Susan looked around the room. "What a nice room. Fireplace and all." She stretched luxuriously. "What a shining morning. I feel like a new woman already. Can you see it?"

"The white flower of the hillside."

"Approve?"

"Unreservedly."

"The beautiful lady didn't. Approve I mean." She made a little grimace.

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"I sensed an aura of . . . ownership." Susan looked obliquely at him, half-smiling.

"Her husband owns the hotel," Michael said stiffly.

"I know that. That isn't what I sensed. I sensed romance."

"You'd sense romance in an ad for surgical trusses. The lady is not romantic. I'm her hired help. I'm her ski guide."

"There is guidance and guidance." Susan laughed good-naturedly. "I'm waiting for something."

"We're having lunch in a little while."

"That's not what I'm waiting for." She approached him, playing at being extravagantly coquettish and batting her eyelashes. She had her sports, Susan, skiing outdoors and flirting within.

"I kissed you at the door," Michael said.

"Like a brother," Susan said, close to him. "Not good enough. I came miles and miles through the night, through sleet and snow . . ." She held out her arms.

He embraced her, kissed her lightly on the mouth, uneasily conscious that he was naked under the robe, broke away. "That good enough?"

"Fair," Susan said. "Anyway, better. Are you going to invite me to sit down?"

"By all means make yourself at home."

She flopped into a chair. "My legs are spaghetti. It's terrible how you age from the end of one ski season to the beginning of the next." "Susan," Michael said, standing over her, "I have to talk to you. Seriously."

Susan sighed with mock despair. "I prefer it when men talk to me frivolously."

Michael ignored this. "It was my understanding that you and Antoine are just friends."

"That's everybody's understanding. What else is new?"

"He just told me he was demented about you."

"Demented. He's just trying out his English vocabulary."

"He wasn't trying out anything," Michael said. "He was sending me a message."

Susan shrugged. "Let him put it in a bottle and send it out to sea. I'm not demented about him."

"When I decoded the message," Michael said, "do you know what I heard?"

"I'm not particularly interested." Susan yawned.

"I heard, 'I love her,' " Michael persisted. " 'Please don't do anything that will prevent her from loving me.' "

"I got a message today, too," Susan said. "Just now. In this very room. The message was from the mistress of the house: 'Mr. Michael Storrs is bespoke. Hands off.' "

"Nonsense," Michael said.

"I never heard a man say 'Nonsense' less convincingly. Haven't you realized yet you're catnip to the ladies?" Susan said lightly. "Or have you become so blase about your beauty and charm that you don't even notice when the net's out for you?"

"I won't argue with you. You'd better go. I've got to dress for lunch."

She sank deeper into her chair and lit a cigarette. "Don't worry about me. I've seen men dress before."

"I'm sure you have, but..."

There was a loud knock on the door.

"You have quite a busy social life in the morning, don't you?" Susan said, grinning up at him. "Are you sure you don't need a secretary?"

Michael went to open the door, pulling the robe tightly around him. Antoine was standing there, holding a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Michael noted the champagne with displeasure. When he had said that he was going to finance Antoine until Christmas he hadn't thought it was going to include champagne in the mornings.

Antoine stepped gaily into the room, then stopped abruptly when he saw Susan. "Oh," he said, "back so soon? I thought we'd have a little reunion celebration, Mike. I see I'm missing a glass." He started back toward the door. "I'll go get another one . . ."

"No need," Michael said. "There's a glass in the bathroom."

He heard Antoine say accusingly, "Susan, you said you wouldn't be back until dark. What're you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Susan said airily. "I was learning how to make parallel turns."

"Yeah," Antoine said, wretchedly. He was trying to open the bottle of champagne without success when Michael came out of the bathroom carrying a tumbler. "Here," he said, taking the bottle out of Antoine's hands. "Let me have that." He opened the bottle easily, the cork popping and the foam fizzing over.

"His strength is as the strength of ten," Susan said mockingly, standing, "because his heart is pure."

Michael poured for the three of them and lifted his glass. "To deep snow and sunny days," he said. Then he looked squarely at Susan. "And to messages," he added.

