Effie wrote me to come home for the hot weather, but though I regretted afterward3 not having done so I could not make up my mind to leave Chicago. It seemed to me then that the deadly quality of Taylorville lay waiting like a trap, which in my present benumbed condition might close on me if I put myself in the way of it. I thought that if I got out of reach of the flare4 of light from the theatre doors, of the smell of back scenes and the florid grip of the posters, that I should never in this world win back to them. A summer in Taylorville would have saved me money, would have rested and perhaps restored the balance of my powers, but the inward monitor of which I was the mere5 shell and surface, clutched upon the city with the grip of desperation. I hung upon whatever slight attachments6 to the theatre my circumstances afforded, like the drowned upon a rope, and waited for the resuscitating7 touch. Somewhere beyond me I was aware of succour; not knowing from whence it should come, I grasped at everything within reach and was buffeted8 and torn about in the eddy9 of reverses.
What more even than his need of me, drove me back on Gerald McDermott, was the certainty that he was deriving10 from Fancy Filette the quality I missed. She was playing in one of the cheaper theatres in one of those entertainments that men are supposed to resort to when their families are out of town, and I had a moment's feeling that he exposed his sex to ridicule11 by the avidity with which he surrendered himself to her perfectly12 obvious methods. Until he sent his family north to one of the lake resorts for the hot weather, I found myself involved in certain obligations of visiting at his house, where I saw that his wife created for him by her incompetence13 much the same sort of background that my bereaved14 and purse-pinched condition made for me, and watched with alternate sympathy and resentment15 his flight from it to the effective self-complacency which Miss Filette induced in him.
I don't mean that Jerry wasn't fond of his wife in a way, and faithful to her, in so far as she didn't interfere16 with his male prerogative17 of being played upon by other women, but I do not think he had ever an inkling that the vortex of anger and despair which she forced him to share with her, in lieu of the passion which she couldn't any more excite, was of the same stripe as his need of the high, inflated18 mood that Miss Filette provided for him with her little bag of tricks. For from the first Jerry seized on me, poured himself out, despoiled19 himself of all the hopes, conjectures20, half-guesses of his career, and that without in the least discovering that I was in need of much the same sort of relief myself. After his wife had taken the children to the country—though she used even then to come down on him suddenly with both of them and break up his work for days, or just when it was running smoothly21, wire to him to rush up to Lake View and allay22 the horrors of her too active imagination—often evenings after the day's work, he would take me to dine at queer little French or Italian restaurants which were supposed to be preferred on account of the "atmosphere" rather than their cheapness, and uncoil for me there all the intricate turnings of his work upon itself, and the rich shapes and colours it took, played upon by the slanting23 eyes and carmine24 smile of Miss Filette. He would sit opposite me with a cigarette and a glass of "Dago red," his black, shining hair, which he wore too long, slanting above his forehead like a boding25 wing, uncramping his soul; and though I liked him as a friend, and as a playwright26 thought him immensely worth while, I was divided between exasperation27 at his tacit exclusion28 of me from the world of excited powers in which any stimulation29 of his maleness threw him, and fear that in missing his capacity for quick, shallow passions, I had missed the one indispensable thing for my art.
"It is the chance of a lifetime," Jerry would be reassuring30 me, "to delineate a character that will be so intimate an expression of the one who is to play it ... it's really extraordinary that she should have been named Fancy ... it's symbolic31."
"Oh, if you imagine she is really in the least like the Mrs. Brandis you are creating ... besides, I happen to know her name is Powers, Amanda Powers." He caught at this delightedly.
"Ah, she's a poet, a poet! Such self-knowledge! To think of her knowing what would suit her so exactly!"
But I was not in the least interested in Miss Filette's psychology32. What I was trying to get at was the source of the creative mood which I was sensible did not arise from anything Miss Filette was, but from what Jerry was able to think of her. I admitted it was a mood you had to be helped to, but I wasn't going to accept it from any male compliment to his inamorata. I set up Jerry's case alongside of Miss Dean and Manager O'Farrell, and a kind of fine intolerance drove me from it as ships are driven apart upon the tide.
