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.
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