CHAPTER IX THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

She looked at the glowing bands on the skin of her arm, spaced like bracelets from her wrist to her shoulder. They were strips of sunlight from the Venetian blinds on the window of an unfamiliar room. She saw a bruise above her elbow, with dark beads that had been blood. Her arm lay on the blanket that covered her body. She was aware of her legs and hips, but the rest of her body was only a sense of lightness, as if it were stretched restfully across the air in a place that looked like a cage made of sunrays.  Turning to look at him, she thought: From his aloofness, from his manner of glass-enclosed formality, from his pride in never being made to feel anything-to this, to Hank Rearden in bed beside her, after hours of a violence which they could not name now, not in words or in daylight-but which was in their eyes, as they looked at each other, which they wanted to name, to stress, to throw at each other's face.  He saw the face of a young girl, her lips suggesting a smile, as if her natural state of relaxation were a state of radiance, a lock of hair falling across her cheek to the curve of a naked shoulder, her eyes looking at him as if she were ready to accept anything he might wish to say, as she had been ready to accept anything he had wished to do.  He reached over and moved the lock of hair from her cheek, cautiously, as if it were fragile. He held it back with his fingertips and looked at her face. Then his fingers closed suddenly in her hair and he raised the lock to his lips. The way he pressed his mouth to it was tenderness, but the way his fingers held it was despair.  He dropped back on the pillow and lay still, his eyes closed. His face seemed young, at peace. Seeing it for a moment without the reins of tension, she realized suddenly the extent of the unhappiness he had borne; but it's past now, she thought, it's over.  He got up, not looking at her. His face was blank and closed again.  He picked up his clothes from the floor and proceeded to dress, standing in the middle of the room, half-turned away from her. He acted, not as if she wasn't present, but as if it did not matter that she was. His movements, as he buttoned his shirt, as he buckled the belt of his slacks, had the rapid precision of performing a duty.  She lay back on the pillow, watching him, enjoying the sight of his figure in motion. She liked the gray slacks and shirt-the expert mechanic of the John Galt Line, she thought, in the stripes of sunlight and shadow, like a convict behind bars. But they were not bars any longer, they were the cracks of a wall which the John Galt Line had broken, the advance notice of what awaited them outside, beyond the Venetian blinds-she thought of the trip back, on the new rail, with the first train from Wyatt Junction-the trip back to her office in the Taggart Building and to all the things now open for her to win-but she was free to let it wait, she did not want to think of it, she was thinking of the first touch of his mouth on hers-she was free to feel it, to hold a moment when nothing else was of any concern-she smiled defiantly at the strips of sky beyond the blinds.  "I want you to know this."  He stood by the bed, dressed, looking down at her. His voice had pronounced it evenly, with great clarity and no inflection. She looked up at him obediently. He said: "What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I've never loved anyone.  “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore-for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind.  “You're not. You're as vile an animal as I am. I should loathe my discovering it. I don't. Yesterday, I would have killed anyone who'd tell me that you were capable of doing what I've had you do. Today, I would give my life not to let it be otherwise, not to have you be anything but the bitch you are. All the greatness that I saw in you-I would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of your talent at an animal's sensation of pleasure. We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren't we? Well, this is all that's left of us-and I want no self-deception about it."  He spoke slowly, as if lashing himself with his words. There was no sound of emotion in his voice, only the lifeless pull of effort; it was not the tone of a man's willingness to speak, but the ugly, tortured sound of duty.  "I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. It had been my pride that I had always acted on my convictions. I've given in to a desire which I despise. It is a desire that has reduced my mind, my will, my being, my power to exist into an abject dependence upon you-not even upon the Dagny Taggart whom I admired-but upon your body, your hands, your mouth and the few seconds of a convulsion of your muscles. I had never broken my word. Now I've broken an oath I gave for life. I had never committed an act that had to be hidden. Now I am to lie, to sneak, to hide. Whatever I wanted, I was free to proclaim it aloud and achieve it in the sight of the whole world.  “Now my only desire is one I loathe to name even to myself. But it is my only desire. I'm going to have you-I'd give up everything I own for it, the mills, the Metal, the achievement of my whole life. I'm going to have you at the price of more than myself: at the price of my self esteem-and I want you to know it. I want no pretense, no evasion, no silent indulgence, with the nature of our actions left unnamed. I want no pretense about love, value, loyalty or respect. I want no shred of honor left to us, to hide behind. I've never begged for mercy. I've chosen to do this-and I'll take all the consequences, including the full recognition of my choice. It's depravity-and I accept it as such-and there is no height of virtue that I wouldn't give up for it. Now if you wish to slap my face, go ahead. I wish you would."  She had listened, sitting up straight, holding the blanket clutched at her throat to cover her body. At first, he had seen her eyes growing dark with incredulous shock. Then it seemed to him that she was listening with greater attentiveness, but seeing more than his face, even though her eyes were fixed on his. She looked as if she were studying intently some revelation that had never confronted her before. He felt as if some ray of light were growing stronger on his face, because he saw its reflection on hers, as she watched him-he saw the shock vanishing, then the wonder-he saw her face being smoothed into a strange serenity that seemed quiet and glittering at once.  When he stopped, she burst out laughing.  The shock to him was that he heard no anger in her laughter. She laughed simply, easily, in joyous amusement, in release, not as one laughs at the solution of a problem, but at the discovery that no problem had ever existed.  She threw the blanket off with a stressed, deliberate sweep of her arm.  She stood up. She saw her clothes on the floor and kicked them aside.  She stood facing him, naked. She said: "I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you-and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed-and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There's nothing you'll have to pretend-don't think of me, don't feel, don't care-I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it's to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but that sensation of pleasure which you despise--but I want it from you. You'd give up any height of virtue for it, while I-I haven't any to give up. There's none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. And seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don't have to fear that you're now dependent upon me. It's I who will depend on any whim of yours. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any. terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please-I'm not afraid to admit it-I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I-as my pride. I'm more proud of it than of anything I've done, more proud than of building the Line. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.”  When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.  The rain was invisible in the darkness of the streets, but it hung like the sparkling fringe of a lampshade under the corner light. Fumbling in his pockets, James Taggart discovered that he had lost his handkerchief.  He swore half-aloud, with resentful malice, as if the loss, the rain and his head cold were someone's personal conspiracy against him.  There was a thin gruel of mud on the pavements; he felt a gluey suction under his shoe soles and a chill slipping down past his collar. He did not want to walk or to stop. He had no place to go.  Leaving his office, after the meeting of the Board of Directors, he had realized suddenly that there were no other appointments, that he had a long evening ahead and no one to help him kill it. The front pages of the newspapers were screaming of the triumph of the John Galt Line, as the radios had screamed it yesterday and all through the night. The name of Taggart Transcontinental was stretched in headlines across the continent, like its track, and he had smiled in answer to the congratulations. He had smiled, seated at the bead of the long table, at the Board meeting, while the Directors spoke about the soaring rise of the Taggart stock on the Exchange, while they cautiously asked to see his written agreement with his sister-just in case, they said-and commented that it was fine, it was hole proof, there was no doubt but that she would have to turn the Line over to Taggart Transcontinental at once, they spoke about their brilliant future and the debt of gratitude which the company owed to James Taggart.  He had sat through the meeting, wishing it were over with, so that he could go home. Then he had stepped out into the street and realized that home was the one place where he dared not go tonight. He could not be alone, not in the next few hours, yet there was nobody to call.  He did not want to see people. He kept seeing the eyes of the men of the Board when they spoke about his greatness: a sly, filmy look that held contempt for him and, more terrifyingly, for themselves.  He walked, head down, a needle of rain pricking the skin of his neck once in a while. He looked away whenever he passed a newsstand. The papers seemed to shriek at him the name of the John Galt Line, and another name which he did not want to hear: Ragnar Danneskjold. A ship bound for the People's State of Norway with an Emergency Gift cargo of machine tools had been seized by Ragnar Danneskjold last night. That story disturbed him in some personal manner which he could not explain. The feeling seemed to have some quality in common with the things he felt about the John Galt Line.  It's because he had a cold, he thought; he wouldn't feel this way if he didn't have a cold; a man couldn't be expected to be in top form when he had a cold-he couldn't help it-what did they expect him to do tonight, sing and dance?