Karen stood unmoving, feeling as if she were under attack by a whole horde of wasps; one sting followed the other so rapidly that numbness finally overcame pain and she felt nothing at all.

She turned blindly toward the door and Julie said gaily, "I hope you aren't brooding about the nasty things I said today. You know how I am, I just get mad and let everything hang out. My shrink says it's the only way to cope with stress. I didn't mean anything by it. You do forgive me, don't you?"

A deprecating smile curved her lips and her eyes were wide and candid. She really meant what she said, or at least she thought she did, which came to the same thing. Do forgive me for cutting you into little aching pieces, it's just my cute, harmless habit. No reasonable person would hold it against me.

Karen murmured something noncommittal. It satisfied Julie; with a practiced smile she put up her umbrella and darted into the pedestrian traffic.

Karen stood staring after her for a moment. Then she shook her head and turned toward home.

What a day. What a horrible, tiring, unbelievable day! Only a few more miserable blocks, a few more terrible minutes, and she could collapse. A glass of wine, a chocolate bar, and thou, oh, muscular hero of television-not singing in the wilderness, but wrecking cars, making love to lissome ladies, fighting villains, and always winning. Just what she needed. Someone who always won.

Head bowed against the rain, hands in her pockets, she trudged northward, wondering whether to stop at a carry-out restaurant for something to eat or forage in Ruth's freezer. To hell with the diet she had started. Tonight she needed all the comfort she could get, and a Hershey bar was cheaper than a psychiatrist.

At least she wouldn't have to worry about seeing Mark again. He must be as anxious to avoid her as she was him. It must have come as a nasty shock to him to learn that she was back in Georgetown, a lone, lorn divorcee-to-be. He would assume she would try to renew their old acquaintance. Karen was not the first of her circle to face divorce. She had seen it happen before, and she knew the signs of desperate pursuit-the forced, bright smile, the too-youthful wardrobe, the telephone calls to married friends. "I do hate to ask, darling, but if Jim (or Joe or Bob) has a few minutes, could he come over and fix my stopped-up sink (or check my snow tires or change the lightbulb)…"

Too bad Mark couldn't know he was safe from that sort of thing. Just as she was safe from him. He would stay as far away from the shop as he could. He wouldn't seek her out there.

She was right. He didn't go to the shop. He was waiting for her on the corner of P Street and Wisconsin.

Concentrating on keeping her footing on the wet sidewalk, she was not aware of his presence until she heard his voice. "Welcome back, Karen. You might know it would be raining."

Karen didn't even stumble. One part of her mind wondered why she was not surprised. Another part moaned, oh, well, what's one more disaster on a day like this? Aloud and quite coolly, she said, "Hello, Mark. I'm sorry I missed you earlier."

"Like hell. Where were you, hiding behind a garbage can in the alley?"

"What makes you think-"

"I was right, wasn't I?" It was a crow of triumph. "That's always been your technique-hiding. And usually behind something rotten. Like Jack Nevitt."

"I would appreciate it if you wouldn't say things like that."

"Don't tell me you're still defending him. Weren't ten years of serfdom long enough?"

Anger is nonproductive, Karen told herself. Anger accomplished nothing. "What did you do with your friend?" she asked.

"Put her in a cab and sent her home. Don't worry about anyone overhearing; this is just between us."

It was raining harder. Water dripped off the brim of Mark's hat. (Mark wearing a hat? In the old days he went bareheaded in all weather, his hair darkened to carnelian by wet or frosted whitely with snowflakes.)

"There's no point in this, Mark," she said wearily. "I don't intend to invite you to come in-"

"I haven't time anyway. Dinner engagement."

"Oh. Then why-"

"Did I stand in the rain waiting for you?" Mark pondered the question with the same gravity he had once bestowed on serious issues of foreign policy. He had majored in foreign affairs; had been one of Jack's students.

After a moment he said, "I yielded to an impulse. I don't often do that anymore, but… Julie had said you were in the office. I knew you must have seen or heard me and bolted out into the alley in order to avoid me. It made me angry."

They had reached the house. Karen stopped by the low wrought-iron gate. Mark reached a long arm over it and unlatched it, with the careless ease of someone who had performed the same action many times. But he did not open it for her. He wasn't finished.

It was on this exact spot that their final confrontation had taken place. It had been raining that day too- a soft spring rain. The sidewalk was sprinkled with catkins from the budding maples and the young leaves shone as if freshly painted. In the gentleness of April Mark's hoarse, angry voice had echoed like an obscenity. She would never forget the things he had said. She had slapped him-the first and last time, the only time she had ever struck anyone.

He was remembering too. A faint ghost of old anger tightened his lips and narrowed his eyes.

"I thought you had come to gloat," Karen said.

"Maybe I did. I hope not. It would have been a lousy thing to do. You don't need to have your nose rubbed in it, do you?"

She had been sure, only a few minutes earlier, that her spirits had sunk as low as they possibly could. She had been mistaken. Mark's eyes moved deliberately from her limp, straggling hair down to the hem of her shapeless old raincoat. Warm brown eyes, almost the same shade as his hair; but they weren't warm and smiling now, they were as cold as the amber whose color they shared.

He had a right to be angry, a right to gloat. Every prediction he had made that spring day had come true. "He likes them young and pretty and intelligent. He likes to pick their brains and cut them down to size-his size.

You have a lot going for you, Karen, you can be somebody. Don't let him use you. He only wants you because you're my lady, he's hated my guts ever since I raised a stink about that paper of mine he tried to steal, he's getting back at me through you-"

That was when she had slapped him. That was the one thing she couldn't accept-the humiliating suggestion that revenge and spite, not love, had prompted Jack's proposal. She still could not accept it. But Mark had been right about everything else, including Jack's ability to destroy her identity and her ambition.

All at once, like a thin demonic voice inside her head, she seemed to hear Mrs. Mac's screech. "And what is he doing? Seems to me he's no better than your husband. Don't stand there and take it!"

She raised her drooping head and blinked the raindrops from her lashes. "No, I don't need to have my nose rubbed in it! I don't need any more-any more crap from anybody, Mark Brinckley, especially from you. You've had your fun and I hope you enjoyed it, because you aren't going to get another chance. Good-by."

She reached for the gate, but he held it firm, moving slightly to block her way. "Fun?" he repeated, his lips twisting in a wry curve that certainly held no suggestion of amusement. "If you think I've enjoyed this… Maybe it's impossible for either of us to forget the past-even the past five minutes-but can't we at least be civil to one another? I'm very fond of your aunt and uncle, and I'd like to go on being friends with them. Ruth canceled an invitation a while back because she thought you wouldn't want to see me."

So he had renewed his old friendship with Ruth and Pat. Ruth hadn't mentioned him. Neither had Pat, whose tactlessness was proverbial.