📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 71
1They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale--and yet they weren't unhappy either. There
2was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring
3together. As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the dark road toward the house. Gatsby was
4waiting where I had left him in the drive. "Is it all quiet up there?" he asked anxiously. "Yes, it's all quiet." I
5hesitated. "You'd better come home and get some sleep." He shook his head. "I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed.
6Good night, old sport." He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as
7though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the
8moonlight--watching over nothing. VIII I couldn't sleep all night; a foghorn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and
9I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby's
10drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress--I felt that I had something to tell him, something to
11warn him about, and morning would be too late. Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was
12leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep. "Nothing happened," he said wanly. "I waited, and
13about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light." His house had
14never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed
15aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches--once I
16tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and
17the rooms were musty, as though they hadn't been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table, with
18two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the
19darkness. "You ought to go away," I said. "It's pretty certain they'll trace your car." "Go away now, old sport?" "Go to
20Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal." He wouldn't consider it. He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew
21what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn't bear to shake him free. It was this night
22that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody--told it to me because "Jay Gatsby" had broken up like
23glass against Tom's hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have
24acknowledged anything now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy. She was the first "nice" girl he had ever
25known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed
26wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor,
27then alone. It amazed him--he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless
28intensity, was that Daisy lived there--it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a
29ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant
30activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but
31fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It
32excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all
33about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. But he knew that he was in
34Daisy's house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless
35young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made
36the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously--eventually he took Daisy one still
37October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand. He might have despised himself, for he had
38certainly taken her under false pretences. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had
39deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as
40herself--that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities--he had no
41comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere
42about the world. But he didn't despise himself and it didn't turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to
43take what he could and go--but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that
44Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn't realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich
45house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby--nothing. He felt married to her, that was all. When they met again, two
46days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of
47star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely
48mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly
49aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy,
50gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
51------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I can't describe to you how surprised I was to
52find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she didn't, because she was in
53love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her … Well, there I was, way off my
54ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great
55things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?" On the last afternoon before he went abroad,
56he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks
57flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon
58had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. They
59had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed
60silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.
61------------------------------------------------------------------------ He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was
62a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the
63divisional machine-guns. After the armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding
64sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now--there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't
65see why he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his
66presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. For Daisy was young and her
67artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the
68year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless
69comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At
70the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces
71drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.
🎉 全部完成！共 71 行