"The drums beat. I got five telephone calls the night you arrived. None from you." But she didn't sound resentful. "Older folk with long memories."

"I've been busy."

"No doubt," she said. It would have been false to say that at forty she was as good looking as she had been when she was twenty-seven, but the snub nose and the merry eyes, although there were lines around them and the sun had done some harsh work on her skin, were still appealing, and her figure, with all the skiing she did in winter and the tennis she played in summer, had remained elegantly youthful in the skintight slacks she had worn then and still wore.

He had been tempted once or twice to call her, but the overwhelming presence of Eva Heggener and the sad memory of Norma Cully had made him decide that the past was the past and that no good would come of digging around among its debris.

"A smart man I once knew told me," Annabel said, "when I was contemplating buying a house here that single women who hang around ski towns turn into withered old spinsters and objects of ridicule. I weighed the pros and cons and bought the house and am enjoying taking the consequences."

"They don't show as yet," Michael said. "The consequences, I mean."

"Dear, gallant Michael." She blew him a little kiss across the table. "When my late dear husband asked for a divorce, at a generous premium I must admit, he called me a loose woman. I don't know what he called himself. He'd screwed everything that moved- especially if it was under twenty-between Newport, Rhode Island, and Sea Island, Georgia. I examined the term for what it meant for myself. I decided that, for better or worse, I am incapable of love but more than capable of lust. You, I'd say, are capable of both. That you're happier for it is something I doubt. As for me-a transient sensualist is what I hit upon as a fitting description, and I'm devoted to youth, which is generally regarded in America as an admirable quality."

"Somebody told me you liked them young."

"I'm sure they did," Annabel said complacently. "And a ski resort is just right for that sort of thing. It's not a sport for the aged-"

"Like me." Michael couldn't help but say it.

"Like you," she said brightly. "And they have to go back to school or work, with an occasional lively weekend thrown in and then a new batch arrives because they stagger their holidays or they get suspended from Harvard for a week or two and all's well. On Sundays I wear my scarlet letter, tastefully set in diamonds by Tiffany." She frowned slightly, as though trying to remember something. "How old were you when we . . . ?"

"Twenty-one."

"Barely under the limit," she said.

"Annabel, you're incorrigible."

"And I hope to stay that way for some years yet," she said good-naturedly. "After that I'll devote myself to Eastern religions and good works and wallow in old lady's memories of the great hours I've spent in my lifetime."

"Do you ever get invited to parties here?"

"Only kiddies' parties. Thank God. Pot and generalized groping. The others bore me out of my mind. If you have an evening free, give me a ring-I'm in the book-and I'll cook you a dinner. Although," she said, with just the trace of a tiny smile playing around the comers of her lips, "I imagine you're being very well taken care of where you are." Then she looked at him consideringly, soberly. "You look nice and healthy and well groomed, but somehow I get the impression from your face that something bad has happened to you."

"Something bad is happening to everybody in the whole world at this very moment," he said, trying to keep her off the subject of Michael Storrs by launching into generalities.

"When I walked into the drugstore and you were standing in front of the stack of paperbacks, and you didn't see me, I had a queer feeling-I thought you looked desperate."

"Anybody trying to pick out a good book these days is liable to look desperate," he said, trying to put her off.

"No joke, old lover. I was shocked. When I knew you when you were a kid I thought, There's one man who's not going to suffer. First of all, you were one of the best looking things I'd ever seen . . ."

"Annabel, you make me blush for my decay."

"And there was something wild and joyous about you. All right, now I'll be fancy-unconquerable."

"You mean now I look conquered?"

"I'm afraid that's what I mean, Michael."

"Stick to the young, darling," Michael said roughly.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, sweet," she said. "But we're old friends and we used to say what we meant to each other."

"You've become the town bang since then. Your words," he said, cruelly, retaliating. "And I've become something maybe worse, only I don't have your gift of phrasing to describe it. Let's leave sleeping friendships lie."

"You can't insult me, Michael," she said, with dignity. "I liked you too much for that. If there's anything I can do to help you, I'm here."

"I don't need any help," he said, sounding, even in his own ears, like a stubborn child.

"Have it your own way." She stood up and kissed him lightly. "Thanks for the drink. I must be off."

The drums do beat, Michael thought, as he watched her walk off, her slacks tight and brave and revealing, her walk swaying and youthful. The town bang. What price reputation? What price selfknowledge? He wondered if she wept the nights she was alone. At any rate, she was happier than Norma Cully and a lot happier than he, himself.

He ordered another drink and sipped it slowly. The drink calmed him down and he thought, with pain, I behaved like a neurotic shit with a nice woman whom I've remembered fondly for a long time. He paid for his drink, looked up her address in the telephone book and went to the town florist and ordered a dozen roses and had them sent to her with a note saying, "Forgive me. I had a bad afternoon. Love."

