CHAPTER IV THE SANCTION OF THE VICTIM

The roast turkey had cost $30. The champagne had cost $25. The lace tablecloth, a cobweb of grapes and vine leaves iridescent in the candlelight, had cost $2,000. The dinner service, with an artist's design burned in blue and gold into a translucent white china, had cost $2,500.  The silverware, which bore the initials LR in Empire wreaths of laurels, had cost $3,000. But it was held to be unspiritual to think of money and of what that money represented.  A peasant's wooden shoe, gilded, stood in the center of the table, filled with marigolds, grapes and carrots. The candles were stuck into pumpkins that were cut as open-mouthed faces drooling raisins, nuts and candy upon the tablecloth.  It was Thanksgiving dinner, and the three who faced Rearden about the table were his wife, his mother and his brother.  "This is the night to thank the Lord for our blessings," said Rearden's mother. "God has been kind to us. There are people all over the country who haven't got any food in the house tonight, and some that haven't even got a house, and more of them going jobless every day. Gives me the creeps to look around in the city. Why, only last week, who do you suppose I ran into but Lucie Judson-Henry, do you remember Lucie Judson? Used to live next door to us. up in Minnesota, when you were ten-twelve years old. Had a boy about your age. I lost track of Lucie when they moved to New York, must have been all of twenty years ago. Well, it gave me the creeps to see what she's come to-just a toothless old hag, wrapped in a man's overcoat, panhandling on a street corner. And I thought: That could've been me, but for the grace of God."  "Well, if thanks are in order," said Lillian gaily, "I think that we shouldn't forget Gertrude, the new cook. She's an artist."  "Me, I'm just going to be old-fashioned," said Philip. "I'm just going to thank the sweetest mother in the world."  "Well, for the matter of that," said Rearden's mother, "we ought to thank Lillian for this dinner and for all the trouble she took to make it so pretty. She spent hours fixing the table. It's real quaint and different."  "It's the wooden shoe that does it," said Philip, bending his head sidewise to study it in a manner of critical appreciation. "That's the real touch. Anybody can have candles, silverware and junk, that doesn't take anything but money-but this shoe, that took thought."  Rearden said nothing. The candlelight moved over his motionless face as over a portrait; the portrait bore an expression of impersonal courtesy.  "You haven't touched your wine," said his mother, looking at him.  "What I think is you ought to drink a toast in gratitude to the people of this country who have given you so much."  "Henry is not in the mood for it, Mother," said Lillian. "I'm afraid Thanksgiving is a holiday only for those who have a clear conscience."  She raised her wine glass, but stopped it halfway to her lips and asked, "You're not going to make some sort of stand at your trial tomorrow, are you, Henry?"  "I am."  She put the glass down. "What are you going to do?"  "You'll see it tomorrow."  "You don't really imagine that you can get away with it!"  "I don't know what you have in mind as the object I'm to get away with."  "Do you realize that the charge against you is extremely serious?"  "I do."  "You've admitted that you sold the Metal to Ken Danagger."  "I have."  "They might send you to jail for ten years."  "I don't think they will, but it's possible."  "Have you been reading the newspapers, Henry?" asked Philip, with an odd kind of smile.  "No."  "Oh, you should!"  "Should I? Why?"  "You ought to see the names they call you!"  "That's interesting," said Rearden; he said it about the fact that Philip's smile was one of pleasure.  "I don't understand it," said his mother. "Jail? Did you say jail, Lillian? Henry, are you going to be sent to jail?"  "I might be."  "But that's ridiculous! Do something about it."  "What?"  "I don't know. I don't understand any of it. Respectable people don't go to jail. Do something. You've always known what to do about business."  "Not this kind of business."  "I don't believe it." Her voice had the tone of a frightened, spoiled child. "You're saying it just to be mean."  "He's playing the hero, Mother," said Lillian. She smiled coldly, turning to Rearden. "Don't you think that your attitude is perfectly futile?"  "No."  "You know that cases of this kind are not . . . intended ever to come to trial. There are ways to avoid it, to get things settled amicably -if one knows the right people."  "I don't know the right people."  "Look at Orren Boyle. He's done much more and much worse than your little fling at the black market, but he's smart enough to keep himself out of courtrooms."  "Then I'm not smart enough."  "Don't you think it's time you made an effort to adjust yourself to the conditions of our age?"  "No."  "Well, then I don't see how you can pretend that you're some sort of victim. If you go to jail, it will be your own fault."  "What pretense are you talking about, Lillian?"  "Oh, I know that you think you're fighting for some sort of principle -but actually it's only a matter of your incredible conceit. You're doing it for no better reason than because you think you're right."  "Do you think they're right?"  She shrugged, "That's the conceit I'm talking about-the idea that it matters who's right or wrong. It's the most insufferable form of vanity, this insistence on always doing right. How do you know what's right? How can anyone ever know it? It's nothing but a delusion to flatter your own ego and to hurt other people by flaunting your superiority over them."  He was looking at her with attentive interest. "Why should it hurt other people, if it's nothing but a delusion?"  "Is it necessary for me to point out that in your case it's nothing but hypocrisy? That is why I find your attitude preposterous. Questions of right have no bearing on human existence. And you're certainly nothing but human-aren't you, Henry? You're no better than any of the men you're going to face tomorrow. I think you should remember that it's not for you to make a stand on any sort of principle. Maybe you're a victim in this particular mess, maybe they're pulling a rotten trick on you, but what of it? They're doing it because they're weak; they couldn't resist the temptation to grab your Metal and to muscle in on your profits, because they had no other way of ever getting rich. Why should you blame them? It's only a question of different strains, but it s the same shoddy human fabric that gives way just as quickly. You wouldn't be tempted by money, because it's so easy for you to make it. But you wouldn't withstand other pressures and you'd fall just as ignominiously. Wouldn't you? So you have no right to any righteous indignation against them. You have no moral superiority to assert or to defend. And if you haven't, then what is the point of fighting a battle that you can't win? I suppose that one might find some satisfaction in being a martyr, if one is above reproach. But you-who are you to cast the first stone?"  She paused to observe the effect. There was none, except that his look of attentive interest seemed intensified; he listened as if he were held by some impersonal, scientific curiosity. It was not the response she had expected.  "1 believe you understand me," she said.  "No," he answered quietly, "I don't."  "I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection, which you know full well to be an illusion. I think you should learn to get along with other people. The day of the hero is past. This is the day of humanity, in a much deeper sense than you imagine. Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we're all in it together, we're all human-and the human is the imperfect. You'll gain nothing tomorrow by proving that they're wrong. You ought to give in with good grace, simply because it's the practical thing to do. You ought to keep silent, precisely because they're wrong. They'll appreciate it. Make concessions for others and they'll make concessions for you. Live and let live. Give and take. Give in and take in. That's the policy of our age-and it's time you accepted it. Don't tell me you're too good for it. You know that you're not. You know that I know it."  The look of his eyes, held raptly still upon some point in space, was not in answer to her words; it was in answer to a man's voice saying to him, "Do you think that what you're facing is merely a conspiracy to seize your wealth? You, who know the source of wealth, should know it's much more and much worse than that."  He turned to look at Lillian. He was seeing the full extent of her failure-in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. He had heard her studied reminders of his guilt on every evening he had spent at home in the past three months. But guilt had been the one emotion he had found himself unable to feel. The punishment she had wanted to inflict on him was the torture of shame; what she had inflicted was the torture of boredom.  He remembered his brief glimpse-on that morning in the Wayne Falkland Hotel-of a flaw in her scheme of punishment, which he had not examined. Now he stated it to himself for the first time. She wanted to force upon him the suffering of dishonor-but his own sense of honor was her only weapon of enforcement. She wanted to wrest from him an acknowledgment of his moral depravity-but only his own moral rectitude could attach significance to such a verdict. She wanted to injure him by her contempt-but he could not be injured, unless he respected her judgment. She wanted to punish him for the pain he had caused her and she held her pain as a gun aimed at him, as if she wished to extort his agony at the point of his pity. But her only tool was his own benevolence, his concern for her, his compassion. Her only power was the power of his own virtues. What if he chose to withdraw it?  An issue of guilt, he thought, had to rest on his own acceptance of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty. He did not accept it; he never had. His virtues, all the virtues she needed to achieve his punishment, came from another code and lived by another standard.  He felt no guilt, no shame, no regret, no dishonor. He felt no concern for any verdict she chose to pass upon him: he had lost respect for her judgment long ago. And the sole chain still holding him was only a last remnant of pity.  But what was the code on which she acted? What sort of code permitted the concept of a punishment that required the victim's own virtue as the fuel to make it work? A code-he thought-which would destroy only those who tried to observe it; a punishment, from which only the honest would suffer, while the dishonest would escape unhurt. Could one conceive of an infamy lower than to equate virtue with pain, to make virtue, not vice, the source and motive power of suffering? If he were the kind of rotter she was struggling to make him believe he was, then no issue of his honor and his moral worth would matter to him. If he wasn't, then what was the nature of her attempt?  To count upon his virtue and use it as an instrument of torture, to practice blackmail with the victim's generosity as sole means of extortion, to accept the gift of a man's good will and turn it into a tool for the giver's destruction . . . he sat very still, contemplating the formula of so monstrous an evil that he was able to name it, but not to believe it possible.  He sat very still, held by the hammering of a single question: Did Lillian know the exact nature of her scheme?-was it a conscious policy, devised with full awareness of its meaning? He shuddered; he did not hate her enough to believe it.  He looked at her. She was absorbed, at the moment, in the task of cutting a plum pudding that stood as a mount of blue flame on a silver platter before her, its glow dancing over her face and her laughing mouth-she was plunging a silver knife into the flame, with a practiced, graceful curve of her arm. She had metallic leaves in the red, gold and brown colors of autumn scattered over one shoulder of her black velvet gown; they glittered in the candlelight.  