ADAM [despairingly] But we shall cease to be.  We shall fall like the fawn and be broken. [Rising and moving about in his agitation].  I cannot bear this knowledge.  I will not have it.  It must not be, I tell you.  Yet I do not know how to prevent it.

EVE.  That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should say so:  there is no pleasing you.  You change your mind so often.

ADAM [scolding her] Why do you say that?  How have I changed my mind?

EVE.  You say we must not cease to exist.  But you used to complain of having to exist always and for ever.  You sometimes sit for hours brooding and silent, hating me in your heart.  When I ask you what I have done to you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of having to be here for ever.  But I know very well that what you mean is the horror of having to be here with me for ever.

ADAM.  Oh!  That is what you think, is it?  Well, you are wrong. [He sits down again, sulkily].  It is the horror of having to be with myself for ever.  I like you; but I do not like myself.  I want to be different; to be better, to begin again and again; to shed myself as a snake sheds its skin.  I am tired of myself.  And yet I must endure myself, not for a day or for many days, but for ever.  That is a dreadful thought.  That is what makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful.  Do you never think of that?

EVE.  No:  I do not think about myself:  what is the use?  I am what I am:  nothing can alter that.  I think about you.

ADAM.  You should not.  You are always spying on me.  I can never be alone.  You always want to know what I have been doing.  It is a burden.  You should try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying yourself with my existence.

EVE.  I have to think about you.  You are lazy:  you are dirty:  you neglect yourself:  you are always dreaming:  you would eat bad food and become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you.  And now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and become dead.

ADAM.  Dead?  What word is that?

EVE [pointing to the fawn] Like that.  I call it dead.

ADAM [rising and approaching it slowly] There is something uncanny about it.

EVE [joining him] Oh!  It is changing into little white worms.

ADAM.  Throw it into the river.  It is unbearable.

EVE.  I dare not touch it.

ADAM.  Then I must, though I loathe it.  It is poisoning the air. [He gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible].

Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits down on the rock, brooding.  The body of the serpent becomes visible, glowing with wonderful new colors.  She rears her head slowly from the bed of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve’s ear in a strange seductively musical whisper.