Susan looked demurely at him and held the glass with two hands to her lips, like a small girl innocently drinking her morning milk.

After lunch, Michael took Antoine down to town to outfit him, while Susan went upstairs to take what she called her beauty nap.

"Well, now," Michael said as Antoine came down the stairs from his room, dressed in his new outfit, with the high plastic boots clumping, "at least you look like a skier." He took Antoine up a small footpath that ran to a knoll behind the hotel. From the top of the knoll there was a gentle slope, well covered with snow, that could not be seen from the hotel and that ended in a copse of trees about seventy-five yards away. They put on their skis and Michael said, "Okay, start down."

Antoine started down shakily. Michael could see that he hadn't been lying-he had been on skis before. But not often. He was completely stiff, as though he had just been taken out of a deep-freeze compartment, his skis were far apart and wobbling, his arms were immobile, like those of a statue. After ten yards he fell. Michael skied down to him and looked pityingly at him, sprawled in the snow.

"Good God, man. Can't you even stand?"

"These things slide" Antoine said pathetically.

"I'm afraid that's the whole idea." He helped Antoine up. Antoine was sweating already.

"Now watch me," Michael said and skied slowly, making two turns, calling back, "Loose, loose, skis together," then said, "Oh, Christ," as Antoine fell again.

"Remember," Antoine said, struggling once more to his feet, "this is only my first day."

"In how many years?" Michael said. "Forty?"

"I had a sergeant in the French Army," Antoine complained, "who was like a mother to me, compared to you." With a look of concentrated determination on his face he started downwards again. He teetered, his arms made wild circles in the air, one ski got out of control and he nearly split in half and he wound up in the snow again in a kneeling position, just as a little boy, aged perhaps nine, skiing without poles, sped down from the knoll and stopped and looked at Antoine, kneeling as if in church. The little boy grinned widely.

"Get out of here, you," Michael yelled at him. The boy, grinning even more widely, sped off and into the woods.

"Hopeless," Michael said, not bothering to help Antoine up this time.

"If I'd had a gun I'd've shot that little bastard."

"Hopeless," Michael repeated.

"Remember," Antoine said, "I have two weeks."

"You won't make it in two years."

"You're undermining my confidence," Antoine said aggrievedly.

"It's the least I can do for you." Michael scratched his head thoughtfully.

"Listen, Mike . . ." Antoine began.

"Keep quiet," Michael said. "I'm thinking. I'm trying to see if there's anything I can do for you aside from shipping you back to France. If Cully doesn't wait two weeks to see how you ski and looks you over tomorrow, as he's very likely to do, it's farewell in ten seconds."

"Don't sound so pessimistic, Mike."

"I said, be quiet, I'm thinking." Michael made a little circle in the snow with the tip of his pole. "I've never done anything like this before, Antoine," he said, "but I am now going to plan to aid and abet a felony or at least a misdemeanor. I'll tell you what you're going to do. Now, listen carefully. Tonight, we're going to go to the most crowded bar in town. Ski teachers, the hotshot kids of the town. I'm going to introduce you as the French bullet. . ."

"There is no need to exaggerate," Antoine said uneasily.

"Shut up. The bar is on the ground floor, but there's a kind of balcony on one side and there's a flight of stairs going up to it and the men's room is off it. At a certain point, when I give the signal, you're going to go up the steps. Then, after the men's room, when you start coming down, you're going to slip . . ."

"Mike, don't let your imagination run away with you, I beg you," Antoine said plaintively.

"Do you want to get a job or don't you?"

"I am in your hands," Antoine said, surrendering. "I am going to slip."

"You fall all the way down the flight of stairs."

"If I hurt my hands I will never earn a living for the rest of my life."

"Keep your hands out of the way. When you reach the bottom, you're going to moan heartrendingly with pain. You're going to grab your ankle. You're going to gasp that you think you've broken your leg. I'm going to say that I'll take you to a doctor. Only we don't go to a doctor. .

"You are enjoying this scenario," Antoine said reproachfully. "You are devoid of human feeling."