-he snapped the question angrily at the unknown judges of his unwitnessed mood. He fumbled for his handkerchief again, cursed and decided that he'd better stop somewhere to buy some paper tissues.  Across the square of what had once been a busy neighborhood, he saw the lighted windows of a dime store, still open hopefully at this late hour. There's another one that will go out of business pretty soon, he thought as he crossed the square; the thought gave him pleasure.  There were glaring lights inside, a few tired salesgirls among a spread of deserted counters, and the screaming of a phonograph record being played for a lone, listless customer in a corner. The music swallowed the sharp edges of Taggart's voice: he asked for paper tissues in a tone which implied that the salesgirl was responsible for his cold. The girl turned to the counter behind her, but turned back once to glance swiftly at his face. She took a packet, but stopped, hesitating, studying him with peculiar curiosity.  "Are you James Taggart?" she asked.  "Yes!" he snapped. "Why?"  "Oh!"  She gasped like a child at a burst of firecrackers; she was looking at him with a glance which he had thought to be reserved only for movie stars.  "I saw your picture in the paper this morning, Mr. Taggart," she said very rapidly, a faint flush appearing on her face and vanishing. "It said what a great achievement it was and how it was really you who had done it all, only you didn't want it to be known."  "Oh," said Taggart. He was smiling.  "You look just like your picture," she said in immense astonishment, and added, "Imagine you walking in here like this, in person!"  "Shouldn't I?" His tone was amused.  "I mean, everybody's talking about it, the whole country, and you're the man who did it-and here you are! I've never seen an important person before. I've never been so close to anything important, I mean to any newspaper news."  He had never had the experience of seeing his presence give color to a place he entered: the girl looked as if she was not tired any longer, as if the dime store had become a scene of drama and wonder.  "Mr. Taggart, is it true, what they said about you in the paper?"  "What did they say?"  "About your secret."  "What secret?"  "Well, they said that when everybody was fighting about your bridge, whether it would stand or not, you didn't argue with them, you just went ahead, because you knew it would stand, when nobody else was sure of it-so the Line was a Taggart project and you were the guiding spirit behind the scenes, but you kept it secret, because you didn't care whether you got credit for it or not."  He had seen the mimeographed release of his Public Relations Department. "Yes," he said, "it's true." The way she looked at him made him feel as if it were.  "It was wonderful of you, Mr. Taggart."  "Do you always remember what you read in the newspapers, so well, in such detail?"  "Why, yes, I guess so-all the interesting things. The big things. I like to read about them. Nothing big ever happens to me."  She said it gaily, without self-pity. There was a young, determined brusqueness in her voice and movements. She had a head of reddish brown curls, wide-set eyes, a few freckles on the bridge of an upturned nose. He thought that one would call her face attractive if one ever noticed it, but there was no particular reason to notice it. It was a common little face, except for a look of alertness, of eager interest, a look that expected the world to contain an exciting secret behind every corner.  "Mr. Taggart, how does it feel to be a great man?"  "How does it feel to be a little girl?"  She laughed. "Why, wonderful."  "Then you're better off than I am."  "Oh, how can you say such a-"  "Maybe you're lucky if you don't have anything to do with the big events in the newspapers. Big. What do you call big, anyway?"  "Why . . . important."  "What's important?"  "You're the one who ought to tell me that, Mr. Taggart."  "Nothing's important."  She looked at him incredulously. "You, of all people, saying that tonight of all nights!"  "1 don't feel wonderful at all, if that's what you want to know. I've never felt less wonderful in my life."  He was astonished to see her studying his face with a look of concern such as no one had ever granted him. "You're worn out, Mr. Taggart," she said earnestly. "Tell them to go to hell."  "Whom?"  "Whoever's getting you down. It isn't right."  "What isn't?"  "That you should feel this way. You've had a tough time, but you've licked them all, so you ought to enjoy yourself now. You've earned it."  "And how do you propose that I enjoy myself?"  "Oh, I don't know. But I thought you'd be having a celebration tonight, a party with all the big shots, and champagne, and things given to you, like keys to cities, a real swank party like that-instead of walking around all by yourself, shopping for paper handkerchiefs, of all fool things!"  "You give me those handkerchiefs, before you forget them altogether," he said, handing her a dime. "And as to the swank party, did it occur to you that I might not want to see anybody tonight?"  She considered it earnestly. "No," she said, "I hadn't thought of it. But I can see why you wouldn't."  "Why?" It was a question to which he bad no answer.  "Nobody's really good enough for you, Mr. Taggart," she answered very simply, not as flattery, but as a matter of fact.  "Is that what you think?"  "I don't think I like people very much, Mr. Taggart. Not most of them."  "I don't either. Not any of them."  "I thought a man like you-you wouldn't know how mean they can be and how they try to step on you and ride on your back, if you let them. I thought the big men in the world could get away from them and not have to be flea-bait all of the time, but maybe I was wrong."  "What do you mean, flea-bait?"  "Oh, it's just something I tell myself when things get tough-that I've got to beat my way out to where I won't feel like I'm flea-bitten all the time by all kinds of lousiness-but maybe it's the same anywhere, only the fleas get bigger."  "Much bigger."  She remained silent, as if considering something. "It's funny," she said sadly to some thought of her own.  "What's funny?"  "I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater-the unhappier. It didn't make sense to me. But maybe it's true."  "It's much truer than you think."  She looked away, her face disturbed.  "Why do you worry so much about the great men?" he asked. "What are you, a hero worshipper of some kind?"  She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile, while her face remained solemnly grave; it was the most eloquently personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she answered in a quiet, impersonal voice, "Mr. Taggart, what else is there to look up to?"  A screeching sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer, rang out suddenly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence.  She jerked her head, as if awakening at the scream of an alarm clock, then sighed. "That's closing time, Mr. Taggart," she said regretfully.  "Go get your hat-I'll wait for you outside," he said.  She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.  "No kidding?" she whispered.  "No kidding."  She whirled around and ran like a streak to the door of the employee’s quarters, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man's invitation.  He stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling-never to identify his emotions was the only steadfast rule of his life; he merely felt it-and this particular feeling was pleasurable, which was the only identification he cared to know. But the feeling was the product of a thought he would not utter. He had often met girls of the lower classes, who had put on a brash little act, pretending to look up to him, spilling crude flattery for an obvious purpose; he had neither liked nor resented them; he had found a bored amusement in their company and he had granted them the status of his equals in a game he considered natural to both players involved. This girl was different. The unuttered words in his mind were: The damn little fool means it.  That he waited for her impatiently, when he stood in the rain on the sidewalk, that she was the one person he needed tonight, did not disturb him or strike him as a contradiction. He did not name the nature of his need. The unnamed and the unuttered could not clash into a contradiction.  When she came out, he noted the peculiar combination of her shyness and of her head held high. She wore an ugly raincoat, made worse by a gob of cheap jewelry on the lapel, and a small hat of plush flowers planted defiantly among her curls. Strangely, the lift of her head made the apparel seem attractive; it stressed how well she wore even the things she wore.  "Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?" he asked.  She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the right words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stating it to herself, "You didn't want to see anybody tonight, but you want to see me. . . " He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in anyone's voice.  She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers they passed. After a while, she said, "I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they'd happen to me."  "Where do you come from?"  "Buffalo."  "Got any family?"  She hesitated. "I guess so. In Buffalo."  "What do you mean, you guess so?"  "I walked out on them."  "Why?"  "I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away."  "Why? What happened?"  "Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That's what I couldn't stand."  "What do you mean?"  "Well, they . . . well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man's never been any good, and Ma didn't care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn't get out, it would get me-I'd rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn't say good-bye. They didn't even know I was going." She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. "Mr. Taggart," she said, "it was a Taggart train."  "When did you come here?"  "Six months ago."  "And you're all alone?"  "Yes," she said happily.  "What was it you wanted to do?"  "Well, you know-make something of myself, get somewhere."  "Where?"  "Oh, I don't know, but . . . but people do things in the world. I saw pictures of New York and I thought"-she pointed at the giant buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window-"I thought, somebody built those buildings-he didn't just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it's a goddamn world and . . . Mr. Taggart"-she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him-"we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take-that they didn't really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!" Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard.  "I don't want to talk about them," she said. "Not with you. This-my meeting you, I mean-that's what they couldn't have. That's what I'm not going to share with them. It's mine, not theirs."  "How old are you?" he asked.  "Nineteen."  