It drove me back in the first instance upon what Pauline and Henry Mills stood for in my life. I was full of a formless importunate33 capacity, like the motor impulses of a paralytic34, and I imagined a relief from it in the shadow of some succoring35 male who, by assuming the traditional responsibility of getting a living, should leave me free to produce the perfect flower of Art. At the time I was as far from realizing as Pauline, that she was eminently36 the sort of woman the sheltered life produced; had Henry Mills been upon the market I should have seized upon him promptly37 as the solution of all my difficulties.
Pauline did her best for me—that is to say, she brought out for me an infinite variety and arrangement of the sentimentalized sex attractions with which she charmed dull care from Henry's brow. It was only by degrees that I perceived that the utter want of relativity of the quality that was known in Evanston as True Womanliness, was due to its being conditioned very much as I thought of myself as happiest to be. It was not until Pauline went to the country for the hot weather without making any sensible change in my affairs, that I began to understand how little she contributed. What I chiefly missed was a place to walk to when I went out for exercise.
I spent a great deal of time just walking, for there was not much doing in the theatrical38 line to interest me, and I was sustained and tormented39 by intimations that somewhere, not far from me, my Help walked too. I don't know where this conviction came from that there was help somewhere in the world; but by the middle of the summer the terrible, keen need of it walked with me through all my days and lay down with me at night. There were times when the certainty that it was there seemed almost enough to lift me again to a plane of power, other times when the sheer hunger of it bit into the bone. It was most like the sense I had had as a child of the large friendliness40 that brooded over Hadley's pasture; it was like the promise of the shining destiny that had moved between my youth and the common occurrence; but now at times, just along the edge of sleep, or out of the thick, waking drowse of heat, it shaped familiarly human. I think about that time I must have dreamed again the dream I had of Helmeth Garrett just after I had seen Modjeska, writing that letter in his uncle's house; and with the help of what my mother had told me I was able to read it plain. I do not distinctly remember dreaming this, but there were times when, just after waking, my mind would be full of him, and there would be a stir in me of the wings of power. But in the broad day, though I thought of him often, I could not so much as recall his face clearly.
The one thing that I remembered about him was that I had pleased him. It was a mortifying41 certainty that Jerry's ready acceptance of me as a woman of whom his wife could not possibly be jealous, had defined for me, that I didn't in general know how to please and interest men. They often were interested in me, but I was never in the least conscious of what drew them or caused them to sheer away. I had a suspicion, doubtless of Taylorvillian extraction, that there was a sort of culpability42 in knowing; but it came back to me now almost with a thrill that I had known with Helmeth Garrett. I had been able, out of all the possible things which might be said, to choose the thing that swayed him. I hadn't known ever for what things my husband loved me; but in a brief hour with Helmeth Garrett I was conscious of much in my manner to him arising from his conscious need. And I had no more than shaped this in my mind than I felt a faint stirring within me as of power.
About this time I began to be more aware of the Something Without, toward which my work tended, just after I had been asleep, as if the self of me had gone on seeking more successfully in the silences. I would arise very early with such a faint consciousness as a vine might have toward the nearest wall, and get up in the blue of the morning to go for long walks through the pleasant, empty streets, sometimes out to the lake shore where the glint of the moving water under the mist, struck faint sparkles from my stagnant44 surfaces. I would come back from these excursions beginning to faint with the day's heat, to wear through the afternoon with books and long drowses, and then in the cool of the evening It would call me again, and I would seek It until late at night, sometimes in the lit streets, fetid with the day's smells, sometimes on a roof garden or at a park concert, where the lights, the gayety, and the music served merely as a drug to my outer sense, which went on busily at its absorbing quest. Sometimes men spoke45 to me in these lonely wanderings; I would remember it afterward as one recalls little, unnoticed incidents in the midst of great excitement; but for the most part I was, except for the invisible presence, as unaccompanied as if the city had been quite empty. If I could have laid the anxiety of my diminishing bank account and the dread46 of not getting an engagement, I should have been almost happy.