He could not get rid of the impression, which he had kept receiving and rejecting for three months, that her vengeance was not a form of despair, as he had supposed-the impression, which he regarded as inconceivable, that she was enjoying it. He could find no trace of pain in her manner. She had an air of confidence new to her. She seemed to be at home in her house for the first time. Even though everything within the house was of her own choice and taste, she had always seemed to act as the bright, efficient, resentful manager of a high-class hotel, who keeps smiling in bitter amusement at her position of inferiority to the owners. The amusement remained, but the bitterness was gone. She had not gained weight, but her features had lost their delicate sharpness in a blurring, softening look of satisfaction; even her voice sounded as if it had grown plump.  He did not hear what she was saying; she was laughing in the last flicker of the blue flames, while he sat weighing the question: Did she know? He felt certain that he had discovered a secret much greater than the problem of his marriage, that he had grasped the formula of a policy practiced more widely throughout the world than he dared to contemplate at the moment. But to convict a human being of that practice was a verdict of irrevocable damnation, and he knew that he would not believe it of anyone, so long as the possibility of a doubt remained.  No-he thought, looking at Lillian, with the last effort of his generosity-he would not believe it of her. In the name of whatever grace and pride she possessed-in the name of such moments when he had seen a smile of joy on her face, the smile of a living being-in the name of the brief shadow of love he had once felt for her-he would not pronounce upon her a verdict of total evil.  The butler slipped a plate of plum pudding in front of him, and he heard Lillian's voice: "Where have you been for the last five minutes, Henry-or is it for the last century? You haven't answered me. You haven't heard a word I said."  "I heard it," he answered quietly. "I don't know what you're trying to accomplish."  "What a question!" said his mother. "Isn't that just like a man?  She's trying to save you from going to jail-that's what she's trying to accomplish."  That could be true, he thought; perhaps, by the reasoning of some crude, childish cowardice, the motive of their malice was a desire to protect him, to break him down into the safety of a compromise. It's possible, he thought-but knew that he did not believe it.  "You've always been unpopular," said Lillian, "and it's more than a matter of any one particular issue. It's that unyielding, intractable attitude of yours. The men who're going to try you, know what you're thinking. That's why they'll crack down on you, while they'd let another man off."  "Why, no. I don't think they know what I'm thinking. That's what I have to let them know tomorrow."  "Unless you show them that you're willing to give in and co-operate, you won't have a chance. You've been too hard to deal with."  "No. I've been too easy."  "But if they put you in jail," said his mother, "what's going to happen to your family? Have you thought of that?"  "No. I haven't."  "Have you thought of the disgrace you'll bring upon us?"  "Mother, do you understand the issue in this case?"  "No, I don't and I-don't want to understand. It's all dirty business and dirty politics. All business is just dirty politics and all politics is just dirty business. I never did want to understand any of it. I don't care who's right or wrong, but what I think a man ought to think of first is his family. Don't you know what this will do to us?"  "No, Mother, I don't know or care."  His mother looked at him, aghast.  "Well, I think you have a very provincial attitude, all of you," said Philip suddenly. "Nobody here seems to be concerned with the wider, social aspects of the case. I don't agree with you, Lillian. I don't see why you say that they're pulling some sort of rotten trick on Henry and that he's in the right. I think he's guilty as hell. Mother, I can explain the issue to you very simply. There's nothing unusual about it, the courts are full of cases of this kind. Businessmen are taking advantage of the national emergency in order to make money. They break the regulations which protect the common welfare of all-for the sake of their own personal gain. They're profiteers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a ruthless, grasping, grabbing, antisocial policy, based on nothing but plain, selfish greed. It's no use pretending about it, we all know it-and I think it's contemptible."  He spoke in a careless, offhand manner, as if explaining the obvious to a group of adolescents; his tone conveyed the assurance of a man who knows that the moral ground of his stand is not open to question.  Rearden sat looking at him, as if studying an object seen for the first time. Somewhere deep in Rearden's mind, as a steady, gentle, inexorable beat, was a man's voice, saying: By what right?-by what code?-by what standard?  "Philip," he said, not raising his voice, "say any of that again and you will find yourself out in the street, right now, with the suit you've got on your back, with whatever change you've got in your pocket and with nothing else."  He heard no answer, no sound, no movement. He noted that the stillness of the three before him had no element of astonishment. The look of shock on their faces was not the shock of people at the sudden explosion of a bomb, but the shock of people who had known that they were playing with a lighted fuse. There were no outcries, no protests, no questions; they knew that he meant it and they knew everything it meant. A dim, sickening feeling told him that they had known it long before he did.  "You . . . you wouldn't throw your own brother out on the street, would you?" his mother said at last; it was not a demand, but a plea.  "I would."  "But he's your brother . . . Doesn't that mean anything to you?"  "No."  "Maybe he goes a bit too far at times, but it's just loose talk, it's just that modern jabber, he doesn't know what he's saying."  "Then let him learn."  "Don't be hard on him . . . he's younger than you and . . . and weaker. He . . . Henry, don't look at me that way! I've never seen you look like that. . . . You shouldn't frighten him. You know that he needs you."  "Does he know it?"  "You can't be hard on a man who needs you, it will prey on your conscience for the rest of your life."  "It won't."  "You've got to be kind, Henry."  "I'm not."  "You've got to have some pity."  "I haven't."  "A good man knows how to forgive."  "I don't."  "You wouldn't want me to think that you're selfish."  "I am."  Philip's eyes were darting from one to the other. He looked like a man who had felt certain that he stood on solid granite and had suddenly discovered that it was thin ice, now cracking open all around him.  "But I . . . " he tried, and stopped; his voice sounded like steps testing the ice. "But don't I have any freedom of speech?"  "In your own house. Not in mine."  "Don't I have a right to my own ideas?"  "At your own expense. Not at mine."  "Don't you tolerate any differences of opinion?"  "Not when I'm paying the bills."  "Isn't there anything involved but money?"  "Yes. The fact that it's my money."  "Don't you want to consider any hi . . ."-he was going to say "higher," but changed his mind-"any other aspects?"  "No."  "But I'm not your slave."  "Am I yours?"  "I don't know what you-" He stopped; he knew what was meant.  "No," said Rearden, "you're not my slave. You're free to walk out of here any time you choose."  "I . . . I'm not speaking of that."  "I am."  "I don't understand it . . ."  "Don't you?"  "You've always known my my political views. You've never objected before."  "That's true," said Rearden gravely. "Perhaps I owe you an explanation, if I have misled you. I've tried never to remind you that you're riving on my charity. I thought that it was your place to remember it. I thought that any human being who accepts the help of another, knows that good will is the giver's only motive and that good will is the payment he owes in return. But I see that I was wrong. You were getting your food unearned and you concluded that affection did not have to be earned, either. You concluded that I was the safest person in the world for you to spit on, precisely because I held you by the throat. You concluded that I wouldn't want to remind you of it and that I would be tied by the fear of hurting your feelings. All right, let's get it straight: you're an object of charity who's exhausted his credit long ago. Whatever affection I might have felt for you once, is gone. I haven't the slightest interest in you, your fate or your future. I haven't any reason whatever for wishing to feed you. If you leave my house, it won't make any difference to me whether you starve or not. Now that is your position here and I will expect you to remember it, if you wish to stay. If not, then get out."  But for the movement of drawing his head a little into his shoulders, Philip showed no reaction. "Don't imagine that I enjoy living here," he said; his voice was lifeless and shrill. "If you think I'm happy, you're mistaken. I'd give anything to get away." The words pertained to defiance, but the voice had a curiously cautious quality. "If that is how you feel about it, it would be best for me to leave." The words were a statement, but the voice put a question mark at the end of it and waited; there was no answer. "You needn't worry about my future. I don't have to ask: favors of anybody. I can take care of myself all right." The words were addressed to Rearden, but the eyes were looking at his mother; she did not speak; she was afraid to move. "I've always wanted to be on my own. I've always wanted to live in New York, near all my friends." The voice slowed down and added in an impersonal, reflective manner, as if the words were not addressed to anyone, "Of course, I'd have the problem of maintaining a certain social position . . . it's not my fault if I'll be embarrassed by a family name associated with a millionaire. . . . I would need enough money for a year or two . . . to establish myself in a manner suitable to my-"  "You won't get it from me."  "I wasn't asking you for it, was 1? Don't imagine that I couldn't get it somewhere else, if I wanted to! Don't imagine that I couldn't leave! I'd go in a minute, if I had only myself to think about. But Mother needs me, and if I deserted her-"  "Don't explain."  "And besides, you misunderstood me, Henry. I haven't said anything to insult you. I wasn't speaking in any personal way. I was only discussing the general political picture from an abstract sociological viewpoint which-"  "Don't explain," said Rearden. He was looking at Philip's face. It was half-lowered, its eyes looking up at him. The eyes were lifeless, as if they had witnessed nothing; they held no spark of excitement, no personal sensation, neither of defiance nor of regret, neither of shame nor of suffering; they were filmy ovals that held no response to reality, no attempt to understand it, to weigh it, to reach some verdict of justice -ovals that held nothing but a dull, still, mindless hatred. "Don't explain. Just keep your mouth shut."  The revulsion that made Rearden turn his face away contained a spasm of pity. There was an instant when he wanted to seize his brother's shoulders, to shake him, to cry: How could you do this to yourself? How did you come to a stage where this is all that's left of you? Why did you let the wonderful fact of your own existence go by? . . . He looked away. He knew it was useless.  He noted, in weary contempt, that the three at the table remained silent. Through all the years past, his consideration for them had brought him nothing but their maliciously righteous reproaches. Where was their righteousness now? Now was the time to stand on their code of justice-if justice had been any part of their code. Why didn't they throw at him all those accusations of cruelty and selfishness, which he had come to accept as the eternal chorus to his life? What had permitted them to do it for years? He knew that the words he heard in his mind were the key to the answer: The sanction of the victim.  "Don't let's quarrel," said his mother, her voice cheerless and vague. "It's Thanksgiving Day."  When he looked at Lillian, he caught a glance that made him certain she had watched him for a long time: its quality was panic.  He got up. "You will please excuse me now," he said to the table at large.  "Where are you going?" asked Lillian sharply.  He stood looking at her for a deliberate moment, as if to confirm the meaning she would read in his answer: "To New York."  She jumped to her feet. "Tonight?"  "Now,"  "You can't go to New York tonight!" Her voice was not loud, but it had the imperious helplessness of a shriek. "This is not the time when you can afford it. When you can afford to desert your family, I mean. You ought to think about the matter of clean hands. You're not in a position to permit yourself anything which you know to be depravity."  By what code?-thought Rearden-by what standard?  "Why do you wish to go to New York tonight?"  "I think, Lillian, for the same reason that makes you wish to stop me."  "Tomorrow is your trial."  "That is what I mean."  He made a movement to turn, and she raised her voice: "I don't want you to go!" He smiled. It was the first time he had smiled at her in the past three months; it was not the kind of smile she could care to see. "I forbid you to leave us tonight!"  He turned and left the room.  Sitting at the wheel of his car, with the glassy, frozen road flying at his face and down under the wheels at sixty miles an hour, he let the thought of his family drop away from him-and the vision of their faces went rolling back into the abyss of speed that swallowed the bare trees and lonely structures of the roadside. There was little traffic, and few lights in the distant clusters of the towns he passed; the emptiness of inactivity was the only sign of a holiday. A hazy glow, rusted by frost, flashed above the roof of a factory once in a rare while, and a cold wind shrieked through the joints of his car, beating the canvas top against the metal frame.  By some dim sense of contrast, which he did not define, the thought of his family was replaced by the thought of his encounter with the Wet Nurse, the Washington boy of his mills.  At the time of his indictment, he had discovered that the boy had known about his deal with Danagger, yet had not reported it to anyone.  "Why didn't you inform your friends about me?" he had asked.  The boy had answered brusquely, not looking at him, "Didn't want to."  "It was part of your job to watch precisely for things of that kind, wasn't it?"  "Yeah."  "Besides, your friends would have been delighted to hear it."  "I know."  "Didn't you know what a valuable piece of information it was and what a stupendous trade you could have pulled with those friends of yours in Washington whom you offered to me once-remember?-the friends who always 'occasion expenses'?" The boy had not answered.  "It could have made your career at the very top level. Don't tell me that you didn't know it."  "I knew it."  "Then why didn't you make use of it?"  "I didn't want to."  "Why not?"  "Don't know."  The boy had stood, glumly avoiding Rearden's eyes, as if trying to avoid something incomprehensible within himself. Rearden had laughed.  "Listen, Non-Absolute, you're playing with fire. Better go and murder somebody fast, before you let it get you-that reason that stopped you from turning informer-or else it will blast your career to hell."  The boy had not answered.  This morning, Rearden had gone to his office as usual, even though the rest of the office building was closed. At lunch time, he had stopped at the rolling mills and had been astonished to find the Wet Nurse standing there, alone in a corner, ignored by everybody, watching the work with an air of childish enjoyment.  "What are you doing here today?" Rearden had asked. "Don't you know it's a holiday?"  "Oh, I let the girls off, but I just came in to finish some business."  "What business?"  "Oh, letters and . . . Oh, hell, I signed three letters and sharpened my pencils, I know I didn't have to do it today, but I had nothing to do at home and . . . I get lonesome away from this place."  "Don't you have any family?"  "No . . . not to speak of. What about you, Mr. Rearden? Don't you have any?"  "I guess-not to speak of."  "I like this place. I like to hang around. . . . You know, Mr. Rearden, what I studied to be was a metallurgist."  Walking away, Rearden had turned to glance back and had caught the Wet Nurse looking after him as a boy would look at the hero of his childhood's favorite adventure story. God help the poor little bastard!-he had thought.  God help them all-he thought, driving through the dark streets of a small town, borrowing, in contemptuous pity, the words of their belief which he had never shared. He saw newspapers displayed on metal stands, with the black letters of headlines screaming to empty corners: "Railroad Disaster." He had heard the news on the radio, that afternoon: there had been a wreck on the main line of Taggart Transcontinental, near Rockland, Wyoming; a split rail had sent a freight train crashing over the edge of a canyon. Wrecks on the Taggart main line were becoming more frequent-the track was wearing out-the track which, less than eighteen months ago, Dagny was planning to rebuild, promising him a journey from coast to coast on his own Metal.  She had spent a year, picking worn rail from abandoned branches to patch the rail of the main line. She had spent months fighting the men of Jim's Board of Directors, who said that the national emergency was only temporary and a track that had lasted for ten years could well last for another winter, until spring, when conditions would improve, as Mr. Wesley Mouch had promised. Three weeks ago, she had made them authorize the purchase of sixty thousand tons of new rail; it could do no more than make a few patches across the continent in the worst divisions, but it was all she had been able to obtain from them.  She had had to wrench the money out of men deaf with panic: the freight revenues were falling at such a rate that the men of the Board had begun to tremble, staring at Jim's idea of the most prosperous year in Taggart history. She had had to order steel rail, there was no hope of obtaining an "emergency need" permission to buy Rearden Metal and no time to beg for it.  