仍旧无人应门。她透过窗户向内窥视，幽暗的小房间映入眼帘，里面陈列的私人物品几乎透出不祥之气，不容任何人侵犯。

She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from the back of the cottage. Having failed to make herself heard, her mettle was roused, she would not be defeated.

她站在原地，侧耳倾听，有声音似乎从农舍后面传来。那家伙居然没听到敲门声，康妮再次鼓起勇气，她不愿畏缩不前。

So she went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage the land rose steeply, so the back yard was sunken, and enclosed by a low stone wall. She turned the corner of the house and stopped. In the little yard two paces beyond her, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his velveteen breeches slipping down over his slender loins. And his white slim back was curved over a big bowl of soapy water, in which he ducked his head, shaking his head with a queer, quick little motion, lifting his slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears, quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water, and utterly alone. Connie backed away round the corner of the house, and hurried away to the wood. In spite of herself, she had had a shock. After all, merely a man washing himself, commonplace enough, Heaven knows!

于是，她迈步向屋后绕去。农舍后面的地势陡然升高，因此后院是凹进去的，被一道低矮的石墙围绕着。她绕过房角，停住脚步。玲珑小巧的院落中，距她两步远的地方，那男人正在沐浴，全然没有觉察她的到来。他上半身不着一缕，棉绒马裤滑落到纤细的腰间。他那白皙修长的脊背，弯向满是肥皂沫的大盆，头浸在水里，以一种奇怪的方式，迅速地小幅度摆动着。他抬起细白的双臂，挤出流进耳朵里的肥皂水，动作迅捷轻盈，如同戏水的鼬鼠，享受着透彻的孤单。康妮退到屋角，急匆匆地向树林走去。不知不觉，她心里大为震颤。其实，只是个男人在沐浴而已，实在不足为奇，天晓得她为何这么吃惊！

Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a b