It was impossible to avoid remembering, impossible to keep the tormenting events of the past two weeks from screeching, roaring, clattering back into his mind like an onrushing subway train, its red lights ablaze. A jostling on the platform, a violent shove and he was lying directly in the path of the train, glued to the rails by blind terror. Only--the rush of returning memories was worse than that, much worse. If it had been merely physical, if it had been merely something that could crush and destroy him he might have welcomed it. But there was no escape from a horror of the mind, unless drink or drugs could be used as an anodyne and something deep in his nature prevented him from taking that dangerous road to forgetfulness. Sleep was out of the question. When he threw himself down and shut his eyes the torment had become worse, the memory pictures more unendurable. Unendurable, torturing now--like salt on raw wounds--but there had been moments when some of them had seemed very precious, worth dying for, worth ... say it, bring it out into the open ... worth killing for. But wasn't that an insane way of looking at it? The scales never came down completely, or balanced completely on one side or the other. There had to be some joy in the most agonizing of memories. Otherwise a man would never go on, would never wade deeper into a dark morass of guilt and self-torment. Knowing himself to be betrayed, but still going on, putting himself beyond the pale. There had to be a glittering prize shining in the darkness, beckoning, offering moments of respite--offering far more than that. Wild joy, forbidden pleasures, the mind-beguiling beauty of Medusa before her snake-wreathed face turned her victims to stone. It was a nightmare now, engulfing him, making him want to die. But it hadn't been that way at the start. It had started glowingly, a new way of life opening up, a bright prospect of fulfillment stretching out before him with nothing at all to mar it. There was nothing depressing or unwelcome about the acclaim of the really important critics, the substantial literary recognition he'd only pretended to despise in moments of immature cynicism. And it was not tormenting even now to go back and dwell on all the financial rewards which were showered on brilliant young novelists who were both serious and widely popular writers--rewards which had been almost within his grasp. Success had not been a prospect reserved for the future alone--a prospect veiled in uncertainty that might not materialize for months or years, or turn out, in the end, to have been completely illusionary. Success had swept so close that it had taken on an aspect of immediacy. He had felt its invisible pulse-beats all about him, had glimpsed the bright fluttering of its wings. And with it had come an undreamed of happiness, something he'd hardly dared to hope for.