The man and the woman were silent for a time as they considered El’s words. Apples had fallen from the tree and lay on the ground. The woman picked up one that had gone soft. She crushed it in her hand. A worm fell from it and landed at her feet. She ignored it, working the pulp of the fruit between her fingers until she felt a small hard object, like a tiny stone. Crossing to the fountain she immersed her hand and stirred it about in the water until the soft pulp had been washed away. Remaining was a hard pip, which she let lie in the hollow of her hand. The surface of the water stilled and became a mirror in which she saw her face as well as those of the man and of bright El, who had come to gaze over her shoulder. In the face of El she thought she perceived some look of concern or bemusement she had not seen before. Then he seemed to become aware that he was being looked on, and his face set itself anew. “My words concerning the apple seed have stirred your curiosity, and led you to new investigations,” he said, “and that is as it should be, for curiosity and the seeking out of greater knowledge are faculties without which no woman or man can be said to have a soul.”

“Every fall, the apples rot on the ground and we smell their fragrance,” the woman said, “but I had given no thought to the hard pips in their centers, nor understood that apples bore within themselves the beginnings of new trees.”

“That is indeed the way of it,” El confirmed, “and were you to plant that seed in the earth and wait patiently, you might see it sprouting into a little tree in the spring.”

The man spoke. “The same is true, I suppose, of the other sorts of plants?”

“They produce their seeds in different ways,” El said, “but they all produce seeds, and it is because of this that the Garden becomes overgrown from time to time and must be weeded back.”

“And is this also true of what grows beyond the wall?” the man asked. “For when the wind blows we can hear it sighing in many branches, and when it storms we hear them cracking.”

“Your perceptions are even keener than I had hoped,” said El, “and do me proud.” But the woman thought she saw once more in El’s face that look of consternation.

“Why were plants made thus, Father?” the man asked. “Why not make them to grow only so much, and no more? Why should each tree produce many apples, and each apple many seeds, when the Garden cannot provide enough space for more than a few trees?”

When El did not answer for a time, the woman asked him, “Father, why did you make it thus?”