It was along early in August that Chicago was greatly stirred by the visit of one of the Presidential candidates—for that was a Presidential year—who was also a popular hero. It had come rather unexpectedly and the preparations for it were of the hastiest. There was to be speaking at Armory47 Hall, and a reception afterward, and I thought I would go and clasp hands with the great man, as if, perhaps, I might find in it, as many of his admirers did, a sort of king's touch for the lethargy of my spirit. The meeting began early in the sweating afternoon and dragged out three heavy hours. Nothing of any importance transpired48 there until we were moving up the right side of the hall toward the receiving committee. The hall was split lengthwise by a bank of chairs, and down the left aisle49 the company of those who had already gripped the broad palm of the candidate, had been elbowed to oblivion by the committee. It was in the very beginning of the handshaking and there were not so many of them as of us. They lingered in groups and talked with one another. I was about midway of the aisles50 and several persons deep in the crush, when I saw him. How well I knew the lock falling over his forehead, and the quick unconscious motion of the head that tossed it back! There was the indefinable air of the outdoor man about him, though he was quite correctly dressed and had a lady's light wrap over his arm.
"Helmeth! Helmeth!" I cried out to him from the centre of my will. I fought my way to the outer edge of the moving crowd, I caught at chairs and struggled to maintain my position opposite him. He was talking to two or three men, and just at the edge of the group a woman stood with an air of waiting. I resented her immobility, so near him and so little moved by him.
"Helmeth, Helmeth, Look! Look at me!" I demanded voicelessly across the bank of chairs.
He heard me; slowly he turned; his attention wandered from the group.
"Helmeth! Helmeth!" All my will was in my cry. Now he looked in my direction. There was that in his face that told me my cry had touched the outer ring of his consciousness. Then the lady who stood by, took advantage of his detachment to touch him on the arm. Only a man's wife touches him like that. I knew her at once; she was the type of woman who subscribes51 to the Delineator, and belongs to the church because she thinks it is an excellent thing for other people. She had blond hair, discreetly52 frizzled about the temples, and her dress had been made at home.
As soon as she touched him, Helmeth Garrett turned to her with divided attention. I saw her take his arm; he looked back; the cry held him; his eyes roved up and down; the moving mass closed between us and carried me completely out of sight.
It was fully43 a quarter of an hour before the crowd released me, and by that time he had quite vanished. I hung about the entrance to the hall, I pushed here and there in the press, elbowed out of it by resentful citizens. At last when the hall was closed and even the policemen had gone from before it, I went home, to lie awake half the night planning how to get at him. And the moment I woke from the doze53 of exhaustion54 into which I finally fell, I knew that the thread which bound me to Chicago had snapped. I stayed on two or three days, vaguely55 hoping to come across him. I even looked in the hotel registers before I accepted Sarah's urgent invitation to spend the rest of the month with her at Lake View.
One night when the wind out of the lake was fresh enough to suggest, in the closed window and the drawn56 blind, a reciprocated57 intimacy58, I told Sarah all about Helmeth Garrett.
"And to think," I said, "how different it all might have been if only I had got that letter."
"Yes," Sarah admitted, "but that doesn't prove you'd have been happy."
"Not if we loved one another?"
"Oh, I am not sure loving has anything to do with happiness, or is meant to. Sometimes I think God—or whoever it is manages things—has a very poor opinion of happiness, because you don't find it invariably along with the best of experiences. It happens, or it doesn't. If love does anything for you it is just to give you the use of yourself."
"You haven't really had it—just being kissed once, what does that amount to?"
"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, that is what hurts me! I haven't really had it. I'm never going to. I'll just go halting like this all my life."
"No, you won't," Sarah shook her head, piecing her own knowledge slowly into comfort for me. "You remember what I told you that time when you found out about Dean and Mr. O'Farrell? There's a kind of feeling that goes with acting60 that is like loving, only it isn't. I don't know where it comes from. Maybe it is what they call genius, but I know you can slide off from loving into it. That is what makes Jerry think he has to be in love all the time; it is a little stair he climbs up, and then he goes sailing off. You don't think Fancy Filette really does anything for him?"
"Goodness, no; she hasn't a teaspoonful61 of brains!"
"Well, then," she triumphed. "After a while his genius will be so strong in him that he won't need that sort of thing and he will think it ridiculous."
"And you think that will come to me?"
"It did come. You didn't have to be in love to begin," Sarah objected.
"Sarah, I will tell you the truth! I was in love all the time, I didn't know with whom, but always wanting somebody ... trying to get through to something; trying to mate. That was it. Nights when I would do my best, and the house would be storming and cheering, I would look around for ... for somebody. And I would go to my room, and he wouldn't be there! I used to think Tommy would be He, I wanted him to be. I thought some day I would turn around suddenly and find him changed into ... whatever it was I wanted. But I know now he never could have been that. And all this summer ... I've heard it calling. I've walked and walked. Sometimes it was just around the corner, but I never caught up with it. And when I saw Helmeth Garrett, I knew!"
