“What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about Papa,” she began in a low, hoarse10 and almost morbid11 tone —“Now I want to know if this last attack means that the end has come. You’ve got to tell me — we’ve got the right to know about it —”
The look of strain and hysteria on her big-boned face, her dull eyes fixed12 on him in a morbid stare, the sore on her large cleft13 chin, above all, the brooding insistence14 of her tone as she repeated phrases he had heard ten thousand times before suddenly rasped upon his frayed15 nerves, stretched them to the breaking-point; he lost his air of hard professionalism and exploded in a flare16 of brutal anger:
“You want to know what? You’ve got a right to be told what? For God’s sake,”— his tone was brutal, rasping, jeering17 —“pull yourself together and stop acting18 like a child.” And then, a little more quietly, but brusquely, he demanded:
“All right. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how long he’s going to last,” she said with morbid insistence. “Now, you’re a doctor,” she wagged her large face at him with an air of challenge that infuriated him, “and you ought to tell us. We’ve got to know!”
“Tell you! Got to know!” he shouted. “What the hell are you talking about? What do you expect to be told?”
“How long Papa has to live,” she said with the same morbid insistence as before.
“You’ve asked me that a thousand times,” he said harshly. “I’ve told you that I didn’t know. He may live another month, he may be here a year from now — how can we tell about these things,” he said in an exasperated19 tone, “particularly where your father is concerned. Helen, three or four years ago I might have made a prediction. I did make them — I didn’t see how W. O. could go on six months longer. But he’s fooled us all — you, me, the doctors at Johns Hopkins, everyone who’s had anything to do with the case. The man is dying from malignant20 carcinoma — he has been dying for years — his life is hanging by a thread and the thread may break at any time — but when it is going to break I have no way of telling you.”
“Ah-hah,” she said reflectively. Her eyes had taken on a dull appeased21 look as he talked to her, and now she had begun to pluck at her large cleft chin. “Then you think —” she began.
“I think nothing,” he shouted. “And for God’s sake stop picking at your chin!”
For a moment he felt the sudden brutal anger that one sometimes feels toward a contrary child. He felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. Instead, he took it out in words and, scowling22 at her, said with brutal directness:
“Look here! . . . You’ve got to pull yourself together. You’re becoming a mental case — do you hear me? You wander around like a person in a dream, you ask questions no one can answer, you demand answers no one can give — you work yourself up into hysterical23 frenzies24 and then you collapse25 and soak yourself with drugs, patent medicines, corn-licker — anything that has alcohol in it — for days at a time. When you go to bed at night you think you hear voices talking to you, someone coming up the steps, the telephone. And really you hear nothing: there is nothing there. Do you know what that is?” he demanded brutally26. “Those are symptoms of insanity27 — you’re becoming unbalanced; if it keeps on they may have to send you to the crazy-house to take the cure.”
“Ah-hah! Uh-huh!” she kept plucking at her big chin with an air of abstracted reflection and with a curious look of dull appeasement28 in her eyes as if his brutal words had really given her some comfort. Then she suddenly came to herself, looked at him with clear eyes, and her generous mouth touched at the corners with the big lewd29 tracery of her earthy humour, she sniggered hoarsely30, and prodding31 him in his fat ribs32 with a big bony finger, she said:
“You think I’ve got ’em, do you? Well —” she nodded seriously in agreement, frowning a little as she spoke, but with the faint grin still legible around the corners of her mouth — “I’ve often thought the same thing. You may be right,” she nodded seriously again. “There are times when I do feel off — you know? — QUEER— looney — crazy — like there was a screw loose somewhere — Brrr!” and with the strange lewd mixture of frown and grin, she made a whirling movement with her finger towards her head. “What do you think it is?” she went on with an air of seriousness. “Now, I’d just like to know. What is it that makes me act like that? . . . Is it woman-business?” she said with a lewd and comic look upon her face. “Am I getting funny like the rest of them — now I’ve often thought the same — that maybe I’m going through a change of life — is that it? Maybe —”
“Oh, change of life be damned!” he said in a disgusted tone. “Here you are a young woman thirty-two years old and you talk to me about a change of life! That has about as much sense to it as a lot of other things you say! The only thing you change is your mind — and you do that every five minutes!” He was silent for a moment, breathing heavily and staring at her coarsely with his bloated and unshaven face, his veined and weary-looking eyes. When he spoke again his voice was gruff and quiet, touched with a burly, almost paternal34 tenderness:
“Helen,” he said, “I’m worried about you — and not about your father. Your father is an old man now with a malignant cancer and with no hope of ever getting well again. He is tired of life, he wants to die — for God’s sake why do you want to prolong his suffering, to try to keep him here in a state of agony, when death would be a merciful release for him? . . . I know there is no hope left for your father: he has been doomed35 for years, the sooner the end comes the better —”
She tried to speak but he interrupted her brusquely, saying:
“Just a minute. There’s something that I want to say to you — for God’s sake try to use it, if you can. The death of this old man seems strange and horrible to you because he is your father. It is as hard for you to think about his death as it is to think about the death of God Almighty36; you think that if your father dies there will be floods and earthquakes and convulsions throughout nature. I assure you that this is not true. Old men are dying every second of the day, and nothing happens except they die —”
“Oh, but Papa was a wonderful man,” she said. “I KNOW! I KNOW! Everybody who ever knew him said the same.”
