The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.
季节向前发展了，成熟了。在新的一年里，鲜花、树叶、夜莺、画眉、金翅雀，以及诸如此类的生命短暂的生物，都出现在它们各自的岗位上了，仅仅在一年以前，这些位置都被其它的生物占据着，而它们不过只是一些胚芽和无机体的分子。在朝阳的光照下，苞芽滋生了，长出了长条，汁液在无声的溪流中奔涌，花瓣绽开了，在无形的喷吐和呼吸中把香气散发出去。

Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.
奶牛场老板克里克奶牛场里挤奶的男女工人们，生活得舒舒适适的，平平静静的，甚至是快快活活的。在整个社会的所有工作岗位中，他们的岗位也许是最快乐的，因为同结束了贫困的人相比，他们还在其上，但是他们又不如另外那个阶层的人，而那个阶层的人因为要遵守社会礼仪而开始压抑天然感情，为了追赶时髦又弄得入不敷出，不得不承受捉襟见肘的压力。

Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.
当树木似乎变成户外最集中的事物时，树叶生长的季节就这样过去了。苔丝和克莱尔都在无意中相互捉摸，一直处在一种激情的边缘之上，但是他们显然又在压制着自己的感情，不让它迸发出来。他们受到不可抗拒的自然法则的支配，一直在向一起聚合，非常像一个山谷中流在一起的两条溪流。

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings. The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil. Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, 'Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?'
近几年来，苔丝的生活从来没有像现在这样快乐过，也可能再也不会像现在这样快乐了。在新的环境里，她在身心两个方面都感到很融洽。她像一棵幼树，在原先栽种的地方，已经把根扎进了有毒的土层里，而现在已经被移植到深厚的土壤里了。另外，她和克莱尔也还处在好感和爱恋之间的不稳固的土壤上；还没有达到一定的深度；也没有什么难以解决的思虑和让人烦恼的问题，“这股新的爱潮要把我带到哪里去？它对我未来的前途意味着什么？它对我的过去又是怎样的？”

Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet - a rosy warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interesting specimen of womankind.
到目前为止，在安琪尔·克莱尔看来，苔丝只不过是一种偶然的现象——一个让人感到温暖的玫瑰色幻影，在他的意识里，这个幻影也只是刚刚具有了驱赶不开的性质。因此他只好容许她在他的思想中存在，认为自己这种专注的心情，只不过是一个哲学家对一个极其新颖、艳丽和有趣的妇女典型的关注而已。