I had leaned back out of the circle of our small shaded lamp to make my confession62, but Sarah came forward into it the better to show me the condoning63 tenderness of her smile.
"It's no use, Sarah, I'm no genius; I have to be in love like the rest of them." She shook her head gently.
"You'll get across. Love would help; I wish you had it. But I'll confess to you; I had love and it only opened the door. There's something beyond, bigger than all men. You must reach out and lay hold of it. Oh, if it were love one needed, I should die—I should die!" I had never seen her so moved before.
"Tell me, Sarah; I've always wanted to know."
"I want you to know, but it isn't easy! I didn't know anything about love ... how could I the way I was brought up! My father was a Baptist preacher. I had been taught that it was wrong to let anybody ... touch you; and when he kissed me I felt as if he had the right...."
"I know, I know!" I had been kissed that way myself.
"How can anybody know? I loved him, and I was the only one of many. He left me without a word, ... like a woman of the street ... not looking backward." She got up and moved about the room, the thick coil of her rich brown hair slipping to her shoulders, and her bodily perfection under the thin dressing64 gown distracting me even from the passion of her speech. I had a momentary65 pang66 of sympathy with the delinquent67 Lawrence, I could see how a man might be afraid almost, of the quality of her beauty.
"Sometimes," she said, "I think marriage is a much more real relation than people think—that something real but invisible happens between them so that even if they are parted they are never quite the same again. It is like having a limb torn from you; you ache always, in the part you have lost." I knew something of what that ache could be, but I could only turn my face up to hers that she might see my tears.
"You have enough of your own to bear," she said. "I must not lay my troubles on you; but I wanted to tell you how I know it is not love that makes art. I was dying for love when Mr. O'Farrell put me to acting. I was bleeding so ... and suddenly I reached out and laid hold of Whatever is, and I found I could act. It was as if the half of me that had been torn away had been between me and It, and I laid hold of It. That's how I know." She came behind me, leaning on my chair, and I put up my hands to her.
"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, help me to lay hold of it, too!" But for all her shy confidences, deep within I didn't believe her.
Toward the first of September we went back to the city, Sarah to begin rehearsals68 for The Futurist, and I to take up the dreary69 round of manager's offices and dramatic agencies. The best that was offered me was poor enough, but it had a faint savour of a superior motive70 clinging to it. It was from a Mr. Coleman, an actor manager of the old, heavy-jowled Shakespearian type, who was projecting a classic revival71 with himself in all the tragic72 parts, and I signed with him to play Portia, Cleopatra, and the wife of Brutus. We had been busy with rehearsals about ten days when I had a telegram from Forester saying that mother had died that day and I was to come immediately.
It was late Sunday evening when I received it and I hunted up the manager at the hotel.
"I'm going," I told him.
"Well, of course, your contract——"
"I'm going anyway ... and I know the lines." He was as considerate, I suppose, as could be expected.
"I can give you three days," he calculated.
"Four," I stipulated73.
