PIKE [turning to ETHEL with slow horror]. _Seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars for_--How much do they charge over here for a _real_
man?

[She is unable to meet his eye. She turns, with flaming cheeks, and runs
into the hotel. He stands staring after her, incredulous, dumfounded, in
a frozen attitude.]


END OF THE FIRST ACT




THE SECOND ACT


Scene: Entrance garden of the hotel.

In the distance are seen the green slopes of vineyards, a ruined castle,
and olive orchards leading up the mountainside.

An old stone wall seven feet high runs across the rear of the stage.
This wall is almost covered with vines, showing autumn tints, crowning
the crest of the wall and hanging from it in profusion. There is a broad
green gate of the Southern Italian type, closed. A white-columned
pergola runs obliquely down from the wall on the right. The top of the
pergola is an awning formed by a skeleton of green-painted wooden strips
thickly covered by entwining lemon branches bearing ripening lemons.
Between the columns of the pergola are glimpses of a formal Italian