



Produced by Sue Asscher.  HTML version by Al Haines.










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.

When the small Odo Valsecca--the only frequenter of the chapel--had been
taunted by the farmer's wife for being a beggar's brat, or when his ears
were tingling from the heavy hand of the farmer's son, he found a
melancholy kinship in that suffering face; but since he had fighting
blood in him too, coming on the mother's side of the rude Piedmontese
stock of the Marquesses di Donnaz, there were other moods when he turned
instead to the