介绍： 毛姆深度剖析人性特点的三大力作之首：一对夫妇，因妻子不忠，丈夫毅然决定带着妻子到霍乱横行的中国内地行医，在这个小镇上，死亡和绝望每天与他们擦身而过......结局出人意料，令人唏嘘，却也发人深省。

【Chapter 37】

Though he denied that he was a Chinese scholar (he swore that the Sinologues were as mad as march har...

介绍： 毛姆深度剖析人性特点的三大力作之首：一对夫妇，因妻子不忠，丈夫毅然决定带着妻子到霍乱横行的中国内地行医，在这个小镇上，死亡和绝望每天与他们擦身而过......结局出人意料，令人唏嘘，却也发人深省。

【Chapter 37】

Though he denied that he was a Chinese scholar (he swore that the Sinologues were as mad as march hares) he spoke the language with ease. He read little and what he knew he had learned from conversation. But he often told Kitty stories from the Chinese novels and from Chinese history and though he told them with that airy badinage which was natural to him it was goodhumoured and even tender. It seemed to her that, perhaps unconsciously, he had adopted the Chinese view that the Europeans were barbarians and their life a folly: in China alone was it so led that a sensible man might discern in it a sort of reality. Here was food for reflexion: Kitty had never heard the Chinese spoken of as anything but decadent, dirty, and unspeakable. It was as though the corner of a curtain were lifted for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of a world rich with a colour and significance she had not dreamt of.

He sat there, talking, laughing, and drinking.

"Don't you think you drink too much?" said Kitty to him boldly.

"It's my great pleasure in life," he answered. "Besides, it keeps the cholera out."

When he left her he was generally drunk, but he carried his liquor well. It made him hilarious, but not disagreeable.

One evening Walter, coming back earlier than usual, asked him to stay to dinner. A curious incident happened. They had their soup and their fish and then with the chicken a fresh green salad was handed to Kitty by the boy.

"Good God, you're not going to eat that," cried Waddington, as he saw Kitty take some.

"Yes, we have it every night."

"My wife likes it," said Walter.

The dish was handed to Waddington, but he shook his head.

"Thank you very much, but I'm not thinking of committing suicide just yet."

Walter smiled grimly and helped himself. Waddington said nothing more, in fact he became strangely taciturn, and soon after dinner he left them.

It was true that they ate salad every night. Two days after their arrival the cook, with the unconcern of the Chinese, had sent it in and Kitty, without thinking, took some. Walter leaned forward quickly.

"You oughtn't to eat that. The boy's crazy to serve it."

"Why not?" asked Kitty, looking at him full in the face. "It's always dangerous, it's madness now. You'll kill yourself."

"I thought that was the idea," said Kitty.

She began to eat it coolly. She was seized with she knew not what spirit of bravado. She watched Walter with mocking eyes. She thought that he grew a trifle pale, but when the salad was handed to him he helped himself. The cook, finding they did not refuse it, sent them some in every day and every day, courting death, they ate it. It was grotesque to take such a risk. Kitty, in terror of the disease, took it with the feeling not only that she was thus maliciously avenging herself on Walter, but that she was flouting her own desperate fears.

......

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