- The novel begins with a description of an ocean horizon on the brink of sunrise. Because it is still dark, the sea is still indistinguishable from the sky.
- The sky gradually lightens, creating a distinction between the water and the sky. As a result, movement in the ocean becomes visible (1a.1).
- The sky lightens further, and the narrator compares the rising sun to a lamp that a woman crouching behind the horizon is slowly raising. The sun begins to send bands of color up into the horizon, like a fan's blades.
- The surface of the sea becomes clearer, as the "dark stripes" in it begin to fade (1a.2).
- Now, the sun is finally visible as a "broad flame," and the sea appears golden in the light from the risen sun (1a.2). Oooh. Purdy.
- The sunlight strikes the trees in a garden as well and makes the contours of a house starker.
- The sun streams through a blind into a bedroom in the house, where "all within was dim and unsubstantial." Meanwhile, the birds sing a "blank melody outside" (1a.3).