THE SERPENT.  Eve.

EVE [startled] Who is that?

THE SERPENT.  It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood.  See [she spreads a magnificent amethystine hood]!

EVE [admiring it] Oh!  But who taught you to speak?

THE SERPENT.  You and Adam.  I have crept through the grass, and hidden, and listened to you.

EVE.  That was wonderfully clever of you.

THE SERPENT.  I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field.

EVE.  Your hood is most lovely. [She strokes it and pets the serpent]. 
Pretty thing!  Do you love your godmother Eve?

THE SERPENT.  I adore her. [She licks Eve’s neck with her double tongue].

EVE [petting her] Eve’s wonderful darling snake.  Eve will never be lonely now that her snake can talk to her.

THE SNAKE.  I can talk of many things.  I am very wise.  It was I who whispered the word to you that you did not know.  Dead.  Death.  Die.

EVE [shuddering] Why do you remind me of it?  I forgot it when I saw your beautiful hood.  You must not remind me of unhappy things.

THE SERPENT.  Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to conquer it.

EVE.  How can I conquer it?

THE SERPENT.  By another thing, called birth.

EVE.  What? [Trying to pronounce it] B-birth?

THE SERPENT.  Yes, birth.

EVE.  What is birth?

THE SERPENT.  The serpent never dies.  Some day you shall see me come out of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin.  That is birth.

EVE.  I have seen that.  It is wonderful.

THE SERPENT.  If I can do that, what can I not do?  I tell you I am very subtle.  When you and Adam talk, I hear you say ‘Why?’ Always ‘Why?’ You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’ I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast when I am renewed.  I call that renewal being born.

EVE.  Born is a beautiful word.

THE SERPENT.  Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful every time?

EVE.  I!  It does not happen:  that is why.

THE SERPENT.  That is how; but it is not why.  Why not?

EVE.  But I should not like it.  It would be nice to be new again; but my old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would see it shrivel up and—­

THE SERPENT.  No.  He need not.  There is a second birth.

EVE.  A second birth?

THE SERPENT.  Listen.  I will tell you a great secret.  I am very subtle; and I have thought and thought and thought.  And I am very wilful, and must have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed.  And I have eaten strange things:  stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.

EVE.  You dared!

THE SERPENT.  I dared everything.  And at last I found a way of gathering together a part of the life in my body—­