barely suggested, that this man might have been employed by Orianna solely to scare Julia), she flees back to the safety of the house. Gloria, meanwhile, has befriended Essex, and talks about her dream to live out the rest of her life—no matter how short it might be—in a real world, rather than the artificial, insulated world of the Halloran manor. Essex betrays Gloria by alerting Orianna of the young woman's plans of leaving. A less obvious dissenter is Fancy. A spoiled and frightening child, Fancy resents the idea that the world will be destroyed before she has a chance to live in it, and plays obsessively with her dollhouse (which itself is a small model of the Halloran house), taking as much delight in ordering her dolls about as Orianna takes in lording over the residents of Halloran House. Fancy has taken her grandmother's promise of inheritance to heart, and claims that she will smash the dollhouse when her grandmother dies because she "won't need it anymore." The evening before the world is due to end, Orianna plans a great party (outdoors, so that no one will comment on the preparations inside the house) and invites the whole village to attend for a final feast. This party takes on the air of a coronation when Orianna appears wearing a small gold crown to symbolise her position in the next world. Orianna vows never to remove the crown until she passes it on to Fancy. The day after the party is spent sending away the servants and covering up the windows of the house so that no one will have to see the destruction that will happen that night. A violent storm begins, and the lights go out as the residents prepare to gather for the night in a single room. As the group goes downstairs, they discover Orianna dead on the landing. "I was certainly wondering about all those instructions and rules of hers," observes one character. "I kept thinking maybe she was going to a different place than ours." As they speculate on what might have happened, Fancy dashes down to take the crown from her grandmother's head and put it on her own. The two men brave the storm to carry Orianna's body to the sundial, where it is implied she will be swept away in the destruction. Then all the players gather together to wait for