点击收听单词发音
1 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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2 tattered | |
adj.破旧的,衣衫破的 | |
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3 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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4 flare | |
v.闪耀,闪烁;n.潮红;突发 | |
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5 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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6 attachments | |
n.(用电子邮件发送的)附件( attachment的名词复数 );附着;连接;附属物 | |
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7 resuscitating | |
v.使(某人或某物)恢复知觉,苏醒( resuscitate的现在分词 ) | |
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8 buffeted | |
反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 ); 连续猛击; 打来打去; 推来搡去 | |
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9 eddy | |
n.漩涡,涡流 | |
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10 deriving | |
v.得到( derive的现在分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取 | |
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11 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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12 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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13 incompetence | |
n.不胜任,不称职 | |
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14 bereaved | |
adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去(希望、生命等)( bereave的过去式和过去分词);(尤指死亡)使丧失(亲人、朋友等);使孤寂;抢走(财物) | |
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15 resentment | |
n.怨愤,忿恨 | |
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16 interfere | |
v.(in)干涉,干预;(with)妨碍,打扰 | |
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17 prerogative | |
n.特权 | |
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18 inflated | |
adj.(价格)飞涨的;(通货)膨胀的;言过其实的;充了气的v.使充气(于轮胎、气球等)( inflate的过去式和过去分词 );(使)膨胀;(使)通货膨胀;物价上涨 | |
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19 despoiled | |
v.掠夺,抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20 conjectures | |
推测,猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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21 smoothly | |
adv.平滑地,顺利地,流利地,流畅地 | |
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22 allay | |
v.消除,减轻(恐惧、怀疑等) | |
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23 slanting | |
倾斜的,歪斜的 | |
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24 carmine | |
n.深红色,洋红色 | |
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25 boding | |
adj.凶兆的,先兆的n.凶兆,前兆,预感v.预示,预告,预言( bode的现在分词 );等待,停留( bide的过去分词 );居住;(过去式用bided)等待 | |
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26 playwright | |
n.剧作家,编写剧本的人 | |
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27 exasperation | |
n.愤慨 | |
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28 exclusion | |
n.拒绝,排除,排斥,远足,远途旅行 | |
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29 stimulation | |
n.刺激,激励,鼓舞 | |
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30 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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31 symbolic | |
adj.象征性的,符号的,象征主义的 | |
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32 psychology | |
n.心理,心理学,心理状态 | |
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33 importunate | |
adj.强求的;纠缠不休的 | |
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34 paralytic | |
adj. 瘫痪的 n. 瘫痪病人 | |
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35 succoring | |
v.给予帮助( succor的现在分词 ) | |
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36 eminently | |
adv.突出地;显著地;不寻常地 | |
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37 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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38 theatrical | |
adj.剧场的,演戏的;做戏似的,做作的 | |
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39 tormented | |
饱受折磨的 | |
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40 friendliness | |
n.友谊,亲切,亲密 | |
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41 mortifying | |
adj.抑制的,苦修的v.使受辱( mortify的现在分词 );伤害(人的感情);克制;抑制(肉体、情感等) | |
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42 culpability | |
n.苛责,有罪 | |
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43 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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44 stagnant | |
adj.不流动的,停滞的,不景气的 | |
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45 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 | |
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46 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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47 armory | |
n.纹章,兵工厂,军械库 | |
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48 transpired | |
(事实,秘密等)被人知道( transpire的过去式和过去分词 ); 泄露; 显露; 发生 | |
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49 aisle | |
n.(教堂、教室、戏院等里的)过道,通道 | |
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50 aisles | |
n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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51 subscribes | |
v.捐助( subscribe的第三人称单数 );签署,题词;订阅;同意 | |
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52 discreetly | |
ad.(言行)审慎地,慎重地 | |
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53 doze | |
v.打瞌睡;n.打盹,假寐 | |
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54 exhaustion | |
n.耗尽枯竭,疲惫,筋疲力尽,竭尽,详尽无遗的论述 | |
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55 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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56 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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57 reciprocated | |
v.报答,酬答( reciprocate的过去式和过去分词 );(机器的部件)直线往复运动 | |
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58 intimacy | |
n.熟悉,亲密,密切关系,亲昵的言行 | |
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59 stumping | |
僵直地行走,跺步行走( stump的现在分词 ); 把(某人)难住; 使为难; (选举前)在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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60 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
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61 teaspoonful | |
n.一茶匙的量;一茶匙容量 | |
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62 confession | |
n.自白,供认,承认 | |
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63 condoning | |
v.容忍,宽恕,原谅( condone的现在分词 ) | |
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64 dressing | |
n.(食物)调料;包扎伤口的用品,敷料 | |
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65 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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66 pang | |
n.剧痛,悲痛,苦闷 | |
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67 delinquent | |
adj.犯法的,有过失的;n.违法者 | |
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68 rehearsals | |
n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 );排练;复述;重复 | |
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69 dreary | |
adj.令人沮丧的,沉闷的,单调乏味的 | |
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70 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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71 revival | |
n.复兴,复苏,(精力、活力等的)重振 | |
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72 tragic | |
adj.悲剧的,悲剧性的,悲惨的 | |
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73 stipulated | |
vt.& vi.规定;约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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74 grudged | |
怀恨(grudge的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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