“Yes,” McGuire agreed, “he was — he was one of the most remarkable37 men I ever knew. And that is what makes it all the harder now.”
She looked at him eagerly, and said:
“You mean — his dying?”
“No, Helen,” McGuire spoke quietly and with a weary patience. “There’s nothing very bad about his dying. Death seems so terrible to you because you know so little about it. But I have seen so much of death, I have seen so many people die — and I know there is really nothing very terrible about it, and about the death of an old man ravaged38 by disease there is nothing terrible at all. It seems terrible to those looking on — there are,” he shrugged39 his fat shoulders, “there are sometimes — physical details that are unpleasant. But the old man knows little of all that: an old man dies as a clock runs down — he is worn out, has lost the will to live, he wants to die, and he just stops. That is all. And that will happen to your father.”
“Oh, but it will be so strange now — so hard to understand!” she muttered with a bewildered look in her eyes. “We have expected him to die so many times — we have been fooled so often — and now I can’t believe that it will ever happen. I thought that he would die in 1916, I never expected him to live another year; in 1918, the year that Ben died, none of us could see how he’d get through the winter — and then Ben died! No one had even thought of Ben —” her voice grew cracked and hoarse and her eyes glistened40 with tears. “We had forgotten Ben — everyone was thinking about Papa — and then when Ben died I turned against Papa for a time. For a while I was bitter against him — it seemed that I had done everything for this old man, that I had given him everything I had — my life, my strength, my energy — all because I thought that he was going to die — and then Ben, who had never been given anything — who had had nothing out of life — who had been neglected and forgotten by us all and who was the best one — the most decent of the whole crowd — Ben was the one who had to go. For a time after his death I didn’t care what happened — to Papa or to any one else. I was so bitter about Ben’s death — it seemed so cruel, so rotten and unjust — that it had to be Ben of all the people in the world — only twenty-six years old and without a thing to show for his life — no love, no children, no happiness, cheated out of everything, when Papa had had so much — I couldn’t stand the thought of it, even now I hate to go to Mama’s house, it almost kills me to go near Ben’s room, I’ve never been in it since the night he died — and somehow I was bitter against Papa! It seemed to me that he had cheated me, tricked me — at times I got so bitter that I thought that he was responsible in some way for Ben’s death. I said I was through with him, that I would do nothing else for him, that I had done all that I intended to do, and that somebody else would have to take care of him. . . . But it all came back; he had another bad spell and I was afraid that he was going to die, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it. . . . And it has gone on now so long, YEAR after year, and YEAR after year,” she said in a frenzied41 tone, “always thinking that he couldn’t last and seeing him come back again, that I couldn’t believe that it would ever happen. I can’t believe it now. . . . And what am I going to do?” she said hoarsely and desperately42, clutching McGuire by the sleeve, “what am I going to do now if he really dies? What is there left for me in life with Papa gone?” Her voice was almost sobbing43 now with grief and desperation —“He’s all I’ve got to live for, Doctor McGuire. I’ve got nothing out of life that I wanted or expected — it’s all been so different from the way I thought it was — I’ve had nothing — no fame, no glory, no success, no children — everything has gone — Papa is all that I have left! If he dies what shall I do?” she cried frantically45, shaking him by the sleeve. “That old man is all I’ve got — the only thing I’ve got left to live for; to keep him alive, to make him comfortable, to ease his pain, to see he gets good food and attention — somehow, somehow,” she panted desperately, clasping her big bony hands in a gesture of unconscious but pitiable entreaty46, and beginning to rock unsteadily on her feet as she spoke — “somehow, somehow, to keep life in him, to keep him here, not to let him go — that’s all I’ve got to live for — what in the name of God am I going to do when that is taken from me?”