Implacably, Michael went on. "I'll take you to the hotel, where I'll have bandages ready and I'll tape your ankle. I'll put so much tape on it it'll look like a balloon. Susan will have to play along with us. Tell her you'll strangle her if she laughs. Every night, for two weeks, I'll take you out and give you lessons. If necessary, finally, I'll let Cully in on it. In two weeks you should look as though you can at least teach children, although you'll have to be prepared to unzip their pants when they have to pee and zip them up again when they're finished."

"I don't like the way you're smiling, Michael," Antoine said.

"Cully's a friend and maybe he has a sense of humor," Michael said, "and he needs instructors. If you perfect your act, he'll probably go along with you. If you don't pass inspection after the two weeks, unless you get a job playing the piano, you let it be known that you have a job waiting for you in New York and you get out of town? Compris?"

"You're a bastard, Mike, you know that?"

"On the contrary, I'm your friend. I'm trying to keep you from being arrested for taking money under false pretenses. Now, climb up this insignificant little pimple of a slope and try to come down in one piece."

"I'm exhausted."

"Wait till you see how you feel after an hour more," Michael said grimly. "Remember, this was your idea."

Antoine groaned and started laboriously climbing the little hill.

The Chimney Corner was the name of the bar. It was an easygoing place where everybody talked to everybody else. Michael had liked hanging around there when he had spent the winter in the town during his post-college holiday. The wood beams of the ceiling and the paneling on the walls were darker from the smoke of the intervening years and the photographs of famous skiers of the past hanging above the great fireplace now looked like mementos of a much earlier America. The people at the bar and lounging around at the tables all looked terribly young to Michael and he guessed that he was older by at least a decade than anybody else in the room. There was a jukebox in a comer which was blessedly silent and a battered upright paino to one side of the fireplace. As Michael and Antoine and Susan sat down at a table, Antoine stared apprehensively at the flight of stairs leading up to the balcony.

Jimmy Davis, the owner of the bar, with whom Michael had drunk on many a long winter evening, came over and Michael made the introductions. "How's your skiing?" Michael asked. They had often skied together. Davis was fat but very nimble and even under the worst conditions of snow and weather was unfailingly cheerful.

"My skiing?" Davis said. "It's just about nonexistent. My wife talked me into opening for lunch and even though I wonder why anybody pays to eat the food I serve, I'm working on my first million. So it keeps me tied down here. But I'll sneak away an afternoon or two if you can't find anybody else crazy enough to follow you. What'll it be, ladies and gentlemen, the first round is on the house."

They ordered whiskeys and Davis himself brought them over. "That piano in tune?" Michael asked.

"I wouldn't know," Davis said. "Nobody's played on it yet this year. Why? You want to give us a concert?"

"My friend, Antoine here, might play us a tune. He's a famous pianist from France."

"Be my guest," Davis said to Antoine. "A famous French pianist might just be what we need to tone up the joint."

The room was filling now and Michael said, "Jimmy-have you instituted a new rule here-nobody over the age of twenty allowed in after ten o'clock?"

Davis chuckled, but a little sadly. "It's true, they get younger and younger. Or at least that's what it looks like to old cocks like us. Somehow, they fight more than they used to. I have to keep a sawed-off baseball bat under the bar to preserve decorum." He moved off to go behind the bar and help the boy there serving drinks.

"Those steps look awfully steep, Mike," Antoine said.

"They'll look less steep after you've had a couple of drinks. Be confident."

"I don't even like the taste of whiskey," Antoine complained.

"Go play something," Michael said. "It'll settle your nerves." He waved to Annabel Fenstock, who was coming through the door with a boy who looked as though he couldn't have been more than eight-teen years old.

Rita and a boy who, Michael guessed rightly, was her older brother came into the room and Michael gestured to them to come over. Rita introduced her brother, Eliot, and rather shyly greeted Susan and Antoine, whom she had served with Michael at dinner.

"Sit down, sit down," Michael said and moved his chair a little, so that Rita and her brother could squeeze in. "You've come just in time. The famous French pianist is going to give his first performance above sea level."