and kills for his food; and makes up idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his terror-ridden life with fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine clothes, so that men may glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as murderer and thief.  All you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my sons’ sons, or my sons’ sons’ sons:  you all come to see me:  you all shew off before me:  all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted out before mother Eve.  The diggers come:  the fighters and killers come:  they are both very dull; for they either complain to me of the last harvest, or boast to me of the last fight; and one harvest is just like another, and the last fight only a repetition of the first.  Oh, I have heard it all a thousand times.  They tell me too of their last-born:  the clever thing the darling child said yesterday, and how much more wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any child that ever was born before.  And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested; though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it.  For you were the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts.  When I can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to.  But you have made the serpent our enemy:  she has left the garden, or is dead:  I never see her now.  So I have to come back and listen to Adam saying the same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit from the last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress me with his importance.  Oh, it is dreary, dreary!  And there is yet nearly seven hundred years of it to endure.

CAIN.  Poor mother!  You see, life is too long.  One tires of everything.  There is nothing new under the sun.

ADAM [to Eve, grumpily] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing better to do than complain?

EVE.  Because there is still hope.

CAIN.  Of what?

EVE.  Of the coming true of your dreams and mine.  Of newly created things.  Of better things.  My sons and my son’s sons are not all diggers and fighters.  Some of them will neither dig nor fight:  they are more useless than either of you:  they are weaklings and cowards:  they are vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their hair.  They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want, because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words.  They can remember their dreams.  They can dream without sleeping.  They have not will enough to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it.  There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can weave the