了不起的盖茨比(尼克和黛西"谈心")

        Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk.【鹅绒般的暮色】 I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, [心潮澎湃]so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.【sedative：镇静的】

      “We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”

　　“I wasn’t back from the war.”

　　“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”【 cynical：不相信人的真诚善良；愤世嫉俗的】

　　Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.[过了一会儿我又吞吞吐吐地回到了她女儿这个话题。]

　　“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”

       “Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. [心不在焉地]“Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”

　　“Very much.”

　　“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where.[你听了就会明白我为什么会这样看待--一切事物。她出世还不到一个钟头，汤姆就天晓得跑到哪里去了。] I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

      “You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I KNOW. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”[饱经世故]

　　 The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.[上流社会的秘密团体中的一分子]