can anyone help me?
Elizabeth drove and tried to get her head around what had just happened in the church. Forget the
body, the fact of another death. That was too big and too sudden. She’d need time to process what it
meant, so she thought about Beckett instead. He wanted to help—she understood that—but she
despised the church in a way he could never understand. It was old, that hatred, twined so deeply into
Elizabeth’s soul that it was hard to stand before the altar of her youth and be objective about anything.
She felt small there, and angry and betrayed. That was a tough combination; so, in the quiet of her car,
she focused on the one thing that mattered now.
Was she right to believe in Adrian?
They’d never been close in any of the normal ways. He was the man who’d saved her life, a glow
in the night of her bitter despair.
That was a tough combination mean?
They’d never been close in any of the normal ways. He was the man who’d saved her life, a glow
in the night of her bitter despair mean?
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Answers · 5
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"That was a tough combination mean?"
A combination of things means a group of things which are joined together in some way. For example, salad dressing can be a combination of oil and vinegar. The person in your story is saying she felt "small, angry and betrayed". She is describing the "combination" of her feelings. "Tough" in this context means 'hard to endure' or 'painful'. She is saying that the combination of her feelings of being small, angry and betrayed is painful and hard to endure.
"They’d never been close in any of the normal ways. He was the man who’d saved her life, a glow
in the night of her bitter despair mean?"
The first sentence means she has a complicated relationship with this man. They are close, but she doesn't know how she feels about him exactly. Is he a brother? A lover? A friend? She doesn't exactly know.
The second sentence describes one of the reasons why her relationship is so complicated with this man. Apparently he saved her life! So that is a very big and important thing. A "glow" means a steady and warm source of light or heat, so it is a very positive thing. She is describing this man as "a glow". She describes herself as being "in the night of her bitter despair", which means that she has a sadness about her life. Words like bitter and despair are negative, and "night" can be used to describe a dark feeling we have. So the author of the book is making a very strong contrast between these two characters in the mind of the female in the story. From her perspective she is living in a dark and depressing life, and within that darkness is this man who she sees as a warm and comforting light (because he saved her life).
0
Exactly. You have not asked a question.
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