him. He believed that in trying to find
God, he would get so lost that he would never be able to retrace his
footsteps. Before he went he kissed the Woman tenderly, begging
forgiveness for all the misery he had caused her.

"But I caused it, too," she confessed. "It wasn't your rib that was to
blame. It wasn't you at all. I wanted the fruit and we ate it together."

It was the first time she had acknowledged it; until then she had
insisted that the fault was his solely. So in the moment of farewell she
restored to him one little ray of the great, lost sun of flaming
happiness.

VI

The air was so thick with falling snow that he was well-nigh stifled.
His eyes were blinded as though they were padded with cottonwool. The
flakes brushed against his cheeks like live things. At his sixth step
from the entrance he had lost his direction. His feet commenced to
slide; against his will he went avalanching and cavorting down the path.

At the bottom he lay panting for a time; then, because he was cold he
picked himself up and went blundering on, not in the least knowing where
he was going. Bushes clutched at his feet. Trees slashed across his
face. He was inclined to weep, but checked himself, remembering that on
one of those sunny afternoon walks God had told him that to cry wasn't
manly. "And I must find God. I must find God," he kept repeating to
himself. The only way he knew of finding God was by pressing forward.
God had once confessed to him, "The reason I am God is because I show
courage."

"Then I'll show courage, too," he thought.

Presently he found himself in the heart of the forest and began to
breathe more freely. Avenues of giant trees stretched before him, which
criss-crossed one another and faded into the gloom of twilit, colonnaded
tunnels. He could almost feel the gnarled trunks bracing themselves
and the crooked branches linking arms to bear up the weight of the
down-poured roof of whiteness. As his eyes grew accustomed to the
dimness, he saw the animals strewn flat among fallen leaves, their noses
pressed between their paws, shivering with terror. Overhead birds and
monkeys sat in rows, squeezed side by side for companionship, weeping
silently. Of a sudden he regained his majesty, being filled with
contempt for their cowardice. "For I am Man," he reminded himself, "so
like to God that I could easily be mistaken for Him--and these are the
creatures who dared to talk of punishing me."

Throwin