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● lit是light（点燃）的过去式。
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● 她的第一个念头只是厨房添菜的问题，现在一个人静静地坐下，想起主要的问题来了。
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● What does a woman do：动词用现在式，表示一般情形。
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● faced：过去分词，前面省略了she is二字。prospect期待或期待中的事情。这个男人，她二十多年前曾经爱过（爱过，但是没有见过面），现在面临着同他见面的机会了，在这种情形之下做女人的该怎么办呢？
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Ralph had phoned that he’d run into Gavin Douglas and could he bring him home to dinner. She had cried, “Who did you say? You can’t mean the actor!” and he had replied in that infuriating unimaginative way he had, so like his father: “Why can’t I mean the actor?” If the prospect of meeting and knowing Gavin Douglas had arisen when she was eighteen, she would have died. Now, after some twenty years, here he was, about to walk into her living room, the dream made flesh…
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● 这一段是补叙电话里的话。但是这并不是小说家在这里补充说明，这里仍旧是那个女人的心理活动——她坐在沙发上的回忆。
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● run into：碰到，不期而遇。could he bring him home to dinner：这句话语法有问题，但是为了要模仿打电话的口吻，这样说也未尚不可。（按规矩来说，大约应该如此：and had asked whether he could bring him home to dinner。）
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● the actor：天下同名同姓的很多，Gavin Douglas是位名伶，但是现在这位Douglas可能另有其人。
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● in that…way：这几个字说明了Ralph的个性，也说明了他父亲（so like his father：多么的像他的父亲!）的个性。他们父子二人都是缺乏想象力的（unimaginative），令人气恼（infuriating）。这几个字又暗示：她对于她丈夫，并不完全满意。母亲听到Gavin Douglas这个名字，情不自禁，大叫出声，可是儿子不觉察到母亲的音调有异，还侃侃地在电话里答辩：“为什么不可以就是舞台名伶Douglas呢？”不能替别人设想，这就是做人缺乏想象力的地方。
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● If the prospect…had arisen：这样一个机会假如在她十八岁时候发生的话，她会死掉的。这是一句很标准的假定句子，请注意动词的形式。（prospect并不解释作“机会”，这里为凑中文的方便，勉强译作“机会”。）
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● some twenty years：约摸二十年。about to：将要。the dream made flesh：这是一个nominative absolute phrase，made是过去分词，flesh是subjective complement。梦想实现，梦中人将以血肉之躯和她相见了。
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She had no idea that anyone she knew would actually know Gavin Douglas, least of all her son. But she didn’t need to think twice to know where and how her son had met him.
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During the past summer Ralph had had his first job. He had been assistant stage manager at a summer theater on the Cape, as a kind of apprenticeship for the work that he thought he wanted to take up later. He was eighteen but he was interested in the theater as a business. And that is how he must have met Gavin Douglas; the Cape playhouse was famous for its guest-stars, though these were usually tired or retired actors, stars of the past rather than the present. Odd that Ralph had never mentioned him before; but how could he have known what it would mean to his mother? He was too young to appreciate the name and fame of the great matinée idol of twenty and thirty years ago, the star who had been an idol of hers when she was Ralph’s age.
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● 她不知道，任何她所认识的人，会真的认识这位名伶；她尤其不能（least of all）相信，她儿子会认识他。
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● didn’t need to think twice：用不着想两遍，一猜就中。
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● the past summer：过去的夏季，可能仍旧是今年。his first job：美国学生暑假期间多有做短工赚钱的。
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● assistant stage manager：助理舞台经理。注意前面不用冠词the，冠词最为难用，不容易用规则来概括说明。大抵predicate nominative（主语之补足词）的名词，前面可以不加the，如Wordsworth的名句：
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The Child is father of the Man.
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此句中的father前面就没有冠词。又，职位前面，常有无需冠词the者，如Queen of England，headmaster of a school等，这里的manager这个字，既然用在动词had been之后，是个主语补足词，又是一个职位的名称（经理），不加the，并不是一种奇怪的用法。但这种用法并不是一定的规则，读者还得于读书时随时留意为要。
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● summer theater：美国的夏季是戏剧季节，平常不大演戏的小城小镇，到了夏天就会有剧团租场演出，这种戏院就叫做summer theater（恐怕是为吸引避暑游客而设的）。the Cape：cape原意是海岬。这篇小说的背景大约是美国东北部一带，所指海岬恐怕是麻萨诸塞州的避暑胜地Cape Cod。
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● a kind of apprenticeship：一种实习。这位青年希望干戏剧活动（the theater），暑假里先实习起来。
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● He was eighteen：十八岁。请参照本段最后一句：when she was Ralph’s age。人不就是年龄，可是中间可以用动词was。
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● guest-stars：客串明星。tired or retired actors：厌倦舞台生涯或业已退隐的伶人，广东话有个较能传神的说法：过气老倌。（tired和retired两个字连用，很巧妙。）那些小剧院所能请到的大明星，无非是些过时人物。
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● Odd：当系It was odd的简略，“这是很奇怪的。”
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● what it would mean：这个人的名字有什么意义呢？
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