e sense enough to know how to live.

ADAM. No matter. [_He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade
again_]. Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are
making it.

EVE [_musing_] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for the
other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat manna?

ADAM. What is manna?

EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the
Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.

ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it.
I will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be
damned.

EVE. Damned? What is that?

ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
you.

EVE [_slowly taking up her distaff_] If you were not a fool you would
find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
digging.

ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.

EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else.
We do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then
we will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor
spinning, nor fighting nor killing.

_She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently._

PART II

The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas

_In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50
is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in
black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat,
though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though
it buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity
indicated by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to
suggest the clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor
bishop; he is rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church
enthusiast; and he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster.

The