When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she'd have a good figure if she'd eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.  "What's your name?" he asked.  "Cherryl Brooks."  "Well, sit down."  He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.  He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoelaces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.  "Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?"  "Why should you care whether I am or not?"  "Because . . . well, if you haven't the right to be happy and proud, who has?"  "That's what I want to know-who has?" He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. "He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?"  "Who?"  "Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."  She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"  "He didn't do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he's never done anything for any other reason."  "What's wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?" Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle. "That's nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don't mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all his profits, and so have you. You're saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done-you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!"  "Yeah? That's what you think. She's a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that's what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I'm not so sure it was great-building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation."  "But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line."  "Yes, because it was my duty-to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don't expect me to enjoy it. I'm not so sure it was great-inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron-why, do you know that the People's State of China hasn't even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people's heads?"  "But . . . but I don't see that that's your fault."  "Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days-when there's so much suffering around us-would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it's great? Well, it's not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn't pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don't read about them in the headlines and you don't run to gape at them at grade crossings-because they can't invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!"  She was looking at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness toned down, her eyes subdued. He felt better.  He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a sudden recollection.  "It was funny, though," he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone of a confidence to a pal. "You should have seen Orren Boyle yesterday, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt Junction! He turned green-but I mean, green, the color of a fish that's been lying around too long! Do you know what he did last night, by way of taking the bad news? Hired himself a suite at the Valhalla Hotel-and you know what that is-and the last I heard, he was still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population of upper Amsterdam Avenue!"  "Who is Mr. Boyle?" she asked, stupefied.  "Oh, a fat slob that's inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yesterday! I got a kick out of that. That-and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That smoothy didn't like it a bit, oh not a bit!-the elegant Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-leather vocabulary-but he carried it off pretty well, I must say, only you could see him squirming in every paragraph-I mean, that interview he gave out this morning, where he said, 'The country gave Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country something in return.' That was pretty nifty, considering who's been riding on the gravy train and . . . well, considering. That was better than Bertram Scudder-Mr. Scudder couldn't think of anything but 'No comment,' when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice his sentiments. 'No comment'-from Bertram Scudder who's never been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about anything you ask him or don't ask, Abyssinian poetry or the state of the ladies' rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rearden didn't invent that Metal-because he was told, by an unnamed reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless inventor whom he murdered!"  He was chuckling happily. She was listening as to a lecture on higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the language, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was certain that it did not mean-coming from him-what it would have meant anywhere else.  He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly.  He slumped into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred.  "She's coming back tomorrow," he said, with a sound like a chuckle devoid of amusement.  "Who?"  "My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she'll think she's great, won't she?"  "You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?" He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer. "Why?" she asked.  "Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."  "You don't mean it, Mr. Taggart."  "I mean, we're only human beings-and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones-so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good-that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."  "But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"  "Then he ought to apologize for it."  "To whom?"  "To those who haven't done it."  "I . . . I don't understand."  "Of course you don't. It takes years and years of study in the higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?" She shook her head, frightened. "How do you know what's good, anyway? Who knows what's good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes-as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that bridge hasn't collapsed? You only think it hasn't. How do you know that there's any bridge at all? You think that a system of philosophy-such as Dr. Pritchett's-is just something academic, remote, impractical? But it isn't. Oh, boy, how it isn't!"  "But, Mr. Taggart, the Line you built-"  "Oh, what's that Line, anyway? It's only a material achievement, is that of any importance? Is there any greatness in anything material? Only a low animal can gape at that bridge-when there are so many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recognition? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue and cry and front pages about some trick arrangement of some scraps of matter. Do they care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it's true that a great man is doomed to unhappiness in this depraved world!" He leaned forward, staring at her intently. "I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you something . . . unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person."  He saw the puzzled, anxious look of her face. "But, Mr. Taggart, you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune for you overnight, you got everything you could ask for-aren't you glad of it?"  In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, sensing a sudden fear within him. He answered, "No."  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.  Hours later, when they lay in bed together, his hand moving over her body, he asked suddenly, throwing her back against the curve of his arm, bending over her-and she knew, by the intensity of his face, by the sound of a gasp somewhere in the quality of his voice, even though his voice was low and steady, that the question broke out of him as if it were worn by the hours of torture he had spent with it: "Who were the other men that had you?"  He looked at her as if the question were a sight visualized in every detail, a sight he loathed, but would not abandon; she heard the contempt in his voice, the hatred, the suffering-and an odd eagerness that did not pertain to torture; he had asked the question, holding her body tight against him.  She answered evenly, but he saw a dangerous flicker in her eyes, as of a warning that she understood him too well. "There was only one other, Hank."  "When?"  "When I was seventeen.”  "Did it last?"  "For some years."  "Who was he?"  She drew back, lying against his arm; he leaned closer, his face taut; she held his eyes. "I won't answer you."  "Did you love him?"  "I won't answer."  "Did you like sleeping with him?"  "Yes!"  The laughter in her eyes made it sound like a slap across his face, the laughter of her knowledge that this was the answer he dreaded and wanted.  He twisted her arms behind her, holding her helpless, her breasts pressed against him; she felt the pain ripping through her shoulders, she heard the anger in his words and the huskiness of pleasure in his voice: "Who was he?"  She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain, was the shape of a mocking smile.  He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his lips.  He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out of her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eagerness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way she wanted to be taken.  * * *  The silhouette of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire in the sky, raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inexhaustible number of small black buckets rode out of the earth in a diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter kept going through the rattle of the chains which a young man in blue overalls was fastening over the machinery, securing it to the flatcars lined on the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.  Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying, blondish head.  There was a first touch of September chill in the air. All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide open, while men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking the vital organs and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.  "Another one?" asked Mr. Mowen, jerking his thumb at the plant, even though he knew the answer.  "Huh?" asked the young man, who had not noticed him standing there.  "Another company moving to Colorado?"  "Uh-huh."  "It's the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks," said Mr. Mowen. "And when you look at what's happening in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic coast . . ."  The young man was not looking and did not seem to listen. "It's like a leaking faucet," said Mr. Mowen, "and all the water's running out to Colorado. All the money." The young man flung the chain across and followed it deftly, climbing over the big shape covered with canvas.  "You'd think people would have some feeling for their native state, some loyalty . . . But they're running away. I don't know what's happening to people."  "It's the Bill," said the young man.  "What Bill?"  "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill."  "How do you mean?"  "I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he's made up his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel."  "I don't see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It's a rotten shame-old firms that have been here for generations . . . There ought to be a law . . ."  The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it. Behind him. the conveyor belt kept rising and clattering against the sky.  Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in the reddish glow of the evening.  Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since the days of his father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.  "It isn't right," he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large, but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear him.  "That's not the way it was in my father's time. I'm not a big shot. I don't want to fight anybody. What's the matter with the world?" There was no answer, "Now you, for instance-are they taking you along to Colorado?"  "Me? No. I don't work here. I'm just transient labor. Just picked up this job helping to lug the stuff out."  "Well, where are you going to go when they move away?"  "Haven't any idea."  "What are you going to do, if more of them move out?"  "Wait and see."  Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously: he could not tell whether the answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the young man's attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking down.  He moved on, to the shrouded shapes on the next flatcar, and Mr. Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something up in space: "I've got rights, haven't I? I was born here. I expected the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he's got a right to count on it, hasn't he? . . . Something ought to be done about it."  "About what?"  "Oh, I know, you think it's great, don't you?-that Taggart boom and Rearden Metal and the gold rush to Colorado and the drunken spree out there, with Wyatt and his bunch expanding their production like kettles boiling over! Everybody thinks it's great-that's all you hear anywhere you go-people are slap-happy, making plans like six-year olds on a vacation-you'd think it was a national honeymoon of some kind or a permanent Fourth of July!"  The young man said nothing.  "Well, I don't think so," said Mr. Mowen. He lowered his voice. 'The newspapers don't say so, either-mind you that-the newspapers aren't saying anything."  Mr. Mowen heard no answer, only the clanking of the chains.  "Why are they all running to Colorado?" he asked. "What have they got down there that we haven't got?"  The young man grinned. "Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got."  "What?" The young man did not answer. "I don't see it. It's a backward, primitive, unenlightened place. They don't even have a modern government. It's the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing-outside of keeping law courts and a police department.  It doesn't do anything for the people. It doesn't help anybody. I don't see why all our best companies want to run there."  The young man glanced down at him, but did not answer.  Mr. Mowen sighed. "Things aren't right," he said. "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill was a sound idea. There's got to be a chance for everybody. It's a rotten shame if people like Quinn take unfair advantage of it. Why didn't he let somebody else start manufacturing ball bearings in Colorado? . . . I wish the Colorado people would leave us alone. That Stockton Foundry out there had no right going into the switch and signal business. That's been my business for years, I have the right of seniority, it isn't fair, it's dog-eat-dog competition, newcomers shouldn't be allowed to muscle in. Where am I going to sell switches and signals? There were two big railroads out in Colorado. Now the Phoenix-Durango's gone, so there's just Taggart Transcontinental left. It isn't fair-their forcing Dan Conway out. There's got to be room for competition. . . . And I've been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle-and now he says he can't promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there's a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench. It isn't fair-Rearden being allowed to ruin other people's markets that way. . . . And I want to get some Rearden Metal, too, I need it-but try and get it! He has a waiting line that would stretch across three states-nobody can get a scrap of it, except his old friends, people like Wyatt and Danagger and such. It isn't fair. It's discrimination. I'm just as good as the next fellow. I'm entitled to my share of that Metal."  The young man looked up. "I was in Pennsylvania last week," he said. "I saw the Rearden mills. There's a place that's busy! They're building four new open-hearth furnaces, and they've got six more coming. . . . New furnaces," he said, looking off to the south. "Nobody's built a new furnace on the Atlantic coast for the last five years. . . ." He stood against the sky, on the top of a shrouded motor, looking off at the dusk with a faint smile of eagerness and longing, as one looks at the distant vision of one's love. "They're busy. . . ." he said.  Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the chain was the first break in the smooth competence of his movements: it looked like a jolt of anger.  Mr. Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the smoke-the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening air, stretching in a long haze all the way to the city of New York somewhere beyond the sunset-and he felt reassured by the thought of New York in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas tanks, cranes and high tension lines. He felt a current of power flowing through every grimy structure of his familiar street; he liked the figure of the young man above him, there was something reassuring in the way he worked, something that blended with the skyline. . . . Yet Mr. Mowen wondered why he felt that a crack was growing somewhere, eating through the solid, the eternal walls.  "Something ought to be done," said Mr. Mowen. "A friend of mine went out of business last week-the oil business-had a couple of wells down in Oklahoma-couldn't compete with Ellis Wyatt. It isn't fair. They ought to leave the little people a chance. They ought to place a limit on Wyatt's output. He shouldn't be allowed to produce so much that he'll swamp everybody else off the market. . . . I got stuck in New York yesterday, had to leave my car there and come home on a damn commuter local, couldn't get any gas for the car, they said there's a shortage of oil in the city. . . . Things aren't right. Something ought to be done about it. . . ."  Looking at the skyline, Mr. Mowen wondered what was the nameless threat to it and who was its destroyer.  "What do you want to do about it?" asked the young man.  "Who, me?" said Mr. Mowen. "I wouldn't know. I'm not a big shot. I can't solve national problems. I just want to make a living. All I know is, somebody ought to do something about it. . . . Things aren't right. . . . Listen-what's your name?"  "Owen Kellogg."  "Listen, Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?"  "You wouldn't care to know."  A whistle blew on a distant tower, the night-shift whistle, and Mr. Mowen realized that it was getting late. He sighed, buttoning his coat, turning to go.  "Well, things are being done," he said. "Steps are being taken. Constructive steps. The Legislature has passed a Bill giving wider powers to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. They've appointed a very able man as Top Co-ordinator. Can't say I've heard of him before, but the newspapers said he's a man to be watched. His name is Wesley Mouch."  Dagny stood at the window of her living room, looking at the city. It was late and the lights were like the last sparks left glittering on the black remnants of a bonfire. She felt at peace, and she wished she could hold her mind still to let her own emotions catch up with her, to look at every moment of the month that had rushed past her. She had had no time to feel that she was back in her own office at Taggart Transcontinental; there had been so much to do that she forgot it was a return from exile. She had not noticed what Jim had said on her return or whether he had said anything. There had been only one person whose reaction she had wanted to know; she had telephoned the Wayne-Falkland Hotel; but Senor Francisco d'Anconia, she was told, had gone back to Buenos Aires.  She remembered the moment when she signed her name at the bottom of a long legal page; it was the moment that ended the John Galt Line. Now it was the Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinental again-except that the men of the train crews refused to give up its name. She, too, found it hard to give up; she forced herself not to call it "the John Galt," and wondered why that required an effort, and why she felt a faint wrench of sadness.  One evening, on a sudden impulse, she had turned the corner of the Taggart Building, for a last look at the office of John Galt, Inc., in the alley; she did not know what she wanted-just to see it, she thought.  A plank barrier had been raised along the sidewalk: the old building was being demolished; it had given up, at last. She had climbed over the planks and, by the light of the street lamp that had once thrown a stranger's shadow across the pavement, she had looked in through the window of her former office. Nothing was left of the ground floor; the partitions had been torn down, there were broken pipes hanging from the ceiling and a pile of rubble on the floor. There was nothing to see.  She had asked Rearden whether he had come there one night last spring and stood outside her window, fighting his desire to enter. But she had known, even before he answered, that he had not. She did not tell him why she asked it. She did not know why that memory still disturbed her at times.  Beyond the window of her living room, the lighted rectangle of the calendar hung like a small shipping tag in the black sky. It read: September 2. She smiled defiantly, remembering the race she had run against its changing pages; there were no deadlines now, she thought, no barriers, no threats, no limits.  She heard a key turning in the door of her apartment; this was the sound she had waited for, had wanted to hear tonight.  Rearden came in, as he had come many times, using the key she had given him, as sole announcement. He threw his hat and coat down on a chair with a gesture that had become familiar; he wore the formal black of dinner clothes.  "Hello," she said.  "I'm still waiting for the evening when I won't find you in," he answered, "Then you'll have to phone the offices of Taggart Transcontinental."  "Any evening? Nowhere else?"  "Jealous, Hank?"  "No. Curious what it would feel like, to be."  