Rearden looked away from the headlines to the glow at the edge of the sky, which was the city of New York far ahead; his hands tightened on the wheel a little.  It was half past nine when he reached the city. Dagny's apartment was dark, when he let himself in with his key. He picked up the telephone and called her office. Her own voice answered: "Taggart Transcontinental."  "Don't you know it's a holiday?" he asked.  "Hello, Hank. Railroads have no holidays. Where are you calling from?"  "Your place."  "I'll be through in another half-hour."  "It's all right. Stay there. I'll come for you."  The anteroom of her office was dark, when he entered, except for the lighted glass cubbyhole of Eddie Willers. Eddie was closing his desk, getting ready to leave. He looked at Rearden, in puzzled astonishment.  "Good evening, Eddie. What is it that keeps you people so busy-the Rockland wreck?"  Eddie sighed. "Yes, Mr. Rearden."  "That's what I want to see Dagny about-about your rail."  "She's still here."  He started toward her door, when Eddie called after him hesitantly, "Mr. Rearden . . ."  He stopped. "Yes?"  "I wanted to say . . . because tomorrow is your trial . . . and whatever they do to you is supposed to be in the name of all the people . . . I just wanted to say that I . . . that it won't be in my name . . .even if there's nothing I can do about it, except to tell you . . . even if I know that that doesn't mean anything."  "It means much more than you suspect. Perhaps more than any of us suspect. Thanks, Eddie."  Dagny glanced up from her desk, when Rearden entered her office; he saw her watching him as he approached and he saw the look of weariness disappearing from her eyes. He sat down on the edge of the desk. She leaned back, brushing a strand of hair off her face, her shoulders relaxing under her thin white blouse.  "Dagny, there's something I want to tell you about the rail that you ordered. I want you to know this tonight."  She was watching him attentively; the expression of his face pulled hers into the same look of quietly solemn tension.  "I am supposed to deliver to Taggart Transcontinental, on February fifteenth, sixty thousand tons of rail, which is to give you three hundred miles of track. You will receive-for the same sum of money-eighty thousand tons of rail, which will give you five hundred miles of track. You know what material is cheaper and lighter than steel. Your rail will not be steel, it will be Rearden Metal. Don't argue, object or agree. I am not asking for your consent. You are not supposed to consent or to know anything about it. I am doing this and I alone will be responsible. We will work it so that those on your staff who'll know that you've ordered steel, won't know that you've received Rearden Metal, and those who'll know that you've received Rearden Metal, won't know that you had no permit to buy it. We will tangle the bookkeeping in such a way that if the thing should ever blow up, nobody will be able to pin anything on anybody, except on me. They might suspect that I bribed someone on your staff, or they might suspect that you were in on it, but they won't be able to prove it. I want you to give me your word that you will never admit it, no matter what happens. It's my Metal, and if there are any chances to take, it's I who'll take them. I have been planning this from the day I received your order. I have ordered the copper for it, from a source which will not betray me. I did not intend to tell you about it till later, but I changed my mind. I want you to know it tonight-because I am going on trial tomorrow for the same kind of crime."  She had listened without moving. At his last sentence, he saw a faint contraction of her cheeks and lips; it was not quite a smile, but it gave him her whole answer: pain, admiration, understanding.  Then he saw her eyes becoming softer, more painfully, dangerously alive-he took her wrist, as if the tight grasp of his fingers and the severity of his glance were to give her the support she needed-and he said sternly, "Don't thank me-this is not a favor-I am doing it in order to be able to bear my work, or else I'll break like Ken Danagger."  She whispered, "All right, Hank, I won't thank you," the tone of her voice and the look of her eyes making it a lie by the time it was uttered.  He smiled. "Give me the word I asked."  She inclined her head. "I give you my word." He released her wrist.  She added, not raising her head, "The only thing I'll say is that if they sentence you to jail tomorrow, I'll quit-without waiting for any destroyer to prompt me."  "You won't. And I don't think they'll sentence me to jail. I think they'll let me off very lightly. I have a hypothesis about it-I'll explain it to you afterwards, when I've put it to the test."  "What hypothesis?"  "Who is John Galt?" He smiled, and stood up. "That's all. We won't talk any further about my trial, tonight. You don't happen to have anything to drink in your office, have you?"  "No. But I think my traffic manager has some sort of a bar on one shelf of his filing closet."  "Do you think you could steal a drink for me, if he doesn't have it locked?"  "I'll try."  He stood looking at the portrait of Nat Taggart on the wall of her office-the portrait of a young man with a lifted head-until she returned, bringing a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He filled the glasses in silence.  "You know, Dagny, Thanksgiving was a holiday established by productive people to celebrate the success of their work."  The movement of his arm, as he raised his glass, went from the portrait-to her-to himself- to the buildings of the city beyond the window.  For a month in advance, the people who filled the courtroom had been told by the press that they would see the man who was a greedy enemy of society; but they had come to see the man who had invented Rearden Metal.  