The woman was in a daze with her following of the road. When she bent her head down and stared upon its yellow dirt surface, she was one with it, a piece of itself walking upon it. When she lifted up her head, she was separate from it, a living thing walking upon a piece of dead earth. Then she looked upon the wall of forest to right and left and became aware that the trees were intimate with the earth. She felt heavily their greater intimacy with the earth. This intimacy bothered her. The forest came up out of the earth in trunks swelling into branches that burst into leaves. The earth was proud of this, proud of the roots that bored into it and sucked at it, at the trunks that went up, swelling into branches, a network between it and the sky, mesh to sift sunshine through. The trees were proud, too, proud of the earth that lay quiet and heavy with nourishment under them, receiving their roots, feeding them. The deep, unfathomable intimacy made them proud. They were joined in understanding, one. Their oneness bothered the woman. At the same time she felt strangely protected by it. She walked quietly and firmly, not fast, as she did in the towns. In the towns she hurried through, looking at no one, eager to get into the safety of the woods, eager almost to be in the bother of the oneness of earth and trees. There were times when she wanted to stop, to leave the road, go up the side of the forest-clothed mountain and lie down; but she did not dare. Something within her urged her on. The Something was her Sin. Her Sin made her put one unwilling foot before the other and follow the winding strip of dirt road. It was her Sin that set her out upon the road. Through long months she had kept it secret, hidden quite from knowing eyes. She kept it secret, shutting out admission that the hour of its triumph would come. She had hoped to kill it, had encased it in prison bars, ruthless, holding herself impervious to the pain of the hurt that wrenched her with the hurting of the thing secret within her. She had tried to starve it, suffering in silence from the lack that she caused herself in withholding food from it. But her Sin lived. It was alive and strong. The day came when its strength moved terribly within her and that set her feet upon the road. While she walked, it was quiet, sleeping like a child carried in its mother’s arms. When she sat down to rest, it moved and urged her on, on down the narrow road winding through the forest around the side of the low mountain. Many turnings and windings the road had. By and by it would come to a swift creek, with a bridge set across, and a mill beside it, and there would be human habitations, imitations of houses, rough hemlock shells, with people carrying on an imitation of living, going through motions that made time slip by. The woman knew all this well. The road had taught her as she came. At some such place her Sin would have its hour of triumph.