid, quickly obedient to her bell, was already with them. “I know nothing.” And he was afterwards to say to himself that he must have spoken with odious52 impatience53, such an impatience as to show that, supremely54 disconcerted, he washed his hands of the whole question.
“Oh!” said May Bartram.
“Are you in pain?” he asked as the woman went to her.
“No,” said May Bartram.
Her maid, who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her room, fixed55 on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her; in spite of which, however, he showed once more his mystification.
“What then has happened?”
She was once more, with her companion’s help, on her feet, and, feeling withdrawal56 imposed on him, he had blankly found his hat and gloves and had reached the door. Yet he waited for her answer. “What was to,” she said.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
waning
|
|
| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
serene
|
|
| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
exquisite
|
|
| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
petals
|
|
| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
fronds
|
|
| n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
exempt
|
|
| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
droop
|
|
| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
complexity
|
|
| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
creases
|
|
| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
reigned
|
|
| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
gulf
|
|
| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
ken
|
|
| n.视野，知识领域 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
vaguely
|
|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
forsake
|
|
| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
intensities
|
|
| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
intervals
|
|
| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
allusions
|
|
| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
flicker
|
|
| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
ironic
|
|
| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
frail
|
|
| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
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： |
|
|
|
|
22
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
smothered
|
|
| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
groan
|
|
| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
avowal
|
|
| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
monstrous
|
|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
sufficiently
|
|
| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
Forsaken
|
|
| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
hovered
|
|
| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
helping
|
|
| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
intensity
|
|
| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
promptly
|
|
| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
imputed
|
|
| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
prodigiously
|
|
| adv.异常地，惊人地，巨大地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
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： |
|
|
|
|
37
gasp
|
|
| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
divination
|
|
| n.占卜，预测 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
immunity
|
|
| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
platitude
|
|
| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
gliding
|
|
| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
adorned
|
|
| [计]被修饰的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
morsels
|
|
| n.一口( morsel的名词复数 )；（尤指食物）小块，碎屑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
rosy
|
|
| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
lustre
|
|
| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
inordinately
|
|
| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
gape
|
|
| v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
shudder
|
|
| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
regained
|
|
| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
odious
|
|
| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
impatience
|
|
| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
supremely
|
|
| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
withdrawal
|
|
| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |