And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her, after the heroine of a famous poem, "The Angel in the House." It was she who used to come between me and my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her.
这个鬼影就是女人。当我进一步了解她后，我就借一首著名诗歌中女主人公之名用“家里的天使”来称呼她。我写评论时，就是她总出现在我和我的文章之间。她不停地困扰我，浪费我的时间，折磨我，所以，最终我杀死了她。
You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her—you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.
你们年轻快乐的一代或许没听说过她，可能不知道我所说的“家里的天使”是什么意思。我将尽可能简短地描述一下。她极富同情心，极有魅力，毫不自私，擅长家庭生活的各项髙难度技能，天天自我牺牲。如果家里吃鸡，她只吃鸡腿；如果家里有穿堂风，她坐在风口。她就是这样一个人，从来没有想到过自己的想法与期望，总是喜欢按照别人的想法和期待来做出牺牲。
Above all—I need not say it—she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty—her blushes, her great grace. In those days—the last of Queen Victoria—every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: "My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex.
总之，我不必说她是纯洁的。她的纯洁应该被看作是她主要的动人之处：她常常脸红，举止优雅。在维多利亚时代后期，每个家庭都有个天使。每当我开始写作，她总会在我刚刚写出几个字时就出现。她翅膀的影子映在我的纸上；我在房间里能听到她的裙子沙沙作响。当我提笔要为一个名人的小说写书评时，她就溜到我身后轻声对我说：“亲爱的，你是一个年轻女子。你所评的这本书是男人写的。你要有同情心，要温柔、要奉承、要欺骗，用尽女人所有的小把戏。