24. Questions and Topics for Discussion.

104. What was Kitty’s state of mind during Walter’s burial and what did she feel after it?

105. Why did Mother Superior find it necessary that Kitty should leave Mei-tan-fu? Why was Kitty reluctant to do so? How did the nuns express their gratitude to Kitty? How did Kitty treat the nuns, their work and their way of life? What weak point did she find in their philosophy? Comment upon Waddington’s words about the meaning of human life?

106. What were Kitty’s thoughts and feelings on her way to Hong Kong? What did she appreciate most of all in her newly-acquired freedom?

107. Who was Kitty met by in Hong Kong? What motives prompted Dorothy to offer Kitty hospitality? Why was Kitty reluctant to accept Dorothy’s invitation? How did the community of the Colony treat Kitty on her arrival?

108. What feelings did Kitty experience when she met Charlie? What did he look like? Comment on his manner during Kitty’s stay. Find proof that he did not quite share his wife’s respect for Kitty?

109. Kitty’s way of life at the Townsends’. What made her recall Mei-tan-fu every now and then?

Part 9 Chapters lxxv-lxxx

1. Active Vocabulary.

• amiable (213)

• to keep smb company (214)

• to foresee (215)

• at all costs (220)

• recollection (221)

• to recollect

• odds and ends (221)

• to detain (222)

• to be broadminded (224)

• disgust (225)

• to condemn smb (226)

• to be provided for (226)

• to endure smth (229)

• to make claims on smb (235)

a) Find the sentences with these words and reproduce the situations.

2. Paraphrase.

110. I think you are rather hard on me. (214)

111. I should never have had a moment’s peace if we’d bolted. (215)

112. I feel head over heels in love with you. (215)

113. …that we were going to get into such a devil of a scrape. (215)

114. Her mind was vacant. (219)

115. She didn’t know what had come over her. (219)

116. …he had found some one eager to take on the lease. (221)

117. When they were small the parents doted on them. (227)

118. …I want her to take life like a free man and make a better job of it. (237)

119. You mustn’t be down-hearted. (237)

120. She shouldn’t know what the future had in store for her. (237)

25. Comment or explain.

121. What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve for. (215)

122. We were dashed uncomfortable in the frying-pan, but we should have been a damned worse off in the fire. (215)

123. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. (216)

124. …he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner… (233)

125. My heart sinks when I think how we’ve battened on you all our lives… Won’t you let me try to make up a little for all I’ve failed to do in the past. (235)

126. I’m not the Kitty I was when I went away.

127. I’m going to bring up my daughter so that she’s free and can stand on her own feet. (226)

128. The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead. (237)

26. Questions and Topics for Discussion.

129. Comment on Townsend and Kitty’s talk when they were left alone. Why did Charlie need that talk? why didn’t Kitty want Charlie to know that he might be the father of her child? Why did Kitty yield at Charlie’s caresses? How did she regard her fall? What moral lesson did Kitty’s relapse teach her?

130. What arrangements did Kitty make before leaving Hong Kong? How did Mrs. Garstin take the news that her daughter was coming home? What did Kitty learn from the letter she received from Doris?

131. Speak about the changes in the Garstin family. What did Mrs. Garstin’s death mean for the whole family? Comment on the change in Kitty’s attitude to her father. Why did she call her father’s new appointment “the bitter irony of fate”? Why did she decide to go to the Bahamas together with her father? What were Kitty’s plans for her future life?

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