THE SERPENT.  I tell you the labor is too much for one.  Two must share it.

EVE.  Do you mean that Adam must share it with me?  He will not.  He cannot bear pain, nor take trouble with his body.

THE SERPENT.  He need not.  There will be no pain for him.  He will implore you to let him do his share.  He will be in your power through his desire.

EVE.  Then I will do it.  But how?  How did Lilith work this miracle?

THE SERPENT.  She imagined it.

EVE.  What is imagined?

THE SERPENT.  She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that never happened to a Lilith that never was.  She did not know then that imagination is the beginning of creation.  You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

EVE.  How can I create out of nothing?

THE SERPENT.  Everything must have been created out of nothing.  Look at that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm!  That was not always there:  you could not climb a tree when I first saw you.  But you willed and tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the roll on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up with one hand and seat yourself on the bough that was above your head.

EVE.  That was practice.

THE SERPENT.  Things wear out by practice:  they do not grow by it.  Your hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further and further.  But it does not grow longer for all its practice in streaming, because you have not willed it so.  When Lilith told me what she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing she had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her will.  Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two wills to create with.

EVE.  To desire, to imagine, to will, to create.  That is too long a story.  Find me one word for it all:  you, who are so clever at words.

THE SERPENT.  In one word, to conceive.  That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.

EVE.  Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your silent language:  the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet came true.

THE SERPENT.  A poem.

EVE.  Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.

THE SERPENT.  She was your mother.

EVE.  And Adam’s mother?

THE SERPENT.  Yes.

EVE [about to rise] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.

THE SERPENT [laughs]!!!

EVE [jarred and startled] What a hateful noise!  What is the matter with you?  No one has ever uttered such a sound before.