The sound of the dragging chain could be heard at in- tervals upon the floor below. It seemed to the tense lis- teners above to pause beside the dead man as though hovering in gloating exultation above its gruesome prey and then it moved again, this time toward the stairway where they all heard it ascending with a creepy slow- ness which wrought more terribly upon tense nerves than would a sudden rush.英文原著 · 《The Oakdale Affair》
A tall gray figure was pouring grain into the hopper when she reached the door of the mill. She stopped abruptly, Rome Stetson turned, and again the two were face to face. No greeting passed. The girl lifted her head with a little toss that deepened the set look about the mountaineer's mouth; her lax figure grew tense as though strung suddenly against some coming harm, and her eyes searched the shadows without once resting on him.英文原著 · 《A Cumberland Vendetta》
The two were sitting on the earthen floor of the cave before a little fire, and Rome, with his hands about his knees and his brows knitted, was staring into the yellow blaze. His unshorn hair fell to his shoulders; his face was pale from insufficient food and exercise, and tense with a look that was at once caged and defiant.英文原著 · 《A Cumberland Vendetta》
He stooped above the sobbing girl, and pulled away her hands from her face, tear-stained and broken with pain. The limit of her self-repression was reached at last; the tense nerves, strained too much, had broken; and the passion, so long checked, surged through her like fire. Ah, God! what had he done? He saw the truth at last. In an impulse of tenderness he lifted the girl to her feet and held her, sobbing uncontrollably, in his arms, with her head against his breast, and his cheek on her hair, soothing her as though she had been a child.英文原著 · 《A Mountain Europa》
She was glad. Presently the man moved from his place in the bows. She saw him lift a leg to get over into the stern, treading carefully in order not to trample on his sleeping companions. Then his black figure seemed to shut up like a telescope. He had become one with the dimness in the boat, was no longer detached from it. Only Ruffo was still detached. Was he going to sleep, too? A certain tenseness came into Vere's body.英文原著 · 《A Spirit in Prison》
They bent, they crouched. They seemed to die down like a wave that is, then is not. Then rising they towered, lifting brawny arms towards the stars. Silence seemed to flow from them, to exude from their labors. And in the swiftness of their movements there was something that was sad. Or was it, perhaps, only pathetic, wistful with the wistfulness of the sea and of all nocturnal things? Artois did not ask, but his attention, the attention of mind and soul, was held by these distant voiceless beings as by a magic. And Vere was still as he was, tense as he was.英文原著 · 《A Spirit in Prison》