, already seems to share
in God's love, for there comes back to memory an ancient New-Year's
hymn--

"All service ranks the same with God."

No one can work on this earth except as God wills--

". . . God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last or first."

And we must not talk of "small events": none exceeds another in
greatness. . . .

The revelation has come to her. Not Ottima nor Phene, not Luigi and his
mother, not even the holy and beloved priest, ranks higher in God's eyes
than she, the little work-girl--

"I will pass each, and see their happiness,
And envy none--being just as great, no doubt,
Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!"

* * * * *

And so, laughing at herself once more because she cares "so mightily"
for her one day, but still insistent that the sun shall shine, she
sketches her outing--

"Down the grass path grey with dew,
Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew,
Nor yet cicala dared carouse,
No, dared carouse--"

But breaks off, breathless, in the singing for which through the whole
region she is famed, leaves the "large mean airy chamber," enters the
little street of Asolo--and begins her Day.

II. MORNING: OTTIMA

In the shrub-house on the hill-side are Ottima, the wife of Luca, and
her German lover, Sebald. He is wildly singing and drinking; to him it
still seems night. But Ottima sees a "blood-red beam through the
shutter's chink," which proves that morning is come. Let him open the
lattice and see! He goes to open it, and no movement can he make but
vexes her, as he gropes his way where the "tall, naked geraniums
straggle"; pushes the lattice, which is behind a frame, so awkwardly
that a shower of dust falls on her; fumbles at the slide-bolt, till she
exclaims that "of course it catches!" At last he succeeds in getting the
window opened, and her only direct acknowledgment is to ask him if she
"shall find him something else to spoil." But this imperious petulance,
curiously as it contrasts with the patience which, a little later, she
will display, is native to Ottima; she is not the victim of her nerves
this morning, though now she passes without transition to a mood of
sensuous cajolement--

"Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is't full morning?
Oh, don't speak, then!"

--but Sebald does speak, for in this aversion from the lig