It had become a routine, each evening, after dinner which Michael and Eva Heggener ate together in the dining room, for them to go for a walk, with the retriever trotting beside them. Although there was still no snow, there were a few guests, who had booked their rooms in advance and who by the hour kept looking hopefully up at the recalcitrant sky. Michael had avoided becoming friendly with any of them and if they speculated about the relationship between the hotel owner's wife and the ski teacher they kept their thoughts to themselves.

This night the sky was overcast and the moon could not be seen and Michael took along a pocket flashlight to light their way. Eva had been especially silent during dinner and Michael wondered if somehow she had heard that he had been seen drinking at the Monadnock that afternoon with Annabel Fenstock.

Finally, her head bent, her eyes on the little circle of light thrown by the flashlight as they walked up the road, potholed by other frosts, Eva said, "There will be some slight changes tomorrow. My husband is arriving."

"Oh," Michael said. He didn't know how Eva expected him to receive this news.

"We won't be able to move in just yet, but the house is about ready," she said. "I know he'll be pleased. It was his idea to have it redone. He said it was going to be his last house and he wanted it to be perfect." She spoke matter-of-factly, as though arranging for a perfect house in which a man was to die was the most normal of activities. She had not invited Michael to see the house and he was in no hurry to do so. By now he had seen enough of Eva's taste in all things, in the way she dressed herself and the way she had furnished and run the hotel, that he was sure that the house would serve Mr. Heggener's tastes, whatever they were, admirably. He had seen no photographs of the husband and knew no more about him than Eva had told him the first night and he had no mental picture of how the man looked or how he would behave. Probably bent over and coughing and rheumy-eyed and barely able to move.

"Perhaps," he said, uneasily, "I should find another place to live." "I've been thinking about that," Eva said. "And I want to show you something."

They were approaching a large stone gate, with two heavy iron gratings swung open onto a graveled driveway. "Let's go in here," she said. Just behind and to one side of the gate there was a small brick cottage. Eva took out a key and opened the door of the cottage and flipped on a light inside. "Come in, come in," she said. The heat had been turned on and a little wave of warmth came through the open door. "This is the gatekeeper's cottage, from a time when there still were gatekeepers."

The living room was quite large, with a curved Victorian sofa covered in worn beige silk and a big desk and old oil lamps now wired for electricity. There was a fireplace with the mounted head of a stag with spreading antlers over the mantelpiece. There was a door open through which he could see a small kitchen and another which led to a bedroom. There was even a telephone and a television set.

"How do you like it?" she asked.

"The gatekeeper was lucky."

"How would you like to live here?"

"Don't you have to consult with your husband first?"

"I don't consult with him about domestic affairs," Eva said. Put down, he thought, I am a domestic affair. "The big house is four hundred yards away," Eva went on, "and there are woods in between and you can make all the noise you want without disturbing us or our seeing who comes and goes in and out of here. You can make yourself useful, shoveling snow, keeping the driveway clear, bringing in wood for the fire, driving my husband when he's too tired or I'm too busy to drive, things like that. We have a maid, but she's seventy years old and she's barely strong enough to cook our meals. Naturally, we wouldn't expect you to pay rent."

"I could always sell my Porsche," Michael said, "and live in luxury at the hotel and I wouldn't have to bring in the wood." She was, he felt, talking to him as though she were hiring a servant.

"Once I move into the house," she said coldly, "it will not be possible for me to visit you in the hotel. I hope you understand that. Unless, of course, that is of no importance to you."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. "I'll show you later how little importance it has for me."

She pulled back, smiling, then opened her coat and pressed hard against him. "I would like a demonstration immediately," she said. "Let us inaugurate this dear little house here and now."

He followed her into the bedroom, where she had turned on a lamp next to the big, oversized bed with a patchwork quilt on it. He closed the door to keep the dog in the living room. There were some sights, he believed, that dogs should not be allowed to see.

Eva no longer insisted upon turning out the light. They had made love one rainy afternoon and the light coming in through the drawn curtains had been strong enough so that they could see each other and now she said it was more exciting when they could look at each other when they had their orgasms. She did not take her hair down and the contrast between the wild, ecstatic expression on her face and the primly curved bands of hair wound around her head gave a new dimension to his immersion in her body.

"As you see," he said, "no great importance."

She chuckled. "I didn't really need confirmation," she said, little beads of sweat, that tasted salty when he kissed her, all over her body. "I just didn't feel like waiting."

"I'm going to give you more confirmation," he said, glad finally to share the memory of the fears that now had proved groundless. "For about two years before I came up here I thought I was impotent."

"You?" She got up on one elbow and stared at him.

