Winter was not prepared for the sheer reality of her: the face he’d seen on video, the body he had fantasized about, the presence that had been described to him, the almost legendary force of her personality—all suddenly manifest in the flesh. She had not been expecting him—not him—and for a moment she stiffened in fear and surprise. But almost at once, the full truth occurred to her. She relaxed, and he saw what everyone of goodwill saw in her: the inner stillness so complete it amounted to a kind of majesty. “You must be Winter,” she said calmly. “They told me you might come.” In an
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