ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be Adam, Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much in me that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who enabled you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death. CAIN [_rising_] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of death? ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your mother to her spinning. CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better way. [_He picks up his shield and spear_]. I will go back to my brave warrior friends and their splendid women. [_He strides to the thorn brake_]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman? [_He goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the distance_] Goodbye, mother. ADAM [_grumbling_] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [_He replaces the hurdle across the passage_]. EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of our grandchildren die before they have 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.