Digital ACT Reading Practice Question #1677

As it is used in the passage, the word "ephemeral" most nearly means: Passage Excerpt (Literary Narrative): In the damp pre-dawn chill of the Venetian lagoon, Maestro Matteo stepped onto the brick floor of his furnace room. The crucible glowed with a fierce cherry radiance, casting long shadows across shelves lined with iron pontil rods. For forty-four years, Matteo had coaxed molten silica into delicate chalices and undulating vases. Yet today, his hands trembled slightly as he lifted the blowpipe. The guild elders had warned him that imported Bohemian crystal was driving Murano wares from northern markets. His nephew Marco urged him to adopt lead-additive formulas to mimic the foreign glass, but Matteo refused. To Matteo, soda-lime glass possessed a warm vitality that lead crystal lacked; it responded to the breath of an artisan, capturing the ephemeral motion of the sea.