We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not let her carry it, but abandoned my day’s labour, which was lighter, and took hers, which was quite enough:  we went back Westward, seeking all the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place:  and nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub.  There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a stone: 

‘Good-night, Clodagh.’

She did not answer promptly:  and her answer, to my surprise, was a protest against her name:  for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came from the darkness, saying: 

‘I am not a Poisoner!’

‘Well,’ said I, ’all right:  tell me whatever you like that I should call you, and henceforth I will call you that.’

‘Call me Eve,’ says she.

‘Well, no,’ said I, ’not Eve, anything but that:  for my name is Adam, and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want to be ridiculous in each other’s eyes.  But I will call you anything else that you like.’

‘Call me Leda,’ says she.

‘And why Leda?’ said I.

‘Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,’ says she, ’and you are al-leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in a book, and liked it:  but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly hollible!’

‘Well, then,’ said I, ’Leda it shall be, and I shan’t forget, for I like it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with an “L.”  Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.’

‘And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,’ says she; and I went.

And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced and woke me:  for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman who had borne twins.  In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have heard of v’s, and b’s, and d’s interchanging about in this way, and if Di, meaning God, or Light, and Bi, meaning Life, and Io_v_e, and Iho_v_ah and Go_d_, meaning much the same, are all one, that would be nothing astonishing to me, as wi_d_ow, and veu_v_e, are one:  and where it says, ‘truly the Light is Good (tob, bon),’ this is as if it said, ‘truly the Di is Di.’  Such, at any rate, is the fatality that attends me, even in the smallest things:  for this Western Eve, or Greek Leda, had twins.