Her voice broke. She pushed swiftly past Hendley, stumbling blindly toward the bed. Her knees struck the edge of the plastifoam layer and she fell forward face down onto the bed. Her body shook, and her fingers dug into the covering. Her sobs were muffled. Slowly Hendley's anger drained out of him. He felt dry, exhausted, like eyes empty of their tears. Ann's slim figure seemed smaller lying crumpled on the bed. Her nakedness made her seem merely vulnerable, exposed to abuse and pain and shame. He could not shake out of his mind the image of her on the stage--and especially the projection of the audience's reaction on the huge thought-screen--but she was not to blame. He should have known that, just as he should have known that the honesty of her surrender on the warm sand of the surface outside the museum could not have been simulated. The rest didn't matter, he thought. She hadn't chosen a way of life for herself. Only that afternoon had she chosen freely. Crossing the room, he stood over the bed looking down at her. The Organization! he thought savagely. The efficient world of machines, coldly manipulating lives, juggling people as if they were no more than the numbers in which the machines dealt. He looked down at ABC-331. How much more than a set of numbers she was! He sat beside her. His hand touched a smooth white shoulder. This time he did not withdraw the touch, turning it into a caress. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "Can you forget what I said just now? It was the surprise--the shock of seeing you on that stage. All that's over. Can we go back?" For a while she didn't move, but she ceased to cry. Her body no longer trembled. "You're beautiful," he said. "I know you don't like to hear that, but you are. I've never seen anyone like you. You're not just beautiful the way a statue is beautiful. It's a different quality--something soft and warm inside you that shows through, that gives the other things"--he smiled--"a special beauty. It makes them _mean_ something." With a gentle pressure of his hand he rolled her onto her back. Her eyes, dark with lingering tears, stared up at him, huge in her pale face. In the dim light he could not see their color, but he remembered fans of brown laced with green flecks. "You're lovely in the way a computer measures loveliness, too. I can see why you were singled out to do--what you have to do. But being beautiful isn't just having a certain shape or size or texture...." His fingers brushed the swell of her breast and moved down to trace the deep cut of her waist. Roughly, because suddenly he wanted her, he said, "Your beauty is alive. It's real. That's like the difference between a piece of plastic with wires woven through it, and another that looks similar but has a live current that makes it into a glowing light." "Oh, Hendley," she whispered. Her hands reached up to pull him down beside her. "I never wanted to be beautiful before! If only I didn't have to--"