"Her speech is brief, decisive, masterly. But it is nevertheless wrong, for she confounds the sin of asking for trouble with the virtue of not avoiding the dust and heat when these are necessary. Adam is by now thoroughly roused, and his real intellectual superiority asserts itself. He grasps Eve's mistake, but forbears scoring off her. Instead he replies with fervour and humility. God supplied us, he argues, with the necessary armour against evil. But it should be used discreetly. You cannot be too careful: for the will may go wrong through the reason's acting on false data, through thinking false appearances to be the truth. And he really answers Eve when he says:"

"Adam's misguided lenience makes things hard for Eve. She would now like to yield, but after all her protests it is hardly consonant with proper pride for her not to accept his offer. So she accepts it, and as a compromise says she does so in deference to Adam's final hypothesis. The whole situation is pervaded with tragic irony. Adam weakens just when he could so easily have been strong. Eve, having requested to garden alone, gains her request just as she has repented of it. With this important phase of the Fall Satan has had nothing to do: it has been conducted on the Meredithian principle:"

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