Something spurred me, and I could not resist shouting a sudden “Hi!” whereupon she scrambled like a spring-bok to her feet, I pointing to the drawing, smiling.

This creature has a way of mincing her pressed lips, while she shakes the head, intensely cooing a fond laugh:  and so she did then.

“You are a clever little wretch, you know,” said I, she cocking her eye, trying to divine my meaning with vague smile.

‘Oh, yes, a clever little wretch,’ I went on in a gruff voice, ’clever as a serpent, no doubt:  for in the first case it was the Black who used the serpent, but now it is the White.  But it will not do, you know.  Do you know what you are to me, you?  You are my Eve!—­a little fool, a little piebald frog like you.  But it will not do at all, at all!  A nice race it would be with you for mother, and me for father, wouldn’t it?—­half-criminal like the father, half-idiot like the mother:  just like the last, in short.  They used to say, in fact, that the offspring of a brother and sister was always weak-headed:  and from such a wedlock certainly came the human race, so no wonder it was what it was:  and so it would have to be again now.  Well no—­unless we have the children, and cut their throats at birth:  and you would not like that at all, I know, and, on the whole, it would not work, for the White would be striking a poor man dead with His lightning, if I attempted that.  No, then:  the modern Adam is some eight to twenty thousand years wiser than the first—­you see? less instinctive, more rational.  The first disobeyed by commission:  I shall disobey by omission:  only his disobedience was a sin, mine is a heroism.  I have not been a particularly ideal sort of beast so far, you know:  but in me, Adam Jeffson—­I swear it—­the human race shall at last attain a true nobility, the nobility of self-extinction.  I shall turn out trumps:  I shall prove myself stronger than Tendency, World-Genius, Providence, Currents of Fate, White Power, Black Power, or whatever is the name for it.  No more Clodaghs, Lucrezia Borgias, Semiramises, Pompadours, Irish Landlords, Hundred-Years’ Wars—­you see?’

She kept her left eye obliquely cocked like a little fool, wondering, no doubt, what I was saying.

‘And talking of Clodagh,’ I went on, ’I shall call you that henceforth, to keep me reminded.  So that is your name—­not Eve—­but Clodagh, who was a Poisoner, you see?  She poisoned a poor man who trusted her:  and that is your name now—­not Eve, but Clodagh—­to remind me, you most dangerous little speckled viper!  And in order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a yashmak to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being commonplace enough.  Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace—­I will show you.’