“The legend,” said the stranger, “tells that those thickets of dwarfed trees growing about the garden sprang from the apple that Adam carried in his hand when he and Eve were driven forth. He felt something in his hand, saw the half-eaten apple, and flung it petulantly aside. And there they grow, in that desolate valley, girdled round with the everlasting snows, and there the fiery swords keep ward against the Judgment Day.”
“But I thought these things were”—Mr. Hinchcliff paused—“fables—parables rather. Do you mean to tell me that there in Armenia”—
The stranger answered the unfinished question with the fruit in his open hand.
“But you don’t know,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “that that is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The man may have had—a sort of mirage, say. Suppose”—
“Look at it,” said the stranger.
It was certainly a strange-looking globe, not really an apple, Mr. Hinchcliff saw, and a curious glowing golden colour, almost as though light itself was wrought into its substance. As he looked at it, he began to see more vividly the desolate valley among the mountains, the guarding swords of fire, the strange antiquities of the story he had just heard. He rubbed a knuckle into his eye. “But”—said he.
“It has kept like that, smooth and full, three months. Longer than that it is now by some days. No drying, no withering, no decay.”
“And you yourself,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “really believe that”—
“Is the Forbidden Fruit.”