CHAPTER VI THE NON-COMMERCIAL

Rearden pressed his forehead to the mirror and tried not to think. That was the only way he could go through with it, he told himself.  He concentrated on the relief of the mirror's cooling touch, wondering how one went about forcing one's mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty. He wondered why no effort had ever seemed beyond his capacity, yet now he could not scrape up the strength to stick a few black pearl studs into his starched white shirt front.  This was his wedding anniversary and he had known for three months that the party would take place tonight, as Lillian wished.  He had promised it to her, safe in the knowledge that the party was a long way off and that he would attend to it, when the time came, as he attended to every duty on his overloaded schedule. Then, during three months of eighteen-hour workdays, he had forgotten it happily-until half an hour ago, when, long past dinner time, his secretary had entered his office and said firmly, "Your party, Mr. Rearden." He had cried, "Good God!" leaping to his feet; he had hurried home, rushed up the stairs, started tearing his clothes off and gone through the routine of dressing, conscious only of the need to hurry, not of the purpose.  When the full realization of the purpose struck him like a sudden blow, he stopped.  "You don't care for anything but business." He had heard it all his life, pronounced as a verdict of damnation. He had always known that business was regarded as some sort of secret, shameful cult, which one did not impose on innocent laymen, that people thought of it as of an ugly necessity, to be performed but never mentioned, that to talk shop was an offense against higher sensibilities, that just as one washed machine grease off one's hands before coming home, so one was supposed to wash the stain of business off one's mind before entering a drawing room. He had never held that creed, but he had accepted it as natural that his family should hold it. He took it for granted-wordlessly, in the manner of a feeling absorbed in childhood, left unquestioned and unnamed-that he had dedicated himself, like the martyr of some dark religion, to the service of a faith which was his passionate love, but which made him an outcast among men, whose sympathy he was not to expect.  He had accepted the tenet that it was his duty to give his wife some form of existence unrelated to business. But he had never found the capacity to do it or even to experience a sense of guilt. He could neither force himself to change nor blame her if she chose to condemn him.  He had given Lillian none of his time for months-:no, he thought, for years; for the eight years of their marriage. He had no interest to spare for her interests, not even enough to learn just what they were.  She had a large circle of friends, and he had heard it said that their names represented the heart of the country's culture, but he had never had time to meet them or even to acknowledge their fame by knowing what achievements had earned it. He knew only that he often saw their names on the magazine covers on newsstands. If Lillian resented his attitude, he thought, she was right. If her manner toward him was objectionable, he deserved it. If his family called him heartless, it was true.  He had never spared himself in any issue. When a problem came up at the mills, his first concern was to discover what error he had made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own; it was of himself that he demanded perfection. He would grant himself no mercy now; he took the blame. But at the mills, it prompted him to action in an immediate impulse to correct the error; now, it had no effect. . . . Just a few more minutes, he thought, standing against the mirror, his eyes closed.  He could not stop the thing in his mind that went on throwing words at him; it was like trying to plug a broken hydrant with his bare hands.  Stinging jets, part words, part pictures, kept shooting at his brain. . . .  Hours of it, he thought, hours to spend watching the eyes of the guests getting heavy with boredom if they were sober or glazing into an imbecile stare if they weren't, and pretend that he noticed neither, and strain to think of something to say to them, when he had nothing to say -while he needed hours of inquiry to find a successor for the superintendent of his rolling mills who had resigned suddenly, without explanation-he had to do it at once-men of that sort were so hard to find-and if anything happened to break the flow of the rolling mills-it was the Taggart rail that was being rolled. . . . He remembered the silent reproach, the look of accusation, long-bearing patience and scorn, which he always saw in the eyes of his family when they caught some evidence of his passion for his business-and the futility of his silence, of his hope that they would not think Rearden Steel meant as much to him as it did-like a drunkard pretending indifference to liquor, among people who watch him with the scornful amusement of their full knowledge of his shameful weakness. . . . "I heard you last night coming home at two in the morning, where were you?" his mother saying to him at the dinner table, and Lillian answering, "Why, at the mills, of course," as another wife would say, "At the corner saloon." . . . Or Lillian asking him, the hint of a wise half-smile on her face, "What were you doing in New York yesterday?" "It was a banquet with the boys." "Business?" "Yes." "Of course"-and Lillian turning away, nothing more, except the shameful realization that he had almost hoped she would think he had attended some sort of obscene stag party. . . .  An ore carrier had gone down in a storm on Lake Michigan, with thousands of tons of Rearden ore-those boats were falling apart-if he didn't take it upon himself to help them obtain the replacements they needed, the owners of the line would go bankrupt, and there was no other line left in operation on Lake Michigan. . . . "That nook?"  said Lillian, pointing to an arrangement of settees and coffee tables in their drawing room. "Why, no, Henry, it's not new, but I suppose I should feel flattered that three weeks is all it took you to notice it. It's my own adaptation of the morning room of a famous French palace -but things like that can't possibly interest you, darling, there's no stock market quotation on them, none whatever." . . . The order for copper, which he had placed six months ago, had not been delivered, the promised date had been postponed three tunes-"We can't help it, Mr. Rearden"-he had to find another company to deal with, the supply of copper was becoming increasingly uncertain. . . . Philip did not smile, when he looked up in the midst of a speech he was making to some friend of their mother's, about some organization he had joined, but there was something that suggested a smile of superiority in the loose muscles of his face when he said, "No, you wouldn't care for this, it's not business, Henry, not business at all, it's a strictly non-commercial endeavor." . . . That contractor in Detroit, with the job of rebuilding a large factory, was considering structural shapes of Rearden Metal -he should fly to Detroit and speak to him in person-he should have done it a week ago-he could have done it tonight. . . . "You're not listening," said his mother at the breakfast table, when his mind wandered to the current coal price index, while she was telling him about the dream she'd had last night. "You've never listened to a living soul.  You're not interested in anything but yourself. You don't give a damn about people, not about a single human creature on God's earth."  . . . The typed pages lying on the desk in his office were a report on the tests of an airplane motor made of Rearden Metal-perhaps of all things on earth, the one he wanted most at this moment was to read it-  it had lain on his desk, untouched, for three days, he had had no time for it-why didn't he do it now and-  He shook his head violently, opening his eyes, stepping back from the mirror.  He tried to reach for the shirt studs. He saw his hand reaching, instead, for the pile of mail on his dresser. It was mail picked as urgent, it had to be read tonight, but he had had no time to read it in the office.  His secretary had stuffed it into his pocket on his way out. He had thrown it there while undressing.  A newspaper clipping fluttered down to the floor. It was an editorial which his secretary had marked with an angry stash in red pencil. It was entitled "Equalization of Opportunity." He had to read it: there had been too much talk about this issue in the last three months, ominously too much, He read it, with the sound of voices and forced laughter coming from downstairs, reminding him that the guests were arriving, that the party had started and that he would face the bitter, reproachful glances of his family when he came down.  The editorial said that at a time of dwindling production, shrinking markets and vanishing opportunities to make a living, it was unfair to let one man hoard several business enterprises, while others had none; it was destructive to let a few corner all the resources, leaving others no chance; competition was essential to society, and it was society's duty to see that no competitor ever rose beyond the range of anybody who wanted to compete with him. The editorial predicted the passage of a bill which had been proposed, a bill forbidding any person or corporation to own more than one business concern.  Wesley Mouch, his Washington man, had told Rearden not to worry; the fight would be stiff, he had said, but the bill would be defeated.  Rearden understood nothing about that kind of fight. He left it to Mouch and his staff. He could barely find time to skim through the reports from Washington and to sign the checks which Mouch requested for the battle.  Rearden did not believe that the bill would pass. He was incapable of believing it. Having dealt with the clean reality of metals, technology, production all his life, he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane-that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won-that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself. A battle against a thing such as that bill seemed preposterous and faintly embarrassing to him, as if he were suddenly asked to compete with a man who calculated steel mixtures by the formulas of numerology.  He had told himself that the issue was dangerous. But the loudest screaming of the most hysterical editorial roused no emotion in him-  while a variation of a decimal point in a laboratory report on a test of Rearden Metal made him leap to his feet in eagerness or apprehension.  He had no energy to spare for anything else.  