Английский язык с У. С. Моэмом. На окраине империи. Рассказы / W. S. Maugham: Stories

"They bathed together in the creek; and in the evening they went down to the lagoon and paddled about in a dug-out, with its great outrigger. The sea was deep blue, wine-coloured at sundown, like the sea of Homeric Greece; but in the lagoon the colour had an infinite variety, aquamarine and amethyst and emerald; and the setting sun turned it for a short moment to liquid gold. Then there was the colour of the coral, brown, white, pink, red, purple; and the shapes it took were marvellous. It was like a magic garden, and the hurrying fish were like butterflies. It strangely lacked reality. Among the coral were pools with a floor of white sand and here, where the water was dazzling clear, it was very good to bathe. Then, cool and happy, they wandered back in the gloaming over the soft grass road to the creek, walking hand in hand, and now the mynah birds filled the coconut trees with their clamour. And then the night, with that great sky shining with gold, that seemed to stretch more widely than the skies of Europe, and the soft airs that blew gently through the open hut, the long night again was all too short. She was sixteen and he was barely twenty. The dawn crept in among the wooden pillars of the hut and looked at those lovely children sleeping in one another’s arms. The sun hid behind the great tattered leaves of the plantains so that it might not disturb them, and then, with playful malice, shot a golden ray, like the outstretched paw of a Persian cat, on their faces. They opened their sleepy eyes and they smiled to welcome another day.

"The weeks lengthened into months (недели постепенно перешли в месяцы), and a year passed (и /вот/ прошел год). They seemed to love one another as (они, казалось, любили друг друга также; as… as… — так же…как) — I hesitate to say passionately (я не решаюсь сказать страстно; to hesitate — колебаться), for passion has in it always a shade of sadness (ибо в страсти всегда присутствует оттенок печали), a touch of bitterness or anguish (налет горечи или страдания), but as whole-heartedly (но так же искренно: «от всего сердца»), as simply and naturally as on that first day (также просто и естественно, как в тот первый день) on which, meeting, they had recognised that a god was in them (в который, встречаясь/знакомясь, они осознали, что в них был бог).