ADAM.  What have you to do with one another now?  She is the creator, you the destroyer.

CAIN.  How can I destroy unless she creates?  I want her to create more and more men:  aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create more men.  I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than there are leaves on a thousand trees.  I will divide them into two great hosts.  One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I fear most and desire to fight and kill most.  And each host shall try to kill the other host.  Think of that! all those multitudes of men fighting, fighting, killing, killing!  The four rivers running with blood!  The shouts of triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair! the shrieks of torment!  That will be life indeed:  life lived to the very marrow:  burning, overwhelming life.  Every man who has not seen it, heard it, felt it, risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the man who has.

EVE.  And I!  I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!

ADAM.  Or to kill you, you fool.

CAIN.  Mother:  the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony, your glory, your triumph.  You make my father here your mere convenience, as you call it, for that.  He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod for you, like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who carries his burdens for him.  No woman shall make me live my father’s life.  I will hunt:  I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my sinews.  When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw it to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains.  She shall have no other food; and that will make her my slave.  And the man that slays me shall have her for his booty.  Man shall be the master of Woman, not her baby and her drudge.

Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve.

EVE.  Are you tempted, Adam?  Does this seem a better thing to you than love between us?

CAIN.  What does he know of love?  Only when he has fought, when he has faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the arms of a woman.  Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife, whether she would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways of Adam, and was a digger and a drudge?

EVE [angrily throwing down her distaff] What!  You dare come here boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the worst of wives!  You her master!  You are more her slave than Adam’s ox or your own sheepdog.  Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk of your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains!  Ha!  Poor wretch:  do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that?  Do you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her