The last dance was a waltz. Luke took Meggie’s hand and put his arm about he

游客2024-11-27  3

问题     The last dance was a waltz. Luke took Meggie’s hand and put his arm about her waist, drew her against him. He was an excellent dancer. To her surprise she found she didn’t need to do anything more than follow where he propelled her. And it was a most extraordinary sensation to be held so against a man, to feel the muscles of his chest and thighs, to absorb his body warmth. She had honestly thought that what she felt in his arms she would never feel in anyone else’s. Yet though this was quite different, it was exciting: her pulse rate had gone up, and she knew he sensed it by the way he turned her suddenly, gripped her more closely, put his cheek on her hair. As the Rolls purred home, making light of the bumpy track and sometimes no track at all, they didn’t speak very much. Braich y Pwll was seventy miles from Drogheda, across paddocks with never a house to be seen all the way, no lights of someone’s home, no intrusion of humanity. The ridge which cut across Drogheda was not more than a hundred feet higher than the rest of the land. Luke stopped the car, got out and came round to open Meggie’s door. She stepped down beside him, trembling a little: was he going to spoil everything by trying to kiss her? It was so quiet, so far from anyone!
    There was a decaying dogleg wooden fence wandering off to one side, and holding her elbow lightly to make sure she didn’t stumble in her frivolous shoes, Luke helped Meggie across the uneven ground, the rabbit holes. Gripping the fence tightly and looking out over the plains, she was speechless: first from terror, then, her panic dying as he made no move to touch her, from wonder.
    Almost as clearly as the sun could, the moon’s still pale light picked out vast sweeping stretches of distance, the grass shimmering and rippling like a restless sigh, silver and white and grey. Lifting her head, she tried to count the stars and could not: as delicate as drops of dew on a wheeling spider’s web the pinpoints flared, went out, flared, went out, in a rhythm as timeless as God. They seemed to hang over her like a net, so beautiful, so very silent, so watchful and searching of the soul, like jewel eyes of insects turned brilliant in a spotlight, blind as to expression and infinite as to seeing power. The only sounds were the wind hot in the grass, hissing trees, an occasional clank from the cooling Rolls, and a sleepy bird somewhere close complaining because they had broken its rest: the sole smell the fragrant, indefinable scent of the bush.
    Luke turned his back on the night, pulled out his tobacco pouch and booklet of rice papers, and began to roll himself a cigarette. "Were you born out here, Meghann?" he asked, rubbing the strands of leaf back and forth in his palm, lazily.
    "No, I was born in New Zealand. We came to Drogheda thirteen years ago. " He slipped the shaped tendrils into their paper sheath, twiddled it expertly between thumb and forefinger, then licked it shut, poked a few wisps back inside the tube with a match end, struck the match and lit up. "You enjoyed yourself tonight, didn’t you?"
    "Oh, yes!"
    "I’d like to take you to all the dances. "
    "Thank you. "
    He fell silent again, smoking quietly and looking back across the roof of the Rolls at the stand of timber where the irate bird still twittered querulously. When only a small remnant of the tube sputtered between his stained fingers he dropped it on the ground and screwed his boot heel viciously down upon it until he was sure it was out. No one kills a cigarette as dead as an Australian bushman.
    Sighing, Meggie turned from the moon vista, and he helped her to the car. He was far too wise to kiss her at this early stage, because he intended to marry her if he could: let her want to be kissed, first. But there were other dances, as the summer wore on and wore itself down in bloody, dusty spendor: gradually the homestead got used to the fact that Meggie had found herself a very good-looking boyfriend. Her brothers forbore to tease, for they loved her and liked him well enough. [br] Braich y Pwll can be best featured for its______.

选项 A、remoteness
B、wildness
C、height
D、darkness

答案 B

解析 推理判断题。由第一段倒数第五句可知,由当地去:Braich y Pwll沿路无人居住,也没有灯火,更没有任何人迹,所以形容此地最恰当的词是“荒凉”(wildness),故[B]正确。由seventy miles可知,这个地方确实很远,但是作者仅一带而过,反而在后半句细致地描写了这个地方如何人迹罕至,所以70英里的距离并不是作者要强调的重点,故排除[A];由倒数第四句可以看出作者的语气——不高于100英尺——并不是强调山脊惊人的高度,故排除[C];由no lights of someone’s home可以看出沿路没有灯光,但作者这样写是为了证明此处无人居住,并不是强调黑暗,故排除[D]。
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