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Produced by Sue Asscher asschers@dingoblue.net.au
THE VALLEY OF DECISION
BY
EDITH WHARTON
Author of “A Gift from the Grave,” “Crucial Instances,” etc.
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.”
TO
MY FRIENDS
PAUL AND MINNIE BOURGET
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
ITALIAN DAYS TOGETHER.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I. THE OLD ORDER.
BOOK II. THE NEW LIGHT.
BOOK III. THE CHOICE.
BOOK IV. THE REWARD.
BOOK I.
THE OLD ORDER.
Prima che incontro alla festosa fronte I lugubri suoi lampi il ver baleni.
1.1.
It was very still in the small neglected chapel. The noises of the farm came faintly through closed doors—voices shouting at the oxen in the lower fields, the querulous bark of the old house-dog, and Filomena’s angry calls to the little white-faced foundling in the kitchen.
The February day was closing, and a ray of sunshine, slanting through a slit in the chapel wall, brought out the vision of a pale haloed head floating against the dusky background of the chancel like a water-lily on its leaf. The face was that of the saint of Assisi—a sunken ravaged countenance, lit with an ecstasy of suffering that seemed not so much to reflect the anguish of the Christ at whose feet the saint knelt, as the mute pain of all poor down-trodden folk on earth.