He stood looking at her across the room, refusing to let himself approach her, deliberately prolonging the pleasure of knowing that he could do it whenever he wished. She wore the tight gray skirt of an office suit and a blouse of transparent white cloth tailored like a man's shirt; the blouse flared out above her waistline, stressing the trim flatness of her hips; against the glow of a lamp behind her, he could see the slender silhouette of her body within the flaring circle of the blouse.  "How was the banquet?" she asked.  "Fine. I escaped as soon as I could. Why didn't you come? You were invited."  "I didn't want to see you in public."  He glanced at her, as if stressing that he noted the full meaning of her answer; then the lines of his face moved to the hint of an amused smile. "You missed a lot. The National Council of Metal Industries won't put itself again through the ordeal of having me for guest of honor. Not if they can help it."  "What happened?"  "Nothing. Just a lot of speeches."  "Was it an ordeal for you?"  "No . . . Yes, in a way . . . I had really wanted to enjoy it."  "Shall I get you a drink?"  "Yes, will you?"  She turned to go. He stopped her, grasping her shoulders from behind; he bent her head back and kissed her mouth. When he raised his head, she pulled it down again with a demanding gesture of ownership, as if stressing her right to do it. Then she stepped away from him.  "Never mind the drink," he said, "I didn't really want it-except for seeing you wait on me."  "Well, then, let me wait on you."  "No."  He smiled, stretching himself out on the couch, his hands crossed under his head. He felt at home; it was the first home he had ever found.  "You know, the worst part of the banquet was that the only wish of every person present was to get it over with," he said. "What I can't understand is why they wanted to do it at all. They didn't have to. Certainly not for my sake."  She picked up a cigarette box, extended it to him, then held the flame of a lighter to the tip of his cigarette, in the deliberate manner of waiting on him. She smiled in answer to his chuckle, then sat down on the arm of a chair across the room.  "Why did you accept their invitation, Hank?" she asked. "You've always refused to join them."  "I didn't want to refuse a peace offer-when I've beaten them and they know it. I'll never join them, but an invitation to appear as a guest of honor-well, I thought they were good losers. I thought it was generous of them."  "Of them?"  "Are you going to say: of me?"  "Hank! After all the things they've done to stop you-"  "I won, didn't I? So I thought . . . You know, I didn't hold it against them that they couldn't see the value of the Metal sooner-so long as they saw it at last. Every man learns in his own way and time. Sure, I knew there was a lot of cowardice there, and envy and hypocrisy, but I thought that that was only the surface-now, when I've proved my case, when I've proved it so loudly!-I thought their real motive for inviting me was their appreciation of the Metal, and-"  She smiled in the brief space of his pause; she knew the sentence he had stopped himself from uttering: " and for that, I would forgive anyone anything."  "But it wasn't," he said. "And I couldn't figure out what their motive was. Dagny, I don't think they had any motive at all. They didn't give that banquet to please me, or to gain something from me, or to save face with the public. There was no purpose of any kind about it, no meaning. They didn't really care when they denounced the Metal-and they don't care now. They're not really afraid that I'll drive them all off the market-they don't care enough even about that. Do you know what that banquet was like? It's as if they'd heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them-so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age. I . . . I couldn't stand it."  She said, her face tight, "And you don't think you're generous!"  He glanced up at her; his eyes brightened to a look of amusement.  "Why do they make you so angry?"  She said, her voice low to hide the sound of tenderness, "You wanted to enjoy it . . ."  "It probably serves me right. I shouldn't have expected anything. I don't know what it was that I wanted."  "I do."  "I've never liked occasions of that sort. I don't see why I expected it to be different, this time. . . . You know, I went there feeling almost as if the Metal had changed everything, even people."  "Oh yes, Hank, I know!"  "Well, it was the wrong place to seek anything. . . . Do you remember? You said once that celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate."  The dot of her lighted cigarette stopped in mid-air; she sat still. She had never spoken to him of that party or of anything related to his home. In a moment., she answered quietly, "I remember."  "1 know what you meant . . . I knew it then, too."  He was looking straight at her. She lowered her eyes.  He remained silent; when he spoke again, his voice was gay. "The worst thing about people is not the insults they hand out, but the compliments. I couldn't bear the kind they spouted tonight, particularly when they kept saying how much everybody needs me-they, the city, the country and the whole world, I guess. Apparently, their idea of the height of glory is to deal with people who need them. I can't stand people who need me." He glanced at her. "Do you need me?"  She answered, her voice earnest, "Desperately."  He laughed. "No. Not the way I meant. You didn't say it the way they do."  "How did I say it?"  "Like a trader-who pays for what he wants. They say it like beggars who use a tin cup as a claim check."  "I . . . pay for it, Hank?"  "Don't look innocent. You know exactly what I mean."  "Yes," she whispered; she was smiling.  "Oh, to hell with them!" he said happily, stretching his legs, shifting the position of his body on the couch, stressing the luxury of relaxation. "I'm no good as a public figure. Anyway, it doesn't matter now.  We don't have to care what they see or don't see. They'll leave us alone. It's clear track ahead. What's the next undertaking, Mr. Vice-President?"  "A transcontinental track of Rearden Metal."  "How soon do you want it?"  "Tomorrow morning. Three years from now is when I'll get it."  "Think you can do it in three years?"  "If the John Galt . . . if the Rio Norte Line does as well as it's doing now."  "It's going to do better. That's only the beginning."  "I have an installment plan made out. As the money comes in, I'm going to start tearing up the main track, one division at a time, and replacing it with Rearden Metal rail."  "Okay. Any time you wish to start."  "I'll keep moving the old rail to the branch lines-they won't last much longer, if I don't. In three years, you'll ride on your own Metal into San Francisco, if somebody wants to give you a banquet there."  "In three years, I'll have mills pouring Rearden Metal in Colorado, in Michigan and in Idaho. That's my installment plan."  "Your own mills? Branches?"  "Uh-huh."  "What about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill?"  "You don't think it's going to exist three years from now, do you?  We've given them such a demonstration that all that rot is going to be swept away. The whole country is with us. Who'll want to stop things now? Who'll listen to the bilge? There's a lobby of the better kind of men working In Washington right this moment. They're going to get the Equalization Bill scrapped at the next session."  "I . . . I hope so."  "I've had a terrible time, these last few weeks, getting the new furnaces started, but it's all set now, they're being built, I can sit back and take it easy. I can sit at my desk, rake in the money, loaf like a bum, watch the orders for the Metal pouring in and play favorites ail over the place. . . . Say, what's the first train you've got for Philadelphia tomorrow morning?"  "Oh, I don't know."  "You don't? What's the use of an Operating Vice-president? I have to be at the mills by seven tomorrow. Got anything running around six?"  "Five-thirty A.M. is the first one, I think."  "Will you wake me up in time to make it or would you rather order the train held for me?"  "I'll wake you up."  "Ok".  She sat, watching him as he remained silent. He had looked tired when he came in; the lines of exhaustion were gone from his face now.  "Dagny," he asked suddenly; his tone had changed, there was some hidden, earnest note in his voice, "why didn't you want to see me in public?"  "I don't want to be part of your . . . official life."  He did not answer; in a moment, he asked casually, "When did you take a vacation last?"  "I think it was two . . . no, three years ago."  "What did you do?"  "Went to the Adirondacks for a month. Came back in a week."  "I did that five years ago. Only it was Oregon." He lay flat on his back, looking at the ceiling. "Dagny, let's take a vacation together. Let's take my car and drive away for a few weeks, anywhere, just drive, down the back roads, where no one knows us. We'll leave no address, we won't look at a newspaper, we won't touch a phone-we won't have any official life at all."  She got up. She approached him, she stood by the side of the couch, looking down at him, the light of the lamp behind her; she did not want him to see her face and the effort she was making not to smile.  "You can take a few weeks off. can't you?" he said. "Things are set and going now. It's safe. We won't have another chance in the next three years."  "All right, Hank," she said, forcing her voice to sound calmly toneless.  "Will you?"  "When do you want to start?"  "Monday morning."  "All right."  She turned to step away. He seized her wrist, pulled her down, swung her body to lie stretched full-length on top of him, he held her still, uncomfortably, as she had fallen, his one hand in her hair, pressing her mouth to his, his other hand moving from the shoulder blades under her thin blouse to her waist, to her legs. She whispered, "And you say I don't need you . . . !"  She pulled herself away from him, and stood up, brushing her hair off her face. He lay still, looking up at her, his eyes narrowed, the bright flicker of some particular interest in his eyes, intent and faintly mocking. She glanced down: a strap of her slip had broken, the slip hung diagonally from her one shoulder to her side, and he was looking at her breast under the transparent film of the blouse. She raised her hand to adjust the strap. He slapped her hand down. She smiled, in understanding, in answering mockery. She walked slowly, deliberately across the room and leaned against a table, facing him, her hands holding the table's edge, her shoulders thrown back. It was the contrast he liked-the severity of her clothes and the half-naked body, the railroad executive who was a woman he owned.  He sat up; he sat leaning comfortably across the couch, his legs crossed and stretched forward, his hands in his pockets, looking at her with the glance of a property appraisal.  "Did you say you wanted a transcontinental track of Rearden Metal, Mr. Vice-President?" he asked. "What if I don't give it to you? I can choose my customers now and demand any price I please. If this were a year ago, I would have demanded that you sleep with me in exchange."  "I wish you had."  "Would you have done it?"  "Of course."  "As a matter of business? As a sale?"  "If you were the buyer. You would have liked that, wouldn't you?"  "Would you?"  "Yes . . ." she whispered.  He approached her, he grasped her shoulders and pressed his mouth to her breast through the thin cloth.  Then, holding her, he looked at her silently for a long moment.  "What did you do with that bracelet?" he asked.  They had never referred to it; she had to let a moment pass to regain the steadiness of her voice. "I have it," she answered.  "I want you to wear it."  "If anyone guesses, it will be worse for you than for me."  "Wear it."  She brought out the bracelet of Rearden Metal. She extended it to him without a word, looking straight at him, the green-blue chain glittering across her palm. Holding her glance, he clasped the bracelet on her wrist. In the moment when the clasp clicked shut under his fingers, she bent her head down to them and kissed his hand.  The earth went flowing under the hood of the car. Uncoiling from among the curves of Wisconsin's hills, the highway was the only evidence of human labor, a precarious bridge stretched across a sea of brush, weeds and trees. The sea rolled softly, in sprays of yellow and orange, with a few red jets shooting up on the hillsides, with pools of remnant green in the hollows, under a pure blue sky. Among the colors of a picture post card, the car's hood looked like the work of a jeweler, with the sun sparkling on its chromium steel, and its black enamel reflecting the sky.  Dagny leaned against the corner of the side window, her legs stretched forward; she liked the wide, comfortable space of the car's seat and the warmth of the sun on her shoulders; she thought that the countryside was beautiful.  "What I'd like to see," said Rearden, "is a billboard,"  She laughed: he had answered her silent thought. "Selling what and to whom? We haven't seen a car or a house for an hour."  "That's what I don't like about it." He bent forward a little, his hands on the wheel; he was frowning. "Look at that road."  The long strip of concrete was bleached to the powdery gray of bones left on a desert, as if sun and snows had eaten away the traces of tires, oil and carbon, the lustrous polish of motion. Green weeds rose from the angular cracks of the concrete. No one had used the road or repaired it for many years; but the cracks were few.  "It's a good road," said Rearden. "It was built to last. The man who built it must have had a good reason for expecting it to carry a heavy traffic in the years ahead."  "Yes . . . "  "I don't like the looks of this."  "I don't either." Then she smiled. "But think how often we've heard people complain that billboards ruin the appearance of the countryside. Well, there's the unruined countryside for them to admire." She added, "They're the people I hate."  She did not want to feel the uneasiness which she felt like a thin crack under her enjoyment of this day. She had felt that uneasiness at times, in the last three weeks, at the sight of the country streaming past the wedge of the car's hood. She smiled: it was the hood that had been the immovable point in her field of vision, while the earth had gone by, it was the hood that had been the center, the focus, the security in a blurred, dissolving world . . . the hood before her and Rearden's hands on the wheel by her side . . . she smiled, thinking that she was satisfied to let this be the shape of her world.  After the first week of their wandering, when they had driven at random, at the mercy of unknown crossroads, he had said to her one morning as they started out, "Dagny, does resting have to be purposeless?" She had laughed, answering, "No. What factory do you want to see?" He had smiled-at the guilt he did not have to assume, at the explanations he did not have to give-and he had answered, "It's an abandoned ore mine around Saginaw Bay, that I've heard about. They say it's exhausted."  They had driven across Michigan to the ore mine. They had walked through the ledges of an empty pit, with the remnants of a crane like a skeleton bending above them against the sky, and someone's rusted lunchbox clattering away from under their feet. She had felt a stab of uneasiness, sharper than sadness-but Rearden had said cheerfully, "Exhausted, hell! I'll show them how many tons and dollars I can draw out of this place!" On their way back to the car, he had said, "If I could find the right man, I'd buy that mine for him tomorrow morning and set him up to work it."  The next day, when they were driving west and south, toward the plains of Illinois, he had said suddenly, after a long silence, "No, I'll have to wait till they junk the Bill. The man who could work that mine, wouldn't need me to teach him. The man who'd need me, wouldn't be worth a damn."  They could speak of their work, as they always had, with full confidence in being understood. But they never spoke of each other. He acted as if their passionate intimacy were a nameless physical fact, not to be identified in the communication between two minds. Each night, it was as if she lay in the arms of a stranger who let her see every shudder of sensation that ran through his body, but would never permit her to know whether the shocks reached any answering tremor within him. She lay naked at his side, but on her wrist there was the bracelet of Rearden Metal.  She knew that he hated the ordeal of signing the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" on the registers of squalid roadside hotels. There were evenings when she noticed the faint contraction of anger in the tightness of his mouth, as he signed the expected names of the expected fraud, anger at those who made fraud necessary. She noticed, indifferently, the air of knowing slyness in the manner of the hotel clerks, which seemed to suggest that guests and clerks alike were accomplices in a shameful guilt: the guilt of seeking pleasure. But she knew that it did not matter to him when they were alone, when he held her against him for a moment and she saw his eyes look alive and guiltless.  They drove through small towns, through obscure side roads, through the kind of places they had not seen for years. She felt uneasiness at the sight of the towns. Days passed before she realized what it was that she missed most: a glimpse of fresh paint. The houses stood like men in unpressed suits, who had lost the desire to stand straight: the cornices were like sagging shoulders, the crooked porch steps like torn hem lines, the broken windows like patches, mended with clapboard. The people in the streets stared at the new car, not as one stares at a rare sight, but as if the glittering black shape were an impossible vision from another world. There were few vehicles in the streets and too many of them were horse-drawn. She had forgotten the literal shape and usage of horsepower; she did not like to see its return.  She did not laugh, that day at the grade crossing, when Rearden chuckled, pointing, and she saw the train of a small local railroad come tottering from behind a hill, drawn by an ancient locomotive that coughed black smoke through a tall stack.  "Oh God, Hank, it's not funny!"  "I know," he said.  They were seventy miles and an hour away from it, when she said, "Hank, do you see the Taggart Comet being pulled across the continent by a coal-burner of that kind?"  "What's the matter with you? Pull yourself together."  "I'm sorry . . . It's just that I keep thinking it won't be any use, all my new track and all your new furnaces, if we don't find someone able to produce Diesel engines. If we don't find him fast. . .  "Ted Nielsen of Colorado is your man."  "Yes, if he finds a way to open his new plant. He's sunk more money than he should into the bonds of the John Galt Line."  "That's turned out to be a pretty profitable investment, hasn't it?"  "Yes, but it's held him up. Now he's ready to go ahead, but he can't find the tools. There are no machine tools to buy, not anywhere, not at any price. He's getting nothing but promises and delays. He's combing the country, looking for old junk to reclaim, from closed factories. If he doesn't start soon-"  "He will. Who's going to stop him now?"  "Hank," she said suddenly, "could we go to a place I'd like to see?"  "Sure, Anywhere. Which place?"  "It's in Wisconsin. There used to be a great motor company there, in my father's time. We had a branch line serving it, but we closed the line-about seven years ago-when they closed the factory. I think it's one of those blighted areas now. Maybe there's still some machinery left there that Ted Nielsen could use. It might have been overlooked-the place is forgotten and there's no transportation to it at all."  "I'll find it. What was the name of the factory?"  "The Twentieth Century Motor Company."  "Oh, of course! That was one of the best motor firms in my youth, perhaps the best. I seem to remember that there was something odd about the way it went out of business . . . can't recall what it was.”  It took them three days of inquiries, but they found the bleached, abandoned road-and now they were driving through the yellow leaves that glittered like a sea of gold coins, to the Twentieth Century Motor Company.  "Hank, what if anything happens to Ted Nielsen?" she asked suddenly, as they drove in silence.  "Why should anything happen to him?"  "I don't know, but . . . well, there was Dwight Sanders. He vanished. United Locomotives is done for now. And the other plants are in no condition to produce Diesels. I've stopped listening to promises. And . . . and of what use is a railroad without motive power?"  "Of what use is anything, for that matter, without it?"  The leaves sparkled, swaying in the wind. They spread for miles, from grass to brush to trees, with the motion and all the colors of fire; they seemed to celebrate an accomplished purpose, burning in unchecked, untouched abundance.  Rearden smiled. "There's something to be said for the wilderness. I'm beginning to like it. New country that nobody's discovered." She nodded gaily. "It's good soil-look at the way things grow. I'd clear that brush and I'd build a-"  And then they stopped smiling. The corpse they saw in the weeds by the roadside was a rusty cylinder with bits of glass-the remnant of a gas-station pump.  It was the only thing left visible. The few charred posts, the slab of concrete and the sparkle of glass dust-which had been a gas station-were swallowed in the brush, not to be noticed except by a careful glance, not to be seen at all in another year.  They looked away. They drove on, not wanting to know what else lay hidden under the miles of weeds. They felt the same wonder like a weight in the silence between them: wonder as to how much the weeds had swallowed and how fast.  