To the left, in the back wall, a large window overlooks a garden. Right centre, a door leads off into a bedroom, and from the bedroom one may see the woods of the mountain. The door is slightly open, showing a glimpse of a tall mirror and the polished pole of a bed.
In the right wall there is a fireplace.
A dog lies across the threshold, asleep, head on paws.
About this room there is perhaps just a little too much of a certain kind of frail beauty of object. Crystal glasses, scent bottles, bowls of an almost too perfect design, furniture that is too antiquely beautiful.
Helena Hucksteppe, a woman of about thirty-five, stands almost back view to the audience, one arm lying along the mantel. She is rather under medium in height. Her hair, which is dark and curling, is done carefully about a small fine head. She is dressed in a dark, long gown, a gown almost too faithful to the singular sadness of her body.
At about the same moment as the curtain’s rising, Gheid Storm vaults the window-sill. He is a man of few years, a well-to-do man of property, brought up very carefully by upright women, the son of a conscientious physician, the kind of man who commutes with an almost religious fervour, and who keeps his wife and his lawns in the best possible trim, without any particular personal pleasure.
Gheid is tall, but much too honourable to be jaunty, he is decidedly masculine. He walks deliberately, getting all the use possible out of his boot-leather, his belt-strap and hat-bands.
His face is one of those which, for fear of misuse, has not been used at all.
Helena Hucksteppe does not appear to be in the least astonished at his mode of entrance.
Gheid Storm—As you never let me in at the door, I thought of the window. [Helena remains silent.] I hope I did not startle you. [Pause.] Women are better calm, that is, some kinds of calm——