WAYS OF LOOKING III

LEVEL: Advanced

8. Complete the following extracts with the right verbs:

The kitchen was dark, but Jim knew where every piece of furniture was. He put out his hand touched the corner of the table, a chair-back, the towel hanger, as he went along. He crossed the room so silently that even he could hear only his breath and the whisper of his trousers legs together, and the beating of his watch in his pocket. The bedroom door stood open. And spilled a patch of moonlight on the kitchen floor. Jim reached the door at last and (a). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . through.

Jim dipped his hand into the trough and stirred the moon to broken swirling streams of light. He wetted his forehead with his damp hands and stood up. This time he did not move so quietly, but the crossed the kitchen on tip toe and stood in the bedroom door. Jelka moved her arm and opened her eyes a little. The eyes sprang wide, then they glistened with moisture. Jim looked into her eyes; her face was blank of expression. A little drop ran out of Jelka's nose and lodged in the hollow of her upper lip. She (b). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . back at him.

There were three steps down form the street door. Then the store extended, narrow and low between the book-packed walls, sixty or seventy feet to a little cubbyhole of an office where a large sallow man worked under a shaded desk lamp. He has heard the street door open and looked that way a moment, (c). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . intently through his spectacles. Seeing only a thin, stiffly erect gentleman with a small cropped white moustache, standing hesitant before the table with the sign "Any book, 50 cents", he returned to the folded copy of a religious weekly on the desk in front of him.

We sat round a small table, sipping our drinks and watching the other inhabitants of the bar with interest. For the most part they seemed to consist of very old men, with long, sweeping moustaches, whose brown faces were seamed and stitched by the wind. They sat in small groups, crouched over their tiny tumblers of cognac or wine with a dead air, as though they were hibernating there in this dingy bar, (d) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hopelessly into the bottoms of their glasses, wondering when the wind would die down and knowing it would not.

No one answered. The bell rang. Still no one spoke. Frodo (e) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . at all the faces, but they were not turned to him. All the committee sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought. A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken.