"Extremely well."

She chuckled again. "That's American, I must say. The laconic Yankee. The Gary Cooper syndrome. An Austrian would be quoting Heine or Schiller to me for a half-hour."

"Unfortunately, I don't know anything from Heine or Schiller. Next time, I'll try Yeats, though. 'When I am old and gray and full of sleep . . .' "

"You're not as old and gray as you think you are."

"Not tonight." If only she knew what he had been through since the day he and Tracy's father had nearly drowned in Long Island Sound.

"Not tonight," she said, musingly. "I take that as a compliment."

"It was meant to be."

"Have you any idea what time it is?"

"A quarter past delirium," he said, and she chuckled once more, complacently. She was, he could tell, used to pleasing men. He reached over for his watch on the bedside table and peered at the illuminated dial. "It's twenty past four."

"Mein Gott. The maids will be moving about soon. It would not do to see the lady of the house leaving a guest's room at this hour in what used to be called complete disarray." She got briskly out of bed and dressed quickly, but left her hair down. Then she came over and kissed him.

"You're something," he said.

"A lady does her best," she said and kissed him again, then said, softly, "Du. Du." '

"What does that mean?"

"You," she said. "You. The familiar second person singular."

Well, he thought, be grateful for the small gifts the night bestows.

Then she was gone, a silent shadow in the last glow from the fireplace.

He stretched hard in the warm bed, appreciating the taut pull of his muscles. For once, as he closed his eyes, he didn't regret that he was no longer twenty-one. Snow or no snow, he thought as he dropped off to sleep, it's a cinch I'm not going to get up early this morning.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

He ate a late hearty breakfast in the deserted dining room, served by the boy who had brought in his bags. Looking out the window, he saw that it had snowed, but lightly, and what there was on the lawn was already thawing down to the grass in the warm sunshine. No skiing today. No matter.

Mrs. Heggener, as he still thought of her, was nowhere to be seen. He remembered that she had said Dave Cully wanted to talk to him and when he finished breakfast went out to get in the car and into town to the ski school.

There was an old station wagon parked next to the Porsche and as he went between the two cars, he heard a woman's voice say, "Hello, Michael."

It was Norma Cully, sitting at the wheel of the station wagon.

"Hello, Norma," he said. "What're you doing here at this time of the morning?"

"Waiting to see you. Pa told me where you were staying." She was wearing a bright checked scarf over her head and she looked pale and tired with all that color around her face. She kept twisting her hands nervously as she smiled tentatively at him. "There're a couple of things I have to tell you. Have you got the time?"

"Of course."

"Do you want to get into the car? It's a cool morning and I've got the heater on."

"I'm all right here," Michael said.

"You needn't worry about coming close," Norma said, smiling wanly. "This time I won't attack you."

"Why didn't you come to dinner at your parents' house last night?"

Norma shifted uneasily on the driver's seat. "Account of you. I didn't know how I'd act the first time I saw you and I didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of Ma and Pa. I didn't know whether I'd laugh or cry or fall down in a faint or accuse you of ruining my life or throw my arms around your neck and say you're the only man I've ever loved. Anyway, I needed at least one night to think you over."

"Norma, dear," Michael said gently, "you had a schoolgirl crush on an older friend of your parents' fourteen years ago. Now you're married and have two kids and you're a grown, sensible woman, according to your mother, and you wouldn't have done any of those things. You would have said, 'How are you, Michael? We're all glad to see you back again. Have you seen the pictures of my two kids?' " "Maybe," Norma said doubtfully. "But maybe I'd have said you shouldn't have kissed me goodnight after taking me to the movies that time and you shouldn't have said you liked skiing with me better than with any of the other girls and maybe I'd've said you had no right to tamper with the affections of a simple mountain girl and lead her on so that she had fantasies of making love with you and even marrying you and going to live with you in New York."

"I'm sorry, Norma," Michael said, with a pang of guilt at his thoughtlessness so many years before. "I liked you. I thought you were a nice girl, as indeed you were, and I just was too stupid to guess anything about your fantasies."

"You must have guessed that just about every girl in town, and almost every woman, too, was crazy to get their hands on you."

"You had a higher opinion of my charm," Michael said dryly, "than I ever did."

"You seemed so sure of yourself. As though everything was due you. It was one of the things that attracted women to you, as much as anything else."

Michael laughed ruefully. "Did I seem like that then? Well, I wasn't at all sure of myself then and I'm even less sure of myself now. Anyway, we can be friends now, can't we? The next time I come to dinner at your parents' house, you'll come, won't you?"

She didn't answer his question. "I put on an awful act when you left without even saying good-bye. I wept and I wouldn't leave my room for days and I nearly drove my poor father out of his mind with my goings-on. I guess I'd seen too many movies about great tragic loves, girls left behind while their lovers went off to war or took up with other women." There was a harsh self-mocking tone to her voice as she spoke. "Anyway, I was ashamed of myself. And I did something worse, that I'm even more ashamed of, and that's why I decided I had to talk to you right away, before you settled in here." "What's that?"

"I boasted."

"About what?"

"About you," she said. "I sort of let it be known to some of my girlfriends and some of the boys, too, that I'd had an affair with you. You were the catch of the year and I wanted to make them jealous and at the same time make myself important. Now you're back you're going to hear some stories and I thought you ought to be prepared."

Michael sighed. "Thank you for telling me. It was foolish, but it's not important. Both you and I will survive."

"I wish it had been true," Norma said defiantly. "Even now, looking at you, I feel very funny."

Michael laughed at the childish word. "I feel funny when I see a lot of people, Norma."

"I heard you were married."

"We're separated."

