Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was

游客2024-08-14  12

问题     Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
    She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had passed she went away to her room alone. She refused to have anyone follow her.
    There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that filled her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
    She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
    She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines indicated repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off in the distance on a patch of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
    There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know: it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the wounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
    Now her bosom rose and fell with excitement. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was struggling to beat it back with her will, as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
    When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath, " free, free, free! " The empty stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed sharp and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
    She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as of little importance.
    She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death: the face that had never looked except with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. [br] When returning to her room, Mrs. Mallard was pressed down by______both physically and mentally.

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答案 exhaustion

解析 (文章第三段第二句pressed down by a physical exhaustion…。)
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