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what's the meaning of "the strength of her resistance"
He was at a loss to divine how much she knew, guessed, or imagined; and any word of enlightenment from him might be inconceivably dangerous. But he was conscious of the strength of her resistance, and lacked the reserves to battle with it.
Q：what's the meaning of "the strength of her resistance" and "the reserves" here? does "the strength of her resistance" mean that her resistance is strong or weak?besides, from the context, we can know that the conjunction "but" here does not mean "however", then what's its function here, just to emphasize the following sentence or what else?
Jan 3, 2016 3:28 PM
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Answers · 5
Well, for starters, to divine as a verb means to find water with a rod or stick. It is an old, mysterious and unscientific method that has been used to locate underground water sources, when people need to dig a well somewhere. It doesn't work very well,or really at all. And it doesn't work very well in this usage where I think it is intended to suggest a psychic ability to know what another person knows, or guesses or imagines... Anyway, to answer you question, the first phrase means 'how strongly she would resist him' or 'how strong her resistance to him would be'. The second phrase refers to the energy he had in 'reserve' to do any kind of battle with her resistance to him. Can I ask where you took this from?
January 3, 2016
In this case, he knew that her resistance was weak. You could think of "strength" in this case as the "level" of her resistance or ability to resist (it's neither strong nor weak by itself, it's the context that will tell you). "Reserves" would be the "amount" or degree that she can withstand or resist before giving in to the thing that she's resisting.
January 3, 2016