He crumpled the editorial and threw it into the wastebasket. He felt the leaden approach of that exhaustion which he never felt at his job, the exhaustion that seemed to wait for him and catch him the moment he turned to other concerns. He felt as if he were incapable of any desire except a desperate longing for sleep, He told himself that he had to attend the party-that his family had the right to demand it of him-that he had to learn to like their kind of pleasure, for their sake, not his own.  He wondered why this was a motive that had no power to impel him. Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically. What was happening to him?-he wondered. The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right-wasn't it the basic formula of moral corruption? To recognize one's guilt, yet feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference-wasn't it a betrayal of that which had been the motor of his life-course and of his pride?  He gave himself no time to seek an answer. He finished dressing, quickly, pitilessly.  Holding himself erect, his tall figure moving with the unstressed, unhurried confidence of habitual authority, the white of a fine handkerchief in the breast pocket of his black dinner jacket, he walked slowly down the stairs to the drawing room, looking-to the satisfaction of the dowagers who watched him-like the perfect figure of a great industrialist.  He saw Lillian at the foot of the stairs. The patrician lines of a lemon-yellow Empire evening gown stressed her graceful body, and she stood like a person proudly in control of her proper background.  He smiled; he liked to see her happy; it gave some reasonable justification to the party.  He approached her-and stopped. She had always shown good taste in her use of jewelry, never wearing too much of it. But tonight she wore an ostentatious display: a diamond necklace, earrings, rings and brooches. Her arms looked conspicuously bare by contrast. On her right wrist, as sole ornament, she wore the bracelet of Rearden Metal. The glittering gems made it look like an ugly piece of dime-store jewelry.  When he moved his glance from her wrist to her face, he found her looking at him. Her eyes were narrowed and he could not define their expression; it was a look that seemed both veiled and purposeful, the look of something hidden that flaunted its security from detection.  He wanted to tear the bracelet off her wrist. Instead, in obedience to her voice gaily pronouncing an introduction, he bowed to the dowager who stood beside her, his face expressionless.  "Man? What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur," said Dr. Pritchett to a group of guests across the room.  Dr. Pritchett picked a canape off a crystal dish, held it speared between two straight fingers and deposited it whole into his mouth.  "Man's metaphysical pretensions," he said, "are preposterous. A miserable bit of protoplasm, full of ugly little concepts and mean little emotions-and it imagines itself important! Really, you know, that is the root of all the troubles in the world."  "But which concepts are not ugly or mean, Professor?" asked an earnest matron whose husband owned an automobile factory.  "None," said Dr. Pritchett, "None within the range of man's capacity."  A young man asked hesitantly, "But if we haven't any good concepts, how do we know that the ones we've got are ugly? I mean, by what standard?"  "There aren't any standards."  This silenced his audience.  "The philosophers of the past were superficial," Dr. Pritchett went on. "It remained for our century to redefine the purpose of philosophy.  The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn't any."  An attractive young woman, whose father owned a coal mine, asked indignantly, "Who can tell us that?"  "I am trying to," said Dr. Pritchett. For the last three years, he had been head of the Department of Philosophy at the Patrick Henry University.  Lillian Rearden approached, her jewels glittering under the lights.  The expression on her face was held to the soft hint of a smile, set and faintly suggested, like the waves of her hair.  "It is this insistence of man upon meaning that makes him so difficult," said Dr. Pritchett. "Once he realizes that he is of no importance whatever in the vast scheme of the universe, that no possible significance can be attached to his activities, that it does not matter whether he lives or dies, he will become much more . . . tractable."  He shrugged and reached for another canape", A businessman said uneasily, "What I asked you about, Professor, was what you thought about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill."  "Oh, that?" said Dr. Pritchett. "But I believe I made it clear that I am in favor of it, because I am in favor of a free economy. A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free."  "But, look . . . isn't that sort of a contradiction?"  "Not in the higher philosophical sense. You must learn to see beyond the static definitions of old-fashioned thinking. Nothing is static in the universe. Everything is fluid."  "But it stands to reason that if-"  "Reason, my dear fellow, is the most naive of all superstitions. That, at least, has been generally conceded in our age,"  "But I don't quite understand how we can-"  "You suffer from the popular delusion of believing that things can be understood. You do not grasp the fact that the universe is a solid contradiction."  "A contradiction of what?" asked the matron.  "Of itself."  "How . . . how's that?"  "My dear madam, the duty of thinkers is not to explain, but to demonstrate that nothing can be explained."  "Yes, of course . . . only . , ,"  "The purpose of philosophy is not to seek knowledge, but to prove that knowledge is impossible to man."  "But when we prove it," asked the young woman, "what's going to be left?"  "Instinct," said Dr. Pritchett reverently.  At the other end of the room, a group was listening to Balph Eubank. He sat upright on the edge of an armchair, in order to counteract the appearance of his face and figure, which had a tendency to spread if relaxed.  "The literature of the past," said Balph Eubank, "was a shallow fraud. It whitewashed life in order to please the money tycoons whom it served. Morality, free will, achievement, happy endings, and man as some sort of heroic being-all that stuff is laughable to us. Our age has given depth to literature for the first time, by exposing the real essence of life,"  A very young girl in a white evening gown asked timidly, "What is the real essence of life, Mr. Eubank?"  "Suffering," said Balph Eubank. "Defeat and suffering."  "But . . . but why? People are happy . . . sometimes . . . aren't they?"  "That is a delusion of those whose emotions are superficial."  The girl blushed. A wealthy woman who had inherited an oil refinery, asked guiltily, "What should we do to raise the people's literary taste, Mr. Eubank?"  "That is a great social problem," said Balph Eubank. He was described as the literary leader of the age, but had never written a book that sold more than three thousand copies. "Personally, I believe that an Equalization of Opportunity Bill applying to literature would be the solution."  "Oh, do you approve of that Bill for industry? I'm not sure I know what to think of it."  "Certainly, I approve of it. Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in their pursuit of material production and technological trickery. They're too comfortable. They will return to a nobler life if we teach them to bear privations. So we ought to place a limit upon their material greed."  "I hadn't thought of it that way," said the woman apologetically.  "But how are you going to work an Equalization of Opportunity Bill for literature, Ralph?" asked Mort Liddy. "That's a new one on me."  "My name is Balph," said Eubank angrily. "And it's a new one on you because it's my own idea."  "Okay, okay, I'm not quarreling, am I? I'm just asking." Mort Liddy smiled. He spent most of his time smiling nervously. He was a composer who wrote old-fashioned scores for motion pictures, and modern symphonies for sparse audiences.  "It would work very simply," said Balph Eubank. "There should be a law limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies. This would throw the literary market open to new talent, fresh ideas and non-commercial writing. If people were forbidden to buy a million copies of the same piece of trash, they would be forced to buy better books."  "You've got something there," said Mort Liddy. "But wouldn't it be kinda tough on the writers' bank accounts?"  "So much the better. Only those whose motive is not money-making should be allowed to write."  "But, Mr. Eubank," asked the young girl in the white dress, "what if more than ten thousand people want to buy a certain book?"  "Ten thousand readers is enough for any book."  "That's not what I mean. I mean, what if they want it?"  "That is irrelevant."  "But if a book has a good story which-"  "Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature," said Balph Eubank contemptuously.  Dr. Pritchett, on his way across the room to the bar, stopped to say, "Quite so. Just as logic is a primitive vulgarity in philosophy."  "Just as melody is a primitive vulgarity in music," said Mort Liddy.  "What's all this noise?" asked Lillian Rearden, glittering to a stop beside them.  "Lillian, my angel," Balph Eubank drawled, "did I tell you that I'm dedicating my new novel to you?"  "Why. thank you, darling."  "What is the name of your new novel?" asked the wealthy woman.  "The Heart Is a Milkman."  "What is it about?"  "Frustration."  "But, Mr. Eubank," asked the young girl in the white dress, blushing desperately, "if everything is frustration, what is there to live for?"  "Brother-love," said Balph Eubank grimly.  Bertram Scudder stood slouched against the bar. His long, thin face looked as if it had shrunk inward, with the exception of his mouth and eyeballs, which were left to protrude as three soft globes. He was the editor of a magazine called The Future and he had written an article on Hank Rearden, entitled "The Octopus."  Bertram Scudder picked up his empty glass and shoved it silently toward the bartender, to be refilled. He took a gulp from his fresh drink, noticed the empty glass in front of Philip Rearden, who stood beside him, and jerked his thumb in a silent command to the bartender. He ignored the empty glass in front of Betty Pope, who stood at Philip's other side.  "Look, bud," said Bertram Scudder, his eyeballs focused approximately in the direction of Philip, "whether you like it or not, the Equalization of Opportunity Bill represents a great step forward."  "What made you think that I did not like it, Mr. Scudder?" Philip asked humbly.  "Well, it's going to pinch, isn't it? The long arm of society is going to trim a little off the hors d'oeuvres bill around here." He waved his hand at the bar.  "Why do you assume that I object to that?"  "You don't?" Bertram Scudder asked without curiosity.  "I don't!" said Philip hotly. "I have always placed the public good above any personal consideration. I have contributed my time and money to Friends of Global Progress in their crusade for the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. I think it is perfectly unfair that one man should get all the breaks and leave none to others."  