"I'm going to tell you something awful, Michael," she said. "I'm glad."

"I'm not," he said soberly.

She leaned toward him, through the open window. "Will you kiss me, just once, for old times' sake?"

He' pulled back a little. "Old times're not what they used to be, Norma."

"I suppose you're right," she said sadly. "Anyway, I'm happy to see you here and I guarantee I won't make any trouble for you and that's what I came here to say and I've said it."

"You're a dear woman."

"Dear," she said dully. Then she started her car and drove off.

He watched the car wind down the road and disappear, then shook his head and got into the Porsche and headed for town.

He parked the car in front of the store in which the ski school had its headquarters. But he didn't go in immediately. He was more shaken by the scene with Norma than he had realized and he took a few minutes to compose himself before he entered the building.

There was a young girl sitting behind a desk, typing with two fingers, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Behind her was a poster with the schedule of rates for the school and a list of the dates and types of races to be run for the season and an advertisement for a hang-gliding school. The office was big and roomy and businesslike, which it had not been fourteen years before.

"Good morning, miss," Michael said to the girl, who glanced up from her typing. "I'm looking for Dave Cully."

"He's out for the moment," the girl said. "You can find him in the diner across the street. He's having his morning coffee."

Michael crossed the street to the diner and went in. Cully was seated alone at a table in a corner, drinking coffee out of a mug and scowling at a newspaper he had spread in front of him. Cully was a big man, much heavier than when Michael had seen him last, and was beginning to grow bald. He had always looked like a mountain man, sturdy and thick, but now, with age, he looked as though he had been hewn out of the side of the mountain.

"Hello, Dave," Michael said.

Cully looked up. "Hi." He had been a handsome young man, but the years had thickened his face and there was a lost puzzled look in his eyes.

"Mrs. Heggener tells me you'd like to talk to me."

Cully nodded. "Sit down. Coffee?"

"Thanks."

Cully called to the waitress behind the counter, "Sally, another coffee, please. And give me a fresh cup, too." He examined Michael across the table, without saying anything. "You seem to have weathered well," he said finally.

"Careful living."

"I would have given odds you'd be dead by now." Cully's voice was heavy, without timbre or inflections. "Nobody would've taken them."

"I'm still around."

"So I see. Thanks, Sally," he said, as the waitress put the two mugs of coffee on the table. "You fixed up pretty good at the Alpina?"

"Never been in a hotel I liked better," Michael said, without going into details.

"Yeah, they've helped the town, helped us. Nice type of clientele. Don't mind spending money and don't give anybody any trouble." Then, with a glint of humor in his eyes, "You don't feel a little out of place there, Mike?"

"I've slowed down in my old age."

"That's not what I hear. I ran into Norman Brewster last night and he said they pulled you in for going eighty-five and sassing the police."

"It was all a great misunderstanding," Michael said, laughing. "There wasn't any need to be in a hurry to get here-"

"You can say that again. It looks as though it ain't going to snow before Christmas this year," Cully said, looking unhappily up at the blue sky through the big plate glass window of the diner. "There ain't much to do around this town unless you can ski. What'll you do with yourself?"

"I saw a poster on the wall of your office for a hang-gliding school. Deltas. On a nice day I might take a few flights."

Cully looked at him incredulously. "Don't tell me you go in for that sort of thing."

"Occasionally."

"Well, you'll like the kid who runs it. He's crazy, too. I was against letting him set up shop but I was voted down."

"What do you have against it?"

"The nearest hospital is in Newburg and that's twenty miles away. That's what I have against it."

"You ever try it?"

"At my age?" Cully said. "My idiot days're over."

"You're missing some great kicks."

"You mean to say you like it?"

"Why else would I do it?" Michael said.

"Showboating. Look, Ma, how brave I am." Cully looked sharply at him. "Those exhibitions you gave doing double somersaults and twists off cliffs. Almost every kid here could beat you in the downhill, but they wouldn't dare try half the things you did and if they did try they most likely wound up in plaster. Christ, I was the hottest thing in town and I wouldn't think of competing with you in damn-fool crap like that."

"I had a peculiar talent," Michael said mildly. "I worked out tumbling for years in gyms. It was fun . . ."

"Maybe," Cully admitted. "Maybe. But maybe you were trying to prove something to yourself that you didn't ever want to admit was bugging you. Is still bugging you. But somersaults on skis isn't hang-gliding. You might crack yourself up, but you don't drop from a thousand feet. Do you do it for money?"

"Come on, Dave," Michael said, "I'm not a professional stunt man." He thought for a moment. "I don't think it's showboating. I don't need an audience. For the rest, maybe you're right, Doctor." He'd had enough of Cully's analysis. His reasons were his own. He only wished he knew what they were. "Anyway, if the wind is right, I'll try it today. It looks as though there ought to be some pretty good hills for it around town."

Cully shook his head. "Remember me in your will."

Michael laughed.

"You really serious about saying you might want to work this year?" Cully asked abruptly, getting down to business. Michael realized that they both had been sparring with each other, feeling each other out. "Mrs. Heggener told me," Cully said, "you might and that if you did, she wanted you assigned to her. I said I'd arrange it if you were serious."

"I guess I am."

"Just don't get Mrs. Heggener hooked on hang-gliding. I'd be run out of town if she crashed."

"Don't worry," Michael said. "She told me she's a timid soul."

Cully merely grunted. "We're hungry for instructors this year," he said. "We're going to stretch the regulations to handle the crowds and we can use a few older guys who know they're being paid for teaching skiing, not for hot-dogging all day and smoking pot and screwing the girls during working hours. Some of the types we get these days, the young ones ..." Cully shook his head sadly.

"Well, at least I'm an older guy."