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finds when he is alone. You’ll see for yourself, one day.”
    Quietly sat up and looked at the trees around her, and listened for a moment to the whispering song of their high branches. She shut her eyes and remembered the pictures she had seen, of crowds pushing up narrow, dirty streets, of ill-kempt children and of fat, bald, sickly doctors whose duty it was to heal and to cure. She thought of the noble things: great curved dams and high buildings with their windows lit. So much that was wrong—so much that was not wrong but was simply inconsistent. And it would be noisy, noisy, noisy.
    Why not live out her year here in the hills, with her fire-building and her hunting and her thoughts? It would not be so different; her father had said, “The same laws, the same forces, apply to meneverywhere as apply to beasts. Kill or be killed, fill your belly, reproduce your kind. The difference is only in the fact that men kill and eat and reproduce beyond necessity, without regard to their basic need.”
    That was it, then—that difference which he wanted her to see. And why not let her accept the truth of it, without this?
    She remembered again—years back. “Quietly, what would it feel like if I hit you, hard, with my open hand?”
    She had considered, carefully. “It would thump and it would sting.”
    He had nodded, and then lashed out brutally and struck her. It was one of the very few times when he had suddenly gathered her up and held her close. She was stiff and silent for a long moment. Then she trembled and hid her face in his shoulder, and cried without making a sound. He held her, rocking her a little, until she quieted, and then said, “Never forget this, child. You did not cry when you answered my question. You could not; you had no reason to. You did
not
know what it would feel like. Now you are crying. Imagination is a good thing, but it can only approximate experience. You can only learn by doing. If ever you want to know what a thing is like, do it, Quietly, do it.”
    Quietly rose and stepped to her fire to push the root-chunk further into the coals. She had a year, and the decision of what to do with it was hers. Her father’s wish was obviously that she live out her year in the world—other people’s world. She could follow his wish, or not. If she did not, she would survive; by the same token, she had no doubt of surviving if she did what he obviously wanted. Survival was not the question, nor was it a matter of which she would enjoy the most; for enjoyment had always been a substance to be squeezed from events as they were lived, and she would enjoy what she did, or not, only as her capacity for enjoyment changed, and not as events dictated. The important consideration sprang from her training. If, in any matter, she did what was expected of her, she was rewarded by the food or the quiet or the freedom her action had earned. If she did not do as her father wished, she took the consequences—not in punishment from him, but in the exact deprivationthat her lack warranted. If it were made possible for her to eat, and through her own choice she did not eat, then she went hungry. If, in the afternoon, she refused the privilege of a certain one of her father’s books, that book was unavailable to her in the evening. To accede to her father’s wishes was invariably to do the functional thing, to make the most of opportunity when it offered itself; and so rigorously did he control his environment—and hers—that there never had been an accident which proved this principle false.
    To stay in the hills, or to go to the towns … she was free to choose. Purely by the placement of events, she knew which her father wished her to do. The fact that she did not want the opportunity to live among other people was unimportant. The fact that she may never have another opportunity if she did not take this one was important, vitally so.
    She stared into the fire, felt its radiant heat, watched its pale sunlit