Bertram Scudder considered him speculatively, but without particular interest. "Well, that's quite unusually nice of you," he said.  "Some people do take moral issues seriously, Mr. Scudder," said Philip, with a gentle stress of pride in his voice.  "What's he talking about, Philip?" asked Betty Pope. "We don't know anybody who owns more than one business, do we?"  "Oh, pipe down!" said Bertram Scudder, his voice bored.  "I don't see why there's so much fuss about that Equalization of Opportunity Bill," said Betty Pope aggressively, in the tone of an expert on economics. "I don't see why businessmen object to it. It's to their own advantage. If everybody else is poor, they won't have any market for their goods. But if they stop being selfish and share the goods they've hoarded-they'll have a chance to work hard and produce some more."  "I do not see why industrialists should be considered at all," said Scudder. "When the masses are destitute and yet there are goods available, it's idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn't they?"  "They should," said Claude Slagenhop. "They need it. Need is the only consideration. If people are in need, we've got to seize things first and talk about it afterwards."  Claude Slagenhop had approached and managed to squeeze himself between Philip and Scudder, shoving Scudder aside imperceptibly.  Slagenhop was not tall or heavy, but he had a square, compact bulk, and a broken nose. He was the president of Friends of Global Progress.  "Hunger won't wait," said Claude Slagenhop. "Ideas are just hot air. An empty belly is a solid fact. I've said in all my speeches that it's not necessary to talk too much. Society is suffering for lack of business opportunities at the moment, so we've got the right to seize such opportunities as exist. Right is whatever's good for society."  "He didn't dig that ore single-handed, did he?" cried Philip suddenly, his voice shrill. "He had to employ hundreds of workers. They did it. Why does he think he's so good?"  The two men looked at him, Scudder lifting an eyebrow, Slagenhop without expression.  "Oh, dear me!" said Betty Pope, remembering.  Hank Rearden stood at a window in a dim recess at the end of the drawing room. He hoped no one would notice him for a few minutes.  He had just escaped from a middle-aged woman who had been telling him about her psychic experiences. He stood, looking out. Far in the distance, the red glow of Rearden Steel moved in the sky. He watched it for a moment's relief.  He turned to look at the drawing room. He had never liked his house; it had been Lillian's choice. But tonight, the shifting colors of the evening dresses drowned out the appearance of the room and gave it an air of brilliant gaiety. He liked to see people being gay, even though he did not understand this particular manner of enjoyment.  He looked at the flowers, at the sparks of light on the crystal glasses, at the naked arms and shoulders of women. There was a cold wind outside, sweeping empty stretches of land. He saw the thin branches of a tree being twisted, like arms waving in an appeal for help.  The tree stood against the glow of the mills.  He could not name his sudden emotion. He had no words to state its cause, its quality, its meaning. Some part of it was joy, but it was solemn like the act of baring one's head-he did not know to whom.  When he stepped back into the crowd, he was smiling. But the smile vanished abruptly; he saw the entrance of a new guest: it was Dagny Taggart.  Lillian moved forward to meet her, studying her with curiosity. They had met before, on infrequent occasions, and she found it strange to see Dagny Taggart wearing an evening gown. It was a black dress with a bodice that fell as a cape over one arm and shoulder, leaving the other bare; the naked shoulder was the gown's only ornament. Seeing her in the suits she wore, one never thought of Dagny Taggart's body. The black dress seemed excessively revealing-because it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulder were fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.  "Miss Taggart, it is such a wonderful surprise to see you here," said Lillian Rearden, the muscles of her face performing the motions of a smile. "I had not really dared to hope that an invitation' from me would take you away from your ever so much weightier concerns. Do permit me to feel flattered."  James Taggart had entered with his sister. Lillian smiled at him, in the manner of a hasty postscript, as if noticing him for the first time.  "Hello, James. That's your penalty for being popular-one tends to lose sight of you in the surprise of seeing your sister."  "No one can match you in popularity, Lillian," he answered, smiling thinly, "nor ever lose sight of you."  "Me? Oh, but I am quite resigned to taking second place in the shadow of my husband. I am humbly aware that the wife of a great man has to be contented with reflected glory-don't you think so, Miss Taggart?"  "No," said Dagny, "I don't."  "Is this a compliment or a reproach, Miss Taggart? But do forgive me if I confess I'm helpless. Whom may I present to you? I'm afraid I have nothing but writers and artists to offer, and they wouldn't interest you, I'm sure."  "I'd like to find Hank and say hello to him."  "But of course. James, do you remember you said you wanted to meet Balph Eubank?-oh yes, he's here-I'll tell him that I heard you rave about his last novel at Mrs. Whitcomb's dinner!"  Walking across the room, Dagny wondered why she had said that she wanted to find Hank Rearden, what had prevented her from admitting that she had seen him the moment she entered.  Rearden stood at the other end of the long room, looking at her.  He watched her as she approached, but he did not step forward to meet her.  "Hello, Hank."  "Good evening."  He bowed, courteously, impersonally, the movement of his body matching the distinguished formality of his clothes. He did not smile.  "Thank you for inviting me tonight," she said gaily.  "I cannot claim that I knew you were coming."  "Oh? Then I'm glad that Mrs. Rearden thought of me. I wanted to make an exception."  "An exception?"  "I don't go to parties very often."  "I am pleased that you chose this occasion as the exception." He did not add "Miss Taggart," but it sounded as if he had.  The formality of his manner was so unexpected that she was unable to adjust to it. "I wanted to celebrate," she said.  "To celebrate my wedding anniversary?"  "Oh, is it your wedding anniversary? I didn't know. My congratulations, Hank."  "What did you wish to celebrate?"  "I thought I'd permit myself a rest. A celebration of my own-in your honor and mine."  "For what reason?"  She was thinking of the new track on the rocky grades of the Colorado mountains, growing slowly toward the distant goal of the Wyatt oil fields. She was seeing the greenish-blue glow of the rails on the frozen ground, among the dried weeds, the naked boulders, the rotting shanties of half-starved settlements.  "In honor of the first sixty miles of Rearden Metal track," she answered.  "I appreciate it." The tone of his voice was the one that would have been proper if he had said, "I've never heard of it."  She found nothing else to say. She felt as if she were speaking to a stranger.  "Why, Miss Taggart!" a cheerful voice broke their silence. "Now this is what I mean when I say that Hank Rearden can achieve any miracle!"  A businessman whom they knew had approached, smiling at her in delighted astonishment. The three of them had often held emergency conferences about freight rates and steel deliveries. Now he looked at her, his face an open comment on the change in her appearance, the change, she thought, which Rearden had not noticed.  She laughed, answering the man's greeting, giving herself no time to recognize the unexpected stab of disappointment, the unadmitted thought that she wished she had seen this look on Rearden's face, instead. She exchanged a few sentences with the man. When she glanced around, Rearden was gone.  "So that is your famous sister?" said Balph Eubank to James Taggart, looking at Dagny across the room.  "I was not aware that my sister was famous," said Taggart, a faint bite in his voice.  "But, my good man, she's an unusual phenomenon in the field of economics, so you must expect people to talk about her. Your sister is a symptom of the illness of our century. A decadent product of the machine age. Machines have destroyed man's humanity, taken him away from the soil, robbed him of his natural arts, killed his soul and turned him into an insensitive robot. There's an example of it-a woman who runs a railroad, instead of practicing the beautiful craft of the handloom and bearing children."  Rearden moved among the guests, trying not to be trapped into conversation. He looked at the room; he saw no one he wished to approach.  "Say, Hank Rearden, you're not such a bad fellow at all when seen close up in the lion's own den. You ought to give us a press conference once in a while, you'd win us over."  Rearden turned and looked at the speaker incredulously. It was a young newspaperman of the seedier sort, who worked on a radical tabloid. The offensive familiarity of his manner seemed to imply that he chose to be rude to Rearden because he knew that Rearden should never have permitted himself to associate with a man of his kind.  Rearden would not have allowed him inside the mills; but the man was Lillian's guest; he controlled himself; he asked dryly, "What do you want?"  "You're not so bad. You've got talent. Technological talent. But, of course, I don't agree with you about Rearden Metal."  "I haven't asked you to agree."  "Well, Bertram Scudder said that your policy-" the man started belligerently, pointing toward the bar, but stopped, as if he had slid farther than he intended.  Rearden looked at the untidy figure slouched against the bar. Lillian had introduced them, but he had paid no attention to the name. He turned sharply and walked off, in a manner that forbade the young bum to tag him.  Lillian glanced up at his face, when Rearden approached her in the midst of a group, and, without a word, stepped aside where they could not be heard.  "Is that Scudder of The Future?" he asked, pointing.  "Why, yes."  He looked at her silently, unable to begin to believe it, unable to find the lead of a thought with which to begin to understand. Her eyes were watching him.  "How could you invite him here?" he asked.  "Now, Henry, don't let's be ridiculous. You don't want to be narrow minded, do you? You must learn to tolerate the opinions of others and respect their right of free speech."  "In my house?"  "Oh, don't be stuffy!"  He did not speak, because his consciousness was held, not by coherent statements, but by two pictures that seemed to glare at him insistently.  