Instead, she has said people want "clarity". She said she will "hold meetings with my colleagues . . . to identity what would be required to secure the backing of the House." The Government, she said, "will approach these meetings in a constructive spirit," a comment that evoked some bitter laughter.
Presumably she will go back to Europe, pull some carefully constructed rabbits out of hats - then ask her colleagues to vote again. She claims that her strategy is not to "run down the clock". More worrying than that thought, though, is the fact there doesn't seem to be a strategy at all.
Others will now fill the vacuum. The House of Commons itself may come up with some proposals, and there are a few floating around.
The People's Vote campaign is calling for the deadlock to be resolved by a new referendum. One of its leaders told me recently that the campaign is now hoping to be "the last option standing": After everything else is voted down, there may be no other choice.
May continues to push back against a second referendum for a simple reason: Polling is showing increasing numbers of people opposed to Brexit.
Indeed, when Britons are offered the choice between remaining in the EU and any other concrete option - May's deal, or no deal - a clear majority favours Remain. But because that outcome would split the Conservative Party, and because the Conservative Party is May's whole life, she wants to avoid that at any cost. And so here we are.
Inevitably, the coming days will be filled with the minutiae of negotiations and parliamentary procedure. But before that happens, let this sink in: Brexit has been a catastrophic political failure.
This messy, unpopular deal, the most unpopular government policy that anybody can remember, was produced by a political class that turned out to be ignorant - about Europe, Europeans, trade arrangements, institutions - and arrogant, disdaining knowledge and expertise.
It was the work of leaders who favoured identity politics over economics, who preferred an undefined notion of "sovereignty" to the real institutions that gave Britain influence and power, who believed in fantasies and scorned reality.
Time that could have been spent on other things - on debating defence, or poverty, or clean beaches - has been wasted on a policy that won't make Britain happier, wealthier or stronger. Instead, this long debate has produced confusion and gridlock. And after today's vote, more of that is coming.
