做一个完美的妻子(A Perfect Wife)
after thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that victoria was endowed with every charm except the thrilling touch of human frailty.
though her perfection discouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the pride of a husband in her natural frigidity. for he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, to the discredited ideal of chivalry. in his youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of the long victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures, of men.
at the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biological fact into a miraculous power, virginius littlepage, the younger son of an old and affluent family, had married victoria brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made a satisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobacco into cigarettes. while virginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had not stooped to folly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring victoria. she was not only modest, which was usual in the neties, but she was beautiful, which is unusual in any decade.
in the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribed intellect to her; but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions created by perfect features and noble expression. everything about her had been smooth and definite, even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore ?la pompadour, was rolled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head. a serious young man, ambitious to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secluded seat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness and precision of victoria's orderly mind.
for in that earnest period the minds, as well as the emotions, of lovers were orderly. it was an age when eager young men flocked to church on sunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the victorian poets in the middle of the week. he could afford to smile now when he recalled the solemn browning class in which he had first lost his heart. how passionately he had admired victoria's virginal features! how fervently he had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet! incredible as it seemed to him now, he had fallen in love with her while she recited from the more ponderous passages in the ring and the book.
he had fallen in love with her then, though he had never really enjoyed browning, and it had been a relief to him when the unseen, in company with its illustrious poet, had at last gone out of fashion. yet, since he was disposed to admire all the qualities he did not possess, he had never ceased to respect the firmness with which victoria continued to deal in other forms with the absolute. as the placid years passed, and she came to rely less upon her virginal features, it seemed to him that the ripe opinions of her youth began to shrink and flatten as fruit does that has hung too long on the tree.
she had never changed, he realized, since he had first known her; she had become merely riper, softer, and sweeter in nature. her advantage rested where advantage never fails to rest, in moral fervour. to be invariably right was her single wifely failing. for his wife, he sighed, with the vague unrest of a husband whose infidelities are imaginary, was a genuinely good woman. she was as far removed from pretence as she was from the posturing virtues that flourish in the credulous world of the drama.
the pity of it was that even the least exacting husband should so often desire something more piquant than goodness.
30年的婚姻幸福之后，他仍然可以提醒自己，维多利亚除了人类脆弱的激动人心的触摸外，其他的一切都被赋予了魅力。
尽管她的完美使快乐，尤其是爱情的快乐感到沮丧，他还是及时学会了以丈夫天生的冷淡为荣。因为在道德败坏的陈词滥调中，他仍然坚持着不名誉的骑士理想。在他年轻的时候，世界充满了维多利亚时代的余辉，优雅的女性风格软化了男人的举止，即使不是天性。
在那个有趣的时代末期，当女性从一个生物学事实被提升为一种神奇的力量时，一个富裕的老家庭的小儿子维吉尼厄斯·利特尔佩奇嫁给了一个烟草种植园主的孙女维多利亚·布鲁克，她由福斯金发了一笔令人满意的财富。他的种植园，把烟草变成香烟。尽管维吉尼厄斯受到严格传统的训练，要尊重每一个没有屈从于愚蠢的女人，但他最不欣赏维多利亚的理由之一，是她性别特有的美德。她不仅谦虚，这在网友中很常见，而且漂亮，这在任何十年都是不寻常的。
在他们开始相识的时候，他更进一步地把才智归功于她；但几个月的婚姻表明，这仅仅是由完美的容貌和高尚的表情造成的众多错觉之一。她身上的一切都很顺利，很明确，甚至她的声音和她那浅棕色头发的样子，她都是这样穿的？拉·庞帕杜，从前额僵硬地向后卷起，盘绕在头顶一条擦亮的绳子上。作为一个严肃的年轻人，他雄心勃勃地想在这个世界上获得一个比他祖先的隐居地更辉煌的地位，维多利亚有秩序的头脑的简洁和精确给他们第一次会面留下了深刻的印象。
因为在那认真的时期，恋人的思想和感情都井然有序。这是一个年轻人在星期天早上聚集到教堂，雄辩的神灵在一周中谈论维多利亚时代的诗人的时代。当他回忆起那堂庄严的布朗宁课时，他现在可以微笑了，在那堂课上他第一次失去了信心。他多么热情地欣赏维多利亚的童贞容貌！他是多么热切地羡慕她和诗人相处得既称职又爱抚人的方式啊！他现在觉得不可思议，他爱上了她，而她却在背诵戒指和书中那些更冗长的段落。
那时他爱上了她，虽然他从来没有真正喜欢过勃朗宁，当这位看不见的人，连同他那著名的诗人，终于不流行时，他感到宽慰。然而，由于他倾向于钦佩他所不具备的所有品质，他从未停止过对维多利亚继续以其他形式与绝对主义者打交道的坚定的尊重。随着平静的岁月过去了，她开始不再依赖自己的童贞容貌，在他看来，她年轻时成熟的思想开始萎缩和压扁，就像树上挂了太久的果实一样。
他意识到，自从他第一次认识她以来，她从未改变过；她只是变得更成熟、更温柔、更甜美。她的优势在于，在道德的热情中，优势从未停止过。她单亲妻子的失败总是对的。对于他的妻子，他叹了口气，模糊地感到不安的丈夫，他的不忠是虚构的，是一个真正的好女人。她与那些在轻信的戏剧界蓬勃发展的装腔作势的美德一样，与虚伪完全不同。
可惜的是，即使是最不挑剔的丈夫也常常渴望比善良更有趣的东西。