He saw the article, "The Octopus," by Bertram Scudder, which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public-an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary. And he saw the lines of Lillian's profile, the proud purity which he had sought in marrying her.  When he noticed her again, he realized that the vision of her profile was in his own mind, because she was turned to him full-face, watching him. In the sudden instant of returning to reality, he thought that what he saw in her eyes was enjoyment. But in the next instant he reminded himself that he was sane and that this was not possible.  "It's the first time you've invited that . . ." he used an obscene word with unemotional precision, "to my house. It's the last."  "How dare you use such-"  "Don't argue, Lillian. If you do, I'll throw him out right now."  He gave her a moment to answer, to object, to scream at him if she wished. She remained silent, not looking at him, only her smooth cheeks seemed faintly drawn inward, as if deflated.  Moving blindly away through the coils of lights, voices and perfume, he felt a cold touch of dread. He knew that he should think of Lillian and find the answer to the riddle of her character, because this was a revelation which he could not ignore; but he did not think of her-and he felt the dread because he knew that the answer had ceased to matter to him long ago.  The flood of weariness was starting to rise again. He felt as if he could almost see it in thickening waves; it was not within him, but outside, spreading through the room. For an instant, he felt as if he were alone, lost in a gray desert, needing help and knowing that no help would come, He stopped short. In the lighted doorway, the length of the room between them, he saw the tall, arrogant figure of a man who had paused for a moment before entering. He had never met the man, but of all the notorious faces that cluttered the pages of newspapers, this was the one he despised. It was Francisco d'Anconia.  Rearden had never given much thought to men like Bertram Scudder.  But with every hour of his life, with the strain and the pride of every moment when his muscles or his mind had ached from effort, with every step he had taken to rise out of the mines of Minnesota and to turn his effort into gold, with all of his profound respect for money and for its meaning, he despised the squanderer who did not know how to deserve the great gift of inherited wealth. There, he thought, was the most contemptible representative of the species.  He saw Francisco d'Anconia enter, bow to Lillian, then walk into the crowd as if he owned the room which he had never entered before.  Heads turned to watch him, as if he pulled them on strings in his wake.  Approaching Lillian once more, Rearden said without anger, the contempt becoming amusement in his voice, "I didn't know you knew that one."  "I've met him at a few parties."  "Is he one of your friends, too?"  "Certainly not!" The sharp resentment was genuine.  "Then why did you invite him?"  "Well, you can't give a party-not a party that counts-while he's in this country, without inviting him. It's a nuisance if he comes, and a social black mark if he doesn't."  Rearden laughed. She was off guard; she did not usually admit things of this kind. "Look," he said wearily, "I don't want to spoil your party. But keep that man away from me. Don't come around with introductions. I don't want to meet him. I don't know how you'll work that, but you're an expert hostess, so work it."  Dagny stood still when she saw Francisco approaching. He bowed to her as he passed by. He did not stop, but she knew that he had stopped the moment in his mind. She saw him smile faintly in deliberate emphasis of what he understood and did not choose to acknowledge. She turned away. She hoped to avoid him for the rest of the evening.  Balph Eubank had joined the group around Dr. Pritchett, and was saying sullenly, ". . . no, you cannot expect people to understand the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the hands of the dollar-chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap."  "You mean, your complaint is that they don't sell like soap?" asked Francisco d'Anconia.  They had not noticed him approach; the conversation stopped, as if slashed off; most of them had never met him, but they all recognized him at once.  "I meant-" Balph Eubank started angrily and closed his mouth; he saw the eager interest on the faces of his audience, but it was not interest in philosophy any longer.  "Why, hello, Professor!" said Francisco, bowing to Dr. Pritchett.  There was no pleasure in Dr. Pritchett's face when he answered the greeting and performed a few introductions.  "We were just discussing a most interesting subject," said the earnest matron. "Dr. Pritchett was telling us that nothing is anything."  "He should, undoubtedly, know more than anyone else about that," Francisco answered gravely.  "I wouldn't have supposed that you knew Dr. Pritchett so well, Senor d'Anconia," she said, and wondered why the professor looked displeased by her remark.  "I am an alumnus of the great school that employs Dr. Pritchett at present, the Patrick Henry University. But I studied under one of his predecessors-Hugh Akston."  "Hugh Akston!" the attractive young woman gasped. "But you couldn't have, Senor d'Anconia! You're not old enough. I thought he was one of those great names of . . . of the last century."  "Perhaps in spirit, madame. Not in fact."  "But I thought he died years ago."  "Why, no. He is still alive."  "Then why don't we ever hear about him any more?"  "He retired, nine years ago."  "Isn't it odd? When a politician or a movie star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it."  "They do, eventually."  A young man said, astonished, "I thought Hugh Akston was one of those classics that nobody studied any more, except in histories of philosophy. I read an article recently which referred to him as the last of the great advocates of reason."  "Just what did Hugh Akston teach?" asked the earnest matron.  Francisco answered, "He taught that everything is something."  "Your loyalty to your teacher is laudable, Senior d'Anconia," said Dr. Pritchett dryly. "May we take it that you are an example of the practical results of his teaching?"  "I am."  James Taggart had approached the group and was waiting to be noticed.  "Hello, Francisco."  "Good evening, James."  "What a wonderful coincidence, seeing you here! I've been very anxious to speak to you."  "That's new. You haven't always been."  "Now you're joking, just like in the old days." Taggart was moving slowly, as if casually, away from the group, hoping to draw Francisco after him. "You know that there's not a person in this room who wouldn't love to talk to you."  "Really? I'd be inclined to suspect the opposite." Francisco had followed obediently, but stopped within hearing distance of the others.  "I have tried in every possible way to get in touch with you," said Taggart, "but . . . but circumstances didn't permit me to succeed."  "Are you trying to hide from me the fact that I refused to see you?"  "Well . . . that is . , . I mean, why did you refuse?"  "I couldn't imagine what you wanted to speak to me about."  "The San Sebastian Mines, of course!" Taggart's voice rose a little.  "Why, what about them?"  "But . . . Now, look, Francisco, this is serious. It's a disaster, an unprecedented disaster-and nobody can make any sense out of it. I don't know what to think. I don't understand it at all. I have a right to know."  "A right? Aren't you being old-fashioned, James? But what is it you want to know?"  "Well, first of all, that nationalization-what are you going to do about it?"  "Nothing."  "Nothing?!"  "But surely you don't want me to do anything about it. My mines and your railroad were seized by the will of the people. You wouldn't want me to oppose the will of the people, would you?"  "Francisco, this is not a laughing matter!"  "I never thought it was."  "I'm entitled to an explanation! You owe your stockholders an account of the whole disgraceful affair! Why did you pick a worthless mine? Why did you waste all those millions? What sort of rotten swindle was It?"  Francisco stood looking at him in polite astonishment. "Why, James," he said, "I thought you would approve of it."  "Approve?!"  "I thought you would consider the San Sebastian Mines as the practical realization of an ideal of the highest moral order. Remembering that you and I have disagreed so often in the past, I thought you would be gratified to see me acting in accordance with your principles."  "What are you talking about?"  Francisco shook his head regretfully. "I don't know why you should call my behavior rotten. I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching. Doesn't everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally selfless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn't it evil to pursue a personal interest? I had no personal interest in it whatever. Isn't it evil to work for profit? I did not work for profit-I took a loss. Doesn't everyone agree that the purpose and justification of an industrial enterprise are not production, but the livelihood of its employees? The San Sebastian Mines were the most eminently successful venture in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved, in a lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one day's work, which they could not do. Isn't it generally agreed that an owner is a parasite and an exploiter, that it is the employees who do all the work and make the product possible? I did not exploit anyone. I did not burden the San Sebastian Mines with my useless presence; I left them in the hands of the men who count. I did not pass judgment on the value of that property. I turned it over to a mining specialist. He was not a very good specialist, but he needed the job very badly. Isn't it generally conceded that when you hire a man for a job, it is his need that counts, not his ability? Doesn't everyone believe that in order to get the goods, all you have to do is need them? I have carried out every moral precept of our age. I expected gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not understand why I am being damned."  In the silence of those who had listened, the sole comment was the shrill, sudden giggle of Betty Pope: she had understood nothing, but she saw the look of helpless fury on James Taggart's face.  People were looking at Taggart, expecting an answer. They were indifferent to the issue, they were merely amused by the spectacle of someone's embarrassment. Taggart achieved a patronizing smile.  "You don't expect me to take this seriously?" he asked.  "There was a time," Francisco answered, "when I did not believe that anyone could take it seriously. I was wrong."  "This is outrageous!" Taggart's voice started to rise. "It's perfectly outrageous to treat your public responsibilities with such thoughtless levity!" He turned to hurry away.  