He stood up, when the judges called upon him to do so. He wore a gray suit, he had pale blue eyes and blond hair; it was not the colors that made his figure seem icily implacable, it was the fact that the suit had an expensive simplicity seldom flaunted these days, that it belonged in the sternly luxurious office of a rich corporation, that his bearing came from a civilized era and clashed with the place around him.  The crowd knew from the newspapers that he represented the evil of ruthless wealth; and-as they praised the virtue of chastity, then ran to see any movie that displayed a half-naked female on its posters-so they came to see him; evil, at least, did not have the stale hopelessness of a bromide which none believed and none dared to challenge. They looked at him without admiration-admiration was a feeling they had lost the capacity to experience, long ago; they looked with curiosity and with a dim sense of defiance against those who had told them that it was their duty to hate him.  A few years ago, they would have jeered at his air of self-confident wealth. But today, there was a slate-gray sky in the windows of the courtroom, which promised the first snowstorm of a long, hard winter; the last of the country's oil was vanishing, and the coal mines were not able to keep up with the hysterical scramble for winter supplies. The crowd in the courtroom remembered that this was the case which had cost them the services of Ken Danagger. There were rumors that the output of the Danagger Coal Company had fallen perceptibly within one month; the newspapers said that it was merely a matter of readjustment while Danagger's cousin was reorganizing the company he had taken over. Last week, the front pages had carried the story of a catastrophe on the site of a housing project under construction: defective steel girders had collapsed, killing four workmen; the newspapers had not mentioned, but the crowd knew, that the girders had come from Orren Boyle's Associated Steel.  They sat in the courtroom in heavy silence and they looked at the tall, gray figure, not with hope-they were losing the capacity to hope -but with an impassive neutrality spiked by a faint question mark; the question mark was placed over all the pious slogans they had heard for years.  The newspapers had snarled that the cause of the country's troubles, as this case demonstrated, was the selfish greed of rich industrialists; that it was men like Hank Rearden who were to blame for the shrinking diet, the falling temperature and the cracking roofs in the homes of the nation; that if it had not been for men who broke regulations and hampered the government's plans, prosperity would have been achieved long ago; and that a man like Hank Rearden was prompted by nothing but the profit motive. This last was stated without explanation or elaboration, as if the words "profit motive" were the self-evident brand of ultimate evil.  The crowd remembered that these same newspapers, less than two years ago, had screamed that the production of Rearden Metal should be forbidden, because its producer was endangering people's lives for the sake of his greed; they remembered that the man in gray had ridden in the cab of the first engine to run over a track of his own Metal; and that he was now on trial for the greedy crime of withholding from the public a load of the Metal which it had been his greedy crime to offer in the public market.  According to the procedure established by directives, cases of this kind were not tried by a jury, but by a panel of three judges appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources; the procedure, the directives had stated, was to be informal and democratic.  The judge's bench had been removed from the old Philadelphia courtroom for this occasion, and replaced by a table on a wooden platform; it gave the room an atmosphere suggesting the kind of meeting where a presiding body puts something over on a mentally retarded membership.  One of the judges, acting as prosecutor, had read the charges. "You may now offer whatever plea you wish to make in your own defense," he announced.  Facing the platform, his voice inflectionless and peculiarly clear, Hank Rearden answered: "I have no defense."  "Do you-" The judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be that easy. "Do you throw yourself upon the mercy of this court?"  "I do not recognize this court's right to try me."  "What?"  "I do not recognize this court's right to try me."  "But, Mr. Rearden, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime."  "I do not recognize my action as a crime."  "But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your Metal."  "I do not recognize your right to control the sale of my Metal."  "Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?"  "No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."  He noted the stillness of the room. By the rules of the complicated pretense which all those people played for one another's benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.  "Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?" asked the judge.  "No. I am complying with the law-to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself, where no defense is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice."  "But, Mr. Rearden, the law provides specifically that you are to be given an opportunity to present your side of the case and to defend yourself."  "A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognized by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very well. Do it."  "Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle-the principle of the public good."  "Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that the good was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it-well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."  