I was soon called back to Folkestone; but Mrs. Meldrum and her young friend had already left England, finding to that end every convenience on the spot and not having had to come up to town. My thoughts however were so painfully engaged there that I should in any case have had little attention for them: the event occurred that was to bring my series of visits to a close. When this high tide had ebbed1 I returned to America and to my interrupted work, which had opened out on such a scale that, with a deep plunge2 into a great chance, I was three good years in rising again to the surface. There are nymphs and naiads moreover in the American depths: they may have had something to do with the duration of my dive. I mention them to account for a grave misdemeanour — the fact that after the first year I rudely neglected Mrs. Meldrum. She had written to me from Florence after my mother’s death and had mentioned in a postscript3 that in our young lady’s calculations the lowest numbers were now Italian counts. This was a good omen4, and if in subsequent letters there was no news of a sequel I was content to accept small things and to believe that grave tidings, should there be any, would come to me in due course. The gravity of what might happen to a featherweight became indeed with time and distance less appreciable5, and I was not without an impression that Mrs. Meldrum, whose sense of proportion was not the least of her merits, had no idea of boring the world with the ups and downs of her pensioner6. The poor girl grew dusky and dim, a small fitful memory, a regret tempered by the comfortable consciousness of how kind Mrs. Meldrum would always be to her. I was professionally more preoccupied7 than I had ever been, and I had swarms8 of pretty faces in my eyes and a chorus of high voices in my ears. Geoffrey Dawling had on his return to England written me two or three letters: his last information had been that he was going into the figures of rural illiteracy9. I was delighted to receive it and had no doubt that if he should go into figures they would, as they are said to be able to prove anything, prove at least that my advice was sound and that he had wasted time enough. This quickened on my part another hope, a hope suggested by some roundabout rumour10 — I forget how it reached me — that he was engaged to a girl down in Hampshire. He turned out not to be, but I felt sure that if only he went into figures deep enough he would become, among the girls down in Hampshire or elsewhere, one of those numerous prizes of battle whose defences are practically not on the scale of their provocations11. I nursed in short the thought that it was probably open to him to become one of the types as to which, as the years go on, frivolous12 and superficial spectators lose themselves in the wonder that they ever succeeded in winning even the least winsome13 mates. He never alluded14 to Flora15 Saunt; and there was in his silence about her, quite as in Mrs. Meldrum’s, an element of instinctive16 tact17, a brief implication that if you didn’t happen to have been in love with her she was not an inevitable18 topic.
Within a week after my return to London I went to the opera, of which I had always been much of a devotee. I arrived too late for the first act of “Lohengrin,” but the second was just beginning, and I gave myself up to it with no more than a glance at the house. When it was over I treated myself, with my glass, from my place in the stalls, to a general survey of the boxes, making doubtless on their contents the reflections, pointed19 by comparison, that are most familiar to the wanderer restored to London. There was a certain proportion of pretty women, but I suddenly became aware that one of these was far prettier than the others. This lady, alone in one of the smaller receptacles of the grand tier and already the aim of fifty tentative glasses, which she sustained with admirable serenity20 — this single exquisite21 figure, placed in the quarter furthest removed from my stall, was a person, I immediately felt, to cause one’s curiosity to linger. Dressed in white, with diamonds in her hair and pearls on her neck, she had a pale radiance of beauty which even at that distance made her a distinguished22 presence and, with the air that easily attaches to lonely loveliness in public places, an agreeable mystery. A mystery however she remained to me only for a minute after I had levelled my glass at her: I feel to this moment the startled thrill, the shock almost of joy with which I suddenly encountered in her vague brightness a rich revival23 of Flora Saunt. I say a revival because, to put it crudely, I had on that last occasion left poor Flora for dead. At present perfectly24 alive again, she was altered only, as it were, by resurrection. A little older, a little quieter, a little finer and a good deal fairer, she was simply transfigured by recovery. Sustained by the reflection that even recovery wouldn’t enable her to distinguish me in the crowd, I was free to look at her well. Then it was it came home to me that my vision of her in her great goggles25 had been cruelly final. As her beauty was all there was of her, that machinery26 had extinguished her, and so far as I had thought of her in the interval27 I had thought of her as buried in the tomb her stern specialist had built. With the sense that she had escaped from it came a lively wish to return to her; and if I didn’t straightway leave my place and rush round the theatre and up to her box it was because I was fixed28 to the spot some moments longer by the simple inability to cease looking at her.
She had been from the first of my seeing her practically motionless, leaning back in her chair with a kind of thoughtful grace and with her eyes vaguely29 directed, as it seemed to me, to one of the boxes on my side of the house and consequently over my head and out of my sight. The only movement she made for some time was to finger with an ungloved hand and as if with the habit of fondness the row of pearls on her neck, which my glass showed me to be large and splendid. Her diamonds and pearls, in her solitude30, mystified me, making me, as she had had no such brave jewels in the days of the Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-of improvement had taken place in her fortunes. The ghost of a question hovered31 there a moment: could anything so prodigious32 have happened as that on her tested and proved amendment33 Lord Iffield had taken her back? This could not have occurred without my hearing of it; and moreover if she had become a person of such fashion where was the little court one would naturally see at her elbow? Her isolation34 was puzzling, though it could easily suggest that she was but momentarily alone. If she had come with Mrs. Mel-drum that lady would have taken advantage of the interval to pay a visit to some other box — doubtless the box at which Flora had just been looking. Mrs. Meldrum didn’t account for the jewels, but the refreshment35 of Flora’s beauty accounted for anything. She presently moved her eyes over the house, and I felt them brush me again like the wings of a dove. I don’t know what quick pleasure flickered36 into the hope that she would at last see me. She did see me: she suddenly bent37 forward to take up the little double-barrelled ivory glass that rested on the edge of the box and, to all appearance, fix me with it. I smiled from my place straight up at the searching lenses, and after an instant she dropped them and smiled as straight back at me. Oh, her smile: it was her old smile, her young smile, her peculiar38 smile made perfect! I instantly left my stall and hurried off for a nearer view of it; quite flushed, I remember, as I went, with the annoyance39 of having happened to think of the idiotic40 way I had tried to paint her. Poor Iffield with his sample of that error, and still poorer Dawling in particular with his! I hadn’t touched her, I was professionally humiliated41, and as the attendant in the lobby opened her box for me I felt that the very first thing I should have to say to her would be that she must absolutely sit to me again.
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1
ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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pensioner
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| n.领养老金的人 | |
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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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swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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illiteracy
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| n.文盲 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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provocations
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| n.挑衅( provocation的名词复数 )；激怒；刺激；愤怒的原因 | |
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frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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winsome
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| n.迷人的，漂亮的 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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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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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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31
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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32
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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33
amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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34
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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35
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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36
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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39
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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40
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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41
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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