And she paused, panting and exhausted47 by her tirade48, her big face strained and quivering, glaring at him with an air of frantic44 entreaty as if it was in his power to give the answers to these frenzied questions. And for a moment he said nothing; he just stood there looking at her with the coarse and brutal stare of his blotched face, his venous yellowed eyes, the wet cigarette stuck comically at the corner of one fat lip.
“What are you going to do?” he barked, presently. “You’re going to get hold of yourself — pull yourself together — amount to something, be somebody!” He coughed chokingly to one side, for a moment there was just the sound of his thick short breathing, then he flung the cigarette away, and said quietly:
“Helen, for God’s sake, don’t throw your life away! Don’t destroy the great creature that lies buried in you somewhere — wake it up, make it come to life. Don’t talk to me of this old man’s life as if it were your own —”
“It is, it is!” she said in a brooding tone of morbid fatality49.
“It is not!” he said curtly50, “unless you make it so — unless you play the weakling and the fool and throw yourself away. For God’s sake, don’t let that happen to you. I have seen it happen to so many people — some of them fine people like yourself, full of energy, imagination, intelligence, ability — all thrown away, frittered away like that,” he flung fat fingers in the air — “because they did not have the guts51 to use what God had given them — to make a new life for themselves — to stand on their own feet and not to lean upon another’s shoulder! . . . Don’t die the death!” he rasped coarsely, staring at her with his brutal face. “Don’t die the rotten, lousy, dirty death-inlife — the only death that’s really horrible! For God’s sake, don’t betray life and yourself and the people who love you by dying that kind of death! I’ve seen it happen to so many people — and it was always so damned useless, such a rotten waste! That’s what I was trying to say to you a few minutes ago — it’s not the death of the dying that is terrible, it is the death of the living. And we always die that death for the same reason:— because our father dies, and takes from us his own life, his world, his time — and we haven33’t courage enough to make a new life, a new world for ourselves. I wonder if you know how often that thing happens — how often I have seen it happen — the wreck52, the ruin, and the tragedy it has caused in life! When the father goes, the whole structure of the family life goes with him — and unless his children have the will, the stuff, the courage to make something of their own, they die too. . . . With you, it’s going to be very hard when your father dies; he was a man of great vitality53 and a strong personality who has left a deep impression on everyone who knew him. And for seven years now, your father’s death has been your life. . . . It has become a part of you, you have brooded over it, lived with it, soaked in it, been tainted54 by it — and now it is going to be hard for you to escape. But escape you must, and stand on your own feet — or you are lost. . . . Helen!” he barked sharply, and fixed her with his coarse and brutal stare —“listen to me:— your childhood, Woodson Street, getting your father over drunks, cooking for him, nursing him, feeding him, dressing55 and undressing him — I know about it all, I saw it all — and now!”— he paused, staring at her, then made a sudden gesture outward, palms downward, of his two thick hands —“over, done for, gone for ever! It’s no good any more, it won’t work any more, it can’t be brought back any more — forget about it!”
“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” she said desperately. “I can’t give him up — I can’t let him go — he’s all I’ve got. Doctor McGuire,” she said earnestly, “ever since I was a kid of ten and you first came to get Papa over one of his sprees, I’ve fairly worshipped you! I’ve always felt down in my heart that you were one of the most wonderful people — the most wonderful doctor — in the world! I’ve always felt that at the end you could do anything — perform a miracle — bring him back. For God’s sake, don’t go back on me now! Do something — anything you can — but save him, save him.”
He was silent for a moment, and just stared at her with his yellow, venous eyes. And when he spoke his voice was filled with the most quiet and utter weariness of despair that she had ever heard:
“Save him?” he said. “My poor child, I can save no one — nothing — least of all myself.”