"Me."

"You owe me a great deal, Mr. Storrs."

"You don't know how much."

"Women are lucky," she said pensively. "They don't have to prove anything. Or do they?"

"They do," he said soberly.

"So they failed you."

"No. I failed myself."

"Do you know why?"

^V'Not really," he said reflectively. "General despondency. The life force at a low ebb and that sort of thing."

"And now the life force is . . . ?"

"Raging."

"May it continue."

"Have no fear." He put his hand on her breast and caressed it, feeling her nipple starting to stand up, hard. "Again?"

"Why not?" she said.

He wished he could say he loved her or get her to say that she loved him but he was certain neither thing would happen. It was possible that she had said it at other times, but he had said it to only one woman. Capable of love, Annabel, the town bang, had called him, but perhaps he had exhausted that particular capability. Well, then, if that were so, there was a great deal, he thought, running his hand over that generous, severely coiffed, blond, pastry-nourished Viennese body, a great deal to be said for lust.

When she had made the bed in neat, housewifely fashion, so that whatever it had been used for would not be evident, they turned out all the lights in the warm gatekeeper's cottage that they had doubly inaugurated, and closed and locked the door behind them. It was beginning to snow. The snow was wet and cold on their faces and was like a benediction on the evening and Eva said, her bare hand with his in the pocket of his big sheepskin coat, "Snow at last. There will be joy all over town in the morning and visions of thousands of cars discharging skiers this weekend and of mortgages being paid off by spring. We are like the peasants in India, waiting for the monsoon rains. No matter how many gadgets and snow-making machines we have, without our mountain monsoons we face starvation-or at least the banks, which amounts to the same thing. In the old days we would have blood sacrifices at the winter solstice."

Michael wasn't thinking of mortgages or winter solstices, as he strode beside her, with the dog beside them putting out his tongue to catch the snowflakes. "What are you going to tell your husband?"

"My husband?" she said. "Nothing. I guarantee he will like you. You are just the sort of man he is attracted to."

Later on, lying alone in his bed, Michael wasn't sure that he wanted to be the sort of man her husband would be attracted to.

He was having a nightmare. He was going down a steep, icy slope on skis, with mean little rocks showing in the bare spots and sparks flying up from his skis as the steel edges hit the rocks and threw him off balance. He was going faster and faster and below him there was a deep dark gully. The wind was screaming past his ears, and his speed became greater and greater as he neared the gully. He tried to stop, but he knew it was impossible on that ice. He screamed, but the wind took the sound out of his mouth. He knew he was going to crash and he knew it was going to be bad and he resigned himself to how bad it was going to be.

Then the telephone rang and he awoke, sweating. He didn't know how long the telephone had been ringing. His hand shook as he reached out for the telephone.

It was Dave Cully. He sounded happy. "Mike," he said, "it's really coming down. There should be over a foot of new powder by morning. I'm opening the lifts at nine. How about making the first run of the season with me?"

"Great," Michael said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I'll be there. What time is it now?"

"Quarter to eleven," Cully said. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Michael said, his voice stronger. "I was doing some research on monsoons."

"What?" Cully asked, puzzled.

"Indian storms," Michael said. "No matter."

"See you at nine," Cully said and hung up.

Another husband who finds me attractive, Michael thought, grateful for the ringing of the telephone that had awakened him. For other reasons, no doubt.

He looked at his watch to see if Cully had had the time right.

Twelve minutes before eleven. It had been a full day. He got out of bed and went to the window and looked out. The snow was coming down heavily, beautifully, evenly glittering in the light of the driveway lampposts in the windless night. Then he saw Eva Heggener walking in the snow in high after-ski boots that came up to the bottom of her thick fur coat, the dog gamboling and rolling deliciously in the new snow. After what happened in the cottage, he thought resentfully, where does she get the energy?

He left the drapes pulled open so he could watch the snow falling and got into bed and tried to sleep again, but the phone rang again. It was Susan Hartley, calling from New York.

"Hey," Susan said. "It's falling like Siberia in New York. How is it up there?"

"There'll be at least a foot of powder in the morning."

"Will the lifts be open?"

"Nine a.m."

"Oh, bliss. I'll take a week off and then there's the Thanksgiving weekend, that'll give me ten days. Antoine's with me now, can you find a room for him, too?"

"How is he?"

"Suicidal."

"Don't tell me," Michael said. "I'm having a good time."

"He says skiing will take his mind off disaster. How's the hotel you're staying in?"

"Bliss," he said, imitating her.

"Get me a room adjoining yours," she said playfully.

"This is Vermont," Michael said sternly. "They frown on such things here. And stop teasing Antoine. And tell him I will make sure that you will get a room in the attic, three floors up from mine and on the other side of the building."