(UECE - 1998)TEXTO PARA A PRXIMA QUESTO:1 Knowing

(UECE - 1998)

TEXTO PARA A PRÓXIMA QUESTÃO:

1 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.

2 It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences. Her husband's friend Richard was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its ¹truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the ²sad message.

3 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, ³wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow.

4 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 her soul.

5 She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, ⁵quite 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.

6 She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain ⁴strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes.

7 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 sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

8 She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will - as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

9 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!"

(CHOPIN, Kate. The Story of an Hour. From Internet.)

 

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