eerful wood fire is crackling. To the left of centre, a round
reading and writing table with a green-shaded electric lamp. Other
electric lights are in brackets around the walls. Easy chairs stand
near the table, which is stacked with magazines. Rocking chairs are
placed here and there about the room, near the windows, etc. A
gramophone stands near the left wall, forward._

_It is nearing eight o'clock of a cold evening about a week later._

_At the rise of the curtain_ Stephen Murray _is discovered sitting
in a chair in front of the fireplace, left._ Murray _is thirty
years old--a tall, slender, rather unusual-looking fellow with a
pale face, sunken under high cheek bones, lined about the eyes and
mouth, jaded and worn for one still so young. His intelligent,
large hazel eyes have a tired, dispirited expression in repose, but
can quicken instantly with a concealed mechanism of mocking,
careless humour whenever his inner privacy is threatened. His large
mouth aids this process of protection by a quick change from its
set apathy to a cheerful grin of cynical good nature. He gives off
the impression of being somehow dissatisfied with himself, but not
yet embittered enough by it to take it out on others. His manner,
as revealed by his speech--nervous, inquisitive, alert--seems more
an acquired quality than any part of his real nature. He stoops a
trifle, giving him a slightly round-shouldered appearance. He is
dressed in a shabby dark suit, baggy at the knees. He is staring
into the fire, dreaming, an open book lying unheeded on the arm of
his chair. The gramophone is whining out the last strains of
Dvorak's Humoresque. In the doorway to the office,_ Miss Gilpin
_stands talking to_ Miss Howard. _The former is a slight,
middle-aged woman with black hair, and a strong, intelligent face,
its expression of resolute efficiency softened and made kindly by
her warm, sympathetic grey eyes._ Miss Howard _is tall, slender and
blonde--decidedly pretty and provokingly conscious of it, yet with
a certain air of seriousness underlying her apparent frivolity. She
is twenty years old. The elder woman is dressed in the all-white of
a full-fledged nurse._ Miss Howard _wears the grey-blue uniform of
one still in training. The record finishes._ Murray _sighs with
relief, but makes no move to get up and st