“She’s more here now,” Bianka muttered to herself. She stood watching as Josef swung Tweety over his shoulders, and singing a ballad, carried her into the other room.

“It will be just fine, dear Lydia,” Seven whispered.

“Whee,” cried Tweety.

Oversoul Seven felt like crying. He felt like laughing.

“Good-bye for a while, dear Lydia. And hello, dear Tweety,” he said. But Seven suddenly felt himself being drawn away; something was happening, some important psychological readjustment …

Before he could wonder about it, Seven found himself back with Cyprus. Jeffery and Ram-Ram still sat talking and sipping drinks.

“No time has passed here,” Cyprus said. “But Lydia’s forgetting is letting Jeffery—”

“Remember,” Oversoul Seven finished. “Of course.”

“What is it?” Ram-Ram asked, leaping to his feet. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Maybe a figurative one,” Jeffery said mysteriously. “No, I’m all right. I just remembered something, though. Now it seems impossible that I’d ever forgotten it.” Then, irritably, “And stop looking at me with that fake kind-old-psychologist smile, will you?”

“Yes, yes. All right,” Ram-Ram said, unoffended.

“You may or may not know that my middle initial is W for William,” Jeffery said. He stood up, almost groggily. It was hard for him to talk. “Well, just now, just this minute, mind you, I remembered that I used to identify myself as Will for, I don’t know, several years. I even signed my name as William, not Jeffery. This was at a time when I was feeling quite despondent, really. Yet for years, all that slipped from my mind. Only earlier today I remembered an … what shall I call it? … almost-suicide attempt. One day I played around with the idea anyway, standing dangerously close to a cliff edge. And I never was sure what happened … a lapse of memory … but I didn’t jump. And I just this moment remembered, after that day I never thought of myself as Will again. And until now, I’d completely forgotten that I ever had.”

“You’d better sit down,” Ram-Ram said anxiously.

But Jeffery paced the floor excitedly, calling over his shoulder, “But that was a kind of psychic suicide, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose it could be called that,” Ram-Ram said cautiously.

“You know damn well it could,” Jeffery said. He was so agitated that Ram-Ram patted him on the shoulder, but Jeffery pulled away.

“I don’t need any sympathy now,” he said. “Suddenly, as I remembered the name thing, I had the oddest feeling. I feel more here, more me, as if I’ve resurrected portions of myself.”

“Suddenly you make me feel quite envious,” Ram-Ram said. “I could have written your book when I was your age, or my version of it. But I didn’t, of course.”

“I didn’t say I had a book,” Jeffery exclaimed.