“I understand,” the girl said. Hand in hand they went off into the Garden searching for a secluded place where the ground was soft and bare, in which they could make some mark that would be preserved even if they fell like leaves and were remade.

Their search took them to a corner where two walls came together. Because of the shade, few plants grew. So the ground was mostly bare, and damp as well, since the sun did not parch it.

As they drew closer, the boy stooped to pick up a branch that had fallen from a tree. He snapped it over his knee, thinking he would use it to scratch a mark into the bare earth.

The girl went on ahead of him, passing through the last low shrubs into the bare place in the corner.

He heard her exclaim in surprise. He ran to catch up with her and found her gazing down in astonishment.

There in the angle of bare earth, amid many footprints like theirs, many scratches had been made in the ground. Discarded among them were many broken sticks.

El entered into the Garden one fine afternoon in the fall and found the boy and the girl at the fountain clearing away leaves. He bade them sit on the curved benches of stone that encircled the fountain. He told them that he was well pleased with their progress. “If you could but remember the state in which you first came into the Garden, you would scarce recognize yourselves,” he said. “You then bore the same relation to what you are now as seeds in the pith of an apple do to this spreading tree.” And he elevated his hands, directing their gaze to an old apple tree above them. “You were then infants. Later you were Boy and Girl. Today, after many years, you are Man and Woman. Nevermore shall the thread of your consciousness be interrupted, save when you lay down to sleep. For my questioning of you, and even more so the questions you have begun to ask me in kind, have demonstrated to my satisfaction that your intellect, and the coherence of your souls, has attained a degree of perfection equal to that of others. You may call me Father, as it pleases me to call you my beloved children.”