The road ended abruptly behind the turn of a hill. What remained was a few chunks of concrete sticking out of a long, pitted stretch of tar and mud. The concrete had been smashed by someone and  carted away; even weeds could not grow in the strip of earth left behind. On the crest of a distant hill, a single telegraph pole stood slanted against the sky, like a cross over a vast grave.  It took them three hours and a punctured tire to crawl in low gear through trackless soft, through gullies, then down ruts left by cart wheels-to reach the settlement that lay in the valley beyond the hill with the telegraph pole.  A few houses still stood within the skeleton of what had once been an industrial town. Everything that could move, had moved away; but some human beings had remained. The empty structures were vertical rubble; they had been eaten, not by time, but by men: boards torn out at random, missing patches of roofs, holes left in gutted cellars. It looked as if blind hands had seized whatever fitted the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence the next morning.  The inhabited houses were scattered at random among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only movement visible in town. A shell of concrete, which had been a schoolhouse, stood on the outskirts; it looked like a skull, with the empty sockets of glassless windows, with a few strands of hair still clinging to it, in the shape of broken wires.  Beyond the town, on a distant hill, stood the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. Its walls, roof lines and smokestacks looked trim, impregnable like a fortress. It would have seemed intact but for a silver water tank: the water tank was tipped sidewise.  They saw no trace of a road to the factory in the tangled miles of trees and hillsides. They drove to the door of the first house in sight that showed a feeble signal of rising smoke. The door was open. An old woman came shuffling out at the sound of the motor. She was bent and swollen, barefooted, dressed in a garment of flour sacking. She looked at the car without astonishment, without curiosity; it was the blank stare of a being who had lost the capacity to feel anything but exhaustion.  "Can you tell me the way to the factory?" asked Rearden.  The woman did not answer at once; she looked as if she would be unable to speak English. "What factory?" she asked.  Rearden pointed. "That one."  "It's closed."  "I know it's closed. But is there any way to get there?"  "I don't know."  "Is there any sort of road?"  "There's roads in the woods."  "Any for a car to drive through?"  "Maybe."  "Well, which would be the best road to take?"  "I don't know."  Through the open door, they could see the interior of her house.  There was a useless gas stove, its oven stuffed with rags, serving as a chest of drawers. There was a stove built of stones in a corner, with a few logs burning under an old kettle, and long streaks of soot rising up the wall. A white object lay propped against the legs of a table: it was a porcelain washbowl, torn from the wall of some bathroom, filled with wilted cabbages. A tallow candle stood in a bottle on the table. There was no paint left on the floor; its boards were scrubbed to a soggy gray that looked like the visual expression of the pain in the bones of the person who had bent and scrubbed and lost the battle against the grime now soaked into the grain of the boards.  A brood of ragged children had gathered at the door behind the woman, silently, one by one. They stared at the car, not with the bright curiosity of children, but with the tension of savages ready to vanish at the first sign of danger.  "How many miles is it to the factory?" asked Rearden.  "Ten miles," said the woman, and added, "Maybe five."  "How far is the next town?"  "There ain't any next town."  "There are other towns somewhere. I mean, how far?"  "Yeah. Somewhere."  In the vacant space by the side of the house, they saw faded rags hanging on a clothesline, which was a piece of telegraph wire. Three chickens pecked among the beds of a scraggly vegetable garden; a fourth sat roosting on a bar which was a length of plumber's pipe. Two pigs waddled in a stretch of mud and refuse; the stepping stones laid across the muck were pieces of the highway's concrete.  They heard a screeching sound in the distance and saw a man drawing water from a public well by means of a rope pulley. They watched him as he came slowly down the street. He carried two buckets that seemed too heavy for his thin arms. One could not tell his age.  He approached and stopped, looking at the car. His eyes darted at the strangers, then away, suspicious and furtive.  Rearden took out a ten-dollar bill and extended it to him, asking, "Would you please tell us the way to the factory?"  The man stared at the money with sullen indifference, not moving, not lifting a hand for it, still clutching the two buckets. If one were ever to see a man devoid of greed, thought Dagny, there he was.  "We don't need no money around here," he said.  "Don't you work for a living?"  "Yeah."  "Well, what do you use for money?"  The man put the buckets down, as if it had just occurred to him that he did not have to stand straining under their weight. "We don't use no money," he said. "We just trade things amongst us."  "How do you trade with people from other towns?"  "We don't go to no other towns."  "You don't seem to have it easy here."  "What's that to you?"  "Nothing. Just curiosity. Why do you people stay here?"  "My old man used to have a grocery store here. Only the factory closed."  "Why didn't you move?"  "Where to?"  "Anywhere."  "What for?"  Dagny was staring at the two buckets: they were square tins with rope handles; they had been oil cans.  "Listen," said Rearden, "can you tell us whether there's a road to the factory?"  "There's plenty of roads."  "Is there one that a car can take?"  "I guess so."  "Which one?"  The man weighed the problem earnestly for some moments. "Well, now, if you turn to the left by the schoolhouse," he said, "and go on til you come to the crooked oak, there's a road up there that's fine when it don't rain for a couple of weeks."  "When did it rain last?"  "Yesterday."  "Is there another road?"  "Well, you could go through Hanson's pasture and across the woods and then there's a good, solid road there, all the way down to the creek."  "Is there a bridge across the creek?"  "No."  "What are the other roads?"  "Well, if it's a car road that you want, there's one the other side of Miller's patch, it's paved, it's the best road for a car, you just turn to the right by the schoolhouse and-"  "But that road doesn't go to the factory, does it?"  "No, not to the factory."  "All right," said Rearden. "Guess we'll find our own way."  He had pressed the starter, when a rock came smashing into the windshield. The glass was shatterproof, but a sunburst of cracks spread across it. They saw a ragged little hoodlum vanishing behind a corner with a scream of laughter, and they heard the shrill laughter of children answering him from behind some windows or crevices.  Rearden suppressed a swear word. The man looked vapidly across the street, frowning a little. The old woman looked on, without reaction. She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.  Dagny had been studying her for some minutes. The swollen shapelessness of the woman's body did not look like the product of age and neglect: it looked as if she was pregnant. This seemed impossible, but glancing closer Dagny saw that her dust-colored hair was not gray and that there were few wrinkles on her face; it was only the vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements that gave her the stamp of senility.  Dagny leaned out and asked, "How old are you?"  The woman looked at her, not in resentment, but merely as one looks at a pointless question. "Thirty-seven," she answered.  They had driven five former blocks away, when Dagny spoke.  "Hank," she said in terror, "that woman is only two years older than I!"  "Yes."  "God, how did they ever come to such a state?"  He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"  The last thing they saw, as they left the town, was a billboard. A design was still visible on its peeling strips, imprinted in the dead gray that had once been color. It advertised a washing machine.  In a distant field, beyond the town, they saw the figure of a man moving slowly, contorted by the ugliness of a physical effort beyond the proper use of a human body: he was pushing a plow by hand.  They reached the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company two miles and two hours later. They knew, as they climbed the hill, that their quest was useless. A rusted padlock hung on the door of the main entrance, but the huge windows were shattered and the place was open to anyone, to the woodchucks, the rabbits and the dried leaves that lay in drifts inside.  The factory had been gutted long ago. The great pieces of machinery had been moved out by some civilized means-the neat holes of their bases still remained in the concrete of the floor. The rest had gone to random looters. There was nothing left, except refuse which the neediest tramp had found worthless, piles of twisted, rusted scraps, of boards, plaster and glass splinters-and the steel stairways, built to last and lasting, rising in trim spirals to the roof.  They stopped in the great hall where a ray of light fell diagonally from a gap in the ceiling, and the echoes of their steps rang around them, dying far away in rows of empty rooms. A bird darted from among the steel rafters and went in a hissing streak of wings out into the sky, "We'd better look through it, just in case," said Dagny. "You take the shops and I'll take the annexes. Let's do it as fast as possible."  "I don't like to let you wander around alone. I don't know how safe they are, any of those floors or stairways."  "Oh, nonsense! I can find my way around a factory-or in a wrecking crew. Let's get it over with. I want to get out of here."  When she walked through the silent yards-where steel bridges still hung overhead, tracing lines of geometrical perfection across the sky -her only wish was not to see any of it, but she forced herself to look.  It was like having to perform an autopsy on the body of one's love. She moved her glance as an automatic searchlight, her teeth clamped tight together. She walked rapidly-there was no necessity to pause anywhere.  It was in a room of what had been the laboratory that she stopped. It was a coil of wire that made her stop. The coil protruded from a pile of junk. She had never seen that particular arrangement of wires, yet it seemed familiar, as if it touched the hint of some memory, faint and very distant. She reached for the coil, but could not move it: it seemed to be part of some object buried in the pile.  