Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all—and yet so desirable? Night after night, when Scarlett went to bed after sitting on the front porch in the semi-darkness with him, she tossed restlessly for hours and comforted herself only with the thought that the very next time he saw her he certainly would propose. But the next time came and went, and the result was nothing—nothing except that the fever possessing her rose higher and hotter.
啊,為什么他要長得這么漂亮,可又這么客氣而不好親近,而且一談起歐洲,書本、音樂、詩歌以及那些她根本不感興趣的東西來,他就那么興奮得令人生厭----可是又那么令人愛慕呢?一個晚上又一個晚上,當(dāng)思嘉同他坐在前門半明半暗的走廊上閑談過以后,每次上床睡覺時,總要翻來覆去好幾個鐘頭,最后只得自我安慰地設(shè)想下次他再來看她時一定會向她求婚,這才慢慢地睡著??墒牵麓蝸砹擞肿吡?,結(jié)果還是一場空----只是那股令她著迷的狂熱勁卻升得更高更熱了。
She loved him and she wanted him and she did not understand him. She was as forthright and simple as the winds that blew over Tara and the yellow river that wound about it, and to the end of her days she would never be able to understand a complexity. And now, for the first time in her life, she was facing a complex nature.
她愛他,她需要他,但是她不了解他。她是那么直率、簡單,就像吃過塔拉上空的風(fēng)和從塔拉身邊流過的河流一樣,而且即使活到老她也不可能理解一件錯綜復(fù)雜的事。如今,她生氣第一次碰上了一個性格復(fù)雜的人。
For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality. He moved in an inner world that was more beautiful than Georgia and came back to reality with reluctance. He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world.
因為艾希禮天生屬于那種類型,一有閑暇不是用來做事,而是用來思想,用來編織色彩斑斕而毫無現(xiàn)實內(nèi)容的幻夢。他生活在一個比佐治亞美好得多的內(nèi)心世界里留連忘返。他對人冷眼旁觀,既不喜歡也不厭惡。他對生活漠然視之,無所動心,也無所憂慮。他對宇謅e以及他在其中的地位,無論適合與否都坦然接受,有時聳聳肩,回到他的音樂、書本和那個更好的世界里去。