ong leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of
a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is
seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment
later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the
buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY,
_a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the
darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._

ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the
stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down
to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and
approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine!

(_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself,
and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later
on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled
outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns
on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in
abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the
creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the
glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.

The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an
outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps lead
down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing wall
save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of plants
leads off.

This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual
workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with
plants, a laboratory.

At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful.
It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a little way up the
glass. You might see the form of a cross in it, if you happened to think
it that way. The leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have
been. They are at once repellent and significant_.

ANTHONY _is at work preparing soil--mixing, sifting. As the wind tries
the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured and
returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the
telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not
buzz once long and th