"Listen, I just have to get away for awhile." She said in kind of a desperate tone."

Get away from who?" he asked."

Get away from the people I am traveling with. Sometimes I don't think he's safe."

An icicle of pain shot through him. He winced. She couldn't see it. She didn't know but he did.

He knew what he had done. That's why he was out here in the rain - the interminable rain. He wondered if she was out here because she had to be or was she hiding. He knew he had no choice. He wondered if she would get to that place of where traveling in the rain would no longer be a choice for her.

It hurt him to hear her speak of being abused. He was a perpetrator of emotional abuse. And it was for this he had been banished. And now here was this person out here in the rain wanting to walk and talk with him for awhile. Never-the-less, the shame in his heart swelled. He felt bad for her and looked to her as yet another instructor.

"Stay focused." he thought. "Keep your eye on the path. Don't get distracted." He had done enough stumbling and falling to last him a lifetime. He no longer had the luxury of "going along for the ride." "Stay focused."

He looked straight ahead with an aire of determination. A rain drop slid down his nose and clung to the end as he surveyed what lay ahead. The mist had now turned to rain. She was gone.