well planned though it was and daringly attempted, Satan did not succeed. You recollect the business of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

THE MUSE. Recollect it? Why, I recorded not one, but several conflicting accounts of the occurrence, especially the one now authorized, and the older one official among the Chaldees, from whom our enterprising Jewish plagiarists took it, but merely to change its bearing, as so often happens when men of letters and theologians work on each other's copy. And since you have alluded to this justly popular story, I can't resist the opportunity of ascertaining, once for all, what precisely, among such conflicting versions, really was your Lordship's part in that-shall we say ?-bad business.

SATAN. Bad certainly for me, dear Clio !

THE MUSE. Was it so bad for you, my Lord? Perhaps not all you aimed at. But surely you scored something: "brought death into the world and all our woe," etc. That was not to be despised.

SATAN. Of course not. And moreover, brought me—as is figured in that mediæval legend which makes that self-same Tree serve for the wood of the True Cross-brought me, though unsuccessful, the sublimest sacrifice my altars ever gloried in.

THE MUSE (knowingly). That has long since been my view; and sundry early Christian theologians nearer the sources, but since branded as heretical, went so far as to declare that it was to your Lordship that the Deity found Himself obliged, like the Patriarch Abraham, to offer up His Son. This circumstance has indeed made me suspect that the Tree in question could not have really been planted by the Creator, like some horticultural exhibit intended to be looked at but not eaten of.

The MUSE hesitates, looking at SATAN with the embarrass

ment of a person not certain of having guessed the truth, and still less certain whether the truth will be welcome.

SATAN (contemptuously). God neither planted nor forbade its use. So far your guess is right.

THE MUSE (delighted). I thought as much! Then your Lordship must forgive my indiscretion, but History's greatest joy is, after all, that of an occasional shrewd look through a millstone-then, since such really was the case, I mean that Tree not being planted by God, it must have been planted by .. (The MUSE looks at SATAN as much as to ask by you?") in short in other words it was planted

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SATAN (suddenly to the MUSE's amazement and almost consternation). By Man, and Man's wife, Woman. The AllCreator gave the seed. But like His other seeds, the original multifold Power scattered it broadcast to lie dormant, or quicken, or perish, as might be. Man saved it from the vast indifferent lavishness, and, like the ear of wild wheat, put it into chosen soil, watering and cherishing it as it sprouted, that he might eat its fruit and his children shelter in its shade.

THE MUSE. To be sure! The precise particulars had somehow escaped my memory. History has really too many things to remember!

SATAN. You were not there, my dear. I was. So I will give History a little lesson in her own subject.

THE MUSE (nettled but inquisitive). Your Lordship's conversation cannot fail to be instructive.

SATAN. Well then! This is the story of the Tree of Knowledge. In the beginning which had no beginning, mere timeless, aimless Chaos and Old Night, Creation stirred, creating its own powers, the multifold of quickening forces making for shape from substance and for soul from motion. I was not born yet.

THE MUSE (still irritated). That much is not unknown.

You were an afterthought, my dear Lord Satan, as befits a rebel.

SATAN. Not a rebel, Clio. But like many who pass for such, a staunch Conservative. I opposed the coming change, loyal to the Chaos and Darkness who had given me birth. I resolved to turn this new-fangled order into anarchy. So, when soul quickened within body, I saw to clogging it by body's clinging habits, and, in return, unsettled secure instincts with half-fledged reason. Man was not yet; hence neither good nor evil. But in the lowest brutes already pain and pleasure emerged, the great creative poles determining life's tides. And at once I seized upon them for my purpose, employing pleasure to increase pain. Then, as your Milton put it, I sought in good the means to evil, so soon as good and evil came along with Man. And to this purpose I sought to turn that Tree planted from God's seed in God's great park: warping its growth, and when it grew despite me, filling its fruitful branches with chimæras and harpies of all foul kinds.

THE MUSE. That is truly interesting! But may I point out that your Lordship's nomenclature lacks a trifle in precision. At one moment, you call the Tree in question "Tree of Knowledge," at another "Tree of Good and Evil."

SATAN. They are the same. For, unknown, good is not good, nor evil, evil; words betokening Man's choice, and answering to Man's needs.

THE MUSE. I see! That would account for Man's planting that particular Tree, instead of: . . well! Your Lordship.

SATAN (looks at the MUSE in amazement). Instead of Me! Of Me, dear Clio? O History, you are a greater goose than I had ever guessed! Why that Tree's planting meant my doom, however long postponed by my manifold arts.

Tree! Why I've attacked it with hundred-fold devices;

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droughts, hurricanes, and loathsome parasites and the obscene snouts of devils turned to swine. I've bled its sap; stripped off its bark and sered roots and branches with frost and fire; urged Man to cut it down, lest it should prove a upas and strangle all his children in its growth. I've borrowed all Jove's official lightnings to blast it. I have seen it parch and wither, branch drop off after branch, crop mildew after crop. But alas! only to note with anguish new blossoms and ever unexpected shoots. I, Satan, plant that hateful holy Tree? O Clio, Clio, that even you could think... Why that Tree, which clasps with a hundred branches the willing heavens, is at the same time delving its million roots and rootlets deeper and further into Chaos and Darkness, narrowing and squeezing this Hell of mine till it become no bigger than this pretty little hand of yours. I will tell you a secret, Clio: Absurd as it at present sounds, some day there will be no more room for Satan.

THE MUSE. Indeed! That is I own a most disheartening supposition, and accounts for a slight vein of, may I call it ?morbidness, which I have grieved to notice in your Lordship's previous remarks. I must not, however, hide from you that there have been rumours to the effect of Satan being .. Well! more correctly described as longlived than as immortal in the literal sense. If this be true, let me remind you of the saying of that enlightened ruler Sardanapalus: "Eat, drink and be merry; the rest is not worth a fig !"

SATAN (ironically pressing her hand). Dear Gossip History! Not Job's comforter, but Satan's !

THE MUSE. And think what opportunities you still have before you! Although you have made clear to me that it is a case, as the poet so charmingly puts it, of gathering your rosebuds while you may. A European war lasting for years may surely be accounted such. For that, if I am correctly

informed, is the subject of the new Ballet to which you have so graciously invited poor old Clio ?

SATAN (kissing her finger-tips gallantly). Just so. My lease of life, though good for many thousand years, is shortening, shrinking with every great success of mine, like the peau de chagrin in Balzac's romance. I may, however, tell you that there is another, and more pressing, reason why I have hurried on this great new spectacle.

THE MUSE. The present moment is eminently propitious. I am told by one or two leaders of modern thought, who frequent my salon, that mankind has attained amazing control over science's means without so far an inkling of science's discipline and aims. Twentieth-century men appear to be slum-and-warehouse savages retaining the worship of all the good old tribal fetishes and racy obscene emblems, and carrying on their ancient cannibal habits under newfangled and decent names; yet at the same time wielding, thanks to some dozen men of genius

SATAN. Waste of genius! Waste of science! There you have a trifling sample of my sport!

THE MUSE (not to be interrupted)-wielding, as I said, appliances which, without enlarging mind or heart, abolish space and multiply all brutish powers a thousandfold. If this account is true, no moment could be better suited for a Dance of Death such as the poor unsophisticated Middle Ages never imagined in their most celebrated nightmares.

SATAN (who has politely suppressed a yawn). You are rightly informed, as befits the Muse of History. But that is not the most urgent reason for hurrying on my monster entertainment. Between you and me, in the very strictest confidence, dear Clio, my Ballet Master Death is growing old.

THE MUSE. You have hinted something to that effect. And I confess that I have myself noticed, not without the