The Day Motive is followed by a phrase whose eager, restless measures graphically reflect the impatience with which _Isolde_ awaits the coming of _Tristan_--the =Motive of Impatience=.
Over this there hovers a dulcet, seductive strain, the =Motive of the Love Call=, which is developed into the rapturous measures of the =Motive of Ecstasy=.
When the curtain rises, the scene it discloses is the palace garden, into which _Isolde's_ apartments open. It is a summer night, balmy and with a moon. The _King_ and his suite have departed on a hunt. With them is _Melot_, a knight who professes devotion to _Tristan_, but whom _Brangäne_ suspects.
_Brangäne_ stands upon the steps leading to _Isolde's_ apartment. She is looking down a bosky _allée_ in the direction taken by the hunt. This silently gliding, uncanny creature, the servitor of sin in others, is uneasy. She fears the hunt is but a trap; and that its quarry is not the wild deer, but her mistress and the knight, who conveyed her for bride to _King Marke_.
Meanwhile against the open door of _Isolde's_ apartment is a burning torch. Its flare through the night is to be the signal to _Tristan_ that all is well, and that _Isolde_ waits.
The first episode of the act is one of those exquisite tone paintings in the creation of which Wagner is supreme. The notes of the hunting-horns become more distant. _Isolde_ enters from her apartment into the garden. She asks _Brangäne_ if she cannot now signal for _Tristan_. _Brangäne_ answers that the hunt is still within hearing. _Isolde_ chides her--is it not some lovely, prattling rill she hears? The music is deliciously idyllic--conjuring up a dream-picture of a sylvan spring night bathed in liquescent moonlight. _Brangäne_ warns _Isolde_ against _Melot_; but _Isolde_ laughs at her fears. In vain _Brangäne_ entreats her mistress not to signal for _Tristan_. The seductive measures of the Love Call and of the Motive of Ecstasy tell throughout this scene of the yearning in _Isolde's_ breast. When _Brangäne_ informs _Isolde_ that she substituted the love-potion for the death-draught, _Isolde_ scorns the suggestion that her guilty love for _Tristan_ is the result of her quaffing the potion. This simply intensified the passion already in her breast. She proclaims this in the rapturous phrases of the Isolde Motive; and then, when she declares her fate to be in the hands of the goddess of love, there are heard the tender accents of the =Love Motive=.