The Temptation and Fall of Eve (Illustration to Milton's "Paradise Lost")

Milton keeps Adam out of this scene. In Book Nine of Paradise Lost, Eve is working alone in another part of the garden when the serpent finds her, and she eats the fruit by herself, at which, Milton writes, Earth felt the wound. Blake puts Adam back in. He stands at the left with his back to us, looking up toward the sky, and has not seen what is happening on the other side of the trunk. There the serpent has wound its coils around Eve's body and passes her a fruit straight from its own mouth. Lightning forks down out of a darkening sky on either side of the tree.