“Her eyes met his and he looked away.He neither believed nor disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in asking; he never had known, never would know, what she was thinking.The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that, soft and passive, but so unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond measure.”

A.Questions:

Identify the writer and the work.

What does the phrase “inscrutable face” mean?

What idea does the quoted passage express?

正确答案：John Galasworthy: The Man of Property.

A face does not show any emotion or reaction so that it is impossible to know how that person is feeling or what he is thinking about.

It presents the inner mind of Soames in face of his wife’s coldness.He can never know what is on his wife’s mind because the makeup of his and her mentality is different.His wife Irene, whose mind is romantically inclined, is disgusted with her husband’s possessiveness.Being unable to read his wife’s mind is as good as saying that he really can’t regard her as his property- this is the very reason why he is enraged beyond measure.