It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phoebe should talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her accomoanying description and remarks. The life of the garden offered topics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never failed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intently observing it, and looking from its petals ito Phoebe’s face, as if the garden flower wrer the sister of the household maiden. Not merely was there a delight in the flower’s perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford’s enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, and individuality that made himn love these blossoms of the garden, as if they were endowed with sentiment and intelligence. This affection and symathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman’s trait. Men, if endowed with it by nature, soon losem forgetm abd learn to despise it, in their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clifford, too, had long forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived from the chill torpor of his life.
Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were pressing something that hurt her. “The world’s very small,” she said at random; she had an immense desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her , to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless water. She had wanted help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
“Ah, be mine as I’m yours!” she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible, through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
This however, of course, was but a subjective fact , as the metahysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters all the rest of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of this. “Do me the greatest kindness of all,” she panted. “I beseech you to go away.”
參考答案:第一段出自:《带有七个尖角阁的房子》第十章 (The House of the Seven Gables By Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 10 "The Pyncheon-garden")
作者: 纳撒尼尔·霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne，1804年7月4日—1864年5月19日）19世纪美国小说家。
第二段出自:《贵妇的肖像》第五十五章 (The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Chapter LV)
作者: 亨利·詹姆斯(Henry James, 1843年4月15日- 1916年2月28日)，英国-美国作家。
他出身于纽约的上层知识分子家庭，父亲老亨利·詹姆斯是著名学者，兄长威廉·詹姆斯是知名的哲学家和心理学家。詹姆斯本人长期旅居欧洲，对19世纪末美国和欧洲的上层生活有细致入微的观察。詹姆斯是同性恋者。他与同时代的美国女作家伊迪丝·华顿保持着长期的友谊。
20世纪末，詹姆斯的不少作品被搬上银幕，如《贵妇的肖像》、《华盛顿广场》等，受到了广泛的关注。
