第一章（第4/10页）

无论被赋予多少浪漫情怀，性事仍是一种古老的、污秽的交合行为和从属关系。歌颂性爱的诗人多是男子。女子却往往深知，世间还存在着更加美好、更加崇高的事物。而如今，这种信念比以往还要明确许多。对于女人而言，完美纯粹的自由如此令人向往，而这是任何性爱都无法企及的。不过糟糕的是，男人对此事的观念依旧停滞落后。他们对性的强烈需求，与兽类无异。

And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connexion. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connexion and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.

女子只得委曲求全。男人好似贪嘴的孩童。当女人不肯屈就于他们的欲望时，他们就可能会摆出臭脸，盛怒而去，活脱脱像个孩子，将原本融洽的关系搞得一团糟。但女人就算屈从于男子，仍可以保有心底自由的真我。那些乐谈性事的诗人和谈论者，好像没有对这给予充分说明。即使委身于人，女子仍能不流露自己内心的真实情感，自然也能做到不受对方的掌控。相反，她们甚至可以巧妙地利用性事，将男人玩弄于股掌之中。她们只须在交媾时抑制住自己的情绪，避免高潮的到来，等到对方弹药耗尽、丢盔卸甲后，就可以将欢好时间延长，享受极度的快感，而此时男人扮演的角色只不过是她的纵欲工具。

Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months… this they had never realized till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to!—had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was.

战火燃起，姐妹俩匆匆赶回家，而在此之前，两人都已有过恋爱的经验。陷入爱河，皆因双方能够倾心交谈，彼此深有好感，愿意互诉衷肠。数月间，能与颖悟绝伦的少男时以继时，日以继日地忘情交谈，那种兴奋的感受真是美妙至极、深奥莫测、难以置信……而这些只有在亲身经历过后，才能真正认识得到。神的许诺：尔将交到可以交心的男子！——从未透露，这个许诺却在恋人们尚未知晓之前，就已兑现。

And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soul-enlightened discussions the sex thing became more or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating thrill inside the body, a final spasm of self-assertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme.

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。