civil virtue—and physical virtue!"

"But why did I create them?" Blake demanded. "And why are they following me around like a bunch of vindictive harpies?"

"There!" Smith said. "You almost had it. Not harpies, though—Furies. Erinyes. Tisiphone, Megaera, Alecto. You created them because you wanted to punish yourself. You created them because you can't accept yourself for what you are. You created them because even after putting me in exile you're still conscience-crazy, and they're following you around and bugging you because you want them to follow you around and bug you—because you want to be reminded of what a heel you think you are! You always were a Puritan in wolfs clothing, Blake."

The remark angered Blake to the extent that it dispelled his amazement. He shoved Smith away from the door and opened it. "All that may be," he said, "and maybe I did know you once upon a time. But don't let me find you here when I get back. Understand?" He paused in the doorway, frowning. "Tell me one more thing, though. Why Burns's birthplace? Why should a memory-image like this appeal to a mind-comber?"

Smith grinned. "Bobby Burns has always fascinated me—just as he has you. Or should I say 'us'?" The grin turned into a leer, and he picked up the bottle and waved it back and forth like a baton—

Furious, Blake strode down the path. Smith's taunting laughter sounding in his wake.

The three Erinyes were waiting for him at the gate, and fell in behind him when he turned down the lane. He lost Sabrina's trail in front of the farmhouse where Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, picked it up again opposite the Mitre Tavern. Presently it veered right, passed between Milton's birthplace and Stratford-on-Avon, and entered a night-image. He was halfway down a dim-lit street, the Erinyes just behind him, before he realized where he was.

Disciplined trees stood at attention along two suburban strips of lawn. Beyond them, half-remembered houses showed. One of them stood out vividly—a round, modernesque affair surrounded by a quarter-acre of grass and shrubs and flowers. It was the house he had rented while Deirdre Eldoria was attending high school. It was a house he had hoped never to see again.

He was seeing it now, though, and he was going to see it at much closer quarters, for Sabrina's footprints led straight across the remembered lawn to the very doorstep. She had not gone in, however, he discovered 

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