Francisco shrugged, spreading his hands. "You see? I didn't think you wanted to speak to me."  Rearden stood alone, far at the other end of the room. Philip noticed him, approached and waved to Lillian, calling her over.  "Lillian, I don't think that Henry is having a good time," he said, smiling; one could not tell whether the mockery of his smile was directed at Lillian or at Rearden. "Can't we do something about it?"  "Oh, nonsense!" said Rearden.  "I wish I knew what to do about it, Philip," said Lillian. "I've always wished Henry would learn to relax. He's so grimly serious about everything. He's such a rigid Puritan. I've always wanted to see him drunk, just once. But I've given up. What would you suggest?"  "Oh, I don't know! But he shouldn't be standing around all by himself."  "drop it," said Rearden. While thinking dimly that he did not want to hurt their feelings, he could not prevent himself from adding, "You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself."  "There-you see?" Lillian smiled at Philip. "To enjoy life and people is not so simple as pouring a ton of steel. Intellectual pursuits are not learned in the market place."  Philip chuckled. "It's not intellectual pursuits I'm worried about.  How sure are you about that Puritan stuff, Lillian? If I were you, I wouldn't leave him free to look around. There are too many beautiful women here tonight."  "Henry entertaining thoughts of infidelity? You flatter him, Philip. You overestimate his courage." She smiled at Rearden, coldly, for a brief, stressed moment, then moved away.  Rearden looked at his brother. "What in hell do you think you're doing?"  "Oh, stop playing the Puritan! Can't you take a joke?"  Moving aimlessly through the crowd, Dagny wondered why she had accepted the invitation to this party. The answer astonished her: it was because she had wanted to see Hank Rearden. Watching him in the crowd, she realized the contrast for the first time. The faces of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features, every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and all looking as if they were melting. Rearden's face, with the sharp planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light.  Her eyes kept returning to him involuntarily. She never caught him glancing in her direction. She could not believe that he was avoiding her intentionally; there could be no possible reason for it- yet she felt certain that he was. She wanted to approach him and convince herself that she was mistaken. Something stopped her; she could not understand her own reluctance.  Rearden bore patiently a conversation with his mother and two ladies whom she wished him to entertain with stories of his youth and his struggle. He complied, telling himself that she was proud of him in her own way. But he felt as if something in her manner kept suggesting that she had nursed him through his struggle and that she was the source of his success. He was glad when she let him go. Then he escaped once more to the recess of the window.  He stood there for a while, leaning on a sense of privacy as if it were a physical support.  "Mr. Rearden," said a strangely quiet voice beside him, "permit me to introduce myself. My name is d'Anconia."  Rearden turned, startled; d'Anconia's manner and voice had a quality he had seldom encountered before: a tone of authentic respect.  "How do you do," he answered. His voice was brusque and dry; but he had answered.  "I have observed that Mrs. Rearden has been trying to avoid the necessity of presenting me to you, and I can guess the reason. Would you prefer that I leave your house?"  The action of naming an issue instead of evading it, was so unlike the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden, startling relief, that Rearden remained silent for a moment, studying d'Anconia's face. Francisco had said it very simply, neither as a reproach nor a plea, but in a manner which, strangely, acknowledged Rearden's dignity and his own.  "No," said Rearden, "whatever else you guessed, I did not say that."  "Thank you. In that case, you will allow me to speak to you."  "Why should you wish to speak to me?"  "My motives cannot interest you at present."  "Mine is not the sort of conversation that could interest you at all."  "You are mistaken about one of us, Mr. Rearden, or both. I came to this party solely in order to meet you."  There had been a faint tone of amusement in Rearden's voice; now it hardened into a hint of contempt. "You started by playing it straight. Stick to it."  "I am."  "What did you want to meet me for? In order to make me lose money?"  Francisco looked straight at him. "Yes-eventually."  "What is it, this time? A gold mine?"  Francisco shook his head slowly; the conscious deliberation of the movement gave it an air that was almost sadness. "No," he said, "I don't want to sell you anything. As a matter of fact, I did not attempt to sell the copper mine to James Taggart, either. He came to me for it. You won't."  Rearden chuckled. "If you understand that much, we have at least a sensible basis for conversation. Proceed on that. If you don't have some fancy investment in mind, what did you want to meet me for?"  "In order to become acquainted with you,"  "That's not an answer. It's just another way of saying the same thing."  "Not quite, Mr. Rearden."  "Unless you mean-in order to gain my confidence?"  "No. I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not."  Rearden's startled glance at him was like the involuntary thrust of a hand grasping for support in a desperate need. The glance betrayed how much he wanted to find the sort of man he thought he was seeing. Then Rearden lowered his eyes, almost closing them, slowly, shutting out the vision and the need. His face was hard; it had an expression of severity, an inner severity directed at himself; it looked austere and lonely.  "All right," he said tonelessly. "What do you want, if it's not my confidence?"  "I want to learn to understand you."  "What for?"  "For a reason of my own which need not concern you at present."  "What do you want to understand about me?"  Francisco looked silently out at the darkness. The fire of the mills was dying down. There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible.  "It's a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain," said Francisco d'Anconia. "This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man."  Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, "Funny . . ."  "What?"  "You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . ."  "You were?"  ". . . only I didn't have the words for it,"  "Shall I tell you the rest of the words?"  "Go ahead."  "You stood here and watched the storm -with the greatest pride one can ever feel-because you are able to have summer flowers and half naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren't for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain."  "How did you know that?"  In tune with his question., Rearden realized that it was not his thoughts this man had named, but his most hidden, most personal emotion; and that he, who would never confess his emotions to anyone, had confessed it in his question. He saw the faintest flicker in Francisco's eyes, as of a smile or a check mark.  "What would you know about a pride of that kind?" Rearden asked sharply, as if the contempt of the second question could erase the confidence of the first.  "That is what I felt once, when I was young."  Rearden looked at him. There was neither mockery nor self-pity in Francisco's face; the fine, sculptured planes and the clear, blue eyes held a quiet composure, the face was open, offered to any blow, unflinching.  "Why do you want to talk about it?" Rearden asked, prompted by a moment's reluctant compassion.  "Let us say-by way of gratitude, Mr. Rearden."  "Gratitude to me?"  "If you will accept it."  Rearden's voice hardened. "I haven't asked for gratitude. I don't need it."  "I have not said you needed it. But of all those whom you are saving from the storm tonight, I am the only one who will offer it."  After a moment's silence, Rearden asked, his voice low with a sound which was almost a threat, "What are you trying to do?"  "I am calling your attention to the nature of those for whom you are working."  "It would take a man who's never done an honest day's work in his life, to think or say that." The contempt in Rearden's voice had a note of relief; he had been disarmed by a doubt of his judgment on the character of his adversary; now he felt certain once more. "You wouldn't understand it if I told you that the man who works, works for himself, even if he does carry the whole wretched bunch of you along. Now I'll guess what you're thinking: go ahead, say that it's evil, that I'm selfish, conceited, heartless, cruel. I am. I don't want any part of that tripe about working for others. I'm not."  For the first time, he saw the look of a personal reaction in Francisco's eyes, the look of something eager and young. "The only thing that's wrong in what you said," Francisco answered, "is that you permit anyone to call it evil." In Rearden's pause of incredulous silence, he pointed at the crowd in the drawing room. "Why are you willing to carry them?"  "Because they're a bunch of miserable children who struggle to remain alive, desperately and very badly, while I-I don't even notice the burden,"  "Why don't you tell them that?"  "What?"  "That you're working for your own sake, not theirs."  "They know it."  "Oh yes, they know it. Every single one of them here knows it. But they don't think you do. And the aim of all their efforts is to keep you from knowing it."  "Why should I care what they think?"  "Because it's a battle in which one must make one's stand clear."  "A battle? What battle? I hold the whip hand. I don't fight the disarmed."  "Are they? They have a weapon against you. It's their only weapon, but it's a terrible one. Ask yourself what it is, some time."  "Where do you see any evidence of it?"  "In the unforgivable fact that you're as unhappy as you are."  Rearden could accept any form of reproach, abuse, damnation anyone chose to throw at him; the only human reaction which he would not accept was pity. The stab of a coldly rebellious anger brought him back to the full context of the moment. He spoke, fighting not to acknowledge the nature of the emotion rising within him, "What sort of effrontery are you indulging in? What's your motive?"  "Let us say-to give you the words you need, for the time when you'll need them."  "Why should you want to speak to me on such a subject?"  "In the hope that you will remember it."  What he felt, thought Rearden, was anger at the incomprehensible fact that he had allowed himself to enjoy this conversation. He felt a dim sense of betrayal, the hint of an unknown danger. "Do you expect me to forget what you are?" he asked, knowing that this was what he had forgotten.  "I do not expect you to think of me at all."  