aula somehow managed to keep a grip on herself until she reached the Fifth Avenue apartment.

After letting herself in quietly, she tiptoed upstairs, not wishing Ann, the housekeeper, to see her in this terrible condition and nervous state.

She slipped into her bedroom, locked the heavy carved-wood door, and leaned against it, finally beginning to breathe a little easier. Her body was taut, rigid still with the fear that had swamped her when Ross Nelson had so unexpectedly launched his physical attack on her.

Eventually she found the strength to move forward on her trembling legs, and her hands shook as she unzipped her ruined

dress and pulled it up over her head and discarded it. Once she had removed her underwear and her ripped stockings, she stumbled blindly into the bathroom.

Paula stood in the shower stall for ten minutes, soaping herself over and over again, letting the hot steaming water sluice

down over her body. She felt battered and unclean, had the urgent need to erase the smell of him, the touch of him.

When at last she stepped out and looked at herself in the mirrored side wall, she saw that her body was bright pink, red in parts as if she had scalded herself or damaged the skin. But at least she felt cleansed of Ross Nelson. Pulling on a toweling robe without bothering to dry herself, she went over to the washbasin and peered at her face in the mirror. Her cheekbone was bruised where she had struck it against the cabinet. It would be black and blue tomorrow.

She continued to stare at herself.

Her blue eyes were dark, almost black, and they held the look of a wild hunted deer, were wide with fright and shock. She squeezed them tightly shut, wanting to forget what had happened to'her only a short while ago. But she could not, and she lifted her lids. His lustful face' danced before her eyes, was reflected in the mirror as if he was standing behind her in the bathroom. Paula shuddered and gripped the edge of the sink as she remembered how his hands had wandered so roughly over her body, how his horrible wet mouth had slobbered against hers, how his weight had trapped her under him. She had felt as though she was being suffocated.

Anger blazed through her. Ross Nelson had virtually tried to rape her. That he had been dreadfully drunk was no excuse. There was no excuse for that unconscionable behavior. He was a disgusting specimen of a man. The worst. He was not a man. He was an animal. The shuddering intensified. How violated, how damaged she felt.

Nausea rose up in Paula. She began to vomit in the washbasin, retching until she had nothing left inside. The dry heaving continued for a while and then eventually subsided. Lifting her head, she wiped her streaming eyes and her sweating face with the damp washcloth, then leaned her head against the cool tiles of the wall. Her head throbbed, her eyes ached, and her muscles were sore from struggling with him, fighting him off.

Blocking out the image of him, she closed her eyes, gulping air, calming herself as best she could, and when she was steadier on her legs, she moved away from the washbasin and blundered back into the bedroom. She lay down on the bed.

It was only then that Paula Fairley fell apart.

Quite suddenly she was gripped by an internal shaking, and then her whole body began to shake as if she had palsy. She pulled the eiderdown up over her. Her teeth began to chatter and she shivered as icy chills swept through her. Clutching at the pillow, she buried her face in it, and she began to sob as if her heart was breaking.

Paula cried without restraint for the next hour.

And all of the pain and sorrow she had suppressed since the tragic deaths of her father, Jim, and Maggie broke free at last.

Her terrible grief overwhelmed her, but she let it wash over her, envelope her completely, gave herself up to it, recognizing finally that it had been wrong and foolish of her to bottle it up inside. But she had not known what else to do. She had had to be strong, so very strong for her mother and Alexander and her children. And so she had deliberately buried the grief. It had lain there dormant, yet it had gradually gnawed away at her, eating her alive, rendering her helpless in so many aspects of her life.

As Paula Fairley wept the bitter tears she should have wept nine months ago but had not, she began to experience a measure of ease, a genuine relief from the searing heartache and anguish that had engulfed her since the avalanche.

When she had no more tears left inside her, she lay quietly on the bed, her body limp and exhausted, her eyes red and swollen, wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

Slowly, but with her usual intelligence and analytical powers, she began to sort out her muddled thoughts, sift through the

painful memories, examine her emotional and physical frigidity with a new and stunning objectivity. It was as if the shock of Ross Nelson's violent assault on her had cleared her brain, startled her out of her state of frozen containment. She started to see herself with new objectivity, and she knew with sudden sureness that the burdensome weight of her enormous guilt had crushed all feeling in her, all emotional response to others except her children. She had no reason to be guilty. She was not to blame for anything. Not one single thing.

Shane was correct in everything he had said.

How cruel she had been to him, inflicting pain on him because her own pain had blinded her to'the truth, to reality. Shane. She saw his face in her imagination, transferred it in her imagination to the ceiling. If only he were really here now. She longed to have the comfort and security of his strong arms around her, keeping her safe.

Tears rushed into Paula's eyes. She had sent him away, had been so willful in her determination to tread her solitary lonely road, believing it to be the only road for her. She wondered if he would ever be able to forgive her.

Ross Nelson's hideous, grinning, drunken face nudged Shane's to one side, obliterated him. Paula shuddered violently and sat up in bed. Fury ripped through her, momentarily stunning her. He had tried to rape her. Never in her entire life had anything quite so disgusting happened to her. But then she had never been exposed to the harsher side of life. She had always been so protected. By Grandy. By her parents. By her large family. And by all that power and wealth. She did not know the streets, the hard world where other women had to live and fight and hold on to their sanity somehow, despite the burdens they had to carry, the punishment certain kinds of men made them endure.

Certainly she had never been exposed to men—not men like Ross Nelson, who were exploitive, pursued their own ends relentlessly. There had only ever been Jim. He had been her first lover, and then she had married him. If he had been selfish and self-involved, and he undoubtedly had, if he had been swept along by his own needs, most certainly he had never been violent with her. He had never really forced himself-on her, not once in all the time they had been married.

And then there had been Shane... theirs had been the grandest of passions, but physical desire had blended in with their deep abiding love, that love which he had said had grown out of their childhood affection and friendship. With Shane there had been a true bonding and on every level.

The brutalizing experience she had suffered at the hands of Ross Nelson had been terrifying. It was the worst kind of violation a man could inflict on a woman—an invasion not only of the body but of the mind and the heart and the soul as well. It had been cruel, painful, and humiliating. She realized how lucky she had been to escape before he had committed that final act, and a small series of shivers rippled over her, and her anger surfaced yet again.

And yet his violence with her had shocked her into reality, brought her back to life, released the dam of her grief, destroyed the shell she had so carefully and deliberately built around her. But the carapace had cracked open, and she was permitting herself to crawl out of it, to come back into the real world, to live again. Yes, she wanted to start afresh, to move forward, to put the past behind her, to look ahead to the future. Don't look back, forge ahead, Emma had always said to her. And that was what she must now do.

It was dawn when Paula finally fell asleep.

She slept deeply, as if she had been drugged. Not once during the night did she awaken and sit up in sudden fear, crying out in terror as she felt herself being buried alive under tons of cold snow that brought with it icy death.

The nightmare that had haunted her nights for so long had been exorcised, along with so many ghosts, so many troubled memories.

When she arose the following morning, after only a few hours of rest, she discovered she felt lighter, freer. It seemed as if a great weight had been lifted, and she recognized then that the guilt she had carried had started to dissolve. That too would disappear entirely... one day in the future.

A new strength came into Paula as.she dressed to go to the store on Fifth Avenue. And with that strength came a steadiness, a calmness, and a sure and thrusting knowledge that reached deep into her heart. She knew where she must go, what she must do, and as she stood in front of the mirror she nodded to herself. Her way was clear. She was about to set out on a new road.