FREDDY. I telephoned about it. I didn't want to wait in this blizzard.

ETHEL. I'm so sorry!

FREDDY. Me, too. But there's no help for it.

ETHEL. So long as she doesn't miss to-morrow night! Did I read you what
she said about that, Freddy? [Takes letter from pocket.] "I'll pray
for fair weather, so that I may get there to see the beautiful dancing.
There is nothing in all the world that I love more... my whole being
seems to flow into the dance. I send you the music of my Sunrise Dance,
that father composed for me. You can learn it, and I'll do it for you. I
don't know, of course; but father used to think that I was wonderful in
it.. and he had known all the great dances in Europe. It was the last
thing I heard him play, before he went out in the boat, and I saw him
perish before my eyes." Don't you think that she writes beautifully,
Freddy?

FREDDY. Yes; it's surprising.

ETHEL, Oh, yes. Her father was an extraordinary man, Henry says... a
musician and a poet. They had books and everything, apparently. You'd
think she's been living in Europe.

FREDDY. I see.

ETHEL. Listen to this: [Reads.] "About my name... I forgot to explain.
You see, Anna sounds like England... or New England... and I am not the
least like those places. Father used to see me, as a little tot, diving
through the breakers, and floating out in the sea, with the snow-white
frigate-birds flashing by overhead; and he said I was the very spirit
of the island and the wild, lonely ocean. So he called me Oceana, and
that's the name I've always borne."

FREDDY. It just fits my idea of her.

ETHEL. She goes on: "You mustn't be surprised at what I am. You may
think it's dreadful... even wicked. But at least don't expect anything
like you've ever known before. Fifteen years with only cocoa-palms and
naked savages... the Boston varnish rubs off one. But I'm going to try
to behave. I expect to feel quite at home... I have pictures of all of
you, and a picture of the house... I even have father's keys, to let
myself in with!"

FREDDY. Can you play her music, Ethel?

ETHEL. Play it? I could play it in my sleep. [Opens piano.] The Sunrise
Dance! [She sits and plays.] Listen!

[She plunges into the ecstatic part of the music. FREDDY leans by the
piano, watching her; she plays, more and more enthralled. The door opens
softly.]

[OCEANA enters; a girl of twenty-two, superbly formed, dark-skinned,
a picture of glowing health. She is clad in a short skir