And suddenly she saw that it was true; she saw that he was lost, that he was done for, gone, and that he knew it. His coarse and bloated face was mottled by great black purplish patches, his yellow weary eyes already had the look of death in them; the knowledge of death rested with an unutterable weariness in his burly form, was audible in the short thick labour of his breath. She saw instantly that he was going to die, and with that knowledge her heart was torn with a rending56 pity as if a knife had been driven through it and twisted there; all of the brightness dropped out of the day, and in that moment it seemed that the whole substance and structure of her life was gone.
The day was a shining one, full of gold and sapphire57 and sparkle, and in the distance, toward the east, she could see the sweet familiar green of hills. She knew that nothing had been changed at all, and yet even the brightness of the day seemed dull and common to her. It served only to make more mean and shabby the rusty58 buildings and the street before her. And the bright light filled her with a nameless uneasiness and sense of shame: it seemed to expose her, to show her imperfections nakedly, and instinctively59 she turned away from it into the drug-store, where there were coolness, artificial lights and gaiety, the clamour of voices and people that she knew. And she knew that most of them had come here for the same reason — because the place gave them a sort of haven, however brief and shabby, from the naked brightness of the day and their sense of indefinable uncertitude and shame — because “it was the only place there was to go.”
Several young people, two girls and a boy were coming down among the crowded tables towards one of the mirrored booths against the wall, where another boy and girl were waiting for them. As they approached, she heard their drawling voices, talking “cute nigger-talk” as her mind contemptuously phrased it, the vapid60 patter phrased to a monotonous61 formula of “charm,” inane62, cheap, completely vulgar, and as if they had been ugly little monsters of some world of dwarfs63 she listened to them with a detached perspective of dislike and scorn.
One of the girls — the one already in the booth — was calling to the others in tones of playful protest, in her “cute,” mannered, empty little voice:
“HEY! theah, you all! WHEAH you been! Come ON, heah, man!” she cried urgently and reproachfully toward the approaching youth —“We been lookin’ up an’ down faw you! What you been doin’, anyhow?” she cried with reproachful curiosity. “We been WAITIN’ heah an’ waitin’ heah until it seemed lak you nevah WOULD come! We wuh about to give you up!”
“Child!” another of the girls drawled back, and made a languid movement of the hand — a move indicative of resignation and defeat. “Don’t tawk! I thought we nevah would get away. . . . That Jawdan woman came in to see Mothah just as me an’ Jim was fixin’ to go out, an’ child!”— again the languid movement of exhaustion64 and defeat —“when that woman gits stahted tawkin’ you might as well give up! No one else can git a wuhd in edgeways. I’ll declayah!” the voice went up, and the hand again made its languid movement of surrender —“I nevah huhd the lak of it in all mah days! That’s the tawkinest woman that evah lived. You’d a-died if you could a-seen the way Jim looked. I thought he was goin’ to pass right out befoah we got away from theah!”
“Lady,” said Jim, who had as yet taken no part in the conversation, “you SAID it! It sho’ly is the truth! That sho is ONE tawkin’ woman — an’ I don’t mean MAYBE, eithah!” He drawled these words out with an air of pert facetiousness65, and then looked round him with a complacent66 smirk67 on his young, smooth, empty face to see if his display of wit had been noticed and properly appreciated.
And Helen, passing by, kept smiling, plucking at her chin abstractedly, feeling toward these young people a weary disgust that was tinged68 with a bitter and almost personal animosity.
“Awful little made-up girls . . . funny-looking little boys . . . nothing to do but hang out here and loaf . . . walk up and down the street . . . and drink coca-cola all day long . . . and to think it seemed so wonderful to me when I was a kid, to dress up and go up town and come in here where Papa was. . . . How dull and cheap and dreary69 it all is!”
