Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

She didn’t know why her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’d rather the bridge had collapsed?”

“I haven’t said that!” he snapped sharply. Then he shrugged and waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry . . . Oh, I know that I have such an awful lot to learn!”

“I am talking about a hunger for something much beyond that bridge.

A hunger that nothing material will ever satisfy.”

“What, Mr. Taggart? What is it you want?”

“Oh, there you go! The moment you ask, ‘What is it?’ you’re back in the crude, material world where everything’s got to be tagged and measured. I’m speaking of things that can’t be named in materialistic words . . . the higher realms of the spirit, which man can never reach. . . .

What’s any human achievement, anyway? The earth is only an atom whirling in the universe—of what importance is that bridge to the solar system?”

A sudden, happy look of understanding cleared her eyes. “It’s great of you, Mr. Taggart, to think that your own achievement isn’t good enough for you. I guess no matter how far you’ve gone, you want to go still farther. You’re ambitious. That’s what I admire most: ambition. I mean, doing things, not stopping and giving up, but doing. I understand, Mr. Taggart . . . even if I don’t understand all the big thoughts.”

“You’ll learn.”

“Oh, I’ll work very hard to learn!”

Her glance of admiration had not changed. He walked across the room, moving in that glance as in a gentle spotlight. He went to refill his glass. A mirror hung in the niche behind the portable bar. He caught a glimpse of his own figure: the tall body distorted by a sloppy, sagging posture, as if in deliberate negation of human grace, the thinning hair, the soft, sullen mouth. It struck him suddenly that she did not see him at all: what she saw was the heroic figure of a builder, with proudly straight shoulders and wind-blown hair. He chuckled aloud, feeling that this was a good joke on her, feeling dimly a satisfaction that resembled a sense of victory: the superiority of having put something over on her.

Sipping his drink, he glanced at the door of his bedroom and thought of the usual ending for an adventure of this kind. He thought that it would be easy: the girl was too awed to resist. He saw the reddish-bronze sparkle of her hair—as she sat, head bent, under a light—and a wedge of smooth, glowing skin on her shoulder. He looked away. Why bother?

—he thought.

The hint of desire that he felt, was no more than a sense of physical discomfort. The sharpest impulse in his mind, nagging him to action, was not the thought of the girl, but of all the men who would not pass up an opportunity of this kind. He admitted to himself that she was a much better person than Betty Pope, perhaps the best person ever offered to him. The admission left him indifferent. He felt no more than he had felt for Betty Pope. He felt nothing. The prospect of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire to experience pleasure.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Where do you live? Let me give you another drink and then I’ll take you home.”

When he said good-bye to her at the door of a miserable rooming house in a slum neighborhood, she hesitated, fighting not to ask a question which she desperately wished to ask him, “Will I . . . ” she began, and stopped.

“What?”

“No, nothing, nothing!”

He knew that the question was: “Will I see you again?” It gave him pleasure not to answer, even though he knew that she would.

She glanced up at him once more, as if it were perhaps for the last time, then said earnestly, her voice low, “Mr. Taggart, I’m very grateful to you, because you . . . I mean, any other man would have tried to . . . I mean, that’s all he’d want, but you’re so much better than that, oh, so much better!”

He leaned closer to her with a faint, interested smile. “Would you have?” he asked.

She drew back from him, in sudden terror at her own words. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way!” she gasped. “Oh God, I wasn’t hinting or . . . or . . .” She blushed furiously, whirled around and ran, vanishing up the long, steep stairs of the rooming house.

He stood on the sidewalk, feeling an odd, heavy, foggy sense of satisfaction: feeling as if he had committed an act of virtue—and as if he had taken his revenge upon every person who had stood cheering along the three-hundred-mile track of the John Galt Line.

When their train reached Philadelphia, Rearden left her without a word, as if the nights of their return journey deserved no acknowledgment in the daylight reality of crowded station platforms and moving engines, the reality he respected. She went on to New York, alone. But late that evening, the doorbell of her apartment rang and Dagny knew that she had expected it.

He said nothing when he entered, he looked at her, making his silent presence more intimate a greeting than words. There was the faint suggestion of a contemptuous smile in his face, at once admitting and mocking his knowledge of her hours of impatience and his own. He stood in the middle of her living room, looking slowly around him; this was her apartment, the one place in the city that had been the focus of two years of his torment, as the place he could not think about and did, the place he could not enter—and was now entering with the casual, unannounced right of an owner. He sat down in an armchair, stretching his legs forward—and she stood before him, almost as if she needed his permission to sit down and it gave her pleasure to wait.

“Shall I tell you that you did a magnificent job, building that Line?” he asked. She glanced at him in astonishment; he had never paid her open compliments of that kind; the admiration in his voice was genuine, but the hint of mockery remained in his face, and she felt as if he were speaking to some purpose which she could not guess. “I’ve spent all day answering questions about you-—and about the Line, the Metal and the future. That, and counting the orders for the Metal.

They’re coming in at the rate of thousands of tons an hour. When was it, nine months ago?—I couldn’t get a single answer anywhere. Today, I had to cut off my phone, not to listen to all the people who wanted to speak to me personally about their urgent need of Rearden Metal.

What did you do today?”

“I don’t know. Tried to listen to Eddie’s reports—tried to get away from people—tried to find the rolling stock to put more trains on the John Galt Line, because the schedule I’d planned won’t be enough for the business that’s piled up in just three days.”

“A great many people wanted to see you today, didn’t they?”

“Why. yes.”

“They’d have given anything just for a word with you, wouldn’t they?”

“I . . . I suppose so.”

“The reporters kept asking me what you were like. A young boy from a local sheet kept saying that you were a great woman. He said he’d be afraid to speak to you, if he ever had the chance. He’s right. That future that they’re all talking and trembling about—it will be as you made it, because you had the courage none of them could conceive of.

All the roads to wealth that they’re scrambling for now, it’s your strength that broke them open. The strength to stand against everyone.

The strength to recognize no will but your own.”

She caught the sinking gasp of her breath: she knew his purpose. She stood straight, her arms at her sides, her face austere, as if in unflinching endurance; she stood under the praise as under a lashing of insults.

“They kept asking you questions, too, didn’t they?” He spoke intently, leaning forward. “And they looked at you with admiration.

They looked, as if you stood on a mountain peak and they could only take their hats off to you across the great distance. Didn’t they?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“They looked as if they knew that one may not approach you or speak in your presence or touch a fold of your dress. They knew it and it’s true. They looked at you with respect, didn’t they? They looked up to you?”

He seized her arm, threw her down on her knees, twisting her body against his legs, and bent down to kiss her mouth. She laughed soundlessly, her laughter mocking, but her eyes half-closed, veiled with pleasure.