Under his anger, the emotion which Rearden would not acknowledge remained unstated and unthought; he knew it only as a hint of pain.  Had he faced it, he would have known that he still heard Francisco's voice saying, "I am the only one who will offer it . . . if you will accept it. . . ." He heard the words and the strangely solemn inflection of the quiet voice and an inexplicable answer of his own, something within him that wanted to cry yes, to accept, to tell this man that he accepted, that he needed it-though there was no name for what he needed, it was not gratitude, and he knew that it was not gratitude this man had meant.  Aloud, he said, "I didn't seek to talk to you. But you've asked for it and you're going to hear it. To me, there's only one form of human depravity-the man without a purpose."  "That is true."  "I can forgive all those others, they're not vicious, they're merely helpless. But you-you're the kind who can't be forgiven."  "It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you."  "You had the greatest chance in life. What have you done with it? If you have the mind to understand all the things you said, how can you speak to me at all? How can you face anyone after the sort of irresponsible destruction you've perpetrated in that Mexican business?"  "It is your right to condemn me for it, if you wish."  Dagny stood by the corner of the window recess, listening. They did not notice her. She had seen them together and she had approached, drawn by an impulse she could not explain or resist; it seemed crucially important that she know what these two men said to each other.  She had heard their last few sentences. She had never thought it possible that she would see Francisco taking a beating. He could smash any adversary in any form of encounter. Yet he stood, offering no defense.  She knew that it was not indifference; she knew his face well enough to see the effort his calm cost him-she saw the faint line of a muscle pulled tight across his cheek.  "Of all those who live by the ability of others," said Rearden, "you're the one real parasite."  "I have given you grounds to think so."  "Then what right have you to talk about the meaning of being a man? You're the one who has betrayed it."  "I am sorry if I have offended you by what you may rightly consider as a presumption."  Francisco bowed and turned to go. Rearden said involuntarily, not knowing that the question negated his anger, that it was a plea to stop this man and hold him, "What did you want to learn to understand about me?"  Francisco turned. The expression of his face had not changed; it was still a look of gravely courteous respect. "I have learned it," he answered.  Rearden stood watching him as he walked off into the crowd. The figures of a butler, with a crystal dish, and of Dr. Pritchett, stooping to choose another canape, hid Francisco from sight. Rearden glanced out at the darkness; nothing could be seen there but the wind.  Dagny stepped forward, when he came out of the recess; she smiled, openly inviting conversation. He stopped. It seemed to her that he had stopped reluctantly. She spoke hastily, to break the silence.  "Hank, why do you have so many intellectuals of the looter persuasion here? I wouldn't have them in my house."  This was not what she had wanted to say to him. But she did not know what she wanted to say; never before had she felt herself left wordless in his presence.  She saw his eyes narrowing, like a door being closed. "I see no reason why one should not invite them to a party," he answered coldly.  "Oh, I didn't mean to criticize your choice of guests. But . . . Well, I've been trying not to learn which one of them is Bertram Scudder. If I do, I'll slap his face." She tried to sound casual, "I don't want to create a scene, but I'm not sure I'll be able to control myself. I couldn't believe it when somebody told me that Mrs. Rearden had invited him."  "I invited him."  "But . . ." Then her voice dropped. "Why?"  "I don't attach any importance to occasions of this kind."  "I'm sorry, Hank. I didn't know you were so tolerant. I'm not."  He said nothing.  "I know you don't like parties. Neither do I. But sometimes I wonder . . . perhaps we're the only ones who were meant to be able to enjoy them."  "I am afraid I have no talent for it."  "Not for this. But do you think any of these people are enjoying it? They're just straining to be more senseless and aimless than usual. To be light and unimportant . . . You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light."  "I wouldn't know."  "It's just a thought that disturbs me once in a while. . . . I thought it about my first ball. . . . I keep thinking that parties are intended to be celebrations, and celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate."  "I have never thought of it."  She could not adapt her words to the rigid formality of his manner; she could not quite believe it. They had always been at ease together, in his office. Now he was like a man in a strait jacket.  "Hank, look at it. If you didn't know any of these people, wouldn't it seem beautiful? The lights and the clothes and all the imagination that went to make it possible . . ." She was looking at the room. She did not notice that he had not followed her glance. He was looking down at the shadows on her naked shoulder, the soft, blue shadows made by the light that fell through the strands of her hair. "Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours."  "In what manner?"  "I don't know . . . I've always expected parties to be exciting and brilliant, like some rare drink." She laughed; there was a note of sadness in it. "But I don't drink, either. That's just another symbol that doesn't mean what it was intended to mean," He was silent. She added, "Perhaps there's something that we have missed."  "I am not aware of it."  In a flash of sudden, desolate emptiness, she was glad that he had not understood or responded, feeling dimly that she had revealed too much, yet not knowing what she had revealed. She shrugged, the movement running through the curve of her shoulder like a faint convulsion.  "It's just an old illusion of mine," she said indifferently. "Just a mood that comes once every year or two. Let me see the latest steel price index and I'll forget all about it."  She did not know that his eyes were following her, as she walked away from him.  She moved slowly through the room, looking at no one. She noticed a small group huddled by the unlighted fireplace. The room was not cold, but they sat as if they drew comfort from the thought of a non-existent fire.  "I do not know why, but I am growing to be afraid of the dark. No, not now, only when I am alone. What frightens me is night. Night as such."  The speaker was an elderly spinster with an air of breeding and hopelessness. The three women and two men of the group were well dressed, the skin of their faces was smoothly well tended, but they had a manner of anxious caution that kept their voices one tone lower than normal and blurred the differences of their ages, giving them all the same gray look of being spent. It was the look one saw in groups of respectable people everywhere. Dagny stopped and listened.  "But, my dear," one of them asked, "why should it frighten you?"  "I don't know," said the spinster, "I am not afraid of prowlers or robberies or anything of the sort. But I stay awake all night. I fall asleep only when I see the sky turning pale. It is very odd. Every evening, when it grows dark, I get the feeling that this tune it is final, that daylight will not return."  "My cousin who lives on the coast of Maine wrote me the same thing,"  said one of the women.  "Last night," said the spinster, "I stayed awake because of the shooting. There were guns going off all night, way out at sea. There were no flashes. There was nothing. Just those detonations, at long intervals, somewhere in the fog over the Atlantic."  "I read something about it in the paper this morning. Coast Guard target practice."  "Why, no," the spinster said indifferently. "Everybody down on the shore knows what it was. It was Ragnar Danneskjold. It was the Coast Guard trying to catch him."  "Ragnar Danneskjold in Delaware Bay?" a woman gasped.  "Oh, yes. They say it is not the first time."  "Did they catch him?"  "No."  "Nobody can catch him," said one of the men.  "The People's State of Norway has offered a million-dollar reward for his head."  "That's an awful lot of money to pay for a pirate's head."  "But how are we going to have any order or security or planning in the world, with a pirate running loose all over the seven seas?"  "Do you know what it was that he seized last night?" said the spinster.  "The big ship with the relief supplies we were sending to the People's State of France."  "How does he dispose of the goods he seizes?"  "Ah, that-nobody knows."  "I met a sailor once, from a ship he'd attacked, who'd seen him in person. He said that Ragnar Danneskjold has the purest gold hair and the most frightening face on earth, a face with no sign of any feeling. If there ever was a man born without a heart, he's it-the sailor said."  "A nephew of mine saw Ragnar Danneskjold's ship one night, off the coast of Scotland. He wrote me that he couldn't believe his eyes. It was a better ship than any in the navy of the People's State of England."  "They say he hides in one of those Norwegian fjords where neither God nor man will ever find him. That's where the Vikings used to hide in the Middle Ages."  "There's a reward on his head offered by the People's State of Portugal, too. And by the People's State of Turkey."  "They say it's a national scandal in Norway. He comes from one of their best families. The family lost its money generations ago, but the name is of the noblest. The ruins of their castle are still in existence.  His father is a bishop. His father has disowned him and excommunicated him. But it had no effect."  "Did you know that Ragnar Danneskjold went to school in this country? Sure. The Patrick Henry University."  "Not really?"  "Oh yes. You can look it up."  "What bothers me is . . . You know, I don't like it. I don't like it that he's now appearing right here, in our own waters. I thought things like that could happen only in the wastelands. Only in Europe. But a big-scale outlaw of that kind operating in Delaware in our day and age!"  "He's been seen off Nantucket, too. And at Bar Harbor. The newspapers have been asked not to write about it."  "Why?"  "They don't want people to know that the navy can't cope with him."  "I don't like it. It feels funny. It's like something out of the Dark Ages."  Dagny glanced up. She saw Francisco d'Anconia standing a few steps away. He was looking at her with a kind of stressed curiosity; his eyes were mocking.  "It's a strange world we're living in," said the spinster, her voice low.  "I read an article," said one of the women tonelessly. "It said that times of trouble are good for us. It is good that people are growing poorer. To accept privations is a moral virtue."  "I suppose so," said another, without conviction.  "We must not worry. I heard a speech that said it is useless to worry or to blame anyone. Nobody can help what he does, that is the way things made him. There is nothing we can do about anything. We must learn to bear it."  "What's the use anyway? What is man's fate? Hasn't it always been to hope, but never to achieve? The wise man is the one- who does not attempt to hope."  "That is the right attitude to take."  "I don't know . . . I don't know what is right any more . . . How can we ever know?"  "Oh well, who is John Galt?"  Dagny turned brusquely and started away from them. One of the women followed her.  "But I do know it," said the woman, in the soft, mysterious tone of sharing a secret.  "You know what?"  "I know who is John Galt."  "Who?" Dagny asked tensely, stopping.  "I know a man who knew John Galt in person. This man is an old friend of a great-aunt of mine. He was there and he saw it happen. Do you know the legend of Atlantis, Miss Taggart?"  "What?"  "Atlantis."  "Why . . . vaguely."  "The Isles of the Blessed. That is what the Greeks called it, thousands of years ago. They said Atlantis was a place where hero-spirits lived in a happiness unknown to the rest of the earth. A place which only the spirits of heroes could enter, and they reached it without dying, because they carried the secret of life within them. Atlantis was lost to mankind, even then. But the Greeks knew that it had existed. They tried to find it. Some of them said it was underground, hidden in the heart of the earth. But most of them said it was an island. A radiant island in the Western Ocean. Perhaps what they were thinking of was America. They never found it. For centuries afterward, men said it was only a legend. They did not believe it, but they never stopped looking for it, because they knew that that was what they had to find."  "Well, what about John Galt?"  "He found it."  Dagny's interest was gone. "Who was he?"  "John Galt was a millionaire, a man of inestimable wealth. He was sailing his yacht one night, in mid-Atlantic, fighting the worst storm ever wreaked upon the world, when he found it. He saw it in the depth, where it had sunk to escape the reach of men. He saw the towers of Atlantis shining on the bottom of the ocean. It was a sight of such kind that when one had seen it, one could no longer wish to look at the rest of the earth. John Galt sank his ship and went down with his entire crew. They all chose to do it. My friend was the only one who survived."  "How interesting."  "My friend saw it with his own eyes," said the woman, offended. "It happened many years ago. But John Galt's family hushed up the story."  "And what happened to his fortune? I don't recall ever hearing of a Galt fortune."  "It went down with him." She added belligerently, "You don't have to believe it."  "Miss Taggart doesn't," said Francisco d'Anconia. "I do."  They turned. He had followed them and he stood looking at them with the insolence of exaggerated earnestness.  "Have you ever had faith in anything, Senor d'Anconia?" the woman asked angrily.  "No, madame."  He chuckled at her brusque departure. Dagny asked coldly, "What's the joke?"  "The joke's on that fool woman. She doesn't know that she was telling you the truth."  "Do you expect me to believe that?"  "No."  "Then what do you find so amusing?"  "Oh, a great many things here. Don't you?"  "No."  "Well, that's one of the things I find amusing."  "Francisco, will you leave me alone?"  "But I have. Didn't you notice that you were first to speak to me tonight?"  "Why do you keep watching me?"  "Curiosity."  "About what?"  "Your reaction to the things which you don't find amusing."  "Why should you care about my reaction to anything?"  "That is my own way of having a good time, which, incidentally, you are not having, are you, Dagny? Besides, you're the only woman worth watching here."  She stood defiantly still, because the way he looked at her demanded an angry escape. She stood as she always did, straight and taut, her head lifted impatiently. It was the unfeminine pose of an executive. But her naked shoulder betrayed the fragility of the body under the black dress, and the pose made her most truly a woman. The proud strength became a challenge to someone's superior strength, and the fragility a reminder that the challenge could be broken. She was not conscious of it. She had met no one able to see it.  He said, looking down at her body, "Dagny, what a magnificent waste!"  She had to turn and escape. She felt herself blushing, for the first time in years: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening.  She ran, trying not to think. The music stopped her. It was a sudden blast from the radio. She noticed Mort Liddy, who had turned it on, waving his arms to a group of friends, yelling, "That's it! That's it! I want you to hear it!"  The great burst of sound was the opening chords of Halley's Fourth Concerto. It rose in tortured triumph, speaking its denial of pain, its hymn to a distant vision. Then the notes broke. It was as if a handful of mud and pebbles had been flung at the music, and what followed was the sound of the rolling and the dripping. It was Halley's Concerto swung into a popular tune. It was Halley's melody torn apart, its holes stuffed with hiccoughs. The great statement of joy had become the giggling of a barroom. Yet it was still the remnant of Halley's melody that gave it form; it was the melody that supported it like a spinal cord.  "Pretty good?" Mort Liddy was smiling at his friends, boastfully and nervously. "Pretty good, eh? Best movie score of the year. Got me a prize. Got me a long-term contract. Yeah, this was my score for Heaven's in Your Backyard."  Dagny stood, staring at the room, as if one sense could replace another, as if sight could wipe out sound. She moved her head in a slow circle, trying to find an anchor somewhere. She saw Francisco leaning against a column, his arms crossed; he was looking straight at her; he was laughing.  Don't shake like this, she thought. Get out of here. This was the approach of an anger she could not control. She thought: Say nothing.  Walk steadily. Get out.  She had started walking, cautiously, very slowly. She heard Lillian's words and stopped. Lillian had said it many times this evening, in answer to the same question, but it was the first time that Dagny heard it.  "This?" Lillian was saying, extending her arm with the metal bracelet for the inspection of two smartly groomed women. "Why, no, it's not from a hardware store, it's a very special gift from my husband. Oh, yes, of course it's hideous. But don't you sec? It's supposed to be priceless. Of course, I'd exchange it for a common diamond bracelet any time, but somehow nobody will offer me one for it, even though it is so very, very valuable. Why? My dear, it's the first thing ever made of Rearden Metal."  Dagny did not see the room. She did not hear the music. She felt the pressure of dead stillness against her eardrums. She did not know the moment that preceded, or the moments that were to follow. She did not know those involved, neither herself, nor Lillian, nor Rearden, nor the meaning of her own action. It was a single instant, blasted out of context. She had heard. She was looking at the bracelet of green-blue metal.  She felt the movement of something being torn off her wrist, and she heard her own voice saying in the great stillness, very calmly, a voice cold as a skeleton, naked of emotion, "If you are not the coward that I think you are, you will exchange it."  On the palm of her hand, she was extending her diamond bracelet to Lillian.  "You're not serious, Miss Taggart?" said a woman's voice.  It was not Lillian's voice. Lillian's eyes were looking straight at her.  She saw them. Lillian knew that she was serious.  "Give me that bracelet," said Dagny, lifting her palm higher, the diamond band glittering across it.  "This is horrible!" cried some woman. It was strange that the cry stood out so sharply. Then Dagny realized that there were people standing around them and that they all stood in silence. She was hearing sounds now, even the music; it was Halley's mangled Concerto, somewhere far away.  She saw Rearden's face. It looked as if something within him were mangled, like the music; she did not know by what. He was watching them.  Lillian's mouth moved into an upturned crescent. It resembled a smile. She snapped the metal bracelet open, dropped it on Dagny's palm and took the diamond band.  "Thank you, Miss Taggart," she said.  Dagny's fingers closed about the metal. She felt that; she felt nothing else.  Lillian turned, because Rearden had approached her. He took the diamond bracelet from her hand. He clasped it on her wrist, raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.  He did not look at Dagny.  Lillian laughed, gaily, easily, attractively, bringing the room back to its normal mood.  "You may have it back, Miss Taggart, when you change your mind," she said.  Dagny had turned away. She felt calm and free. The pressure was gone. The need to get out had vanished.  She clasped the metal bracelet on her wrist. She liked the feel of its weight against her skin. Inexplicably, she felt a touch of feminine vanity, the kind she had never experienced before: the desire to be seen wearing this particular ornament.  From a distance, she heard snatches of indignant voices: "The most offensive gesture I've ever seen. . . . It was vicious. . . . I'm glad Lillian took her up on it. . . . Serves her right, if she feels like throwing a few thousand dollars away. . . . "  For the rest of the evening, Rearden remained by the side of his wife.  He shared her conversations, he laughed with her friends, he was suddenly the devoted, attentive, admiring husband.  He was crossing the room, carrying a tray with drinks requested by someone in Lillian's group-an unbecoming act of informality which nobody had ever seen him perform-when Dagny approached him.  She stopped and looked up at him, as if they were alone in his office.  She stood like an executive, her head lifted. He looked down at her. In the line of his glance, from the fingertips of her one hand to her face, her body was naked but for his metal bracelet.  "I'm sorry, Hank," she said, "but I had to do it."  His eyes remained expressionless. Yet she was suddenly certain that she knew what he felt: he wanted to slap her face.  "It was not necessary," he answered coldly, and walked on.  It was very late when Rearden entered his wife's bedroom. She was still awake. A lamp burned on her bedside table.  