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● nor more nor less：不多也不少，正是（地狱）。
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● tore at本意为“使劲地拉”。屋子大火，刺激她的眼睛，好像要抓破她的眼球似的。looking at it：对它看。more than looking：不止是看而已。大火不单对她的“视觉”发生作用，她的整个身心都受到影响：它已经开始把她吞下去。
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The clawing flame fingers began to encircle her heart. What did they want? Could they release the dream that had been walled up in her? A dream as soft-feathered and surely molded as a thrush, but lifeless now, head battered and wings shredded from beating against the walls of defeat. This dream of life, giving and taking and of loving—poor love—was dead. She had failed; and the heart was a tomb and the flame fingers could probe and claw to no purpose—forever. That was it. She had forgotten. Hell was a flame forever; that was the whole point. Eternal fire.
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● clawing：用爪来抓的。女主人面对大火，火光刺目，热浪袭人，加以思潮起伏，百感交集，此身似已为大火吞去。本段又云：烈焰嚣张，伸指欲抓，开始向其方寸之间围玫。是则非但身外火势逼近，而且心中焦灼如焚，亦不堪熬炼矣。
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● 这些火焰的手指要些什么东西呢？它们能不能将“砌”（walled up）在她心头的一个梦“释放”（release）出来呢？A dream之下并无finite verb，句子不完全，只是用以说明上一句的the dream。她的梦像一只小鸟（thrush：画眉），羽毛柔软，形体宛然（surely molded：她的梦不是空虚的，而有确定的塑造成的形体的）。现在这只小鸟是死了，因为想破壁而出，自己给撞死的。battered和shredded都是过去分词“头破翅裂”。围着那只小鸟的墙是什么墙呢？是“失败之墙”。她一生多故，累遭挫折，好梦难圆，情思郁结——梦想之鸟，难破失败之墙，终于梦碎鸟死，生机奄然矣。
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● 次句说明“梦”之内容：“生命之梦——施与受”。照语法结构，taking后最好接comma，可是接了comma之后，dream of life和dream of loving硬是成对立之局。作者之意不然，of loving既似与of life对立，又似附属于of life之下，而和giving and taking相平行。此时小说中主角心头本不甚清楚，此种句法似更能代表当时之心境。
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● she had failed：她的生命是失败了。probe：探察（尤其指用尖锐的外科仪器以探察伤口）。to no purpose：没有结果。“她的心已经像一座坟，探察它撕抓它也得不到什么结果了。”
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● she had forgotten：她已经把过去都忘记了。她还是自以为她的过去已经毁灭，她的心已经死去，看下文乃知事实并不如此。
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● that was the whole point：就是如此而已，只剩下大火，地狱，永久的（eternal）火。
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And she sighed. For the first time she took her eyes away from the fire. That was all that happened. She paused and looked around.
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She saw that oddly enough the woods behind the house had had nothing to do with the fire. Under her feet there were buds of bleeding heart and violets. In the valley, beyond the fire engines, a living thrush twittered. Could it be that the sky was reddening not with blood but with dawn?
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● sighed：叹气。
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● That was all that happened：所发生的就是这么一件事。叹了一口气，眼光转了一下。可是这么一来，她在心理上就大有转变了。
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● had had nothing to do with the fire：跟火不发生什么关系。第一个had表示过去完成式，第二个had表示“有”。
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● bleeding heart：花名，中国俗名“荷包牡丹”或“倒挂金钟”。twittered：啾唧而鸣。reddening：（天色）转红。不是为血所染红的吧？或者可能是天亮了吧？
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Spring dawn became something faintly more than the shadow smell of ground flowers under the leaves; and when she breathed she had to unclench her hands, because it was impossible to inhale the violet-tinged, dogwood-tipped air without also moving her neck and shoulders to relax them, then relaxing her arms, and at last her hands, which she held upward waist high and opened into palms.
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● shadow：名词当形容词用，指“依稀恍惚，不可捉摸”——草花之香是如此。花香虽轻淡如影，然对于小说中主人之心理，已起作用；今晨光熹微，春日之黎明已可隐约觉得，在其人心理上亦起作用，其作用略甚（faintly more）于花香。
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● unclench：松开。她因为神经紧张过度，双手一直是紧握着拳的，现在透了一口气，手也松开了。impossible跟without意义相连：不那么做，这个也不可能了。要做这个也得连那个一起来。
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● inhale：吸入。所吸入的空气有两个“复合字”（compound words）形容：violet-tinged（微微的带一点紫罗兰味儿的），dogwood-tipped（尖头上抹着山茱萸香味的）。空气怎么会有尖头（tip）的呢？中文也有“香味钻进鼻孔里面去”的说法，既能“钻”，就可以有尖头了。
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● relax：放松。闻了那种空气，脖子和肩膀就得动一下，以求松弛；然后臂也松了，手也松了。她的手抬得同腰一般高，现在张开来了。palms：手掌。
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In one of them, of course, lay the golden bracelet. She had saved it without knowing it, and exactly when she thought she had made up her mind not to save it; and she had taken it because it was all she had worth saving.
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● of course：当然如此，不用说的。她手心里本来就捏着那只金手镯，手张开来，当然还在那里。
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● had saved有一个adverbial phrase（without…）和一个adverbial clause（exactly when…）形容，两者之间有and连接。她把手镯带了出来，自己还不知道；那时候她正还下了决心不把它带出来呢！手镯是她丈夫所送的，她是不愿意再想起这一段姻缘了，决心让那手镯付之一炬。可是人生的神秘就在这里（心理小说的妙处也在这里）；意识里想做的是一件事，下意识支配人所做的是另一件事。而迷迷茫茫仓皇逃生的一刹那，亦正是下意识发挥作用之时。手镯还是给带出来了，因为她所有的东西里面值得抢救的，就只是那只手镯而已。
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