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Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected him to do no less), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent.
阿切爾設法安慰自己，心想他跟拉里·萊弗茨那樣的蠢驢決不可同日而語，梅也不是可悲的格特魯德那樣的傻爪；然而這差別畢竟只是屬于才智方面的，而不是原則性的。他們實際上都生活在一種用符號表示的天地里，在那里真實的事情從來不說、不做，甚至也不想，而只是用一套隨心所欲的符號來表示；就像韋蘭太太那樣，她十分清楚阿切爾為什么催她在博福特的舞會上宣布女兒的訂婚消息（而且她確實也希望他那樣做），卻認為必須假裝不情愿，裝出勉為其難的樣子，這頗似文化超前的人們開始閱讀的關于原始人的書中描繪的情景：原始時代未開化的新娘是尖叫著被人從父母的帳篷里拖走的。
The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called "the facts of life."
其結果必然是，處于精心策劃的神秘體制中心的年輕姑娘因為坦誠與自信反而越發不可思議。她坦誠——可憐的寶貝——因為她沒有什么需要隱瞞；她自信，因為她不知道有什么需要防范；僅僅有這點準備，一夜之間她便投身于人們含糊稱謂的“生活常規”之中去了。
The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
阿切爾真誠卻又冷靜地墜人愛河，他喜愛未婚妻光華照人的容貌、她的身體、她的馬術、她在游戲中的優雅與敏捷，以及在他指導下剛剛萌發的對書籍與思想的興趣。（她已經進步到能與他一起嘲笑《國王牧歌》，但尚不能感受《尤利西斯》與《食忘憂果者》的美妙。）她直爽、忠誠、勇敢，并且有幽默感（主要證明是聽了他的笑話后大笑）。他推測，在她天真、專注的心靈深處有一種熱烈的感情，喚醒它是一種快樂。然而對她進行一番解剖之后，他重又變得氣餒起來，因為他想到，所有這些坦率與天真只不過是人為的產物。未經馴化的人性是不坦率、不天真的，而是出自本能的狡猾，充滿了怪僻與防范。他感到自己就受到這種人造的假純潔的折磨。它非常巧妙地由母親們、姑姨們、祖母們及早已過世的祖先們合謀制造出來——因為據認為他需要它并有權得到它——以便讓他行使自己的高貴意志，把它像雪人般打得粉碎。
There was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.
這些想法未免有些迂腐，它們屬于臨近婚禮的年輕人慣常的思考，不過伴隨這些思考的往往是懊悔與自卑，但紐蘭·阿切爾卻絲毫沒有這種感覺。他不想哀嘆（這是薩克雷的主人公們經常令他惱怒的做法）他沒有一身的清白奉獻給他的新娘，以換取她的白壁無瑕。他不想回避這樣的事實：假如他受的教養跟她一樣，他們的適應能力就無異于那些容易上當的老好人。而且，絞盡腦汁也看不出有何（與他個人的一時尋歡與強烈的男性虛榮心不相干的）正當理由，不讓他的新娘得到與他同樣的自由與經驗。
Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to undress. He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him.
這樣一些問題，在這樣一種時刻，是必然會浮上他心頭的；然而他意識到，它們那樣清晰、那樣令人不快地壓在他的心頭，全是因為奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人來得不合時宜，使他剛好在訂婚的時刻——思想純凈、前景光明的時刻——突然被推人丑聞的混濁漩渦，引出了所有那些他寧愿束之高閣的特殊問題。“去他的埃倫·奧蘭斯卡！”他抱怨地咕噥道，一面蓋好爐火，開始脫衣。他真的不明白她的命運為何會對他產生影響，然而他朦朧地感覺到，他只是剛剛開始體驗訂婚加給他的捍衛者這一角色的風險。
