Read the passage carefully, then answer the question that follows.
The salt spray on the deck of the *SS Orion* was a cold reminder of the leagues that now lay between Beatrice and the soot-choked streets of London. It had been three weeks since the departure from Tilbury docks, a departure she had made in such haste that she had left her writing desk open, its drawers spilling over with unanswered correspondence. Among those papers lay the letter from her brother Arthur—the catalyst for this sudden flight. Arthur had written of the old orchard at High Wycombe, of the summer they had spent hiding in the hollow oak, and of the sudden, devastating frost that had ruined the harvest that August of their twelfth year.
At the time she read it, sitting in her damp parlor while the London rain beat against the panes, the letter had seemed a mere exercise in nostalgia. But as the steamer cut through the grey waters of the Mediterranean, the memory of that frost took on a sharper, more ominous shape. She recalled how Arthur had insisted on climbing the wall to steal the last remaining plums before the frost could claim them, only to fall and break his wrist. She remembered her own silence, her refusal to call for their father, fearing the switch more than her brother’s pain. It was that silence, she now realized, that had set the pattern for the years that followed: a habit of concealment that had ultimately driven her to board the steamer under an assumed name.
A shadow fell across her lap. It was the purser, Mr. Finch, holding a tray of afternoon tea. Beatrice shrank back, pulling her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. She looked at his face, searchingly, wondering if he, too, carried secrets that drove him across the sea, or if he merely saw her as another solitary passenger escaping the English winter.
Which of the following best describes how the non-linear narrative sequence of the passage functions to develop Beatrice's character?
- ABy presenting Beatrice's sudden flight before describing the arrival of Arthur's letter, the sequence suggests that her brother's letter was written in response to her departure.
- BBy introducing Mr. Finch immediately after the memory of the childhood accident, the sequence uses dramatic conventions to signal that Beatrice's father has successfully tracked her to the ship.
- By interrupting the journey on the steamer with recollections of London and her childhood, the sequence reveals that her current flight is the culmination of a long-standing habit of concealment.Cevap
- DBy contrasting the cold frost of her twelfth year with the warmth of the Mediterranean, the sequence establishes a moral conflict between Beatrice’s ethical innocence and Arthur's greed.
- EBy tracing Beatrice's movement from the orchard at High Wycombe to London and then to the Mediterranean, the sequence chronologically maps her physical escape from her father's household.