点击收听单词发音
1 pharmacy | |
n.药房,药剂学,制药业,配药业,一批备用药品 | |
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2 prescription | |
n.处方,开药;指示,规定 | |
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3 grunt | |
v.嘟哝;作呼噜声;n.呼噜声,嘟哝 | |
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4 fumble | |
vi.笨拙地用手摸、弄、接等,摸索 | |
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5 baggy | |
adj.膨胀如袋的,宽松下垂的 | |
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6 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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7 grunted | |
(猪等)作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 ); (指人)发出类似的哼声; 咕哝着说 | |
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8 brutal | |
adj.残忍的,野蛮的,不讲理的 | |
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9 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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10 hoarse | |
adj.嘶哑的,沙哑的 | |
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11 morbid | |
adj.病的;致病的;病态的;可怕的 | |
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12 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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13 cleft | |
n.裂缝;adj.裂开的 | |
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14 insistence | |
n.坚持;强调;坚决主张 | |
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15 frayed | |
adj.磨损的v.(使布、绳等)磨损,磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16 flare | |
v.闪耀,闪烁;n.潮红;突发 | |
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17 jeering | |
adj.嘲弄的,揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
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18 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
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19 exasperated | |
adj.恼怒的 | |
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20 malignant | |
adj.恶性的,致命的;恶意的,恶毒的 | |
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21 appeased | |
安抚,抚慰( appease的过去式和过去分词 ); 绥靖(满足另一国的要求以避免战争) | |
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22 scowling | |
怒视,生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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23 hysterical | |
adj.情绪异常激动的,歇斯底里般的 | |
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24 frenzies | |
狂乱( frenzy的名词复数 ); 极度的激动 | |
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25 collapse | |
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷 | |
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26 brutally | |
adv.残忍地,野蛮地,冷酷无情地 | |
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27 insanity | |
n.疯狂,精神错乱;极端的愚蠢,荒唐 | |
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28 appeasement | |
n.平息,满足 | |
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29 lewd | |
adj.淫荡的 | |
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30 hoarsely | |
adv.嘶哑地 | |
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31 prodding | |
v.刺,戳( prod的现在分词 );刺激;促使;(用手指或尖物)戳 | |
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32 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 | |
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33 haven | |
n.安全的地方,避难所,庇护所 | |
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34 paternal | |
adj.父亲的,像父亲的,父系的,父方的 | |
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35 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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36 almighty | |
adj.全能的,万能的;很大的,很强的 | |
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37 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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38 ravaged | |
毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 ); 蹂躏; 劫掠; 抢劫 | |
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39 shrugged | |
vt.耸肩(shrug的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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40 glistened | |
v.湿物闪耀,闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41 frenzied | |
a.激怒的;疯狂的 | |
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42 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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43 sobbing | |
<主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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44 frantic | |
adj.狂乱的,错乱的,激昂的 | |
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45 frantically | |
ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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46 entreaty | |
n.恳求,哀求 | |
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47 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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48 tirade | |
n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
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49 fatality | |
n.不幸,灾祸,天命 | |
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50 curtly | |
adv.简短地 | |
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51 guts | |
v.狼吞虎咽,贪婪地吃,飞碟游戏(比赛双方每组5人,相距15码,互相掷接飞碟);毁坏(建筑物等)的内部( gut的第三人称单数 );取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 );内脏;消化道的下段;肠 | |
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52 wreck | |
n.失事,遇难;沉船;vt.(船等)失事,遇难 | |
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53 vitality | |
n.活力,生命力,效力 | |
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54 tainted | |
adj.腐坏的;污染的;沾污的;感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 );使污染;败坏;被污染,腐坏,败坏 | |
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55 dressing | |
n.(食物)调料;包扎伤口的用品,敷料 | |
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56 rending | |
v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 );分裂;(因愤怒、痛苦等而)揪扯(衣服或头发等);(声音等)刺破 | |
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57 sapphire | |
n.青玉,蓝宝石;adj.天蓝色的 | |
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58 rusty | |
adj.生锈的;锈色的;荒废了的 | |
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59 instinctively | |
adv.本能地 | |
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60 vapid | |
adj.无味的;无生气的 | |
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61 monotonous | |
adj.单调的,一成不变的,使人厌倦的 | |
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62 inane | |
adj.空虚的,愚蠢的,空洞的 | |
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63 dwarfs | |
n.侏儒,矮子(dwarf的复数形式)vt.(使)显得矮小(dwarf的第三人称单数形式) | |
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64 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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65 facetiousness | |
n.滑稽 | |
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66 complacent | |
adj.自满的;自鸣得意的 | |
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67 smirk | |
n.得意地笑;v.傻笑;假笑着说 | |
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68 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69 dreary | |
adj.令人沮丧的,沉闷的,单调乏味的 | |
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