Every window of the house being open Clare could hear across the yard each trivial sound of the retiring household. That dairy-house, so humble, so insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained sojourn that he had never hitherto deemed it of sufficient importance to be reconnoitred as an object of any quality whatever in the landscape; what was it now? The aged and lichened brick gables breathed forth 'Stay!' The windows smiled, the door coaxed and beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A personality within it was so far-reaching in her influence as to spread into and make the bricks, mortar, and whole overhanging sky throb with a burning sensibility. Whose was this mighty personality? A milkmaid's.
房子的每個窗子都開著，克萊爾聽得見全屋子人安歇時發(fā)出的每一種細小的聲音。奶牛場的住宅簡陋不堪，無足輕重，他純粹是迫不得已才來這兒寄居的，所以從來就沒有重視它，也沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)在這片景物里有一件有價值的東西讓他留戀。但是這所住宅現(xiàn)在又是什么樣子呢？古老的長滿了苔蘚的磚墻在輕聲呼喊“留下來吧”，窗子在微微含笑，房門在好言勸說，在舉手召喚，長春藤也因為暗中同謀而露出了羞愧。這是因為屋子里住著一個人物，她的影響是如此深遠廣大，深入到了磚墻、灰壁和頭頂?shù)恼麄€藍天之中，使它們帶著燃燒的感覺搏動。什么人會有這么大的力量呢？是一個擠奶女工的力量。

It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a matter the life of the obscure dairy had become to him. And though new love was to be held partly responsible for this it was not solely so. Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus he found that life was to be seen of the same magnitude here as elsewhere.
這個偏僻奶牛場里的生活變成了對安琪爾·克萊爾非常重要的事情，這的確讓人感到驚訝不已。雖然部分原因是因為剛剛產(chǎn)生的愛情，但是也不是完全如此。除了安琪爾而外，許多人知道，人生意義的大小不在于外部的變遷，而在于主觀經(jīng)驗。一個天性敏感的農(nóng)民，他的生活比一個天性遲鈍的國王的生活更廣闊、更豐富、更激動人心。如此看來，他發(fā)現(xiàn)這兒的生活同其它地方的生活一樣有著重要的意義。

Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living her precious life - a life which, to herself who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself only came into being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which she was born.
盡管克萊爾相信異端學說，身上有種種缺點和弱點，他仍然是一個具有是非感的人。苔絲不是一個無足輕重的人，不是隨意玩弄以后就可以把她丟開的；而是一個過著寶貴生活的婦女——這種生活對她來說無論是受苦還是享受，也像最偉大人物的生活一樣重要。對于苔絲來說，整個世界的存在全憑她的感覺，所有生物的存在也全憑她的存在。對于苔絲，宇宙本身的誕生，就是在她降生的某一年中的某一天里誕生的。

This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic First Cause - her all; her every and only chance. How then should he look upon her as of less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her - so fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve; in order that it might not agonize and wreck her?
他已經(jīng)進入的這個知覺世界，是無情的造物主賜給苔絲的唯一的生存機會——是她的一切；是所有的也是僅有的機會。那么他怎么能夠把她看得不如自己重要呢？怎么能夠把她當作一件漂亮的小物件去玩弄，然后又去討厭它呢？怎么能夠不以最嚴肅認真的態(tài)度來對待他在她身上喚起來的感情呢？——她看起來很沉靜，其實卻非常熱烈，非常容易動情；因此他怎么能夠去折磨她和讓她痛苦呢？