quotes, blackslashes and escaping

hello all,

This is probably a simple solution, so forgive me.  What I want to load some xml info into flash. I have a variable that holds a path to the xml document.

private var _xmlPath:String = "assets\xmlfiles\";

but it seems when I place the last backslash after xmlfiles Flash builder is telling me  I have no closing quotes. I assume this is do to the fact that I am probably escaping my quotes with the last backslash. 

How would I get the string "assets\xmlfiles\" into a variable without escaping the last quote?

Thanks a bunch.