The Wings of the Dove (Excerpt)
《鸽之翼》是亨利·詹姆斯1902年创作的小说。小说讲述了米莉·希勒，一个身患重病的美国女继承人以及她对她身边的人的影响的故事。有些人真诚地当米莉为朋友，但有些人却对她图谋不轨，只顾自身利益。
The Wings of the Dove (Excerpt)
By Henry James
“I never was in love with her,” said Densher.
She took it, but after a little she met it. “I believe that now——for the time she lived. I believe it at least for the time you were there. But your change came——as it might well——the day you last saw her; she died for you then that you might understand her. From that hour, you did.” With which Kate slowly rose. “And I do now. She did it for us.” Densher rose to face her, and she went on with her thought. “I used to call her, in my stupidity——for want of anything better——a dove. Well she stretched out her wings, and it was to that they reached. They cover us.”
“They cover us,” Densher said.
“That’s what I give you,” Kate gravely wound up. “That’s what I’ve done for you.”
His look at her had a slow strangeness that had dried, on the moment, his tears. “Do I understand then——?”
“That I do consent?” She gravely shook her head. “No——for I see. You’ll marry me without the money; you won’t marry me with it. If I don’t consent you don’t.”
“You lose me?” He showed, though naming it frankly, a sort of awe of her high grasp. “Well, you lose nothing else. I make over to you every penny.”
Prompt was his own clearness, but she had no smile this time to spare. “Precisely——so that I must choose.”
“You must choose.”
Strange it was for him then that she stood in his own rooms doing it, while, with an intensity now beyond any that had ever made his breath come slow, he waited for her act. “There’s but one thing that can save you from my choice.”
“From your choice of my surrender to you?”
“Yes” ——and she gave a nod at the long envelope on the table— “your surrender of that.”
“What is it then?” “Your word of honor that you’re not in love with her memory.”
“Oh——her memory!”
“Ah” ——she made a high gesture— “don’t speak of it as if you couldn’t be. I could in your place; and you’re one for whom it will do. Her memory’s your love. You want no other.”
He heard her out in stillness, watching her face but not moving. Then he only said: “I’ll marry you, mind you, in an hour.”
“As we were?”
“As we were.”
But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. “We shall never be again as we were!”
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