The room looked as if it had been an experimental laboratory-if she was right in judging the purpose of the torn remnants she saw on the walls: a great many electrical outlets, bits of heavy cable, lead conduits, glass tubing, built-in cabinets without shelves or doors. There was a great deal of glass, rubber, plastic and metal in the junk pile, and dark gray splinters of slate that had been a blackboard. Scraps of paper rustled dryly all over the floor. There were also remnants of things which had not been brought here by the owner of that room: popcorn wrappers, a whiskey bottle, a confession magazine.  She attempted to extricate the coil from the scrap pile. It would not move; it was part of some large object. She knelt and began to dig through the junk.  She had cut her hands, she was covered with dust by the time she stood up to look at the object she had cleared. It was the broken remnant of the model of a motor. Most of its parts were missing, but enough was left to convey some idea of its former shape and purpose.  She had never seen a motor of this kind or anything resembling it.  She could not understand the peculiar design of its parts or the functions they were intended to perform.  She examined the tarnished tubes and odd-shaped connections. She tried to guess their purpose, her mind going over every type of motor she knew and every possible kind of work its parts could perform.  None fitted the model. It looked like an electric motor, but she could not tell what fuel it was intended to burn. It was not designed for steam, or oil, or anything she could name.  Her sudden gasp was not a sound, but a jolt that threw her at the junk pile. She was on her hands and knees, crawling over the wreckage, seizing every piece of paper in sight, flinging it away, searching further. Her hands were shaking.  She found part of what she hoped had remained in existence. It was a thin sheaf of typewritten pages clamped together-the remnant of a manuscript. Its beginning and end were gone; the bits of paper left under the clamp showed the thick number of pages it had once contained. The paper was yellowed and dry. The manuscript had been a description of the motor.  From the empty enclosure of the plant's powerhouse, Rearden heard her voice screaming, "Hank!" It sounded like a scream of terror.  He ran in the direction of the voice. He found her standing in the middle of a room, her hands bleeding, her stockings torn, her suit smeared with dust, a bunch of papers clutched in her hand.  "Hank, what does this look like?" she asked, pointing at an odd piece of wreckage at her feet; her voice had the intense, obsessed tone of a person stunned by a shock, cut off from reality. "What does it look like?"  "Are you hurt? What happened?"  "No! . . . Oh, never mind, don't look at me! I'm all right. Look at this. Do you know what that is?"  "What did you do to yourself?"  "I had to dig it out of there. I'm all right."  "You're shaking."  "You will, too, in a moment. Hank! Look at it. Just look and tell me what you think it is."  He glanced down, then looked attentively-then he was sitting on the floor, studying the object intently. "It's a queer way to put a motor together," he said, frowning.  "Read this," she said, extending the pages.  He read, looked up and said, "Good God!"  She was sitting on the floor beside him, and for a moment they could say nothing else.  "It was the coil," she said. She felt as if her mind were racing, she could not keep up with all the things which a sudden blast had opened to her vision, and her words came hurtling against one another. "It was the coil that I noticed first-because I had seen drawings like it, not quite, but something like it, years ago, when I was in school-it was in an old book, it was given up as impossible long, long ago-but I liked to read everything I could find about railroad motors. That book said that there was a time when men were thinking of it-they worked on it, they spent years on experiments, but they couldn't solve it and they gave it up. It was forgotten for generations. I didn't think that any living scientist ever thought of it now. But someone did.  Someone has solved it, now, today! . . . Hank, do you understand?  Those men, long ago, tried to invent a motor that would draw static electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along. They couldn't do it. They gave it up." She pointed at the broken shape. "But there it is."  He nodded. He was not smiling. He sat looking at the remnant, intent on some thought of his own; it did not seem to be a happy thought.  "Hank! Don't you understand what this means? It's the greatest revolution in power motors since the internal-combustion engine-greater than that! It wipes everything out-and makes everything possible. To hell with Dwight Sanders and all of them! Who'll want to look at a Diesel? Who'll want to worry about oil, coal or refueling stations? Do you see what I see? A brand-new locomotive half the size of a single Diesel unit, and with ten times the power. A self-generator, working on a few drops of fuel, with no limits to its energy. The cleanest, swiftest, cheapest means of motion ever devised. Do you see what this will do to our transportation systems and to the country-in about one year?"  There was no spark of excitement in his face. He said slowly, "Who designed it? Why was it left here?"  "We'll find out."  He weighed the pages in his hand reflectively. "Dagny," he asked, "if you don't find the man who made it, will you be able to reconstruct that motor from what is left?"  She took a long moment, then the word fell with a sinking sound: "No."  "Nobody will. He had it all right. It worked-judging by what he writes here. It is the greatest thing I've ever laid eyes on. It was. We can't make it work again. To supply what's missing would take a mind as great as his."  "I'll find him-if I have to drop every other thing I'm doing."  "-and if he's still alive."  She heard the unstated guess in the tone of his voice. "Why do you say it like that?"  "I don't think he is. If he were, would he leave an invention of this kind to rot on a junk pile? Would he abandon an achievement of this size? If he were still alive, you would have had the locomotives with the self-generators years ago. And you wouldn't have had to look for him, because the whole world would know his name by now."  "I don't think this model was made so very long ago."  He looked at the paper of the manuscript and at the rusty tarnish of the motor. "About ten years ago, I'd guess. Maybe a little longer."  "We've got to find him or somebody who knew him. This is more important-"  "-than anything owned or manufactured by anyone today. I don't think we'll find him. And if we don't, nobody will be able to repeat his performance. Nobody will rebuild his motor. There's not enough of it left. It's only a lead, an invaluable lead, but it would take the sort of mind that's born once in a century, to complete it. Do you see our present-day motor designers attempting it?"  "No."  "There's not a first-rate designer left. There hasn't been a new idea in motors for years. That's one profession that seems to be dying-or dead."  "Hank, do you know what that motor would have meant, if built?"  He chuckled briefly. "I'd say: about ten years added to the life of every person in this country-if you consider how many things it would have made easier and cheaper to produce, how many hours of human labor it would have released for other work, and how much more anyone's work would have brought him. Locomotives? What about automobiles and ships and airplanes with a motor of this kind? And tractors. And power plants. All hooked to an unlimited supply of energy, with no fuel to pay for, except a few pennies' worth to keep the converter going. That motor could have set the whole country in motion and on fire. It would have brought an electric light bulb into every hole, even into the homes of those people we saw down in the valley."  "It would have? It will. I'm going to find the man who made it."  "We'll try."  He rose abruptly, but stopped to glance down at the broken remnant and said, with a chuckle that was not gay, "There was the motor for the John Galt Line."  Then he spoke in the brusque manner of an executive. "First, we'll try to see if we can find their personnel office here. We'll look for their records, if there's any left. We want the names of their research staff and their engineers. I don't know who owns this place now, and I suspect that the owners will be hard to find, or they wouldn't have let it come to this. Then we'll go over every room in the laboratory.  Later, we'll get a few engineers to fly here and comb the rest of the place."  They started out, but she stopped for a moment on the threshold.  "Hank, that motor was the most valuable thing inside this factory," she said, her voice low. "It was more valuable than the whole factory and everything it ever contained. Yet it was passed up and left in the refuse. It was the one thing nobody found worth the trouble of taking."  "That's what frightens me about this," he answered.  The personnel office did not take them long. They found it by the sign which was left on the door, but it was the only thing left. There was no furniture inside, no papers, nothing but the splinters of smashed windows.  They went back to the room of the motor. Crawling on hands and knees, they examined every scrap of the junk that littered the floor.  There was little to find. They put aside the papers that seemed to contain laboratory notes, but none referred to the motor, and there were no pages of the manuscript among them. The popcorn wrappers and the whiskey bottle testified to the kind of invading hordes that had rolled through the room, like waves washing the remnants of destruction away to unknown bottoms.  They put aside a few bits of metal that could have belonged to the motor, but these were too small to be of value. The motor looked as if parts of it had been ripped off, perhaps by someone who thought he could put them to some customary use. What had remained was too unfamiliar to interest anybody.  On aching knees, her palms spread flat upon the gritty floor, she felt the anger trembling within her, the hurting, helpless anger that answers the sight of desecration. She wondered whether someone's diapers hung on a clothesline made of the motor's missing wires-whether its wheels had become a rope pulley over a communal well-whether its cylinder was now a pot containing geraniums on the window sill of the sweetheart of the man with the whiskey bottle.  There was a remnant of light on the hill, but a blue haze was moving in upon the valleys, and the red and gold of the leaves was spreading to the sky in strips of sunset.  It was dark when they finished. She rose and leaned against the empty frame of the window for a touch of cool air on her forehead. The sky was dark blue. "It could have set the whole country in motion and on fire." She looked down at the motor. She looked out at the country. She moaned suddenly, hit by a single long shudder, and dropped her head on her arm, standing pressed to the frame of the window.  "What's the matter?" he asked.  She did not answer.  He looked out. Far below, in the valley, in the gathering night, there trembled a few pale smears which were the lights of tallow candles.