Something About Eve

    “I have heard of the woman,” said Maya, rather absent-mindedly, as she went on with the darning upon which stayed fixed her actual attention,—“of course: but nothing to her credit. They report, for example, that she has a mirror—”

    “I, too, have heard continually of that mirror, but never of exactly what she does with it.”

    “For that matter, Gerald, I also have a mirror, if that is all which is needed. Everybody has a mirror. In fact, I have a number of mirrors.”

    “I know. I have noticed them everywhere about the cottage. But all your mirrors, dear lady, are rose-colored.”

    —To which Maya replied irrelevantly, and without looking up from her darning: “But did you not know from the first that I was a wise woman? In any case, it is said that Queen Freydis holds her mirror up to nature, and that she does not scruple to hold this mirror up to her disreputable visitors, too. For they really are, you know. It is all very well being a god while it lasts. Only, it never does. And then where are you? Why, exactly! That is why the overlords of Turoine have always seemed to me more business-like. And there is no flaw in it, people say,”—now, though, as Gerald deduced, Maya was talking about the Mirror of the Hidden Children,—“no distortion of any kind, no flattering in it, and no kindly exaggeration. It is not in anything like my more sensible rose-colored mirrors. And nobody could of course be expected to approve of such a mirror.”

    “Nevertheless, if there indeed be any such mirror, I mean to face it, when to-morrow I enter into my kingdom, and liberate the great words of the Master Philologist, and restore the Dirghic mythology, for in that mythology, I must tell you, I am a god with four aspects.”

    “What nonsense you do talk!” said Maya, comfortably, as she slipped the darning-egg into another stocking.

    Then Gerald confided in her. Then Gerald told Maya of how he, howsoever unmeritorious, was heir to all the unimaginable wonders which harbored yonder. He told her that he and none other was Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. He told her of everything that had happened in his triumphant expedition, thus far. He told her of somewhat more than had happened, for under Gerald’s expansive handling of the rather beautiful idea of his own invincibility the tale became an epic. And Gerald told her, too, of how he intended to rule in the goal of all the gods. He briefly indicated his summer and winter palaces, the probable personnel of his harem, the deities who would serve in his immediate household, and, in a general way, the worlds which he would create: and he promised to remember Maya, liberally, after he had come into his kingdom.

    And Maya all this while went on darning placidly. She admitted that men—

    “But, as I was telling you, I am a god,—a god with no less than four aspects.”

    That did not really matter, Maya considered. The gods, as near as she had been able to judge those scatter-brained ne’er-do-wells that went tramping by, were just the same, and, if anything, more so. It was simply incredible, she continued, how little wear there was in a stocking nowadays. She then admitted that male persons did have these notions, even about such unlikely places as Antan. And Gerald would, in any event, be finding out for himself all about Antan tomorrow, because if he for one solitary instant thought she was going to have him hanging about her cottage forever—!

    “Come now, my dear, but hospitality is a very famous virtue: and, besides, you owe it to me that you are now the handsomest woman in these parts.”

    “But that, Gerald,—even if it were the truth, of course, for you need not think you are fooling me, you scamp,—that is just why people will be imagining things if you continue to stay here.”

    “Then let us take good care not to be suspected unjustly, because that would be unfair to everybody—”

    “Oh, get along with you! and do you pick up every one of those stockings, too, now you have scattered them all over the floor. And really, you red-headed pest, I am not joking, either. That horse of yours—”

    “Ah, yes, that horse of mine! I admit that to the discerning eyes of a woman it is not the handsomest beast in the world. And I suppose you are about to point out that this horse is unworthy of me, and that I ought to dispose of it, in one way or another—”

    “But whatever nonsense are you talking, now! It is an extremely handsome horse. There is some sort of prophecy about it, too, is there not? So you would be even more foolish than you seem to be, to part with that horse.”

    “Well, to be sure, there may be something in what you say.”

    “—And what I was attempting to tell you is that, if you will simply permit me to talk for one minute without interrupting—”

    “Hereafter I remain as quiet, my dear, as a belch in polite society; and you may go on.”