“No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.”
“Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, do they?”
“Yes”—with all accommodation—“everything depends!” On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating3 step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs4 I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy5 of “work,” behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment6 that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently7 obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back—none other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity8 and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively9 he who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb10 of hope. Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted pane11, for something he couldn’t see?—and wasn’t it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse12? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent13. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss14. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed15. “Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees with me!”
“You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,” I went on bravely, “that you’ve been enjoying yourself.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about—miles and miles away. I’ve never been so free.”
He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. “Well, do you like it?”
He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words—“Do you?”—more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened16. “Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone together now it’s you that are alone most. But I hope,” he threw in, “you don’t particularly mind!”
“Having to do with you?” I asked. “My dear child, how can I help minding? Though I’ve renounced17 all claim to your company—you’re so beyond me—I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?”
He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. “You stay on just for that?”
“Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your while. That needn’t surprise you.” My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. “Don’t you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you?”
“Yes, yes!” He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. “Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for you!”
“It was partly to get you to do something,” I conceded. “But, you know, you didn’t do it.”
“Oh, yes,” he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, “you wanted me to tell you something.”
“That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know.”
“Ah, then, is that what you’ve stayed over for?”
He spoke18 with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest little quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to express the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as if what I had yearned19 for had come at last only to astonish me. “Well, yes—I may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely20 for that.”
He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating21 the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was: “Do you mean now—here?”
“There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round him uneasily, and I had the rare—oh, the queer!—impression of the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate22 fear. It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me—which struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang23 of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost grotesque24. “You want so to go out again?”
“Awfully!” He smiled at me heroically, and the touching25 little bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse26 horror of what I was doing. To do it in any way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion27 of the idea of grossness and guilt28 on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse29? Wasn’t it base to create for a being so exquisite30 a mere31 alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn’t have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish32 that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and scruples33, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles said—“I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I will tell you—I will. But not now.”
“Why not now?”
My insistence34 turned him from me and kept him once more at his window in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, someone who had frankly35 to be reckoned with was waiting. “I have to see Luke.”
I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request.”
He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a little to bargain. “Very much smaller—?”
“Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me”—oh, my work preoccupied36 me, and I was offhand37!—“if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter.”
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收听单词发音
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1
concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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cogitating
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| v.认真思考，深思熟虑( cogitate的现在分词 ) | |
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4
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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13
portent
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| n.预兆；恶兆；怪事 | |
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14
gloss
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| n.光泽，光滑；虚饰；注释；vt.加光泽于；掩饰 | |
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15
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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16
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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17
renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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18
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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repudiating
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的现在分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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22
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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24
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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25
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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26
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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27
obtrusion
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| n.强制，莽撞 | |
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28
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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29
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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30
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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31
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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32
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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33
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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34
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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35
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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36
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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37
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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