aware only of outside things. Inwardly he began to go soft as pulp. But outwardly he began to be effective.

从某种程度来讲，博尔顿将让克利福德塑造成真正的男子汉，而这是康妮从未企及的。康妮对他若即若离，让他变得极为敏感，对自己和自己的状态有清醒的认识。博尔顿太太则让他只管放眼外界。在内心深处，他变得软弱不堪。而从表面看来，他却显得斗志昂扬。

He even roused himself to go to the mines once more: and when he was there, he went down in a tub, and in a tub he was hauled out into the workings. Things he had learned before the war, and seemed utterly to have forgotten, now came back to him. He sat there, crippled, in a tub, with the underground manager showing him the seam with a powerful torch. And he said little. But his mind began to work.

他甚至振奋精神，重返矿场。他乘着矿车下到井底，被拖拽着审查过各个矿坑。大战爆发前，他熟知矿场的一切，而这些曾彻底被抛诸脑后，此刻却又再度回到原位。下肢瘫痪的他坐在矿车里，井下主管则用强力矿灯照亮矿层，便于他审视。他很少做声。但心里却开始盘算起什么。

He began to read again his technical works on the coal-mining industry, he studied the government reports, and he read with care the latest things on mining and the chemistry of coal and of shale which were written in German. Of course the most valuable discoveries were kept secret as far as possible. But once you started a sort of research in the field of coal-mining, a study of methods and means, a study of by-products and the chemical possibilities of coal, it was astounding the ingenuity and the almost uncanny cleverness of the modern technical mind, as if really the devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of industry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional half-witted stuff, was this technical science of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and fighting to carry them out. In this activity, men were beyond any mental age calculable. But Clifford knew that when it did come to the emotional and human life, these self-made men were of a mental age of about thirteen, feeble boys. The discrepancy was enormous and appalling.

他重新开始阅读有关采煤业的技术著作，研究政府公报，留意着有关采矿、煤炭化学以及岩层化学的最新资料，这些资料均用德文写成。当然，科学家们会竭尽所能，保证其最具价值的成果不被泄露。一旦涉足采煤领域的研究，探索各种方