第一章（第4/8页）
生动的、启迪灵魂的交谈，使恋人间的关系变得亲昵，若此时云情雨意已无法抑制，那就不妨顺其自然。这标志着一个篇章的终结。其本身也伴随着强烈的快感：肉体深处莫可名状的震颤，最终释放欲望时的痉挛，像是文章末尾激奋人心的字眼，更像是段落结尾处一连串的星号，预示着主题思想戛然而止。
When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.
适逢1913年暑期，姐妹俩返回故乡，那时希尔达20岁，康妮18岁，其父一眼便看出她们已经有了爱情经验。
L'amour avait possé par là, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its course. As for the mother, a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be "free", and to "fulfil themselves". She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, high-spirited wife to rule her own roost, while he went his own way.
正如某人所说：爱情已经来临过。然而他自己已是过来人，索性听之任之。至于她们的母亲，疯疯癫癫的她已经时日无多，只剩几个月的活头，期望女儿们能够“自由自在”，“充实自我”。她从未做过真正的自己，这个权利被剥夺了。天晓得原因为何，毕竟她是个经济独立、行事果敢的女子。她归咎于自己的丈夫。但事实上，只是陈腐的伦常对其思想或灵魂的影响太过深重，以至于她始终都无法摆脱出来。这跟马尔科姆爵士绝无半点干系。他对妻子神经质的敌视和执着熟视无睹，心安理得地我行我素。
So the girls were 'free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men. They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else they were a little rebuffed, though they did not know it.
姐妹俩自然不会受到什么约束，她们再赴德累斯顿，回归高校继续研修音乐，也得以重返年轻的情郎的怀抱。两对恋人都全身心地深爱着彼此。少男们所想、所说、所写的一切美妙事物，全都是为了自己心爱的女孩。康妮的爱郎学习音乐，而希尔达的则主修理工。但他们生活的重心完全放在自己的恋人身上。更确切地说，从思想及情感方面来讲尤是如此。而在其他方面，他们却并未被完全接受，虽说二人始终没有察觉到这一点。
It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less assertive, more hesitant.
显而易见，爱情，干柴烈火的肉体之爱，已经在她俩身上留下痕迹。奇妙的是，肉体之爱会让情侣们的身体发生细微但却显而易见的变化：女孩变得更加丰腴圆润，好似盛放的花朵，少女时期的棱角渐渐被磨平，取而代之的是抑或忧心忡忡，抑或洋洋得意的丰富表情；男孩则变得更加沉静内敛，肩膀和臀部的线条少了几分斩钉截铁，多了几分犹豫不决。
In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the woman for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie's man could be a bit sulky, and Hilda's a bit jeering. But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason.
身体内部真切的性快感，让姐妹俩几乎要对男性的奇异力量俯首称臣。但二人旋即重拾自我，将性快感归于官能的刺激，坚守着心灵的自由。反观她们的情郎，却因为对佳人以身相许心存感念，将灵魂也尽数交托给对方。但过不多时，他们就发觉这似乎有些得不偿失。康妮的爱侣不时板起脸孔，而希尔达的则经常冷嘲热讽。男人就是这副臭德行！薄情寡幸，贪得无厌。对其敬而远之，他们便心生怨恨；与其如胶似漆，也会招致其他缘由的厌烦。