She lay in bed, propped up on pillows of pale green linen. Her bed jacket was pale green satin, worn with the untouched perfection of a window model; its lustrous folds looked as if the crinkle of tissue paper still lingered among them. The light, shaded to a tone of apple blossoms, fell on a table that held a book, a glass of fruit juice, and toilet accessories of silver glittering like instruments in a surgeon's case. Her arms had a tinge of porcelain. There was a touch of pale pink lipstick on her mouth. She showed no sign of exhaustion after the party-no sign of life to be exhausted. The place was a decorator's display of a lady groomed for sleep, not to be disturbed.  He still wore his dress clothes; his tie was loose, and a strand of hair hung over his face. She glanced at him without astonishment, as if she knew what the last hour in his room had done to him.  He looked at her silently. He had not entered her room for a long time. He stood, wishing he had not entered it now.  "Isn't it customary to talk, Henry?"  "If you wish."  "I wish you'd send one of your brilliant experts from the mills to take a look at our furnace. Do you know that it went out during the party and Simons had a terrible time getting it started again? . . . Mrs. Weston says that our best achievement is our cook-she loved the hors d'oeuvres. . . . Balph Eubank said a very funny thing about you, he said you're a crusader with a factory's chimney smoke for a plume. . . . I'm glad you don't like Francisco d'Anconia. I can't stand him."  He did not care to explain his presence, or to disguise defeat, or to admit it by leaving. Suddenly, it did not matter to him what she guessed or felt. He walked to the window and stood, looking out.  Why had she married him?-he thought. It was a question he had not asked himself on their wedding day, eight years ago. Since then, in tortured loneliness, he had asked it many times. He had found no answer.  It was not for position, he thought, or for money. She came from an old family that had both. Her family's name was not among the most distinguished and their fortune was modest, but both were sufficient to let her be included in the top circles of New York's society, where he had met her. Nine years ago, he had appeared in New York like an explosion, in the glare of the success of Rearden Steel, a success that had been thought impossible by the city's experts. It was his indifference that made him spectacular. He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment.  He attended, reluctantly, a few social occasions to which he was invited by men who sought his favor. He did not know, but they knew, that his courteous politeness was condescension toward the people who had expected to snub him, the people who had said that the age of achievement was past.  It was Lillian's austerity that attracted him-the conflict between her austerity and her behavior. He had never liked anyone or expected to be liked. He found himself held by the spectacle of a woman who was obviously pursuing him but with obvious reluctance, as if against her own will, as if fighting a desire she resented. It was she who planned that they should meet, then faced him coldly, as if not caring that he knew it. She spoke little; she had an air of mystery that seemed to tell him he would never break through her proud detachment, and an air of amusement, mocking her own desire and his.  He had not known many women. He had moved toward his goal, sweeping aside everything that did not pertain to it in the world and in himself. His dedication to his work was like one of the fires he dealt with, a fire that burned every lesser element, every impurity out of the white stream of a single metal. He was incapable of halfway concerns.  But there were times when he felt a sudden access of desire, so violent that it could not be given to a casual encounter. He had surrendered to it, on a few rare occasions through the years, with women he had thought he liked. He had been left feeling an angry emptiness-because he had sought an act of triumph, though he had not known of what nature, but the response he received was only a woman's acceptance of a casual pleasure, and he knew too clearly that what he had won had no meaning. He was left, not with a sense of attainment, but with a sense of his own degradation. He grew to hate his desire. He fought it. He came to believe the doctrine that this desire was wholly physical, a desire, not of consciousness, but of matter, and he rebelled against the thought that his flesh could be free to choose and that its choice was impervious to the will of his mind. He had spent his life in mines and mills, shaping matter to his wishes by the power of his brain-and he found it intolerable that he should be unable to control the matter of his own body. He fought it. He had won his every battle against inanimate nature; but this was a battle he lost.  It was the difficulty of the conquest that made him want Lillian.  She seemed to be a woman who expected and deserved a pedestal; this made him want to drag her down to his bed. To drag her down, were the words in his mind; they gave him a dark pleasure, the sense of a victory worth winning.  He could not understand why-he thought it was an obscene conflict, the sign of some secret depravity within him-why he felt, at the same time, a profound pride at the thought of granting to a woman the title of his wife. The feeling was solemn and shining; it was almost as if he felt that he wished to honor a woman by the act of possessing her.  Lillian seemed to fit the image he had not known he held, had not known he wished to find; he saw the grace, the pride, the purity; the rest was in himself; he did not know that he was looking at a reflection.  He remembered the day when Lillian came from New York to his office, of her own sudden choice, and asked him to take her through his mills. He heard a soft, low, breathless tone-the tone of admiration-  growing in her voice, as she questioned him about his work and looked at the place around her. He looked at her graceful figure moving against the bursts of furnace flame, and at the light, swift steps of her high heels stumbling through drifts of slag, as she walked resolutely by his side.  The look in her eyes, when she watched a heat of steel being poured, was like his own feeling for it made visible to him. When her eyes moved up to his face, he saw the same look, but intensified to a degree that seemed to make her helpless and silent. It was at dinner, that evening, that he asked her to marry him.  It took him some time after his marriage before he admitted to himself that this was torture. He still remembered the night when he admitted it, when he told himself-the veins of his wrists pulled tight as he stood by the bed, looking down at Lillian-that he deserved the torture and that he would endure it. Lillian was not looking at him; she was adjusting her hair. "May I go to sleep now?" she asked.  She had never objected; she had never refused him anything; she submitted whenever he wished. She submitted in the manner of complying with the rule that it was, at times, her duty to become an inanimate object turned over to her husband's use.  She did not censure him. She made it clear that she took it for granted that men had degrading instincts which constituted the secret, ugly part of marriage. She was condescendingly tolerant. She smiled, in amused distaste, at the intensity of what he experienced. "It's the most undignified pastime I know of," she said to him once, "but I have never entertained the illusion that men are superior to animals."  His desire for her had died in the first week of their marriage. What remained was only a need which he was unable to destroy. He had never entered a whorehouse; he thought, at times, that the self-loathing he would experience there could be no worse than what he felt when he was driven to enter his wife's bedroom.  He would often find her reading a book. She would put it aside, with a white ribbon to mark the pages. When lie lay exhausted, his eyes closed, still breathing in gasps, she would turn on the light, pick up the book and continue her reading.  He told himself that he deserved the torture, because he had wished never to touch her again and was unable to maintain his decision. He despised himself for that. He despised a need which now held no shred of joy or meaning, which had become the mere need of a woman's body, an anonymous body that belonged to a woman whom he had to forget while he held it. He became convinced that the need was depravity.  He did not condemn Lillian. He felt a dreary, indifferent respect for her. His hatred of his own desire had made him accept the doctrine that women were pure and that a pure woman was one incapable of physical pleasure.  Through the quiet agony of the years of his marriage, there had been one thought which he would not permit himself to consider; the thought of infidelity. He had given his word. He intended to keep it. It was not loyalty to Lillian; it was not the person of Lillian that he wished to protect from dishonor-but the person of his wife.  He thought of that now, standing at the window. He had not wanted to enter her room. He had fought against it. He had fought, more fiercely, against knowing the particular reason why he would not be able to withstand it tonight. Then, seeing her, he had known suddenly that he would not touch her. The reason which had driven him here tonight was the reason which made it impossible for him.  He stood still, feeling free of desire, feeling the bleak relief of indifference to his body, to this room, even to his presence here. He had turned away from her, not to see her lacquered chastity. What he thought he should feel was respect; what he felt was revulsion.  ". . . but Dr. Pritchett said that our culture is dying because our universities have to depend on the alms of the meat packers, the steel puddlers and the purveyors of breakfast cereals."  Why had she married him?-he thought. That bright, crisp voice was not talking at random. She knew why he had come here. She knew what it would do to him to see her pick up a silver buffer and go on talking gaily, polishing her fingernails. She was talking about the party.  But she did not mention Bertram Scudder-or Dagny Taggart.  What had she sought in marrying him? He felt the presence of some cold, driving purpose within her-but found nothing to condemn. She had never tried to use him. She made no demands on him. She found no satisfaction in the prestige of industrial power-she spurned it-she preferred her own circle of friends. She was not after money-she spent little-she was indifferent to the kind of extravagance he could have afforded. He had no right to accuse her, he thought, or ever to break the bond. She was a woman of honor in their marriage. She wanted nothing material from him.  He turned and looked at her wearily.  "Next time you give a party," he said, "stick to your own crowd. Don't invite what you think are my friends. I don't care to meet them socially."  She laughed, startled and pleased. "I don't blame you, darling," she said.  He walked out, adding nothing else.  What did she want from him?-he thought. What was she after? In the universe as he knew it. There was no answer.