Adam and Eve walk through the Garden on their fortieth anniversary



Adam: Eve, it has been forty years and much time and content has passed between us, have you yet found peace or contentment in me.



Eve: I am at peace in that I am myself and that you are you, and in the hope that you shall one day be the prince the Good Lord promised me.



Adam: Have I not yet become something mature and tasteful in your mind? Am I not refined, more knowledgeable, better skilled, and more temperate than I was at twenty?



Eve: Indeed, you are all those things, but not yet the thing my heart desires. For all your skill you have yet to learn to love me as I choose. For all your knowledge, you still cannot satisfy my ears with your ill-chosen words. For all your temperance, you still cling to your own fire as if it were the brightest star in the heavens.



Adam: Amusing, as I no longer feel the spark of youth and individuality. Have I not lit as many candles for you as there are stars in the sky? Have I not sacrificed the hunt for the home? Have I not toiled hard, built shelter, and provided enough to prove my metal?



Eve: When a Man toils he toils only for himself and his only element is earth. When you work, you work in the earth, and build with what the earth bestows upon you. Your prize is pride and you are never so happy as when you are happy with yourself. Surely, what joy am I to take in my kind of happiness that proves only to make you the happier and my state unchanged?



Adam: Unchanged? Woman, you would be better off without me?



Eve: Not better. I love you and would not discharge you. My joy is in the hope and idea of you that time has yet to mold. As I was molded from dust and bone, so a man is molded by time and experience. But a man never experiences woman. Man experiences Earth and all its earthly feelings. When woman is happy, man experiences happiness. When woman is miserable, man experiences misery. But man never experiences the woman.



Adam: Am I as terrible as all of that? Have we not talked for forty years? Are you not the only mind and heart my mind and heart has ever known?



Eve: You would think, if that be the case, you would know me better and better serve my modest needs?



Adam: What of my needs? Is there equality in this dialogue? For over these many years you have given less and demanded more. Are you not less a lover and companion than forty years when we first proved a match? Is not your patience worn down to a moments tolerance? Has not our friendship evaporated to but a passionless puddle, hurdled with but a skip, so as not to get your feet wet? And yet, here after forty years you speak only of your discontent!



Eve: Do not be troubled, Man. You are as you were made and I do not seek to remake you in any other image. I have done my every duty, I have stayed. But do not ask my heart to feel full when it is empty, or my mind to be satisfied when it is restless. A Man is never so committed to changing anything then he is a woman's mind! He is never so bold as when he wars with a womans' heart! Was I to be loved as a wife or warred against as an enemy when you married me?



Adam: Your questions' teeth bite without respect or compassion, woman!



Eve: And your selfishness is a Sun that shines on only half the earth!



Adam: That is what a sun does!



Eve: And the dark side of the earth is cold and quiet. That is what a sun does!