INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley is sitting, looking through the microscope, moving the slide around.

He leaps in astonishment from his seat, then scrambles back into his chair to stare through the eyepiece.

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. DAY

As if through the eyepiece, we see, in front of a stylised painted backdrop showing a sylvan scene, a semi-naked nymph, clad in wisps of chiffon, dancing around. The effect is like an end-of-the-pier Victorian pornographic peepshow styled by Julia Margaret Cameron.

The nymph, ANIMULA, is young and beautiful, balletic in her movements.

LINLEY (V.O.)
Animula! My heart's delight!

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. DAY
Through the eyepiece frame: Animula flits about her 'stage', picking flowers and fruit.

LINLEY (V.O.)
Those eyes of mystic violet. That lustrous hair! Oh, light of my life!

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley gazes rapt through his microscope.

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. DAY
Animula, seems to hear something in the distance; she exaggeratedly listens, then sweeps theatrically 'offstage'.

An empty set is left.

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley becomes agitated, moving the slide about as he looks in vain for Animula through the microscope's eyepiece.

LINLEY (V.O.)
It seemed as though I had suddenly gone blind. What could have caused this disappearance? Had she a lover, a husband?

He puts his head in his hands.

LINLEY (cont'd)
The agony of my sensations startled me. I battled against the fatal conclusion, but in vain. I had no escape from it...

A silent-film caption reads:

In Love... With an Animalcule!

Linley takes his eye from the eyepiece, and his gaze falls on the glass slide with the tiny drop of water imprisoned on it.

LINLEY (cont'd)
Within that miserable drop of water dwelt all that could make my life lovely. Could she but see me once! Even the slightest link between us...

Linley rises from his seat and flings himself on his bed in a fit of despair.

LINLEY (cont'd)
But it could not be. Nothing could break down the barriers which Nature had erected between us.

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT AND DAY (B/W, FLASHBACK)
A dishevilled, sleepless Linley pores over his microscope, day and night, spying on the object of his obsession.

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. DAY
Animula, oblivious of her observer, does a striptease and bathes herself in a river.

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
In the spirit of experiment Linley dims the lamplight shining on the slide and the water droplet.

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. TWILIGHT
In the dim light Animula shows signs of distress, with an expression of pain, wringing her hands.

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley turns up the gas on the lamp so the light shines strongly.

LINLEY (V.O.)
How I delighted to learn I could have any effect on her, however invisible or anonymous the force.

INT. ANIMULA'S WORLD. DAY
Animula's environment is flooded with light, an effect which makes her gambol and sing with pleasure.

LINLEY (V.O.)
If science only had the means of magnifying sounds - what carols of happiness would have entranced my ears!

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley is turning the lamp up and down, staring through the microscope.

LINLEY (V.O.)
I grew pale and emaciated. My inability to touch or even speak a word to my beloved, I realised, was driving me to distraction.

I concluded that I had developed an exaggerated notion of Animula's charms because of my seclusion from female society. If I compared her with the flesh and blood women of my own world, this false enchantment would vanish like the dew.

INT. LINLEY'S FLAT. DAY (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley looks at a newspaper advertisement, for a celebrated dancer, performing nightly at Niblo's.

LINLEY (V.O.)
Signora Caradolce. Said to be the most beautiful, the most graceful woman in the world...

INT. THEATRE STALLS. NIGHT (B/W, FLASHBACK)
Linley is sitting among the audience in a small theatre. He waits with anticipation.

The curtain rises.

The backdrop is a crude painting of a woodland scene, like a rough parody of Animula's home.

The audience around Linley start to applaud with delight.

A tall figure pushes aside the drapes to emerge and dance around the stage, dressed in white muslin.

Linley shrinks into his seat.

The figure onstage is graceful but muscular, and leaps athletically; this is very different from Animula's dainty caperings.

Linley, hands trembling, puts his opera glasses to his eyes.

We see what he sees, framed by the glasses:

An Amazonian woman, her face harshly painted, smiling grotesquely, lumbers around the stage.
Sweat runs down her face. As her feet hit the floor the scenery shudders.

Linley jumps to his feet, horrified, and runs from the theatre.