优美文章：一个小时的故事

　以下是我整理的情感类英语美文欣赏： 一个小时的故事，希望对你有所感触。

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　一个小时的故事

　大家都知道马兰德夫人的心脏有毛病，所以在把她丈夫的死讯告诉她时都是小心翼翼的，尽可能地温和委婉。坏消息是她的姐姐约瑟芬告诉她的，她连话都没说成句，只是遮遮掩掩地向她暗示。她丈夫的朋友理查兹也在场。当火车事故的消息传来的时候，理查兹正好在报社里，遇难者名单上布兰特雷?马兰德的名字排在第一个?

　Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a hearttrouble, great care was taken to break to her asgently as possible the news of her husband's death.

　It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in halfconcealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been inthe newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with BrentlyMallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of itstruth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friendin bearing the sad message.

　She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability toaccept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have noone follow her.

　There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into hersoul.

　She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver withthe new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler wascrying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

　There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met andpiled above the other in the west facing her window.

　She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, exceptwhen a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleepcontinues to sob in its dreams.

　She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certainstrength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder onone of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated asuspension of intelligent thought.

　There was something coming to her and she waswaiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did notknow; it was too subtle and elusive to name. Butshe felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching towardher through the sounds, the scents, the color thatfilled the air.

　Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She wasbeginning to recognize this thing that wasapproaching to possess her, and she was strivingto beat it back with her will-as powerless as her twowhite slender hands would have been.

　When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She saidit over and over under her breath: "Free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terrorthat had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen 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 andexalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

　She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; theface that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she sawbeyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to herabsolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

　There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men andwomen believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kindintention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in thatbrief moment of illumination.

　And yet she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love,the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion, which shesuddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

　"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

　Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole,imploring foradmission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door-you will make yourself ill. What areyou doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

　"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through thatopen window.

　Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, andall sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. Itwas only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

　She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverishtriumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She claspedher sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them atthe bottom.

　Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a littletravel-stained, composedly carrying his gripsack and umbrella. He had been far from the sceneof accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine'spiercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

　But Richards was too late.

　When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills.