SCENE--Several months later. A terrace on the Evans' estate on Long Island. In the rear, the terrace overlooks a small harbor with the ocean beyond. On the right is a side entrance of the pretentious villa. On the left is a hedge with an arched gateway leading to a garden. The terrace is paved with rough stone.

SCENE--Late afternoon in late June, ten years later--the afterdeck of the Evans' motor cruiser anchored in the lane of yachts near the finish line at Poughkeepsie. The bow and amidship of the cruiser are off right, pointed upstream. The portside rail is in the rear, the curve of the stern at left, the rear of the cabin with broad windows and a door is at right.

SCENE--Nearly eleven years later. The sitting room of the Evans' apartment on Park Avenue, New York City--a room that is a tribute to Nina's good taste. It is a large, sunny room, the furniture expensive but extremely simple. The arrangement of the furniture shown is as in previous scenes except there are more pieces. Two chairs are by the table at left.

SCENE--The same--an evening a little over a year later. The room has undergone a significant change. There is a comfortable, homey atmosphere as though now it definitely belonged to the type of person it was built for. It has a proud air of modest prosperity.

SCENE--The sitting room of a small house Evans has rented in a seashore suburb near New York. It is a bright morning in the following April.

SCENE--An evening early in the following winter about seven months later. The Professor's study again. The books in the cases have never been touched, their austere array shows no gaps, but the glass separating them from the world is gray with dust, giving them a blurred ghostly quality.

SCENE--Seven months or so later--the dining room of the Evans' homestead in northern New York state--about nine o'clock in the morning of a day in late spring of the following year.

SCENE--The same as Scene One, Professor Leeds' study. It is about nine o'clock of a night in early fall, over a year later. The appearance of the room is unchanged except that all the shades, of the color of pale flesh, are drawn down, giving the windows a suggestion of lifeless closed eyes and making the room seem more withdrawn from life than before. The reading lamp on the table is lit.

Characters

CHARLES MARSDEN

PROFESSOR HENRY LEEDS

NINA LEEDS, his daughter

EDMUND DARRELL