A trembling shock coursed through her. “She’s not here.”

Not in the hallway, not in the music room. Oh, don’t let it be, not in the furnace.

Don’t hurt me this much, John, please!

“I know that. I just wanted you to be on the alert.” He paused. There were a series of stifled grunts, the sobs of a man who doesn’t know how to cry. “On the alert,” he said again.“I’ll call you with any news.”The line clicked, the cutting of the wire of life. The phone slipped from Miriam’s hand, banged on the oak floor. She closed her eyes. Snarling pain gripped her temples. Ice-cold air seemed to enclose her. She craned her neck like a woman seeking to rise from the bottom of the sea.

She ran her hands along the fabric of her suit, bowed her head. When her clock tolled one, she looked, startled, at its ancient face.

Impulses raced through her mind: kill John, kill herself. She rejected them both as beneath her. He was helpless in his actions, driven by forces beyond his control. And she had no intention of voluntarily giving up life.

Bit by bit she regained her composure. There came into her heart a new feeling toward John. His suffering mattered less to her, his potential for destruction more.

How dare he take Alice. She belonged to Miriam, not to him. Rage blazed up in her. It was lucky for him that he was not home. At this moment she would have faced knives, guns, tearing claws to get at him.

Yet he had given her all of himself that he could give. For love of her he was paying an exorbitant price. He was losing much more than life, facing an end more terrible than even the worst death. She could not let herself hate the damnable creature.

She was alone again.

In all the world there was not one friendly soul, not one being with whom she could share anything.

She ran into the library, the place where she habitually did her planning and thinking. “ALICE!” With a moan she yanked the heavy drapes closed and sank into her desk chair. The only sound in the room was the steady tinkle of the old Roman water clock.

Her whole future had been planted in Alice. The possibility of losing the girl had simply never occurred to her. Oh, what plans she had made!

She had always loved her life with joyous intensity. Over the years she had ruthlessly blotted out every memory of her family, had shaken off all the tragedies, and pressed ahead. She had seen humanity rising out of the muck, had learned to respect it as the rest of her species never could, had come to anticipate the future with zest, especially now that overtones of barbarism were re-entering human culture.

In one mad instant John had taken the future away.