Jex called her name again, but if he had any other words to offer, they were cut off by the door closing. Kit was running out of the room, running down the hallway, running down the deserted marble stairs because she could not bear the wait at the elevator door. She was sobbing so hard she could not draw breath. At one point, she had to come to a dead halt on the stairwell—bent half double like a woman pummeled in the stomach—and try to force the air in her lungs. She could not take a deep breath, and the short shallow sips of air would not give her enough to live on. She didn’t want to live. She wanted to curl up right here and die.

More slowly, she continued her descent, clinging to the bannister for both support and guidance, since her eyes were blinded by tears. What would she do, where could she go, what possible small fragment of her life had any meaning if she could not love Jex and be loved by him in turn? She had not felt so abandoned or adrift since the day her father died. That was the day she had known, in her blood cells and her bones, that the world was an empty place echoing with ghostly winds. But nothing could have prepared her for the shock and devastation she felt now.

She stumbled down the stairwell and stood for a moment in the great, empty hallway, unable to think or move. She had told Patrin to come back for her in an hour, and of course she had been with Jex only ten or fifteen minutes. She must be here when he returned—and anyway, she did not think she could, in her present state, negotiate the streets or the trolleys or the Centrifuge. She must find someplace to sit, to collect her thoughts, to regain her strength.

There was nowhere. She didn’t care. She staggered toward the nearest wall, laid her back against it, and slowly sank to the floor. Drawing her knees toward her chin, she put her face down and let herself sob.

How could he have done such things, how could he have said them? She had been shocked first at his cavalier announcement that he had chosen to visit with his friends instead of her—something incomprehensible to her. Had she been the one in prison, she would have schemed and lived for another minute with Jex, to the exclusion of any other human being, she would have counted the minutes, crammed the hours with activity just to make them fly past. How could he wish to see anyone else? Where did she fall on his list of imperatives and desires?