ng 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 patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and
raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make
little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and
ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those
faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up
quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on
their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars,
and can foretell when the sun will be covered with a black saucepan lid.
And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me which has saved me so
much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the hills, and hears the
Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the
Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they come, there is
always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They
never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating
either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you,
Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your