Mark Gurney dies of a fever in China on the same day that his wife stands at the window, gazing at the flowers in his mother’s garden. Dolly Gurney is painfully childish and unrefined, but these demerits are more than made up for by her beauty. Since Mark has been enlisted in the war, she has come to live with his mother, Imogene, and his brother, Brooks, until his return. Lizzie, an enslaved woman, is sent to live with Dolly – privately, Mark makes her promise to look after Dolly and shield her from his mother’s dislike. Dolly wants flowers from Imogene’s garden for the vase in her room, but Lizzie discourages her. Imogene goes out to the garden to sit amongst her flowers, listening to Brooks playing the clavichord within. His composition sounds off to him, so he is only mildly irritated when Dolly interrupts. She had plucked the flowers she wanted, but they were flushed down the toilet just as quickly in a moment of fear. Brooks senses her loneliness and the two converse – he feels a strange, violent lust for women that is a direct result of how much his mother has sheltered him – and as he and Dolly kiss, he rips the front of her dress. She pulls back, horrified, realising that she misses Mark. Brooks tells her bitterly that the ‘crime’ has happened already, and that she would return to him whether she wanted to or not. Imogene returns to find some of her flowers destroyed; angrily, she makes for the house. Dolly flees to her rooms and begs Lizzie to let no one see her. Lizzie understands that Dolly has done what she was forbidden to do – she hopes that Mark returns home soon, because things would go very badly indeed if he did not.