“I can’t describe to you the rage of conformity2 that possessed3 me. Poetry, ideas—all the picture-making processes stopped. A kind of dull self-discipline seemed to me the only exercise worthy4 of a reflecting mind. I had to justify5 my great refusal, and I tried to do it by plunging6 myself up to the eyes into the very conditions I had been instinctively7 struggling to get away from. The only possible consolation8 would have been to find in a life of business routine and social submission9 such moral compensations as may reward the citizen if they fail the man; but to attain10 to these I should have had to accept the old delusion11 that the social and the individual man are two. Now, on the contrary, I found soon enough that I couldn’t get one part of my machinery12 to work effectively while another wanted feeding: and that in rejecting what had seemed to me a negation13 of action I had made all my action negative.
“The best solution, of course, would have been to fall in love with another woman; but it was long before I could bring myself to wish that this might happen to me.... Then, at length, I suddenly and violently desired it; and as such impulses are seldom without some kind of imperfect issue I contrived14, a year or two later, to work myself up into the wished-for state.... She was a woman in society, and with all the awe15 of that institution that Paulina lacked. Our relation was consequently one of those unavowed affairs in which triviality is the only alternative to tragedy. Luckily we had, on both sides, risked only as much as prudent16 people stake in a drawingroom game; and when the match was over I take it that we came out fairly even.
“My gain, at all events, was of an unexpected kind. The adventure had served only to make me understand Paulina’s abhorrence17 of such experiments, and at every turn of the slight intrigue18 I had felt how exasperating19 and belittling20 such a relation was bound to be between two people who, had they been free, would have mated openly. And so from a brief phase of imperfect forgetting I was driven back to a deeper and more understanding remembrance....
“This second incarnation of Paulina was one of the strangest episodes of the whole strange experience. Things she had said during our extraordinary talk, things I had hardly heard at the time, came back to me with singular vividness and a fuller meaning. I hadn’t any longer the cold consolation of believing in my own perspicacity21: I saw that her insight had been deeper and keener than mine.
“I remember, in particular, starting up in bed one sleepless22 night as there flashed into my head the meaning of her last words: ‘There was no other way’; the phrase I had half-smiled at at the time, as a parrot-like echo of the novel-heroine’s stock farewell. I had never, up to that moment, wholly understood why Paulina had come to my house that night. I had never been able to make that particular act—which could hardly, in the light of her subsequent conduct, be dismissed as a blind surge of passion—square with my conception of her character. She was at once the most spontaneous and the steadiest-minded woman I had ever known, and the last to wish to owe any advantage to surprise, to unpreparedness, to any play on the spring of sex. The better I came, retrospectively, to know her, the more sure I was of this, and the less intelligible23 her act appeared. And then, suddenly, after a night of hungry restless thinking, the flash of enlightenment came. She had come to my house, had brought her trunk with her, had thrown herself at my head with all possible violence and publicity24, in order to give me a pretext25, a loophole, an honourable26 excuse, for doing and saying—why, precisely27 what I had said and done!
“As the idea came to me it was as if some ironic28 hand had touched an electric button, and all my fatuous29 phrases had leapt out on me in fire.
“Of course she had known all along just the kind of thing I should say if I didn’t at once open my arms to her; and to save my pride, my dignity, my conception of the figure I was cutting in her eyes, she had recklessly and magnificently provided me with the decentest pretext a man could have for doing a pusillanimous30 thing....
“With that discovery the whole case took a different aspect. It hurt less to think of Paulina—and yet it hurt more. The tinge31 of bitterness, of doubt, in my thoughts of her had had a tonic32 quality. It was harder to go on persuading myself that I had done right as, bit by bit, my theories crumbled33 under the test of time. Yet, after all, as she herself had said, one could judge of results only in the long run....
“The Trants stayed away for two years; and about a year after they got back, you may remember, Trant was killed in a railway accident. You know Fate’s way of untying34 a knot after everybody has given up tugging35 at it!
“Well—there I was, completely justified36: all my weaknesses turned into merits! I had ‘saved’ a weak woman from herself, I had kept her to the path of duty, I had spared her the humiliation37 of scandal and the misery38 of self-reproach; and now I had only to put out my hand and take my reward.
“I had avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort to see me. But after Trant’s death I wrote her a few lines, to which she sent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval39 had elapsed, and I asked if I might call on her, she answered at once that she would see me.
“I went to her house with the fixed40 intention of asking her to marry me—and I left it without having done so. Why? I don’t know that I can tell you. Perhaps you would have had to sit there opposite her, knowing what I did and feeling as I did, to understand why. She was kind, she was compassionate—I could see she didn’t want to make it hard for me. Perhaps she even wanted to make it easy. But there, between us, was the memory of the gesture I hadn’t made, forever parodying41 the one I was attempting! There wasn’t a word I could think of that hadn’t an echo in it of words of hers I had been deaf to; there wasn’t an appeal I could make that didn’t mock the appeal I had rejected. I sat there and talked of her husband’s death, of her plans, of my sympathy; and I knew she understood; and knowing that, in a way, made it harder.... The door-bell rang and the footman came in to ask if she would receive other visitors. She looked at me a moment and said ‘Yes,’ and I got up and shook hands and went away.
“A few days later she sailed for Europe, and the next time we met she had married Reardon....”
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1
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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2
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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3
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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5
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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6
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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7
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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8
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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9
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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10
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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13
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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15
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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16
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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17
abhorrence
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| n.憎恶；可憎恶的事 | |
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18
intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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19
exasperating
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| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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20
belittling
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| 使显得微小，轻视，贬低( belittle的现在分词 ) | |
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21
perspicacity
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| n. 敏锐, 聪明, 洞察力 | |
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22
sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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25
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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28
ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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29
fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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30
pusillanimous
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| adj.懦弱的，胆怯的 | |
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31
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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32
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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33
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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34
untying
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| untie的现在分词 | |
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35
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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36
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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37
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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38
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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39
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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40
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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41
parodying
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| v.滑稽地模仿，拙劣地模仿( parody的现在分词 ) | |
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