Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“But I can’t. Every one of us has to travel that road by his own steps.

But it’s the same road.”

“Where does it lead?”

He smiled, as if softly closing a door on the questions that he would not answer. “To Atlantis,” he said.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“Don’t you remember?—the lost city that only the spirits of heroes can enter.”

The connection that struck her suddenly had been struggling in her mind since morning, like a dim anxiety she had had no time to identify.

She had known it, but she had thought only of his own fate and his personal decision, she had thought of him as acting alone. Now she remembered a wider danger and sensed the vast, undefined shape of the enemy she was facing.

“You’re one of them,” she said slowly, “aren’t you?”

“Of whom?”

“Was it you in Ken Danagger’s office?”

He smiled. “No.” But she noted that he did not ask what she meant.

“Is there—you would know it—is there actually a destroyer loose in the world?”

“Of course.”

“Who is it?”

“You.”

She shrugged; her face was growing hard. “The men who’ve quit, are they still alive or dead?”

“They’re dead—as far as you’re concerned. But there’s to be a Second Renaissance in the world. I’ll wait for it.”

“No!” The sudden violence of her voice was in personal answer to him, to one of the two things he had wanted her to hear in his words.

“No, don’t wait for me!”

“I’ll always wait for you, no matter what we do, either one of us.”

The sound they heard was the turning of a key in the lock of the entrance door. The door opened and Hank Rearden came in.

He stopped briefly on the threshold, then walked slowly into the living room, his hand slipping the key into his pocket.

She knew that he had seen Francisco’s face before he had seen hers.

He glanced at her, but his eyes came back to Francisco, as if this were the only face he was now able to see.

It was at Francisco’s face that she was afraid to look. The effort she made to pull her glance along the curve of a few steps felt as if she were pulling a weight beyond her power. Francisco had risen to his feet, as if in the unhurried, automatic manner of a d’Anconia trained to the code of courtesy. There was nothing that Rearden could see in his face. But what she saw in it was worse than she had feared.

“What are you doing here?” asked Rearden, in the tone one would use to address a menial caught in a drawing room.

“I see that I have no right to ask you the same question,” said Francisco. She knew what effort was required to achieve the clear, toneless quality of his voice. His eyes kept returning to Rearden’s right hand, as if he were still seeing the key between, his fingers.

“Then answer it,” said Rearden.

“Hank, any questions you wish to ask should be asked of me,” she said.

Rearden did not seem to see or hear her. “Answer it,” he repeated.

“There is only one answer which you would have the right to demand,” said Francisco, “so I will answer you that that is not the reason of my presence here.”

“There is only one reason for your presence in the house of any woman,” said Rearden. “And I mean, any woman—as far as you’re concerned. Do you think that I believe it now, that confession of yours or anything you ever said to me?”

“I have given you grounds not to trust me, but none to include Miss Taggart.”

“Don’t tell me that you have no chance here, never had and never will. I know it. But that I should find you here on the first—”

“Hank, if you wish to accuse me—” she began, but Rearden whirled to her.

“God, no, Dagny, I don’t! But you shouldn’t be seen speaking to him. You shouldn’t deal with him in any way. You don’t know him. I do.” He turned to Francisco. “What are you after? Are you hoping to include her among your kind of conquests or—”

“No!” It was an involuntary cry and it sounded futile, with its passionate sincerity offered—to be rejected—as its only proof.

“No? Then are you here on a matter of business? Are you setting a trap, as you -did for me? What sort of double-cross are you preparing for her?”

“My purpose . . . was not . . . a matter of business.”

“Then what was it?”

“If you still care to believe me, I can tell you only that it involved no . . . betrayal of any kind.”

“Do you think that you may still discuss betrayal, in my presence?”

“I will answer you some day. I cannot answer you now.”

“You don’t like to be reminded of it, do you? You’ve stayed away from me since, haven’t you? You didn’t expect to see me here? You didn’t want to face me?” But he knew that Francisco was facing him as no one else did these days—he saw the eyes held straight to meet his, the features composed, without emotion, without defense or appeal, set to endure whatever was coming—he saw the open, unprotected look of courage—this was the face of the man he had loved, the man who had set him free of guilt—and he found himself fighting against the knowledge that this face still held him, above all else, above his month of impatience for the sight of Dagny. “Why don’t you defend yourself, if you have nothing to hide? Why are you here? Why were you stunned to see me enter?”

“Hank, stop it!” Dagny’s voice was a cry, and she drew back, knowing that violence was the most dangerous element to introduce into this moment.

Both men turned to her. “Please let me be the one to answer,” Francisco said quietly.

“I told you that I hoped I’d never see him again,” said Rearden.

“I’m sorry if it has to be here. It doesn’t concern you, but there’s something he must be paid for.”

“If that is . . . your purpose,” Francisco said with effort, “haven’t you . . . achieved it already?”

“What’s the matter?” Rearden’s face was frozen, his lips barely moving, but his voice had the sound of a chuckle. “Is this your way of asking for mercy?”

The instant of silence was Francisco’s strain to a greater effort.

“Yes . . . if you wish,” he answered.

“Did you grant it when you held my future in your hands?”

“You are justified in anything you wish to think of me. But since it doesn’t concern Miss Taggart . . . would you now permit me to leave?”

“No! Do you want to evade it, like all those other cowards? Do you want to escape?”

“I will come anywhere you require any time you wish. But I would rather it were not in Miss Taggart’s presence.”

“Why not? I want it to be in her presence, since this is the one place you had no right to come. I have nothing left to protect from you, you’ve taken more than the looters can ever take, you’ve destroyed everything you’ve touched, but here is one thing you’re not -going to touch.” He knew that the rigid absence of emotion in Francisco’s face was the strongest evidence of emotion, the evidence of some abnormal effort at control—he knew that this was torture and that he, Rearden, was driven blindly by a feeling which resembled a torturer’s enjoyment, except that he was now unable to tell whether he was torturing Francisco or himself. “You’re worse than the looters, because you betray with full understanding of that which you’re betraying. I don’t know what form of corruption is your motive—but I want you to learn that there are things beyond your reach, beyond your aspiration or your malice.”

“You have nothing . . . to fear from me . . . now.”

“I want you to learn that you are not to think of her, not to look at her, not to approach her. Of all men, it’s you who’re not to appear in her presence.” He knew that he was driven by a desperate anger at his own feeling for this man, that the feeling still lived, that it was this feeling which he had to outrage and destroy. “Whatever your motive, it’s from any contact with you that she has to be protected.”

“IE I gave you my word—” He stopped.

Rearden chuckled. “I know what they mean, your words, your convictions, your friendship and your oath by the only woman you ever—”

He stopped. They all knew what this meant, in the same instant that Rearden knew it.

He made a step toward Francisco; he asked, pointing at Dagny, his voice low and strangely unlike his own voice, as if it neither came from nor were addressed to a living person, “Is this the woman you love?”

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