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 three short.  Then he returns to his work.  The buzzer goes on and on in impatient jerks which mount in anger.  Several times ANTHONY is almost compelled by this insistence, but the thing that holds him back is stronger.  At last, after a particularly mad splutter, to which ANTHONY longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it up.  ANTHONY goes on preparing soil.

A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in, and also_ MR HARRY ARCHER, wrapped in a rug.)

ANTHONY:  Oh, please close the door, sir.

HARRY:  Do you think I’m not trying to? (he holds it open to say this)

ANTHONY:  But please do.  This stormy air is not good for the plants.

HARRY:  I suppose it’s just the thing for me!  Now, what do you mean,
Anthony, by not answering the phone when I buzz for you?

ANTHONY:  Miss Claire—­Mrs Archer told me not to.

HARRY:  Told you not to answer me?

ANTHONY:  Not you especially—­nobody but her.

HARRY:  Well, I like her nerve—­and yours.

ANTHONY:  You see, she thought it took my mind from my work to be interrupted when I’m out here.  And so it does.  So she buzzes once long and—­Well, she buzzes her way, and all other buzzing—­

HARRY:  May buzz.

ANTHONY:  (nodding gravely) She thought it would be better for the flowers.

HARRY:  I am not a flower—­true, but I too need a little attention—­and a little heat.  Will you please tell me why the house is frigid?

ANTHONY:  Miss Claire ordered all the heat turned out here, (patiently explaining it to MISS CLAIRE’s speechless husband) You see the roses need a great deal of heat.