Part 1 Miss Mary Pask Chapter 3

When I was well enough to trust myself to think about it all again I found that a very little thinking got my temperature up, and my heart hammering in my throat. No use . . . I simply couldn’t stand it . . . for I’d seen Grace Bridgeworth in crape, weeping over the cable, and yet I’d sat and talked with her sister, on the same sofa — her sister who’d been dead a year!

The circle was a vicious one; I couldn’t break through it. The fact that I was down with fever the next morning might have explained it; yet I couldn’t get away from the clinging reality of the vision. Supposing it was a ghost I had been talking to, and not a mere¹ projection² of my fever? Supposing something survived of Mary Pask — enough to cry out to me the unuttered loneliness of a lifetime, to express at last what the living woman had always had to keep dumb and hidden? The thought moved me curiously³ — in my weakness I lay and wept over it. No end of women were like that, I supposed, and perhaps, after death, if they got their chance they tried to use it . . . Old tales and legends floated through my mind; the bride of Corinth, the mediaeval vampire⁴ — but what names to attach to the plaintive⁵ image of Mary Pask!

My weak mind wandered in and out among these visions and conjectures⁶, and the longer I lived with them the more convinced I became that something which had been Mary Pask had talked with me that night . . . I made up my mind, when I was up again, to drive back to the place (in broad daylight, this time), to hunt out the grave in the garden — that “shady corner where the sun never bothers one” — and appease⁷ the poor ghost with a few flowers. But the doctors decided⁸ otherwise; and perhaps my weak will unknowingly abetted⁹ them. At any rate, I yielded to their insistence¹⁰ that I should be driven straight from my hotel to the train for Paris, and thence transshipped, like a piece of luggage, to the Swiss sanatorium they had in view for me. Of course I meant to come back when I was patched up again . . . and meanwhile, more and more tenderly, but more intermittently¹¹, my thoughts went back from my snow-mountain to that wailing¹² autumn night above the Baie des Trépassés, and the revelation of the dead Mary Pask who was so much more real to me than ever the living one had been.

1 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。

2 projection   

n.发射，计划，突出部分

参考例句：

• Projection takes place with a minimum of awareness or conscious control.投射在最少的知觉或意识控制下发生。
• The projection of increases in number of house-holds is correct.对户数增加的推算是正确的。

3 curiously   

adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地

参考例句：

• He looked curiously at the people.他好奇地看着那些人。
• He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.他迈着悄没声息的大步。他的双手出奇地冷。

4 vampire   

n.吸血鬼

参考例句：

• It wasn't a wife waiting there for him but a blood sucking vampire!家里的不是个老婆，而是个吸人血的妖精！
• Children were afraid to go to sleep at night because of the many legends of vampire.由于听过许多有关吸血鬼的传说，孩子们晚上不敢去睡觉。

5 plaintive   

adj.可怜的，伤心的

参考例句：

• Her voice was small and plaintive.她的声音微弱而哀伤。
• 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。

6 conjectures   

推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• That's weighing remote military conjectures against the certain deaths of innocent people. 那不过是牵强附会的军事假设，而现在的事实却是无辜者正在惨遭杀害，这怎能同日而语！
• I was right in my conjectures. 我所猜测的都应验了。

7 appease   

v.安抚，缓和，平息，满足

参考例句：

• He tried to appease the crying child by giving him candy.他试图给那个啼哭的孩子糖果使他不哭。
• The government tried to appease discontented workers.政府试图安抚不满的工人们。

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

9 abetted   

v.教唆（犯罪）( abet的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；怂恿；支持

参考例句：

• He was abetted in the deception by his wife. 他行骗是受了妻子的怂恿。
• They aided and abetted in getting the police to catch the thief. 他们协助警察抓住了小偷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 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。

11 intermittently   

adv.间歇地；断断续续

参考例句：

• Winston could not intermittently remember why the pain was happening. 温斯顿只能断断续续地记得为什么这么痛。 来自英汉文学
• The resin moves intermittently down and out of the bed. 树脂周期地向下移动和移出床层。 来自辞典例句

12 wailing   

v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱

参考例句：

• A police car raced past with its siren wailing. 一辆警车鸣着警报器飞驰而过。
• The little girl was wailing miserably. 那小女孩难过得号啕大哭。