“There's another thing. You write about the people who have their evenings and mornings together and those who haven't. Just the position of the latter seems to me the more favourable. They have done something bad, certainly or possibly, and the dirt of this scene derives, as you rightly say, essentially from their being strangers, and it's physical dirt, like the dirt of an apartment which has never been inhabited and suddenly ripped wide open. This is bad indeed, or on Earth, it's actually nothing but a 'play with a ball' as you call it. It's as though Eve, having indeed plucked the apple from the tree (sometimes I believe I understand the Fall of Man as no one else), did so nevertheless only in order to show it to Adam - because she liked it. It was the biting into it that was decisive - the playing with it was, though not permitted, not forbidden either.”