(完整版)TheStoryofAnHour参考译文.doc

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care wa s taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints th at revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, ne ar her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of t he railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a par alyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild a bandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into thi s she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that we re all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds t hat had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite moti onless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke