This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she sat there to-day she was ineffaceably stamped with him. Beneficent, blameless as Stransom held her, he couldn’t rid himself of the sense that he had been, as who should say, swindled. She had imposed upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as he. All this later past came back to him as a time grotesquely10 misspent. Such at least were his first reflexions; after a while he found himself more divided and only, as the end of it, more troubled. He imagined, recalled, reconstituted, figured out for himself the truth she had refused to give him; the effect of which was to make her seem to him only more saturated11 with her fate. He felt her spirit, through the whole strangeness, finer than his own to the very degree in which she might have been, in which she certainly had been, more wronged. A women, when wronged, was always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions when the least she could have got off with was more than the most he could have to bear. He was sure this rare creature wouldn’t have got off with the least. He was awestruck at the thought of such a surrender—such a prostration12. Moulded indeed she had been by powerful hands, to have converted her injury into an exaltation so sublime13. The fellow had only had to die for everything that was ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent14. It was vain to try to guess what had taken place, but nothing could be clearer than that she had ended by accusing herself. She absolved15 him at every point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had profited had rushed back after its ebb16, and now the tide of tenderness, arrested for ever at flood, was too deep even to fathom17. Stransom sincerely considered that he had forgiven him; but how little he had achieved the miracle that she had achieved! His forgiveness was silence, but hers was mere18 unuttered sound. The light she had demanded for his altar would have broken his silence with a blare; whereas all the lights in the church were for her too great a hush19.
She had been right about the difference—she had spoken the truth about the change: Stransom was soon to know himself as perversely21 but sharply jealous. His tide had ebbed22, not flowed; if he had “forgiven” Acton Hague, that forgiveness was a motive23 with a broken spring. The very fact of her appeal for a material sign, a sign that should make her dead lover equal there with the others, presented the concession24 to her friend as too handsome for the case. He had never thought of himself as hard, but an exorbitant25 article might easily render him so. He moved round and round this one, but only in widening circles—the more he looked at it the less acceptable it seemed. At the same time he had no illusion about the effect of his refusal; he perfectly saw how it would make for a rupture26. He left her alone a week, but when at last he again called this conviction was cruelly confirmed. In the interval27 he had kept away from the church, and he needed no fresh assurance from her to know she hadn’t entered it. The change was complete enough: it had broken up her life. Indeed it had broken up his, for all the fires of his shrine28 seemed to him suddenly to have been quenched29. A great indifference30 fell upon him, the weight of which was in itself a pain; and he never knew what his devotion had been for him till in that shock it ceased like a dropped watch. Neither did he know with how large a confidence he had counted on the final service that had now failed: the mortal deception32 was that in this abandonment the whole future gave way.
These days of her absence proved to him of what she was capable; all the more that he never dreamed she was vindictive33 or even resentful. It was not in anger she had forsaken34 him; it was in simple submission35 to hard reality, to the stern logic36 of life. This came home to him when he sat with her again in the room in which her late aunt’s conversation lingered like the tone of a cracked piano. She tried to make him forget how much they were estranged37, but in the very presence of what they had given up it was impossible not to be sorry for her. He had taken from her so much more than she had taken from him. He argued with her again, told her she could now have the altar to herself; but she only shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to waste his breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn’t he see that in relation to her private need the rites38 he had established were practically an elaborate exclusion39? She regretted nothing that had happened; it had all been right so long as she didn’t know, and it was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment their eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had doubtless been happiness enough for them to go on together so long. She was gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a deep immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold of the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a stranger of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He would have hated to plunge40 again into that well of reminders41, but he enjoyed quite as little the vacant alternative.
After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that to have come at last into her house had had the horrid42 effect of diminishing their intimacy43. He had known her better, had liked her in greater freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled together. Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly sincere. They began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame9 imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning or ending, had been connected with their visits to the church. They had either strolled away as they came out or gone in to rest on the return. Stransom, besides, now faltered44; he couldn’t walk as of old. The omission45 made everything false; it was a dire46 mutilation of their lives. Our friend was frank and monotonous47, making no mystery of his remonstrance48 and no secret of his predicament. Her response, whatever it was, always came to the same thing—an implied invitation to him to judge, if he spoke20 of predicaments, of how much comfort she had in hers. For him indeed was no comfort even in complaint, since every allusion49 to what had befallen them but made the author of their trouble more present. Acton Hague was between them—that was the essence of the matter, and never so much between them as when they were face to face. Then Stransom, while still wanting to banish50 him, had the strangest sense of striving for an ease that would involve having accepted him. Deeply disconcerted by what he knew, he was still worse tormented51 by really not knowing. Perfectly aware that it would have been horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend or to tell his companion the story of their quarrel, it yet vexed52 him that her depth of reserve should give him no opening and should have the effect of a magnanimity greater even than his own.
He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked himself if he were in love with her that he should care so much what adventures she had had. He had never for a moment allowed he was in love with her; therefore nothing could have surprised him more than to discover he was jealous. What but jealousy53 could give a man that sore contentious54 wish for the detail of what would make him suffer? Well enough he knew indeed that he should never have it from the only person who to-day could give it to him. She let him press her with his sombre eyes, only smiling at him with an exquisite55 mercy and breathing equally little the word that would expose her secret and the word that would appear to deny his literal right to bitterness. She told nothing, she judged nothing; she accepted everything but the possibility of her return to the old symbols. Stransom divined that for her too they had been vividly56 individual, had stood for particular hours or particular attributes—particular links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, as he believed, that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature of the plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition57; that it happened to have come from her was precisely58 the vice31 that attached to it. To the voice of impersonal59 generosity60 he felt sure he would have listened; he would have deferred61 to an advocate who, speaking from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without having known Hague, should have had the imagination to say: “Ah, remember only the best of him; pity him; provide for him.” To provide for him on the very ground of having discovered another of his turpitudes was not to pity but to glorify62 him. The more Stransom thought the more he made out that whatever this relation of Hague’s it could only have been a deception more or less finely practised. Where had it come into the life that all men saw? Why had one never heard of it if it had had the frankness of honourable63 things? Stransom knew enough of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances, not to say enough of his general character, to be sure there had been some infamy64. In one way or another this creature had been coldly sacrificed. That was why at the last as well as the first he must still leave him out and out.
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1
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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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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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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prostration
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| n. 平伏, 跪倒, 疲劳 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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absolved
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| 宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的过去式和过去分词 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责） | |
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ebb
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| vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态 | |
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fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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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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perversely
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| adv. 倔强地 | |
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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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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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rupture
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| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
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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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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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29
quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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32
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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34
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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40
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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reminders
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| n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 )；提醒…的东西；（告知该做某事的）通知单；提示信 | |
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42
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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43
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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44
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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45
omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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46
dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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47
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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48
remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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49
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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50
banish
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| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
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51
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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52
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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53
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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54
contentious
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| adj.好辩的，善争吵的 | |
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55
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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57
prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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60
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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61
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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62
glorify
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| vt.颂扬，赞美，使增光，美化 | |
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63
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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64
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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