A group of seats at the side of the courtroom was reserved for the prominent visitors who had come from New York to witness the trial. Dagny sat motionless and her face showed nothing but a solemn attention, the attention of listening with the knowledge that the flow of his words would determine the course of her life. Eddie Willers sat beside her. James Taggart had not come. Paul Larkin sat hunched forward, his face thrust out, pointed like an animal's muzzle, sharpened by a look of fear now turning into malicious hatred. Mr. Mowen, who sat beside him, was a man of greater innocence and smaller understanding; his fear was of a simpler nature; he listened in bewildered indignation and he whispered to Larkin, "Good God, now he's done it! Now he'll convince the whole country that all businessmen are enemies of the public good!"  "Are we to understand," asked the judge, "that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"  "I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."  "What . . . what do you mean?"  "I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices."  "Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?"  "Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes-by refusing to buy my product."  "We are speaking of . . . other methods."  "Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters -and I recognize it as such."  "Mr. Rearden, this is hardly the way to defend yourself."  "I said that I would not defend myself."  "But this is unheard of! Do you realize the gravity of the charge against you?"  "I do not care to consider it."  "Do you realize the possible consequences of your stand?"  "Fully."  "It is the opinion of this court that the facts presented by the prosecution seem to warrant no leniency. The penalty which this court has the power to impose on you is extremely severe."  "Go ahead."  "I beg your pardon?"  "Impose it."  The three judges looked at one another. Then their spokesman turned back to Rearden. "This is unprecedented," he said.  "It is completely irregular," said the second judge. "The law requires you to submit a plea in your own defense. Your only alternative is to state for the record that you throw yourself upon the mercy of the court."  "I do not."  "But you have to."  "Do you mean that what you expect from me is some sort of voluntary action?"  "Yes."  "I volunteer nothing."  "But the law demands that the defendant's side be represented on the record."  "Do you mean that you need my help to make this procedure legal?"  "Well, no . . . yes . . . that is, to complete the form."  "I will not help you."  The third and youngest judge, who had acted as prosecutor, snapped impatiently, "This is ridiculous and unfair! Do you want to let it look as if a man of your prominence had been railroaded without a-" He cut himself off short. Somebody at the back of the courtroom emitted a long whistle.  "I want," said Rearden gravely, "to let the nature of this procedure appear exactly for what it is. If you need my help to disguise it-I will not help you."  "But we are giving you a chance to defend yourself-and it is you who are rejecting it."  "I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice."  "But the law compels you to volunteer a defense!"  There was laughter at the back of the courtroom.  "That is the flaw in your theory, gentlemen," said Rearden gravely, "and I will not help you out of it. If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so. But you will discover that you need the voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you can see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their own volition-which you cannot force-that makes you possible. I choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you demand. Whatever you wish me to do, I will do it at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry me there-I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine-I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe that you have the right to force me-use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action."  The eldest judge leaned forward across the table and his voice became suavely derisive: "You speak as if you were fighting for some sort of principle, Mr. Rearden, but what you're actually fighting for is only your property, isn't it?"  "Yes, of course. I am fighting for my property. Do you know the kind of principle that represents?"  "You pose as a champion of freedom, but it's only the freedom to make money that you're after."  "Yes, of course. All I want is the freedom to make money. Do you know what that freedom implies?"  "Surely, Mr. Rearden, you wouldn't want your attitude to be misunderstood. You wouldn't want to give support to the widespread impression that you are a man devoid of social conscience, who feels no concern for the welfare of his fellows and works for nothing but his own profit."  "I work for nothing but my own profit. I earn it."  There was a gasp, not of indignation, but of astonishment, in the crowd behind him and silence from the judges he faced. He went on calmly: "No, I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers-with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit-which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage-and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with-the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and to do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people-the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability-I refuse to apologize for my success-I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code-and I will accept no other.  “I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish-but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work-my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good-that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices-that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation-as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise.  “If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own-I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every, power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!"  The crowd burst into applause.  Rearden whirled around, more startled than his judges. He saw faces that laughed in violent excitement, and faces that pleaded for help; he saw their silent despair breaking out into the open; he saw the same anger and indignation as his own, finding release in the wild defiance of their cheering; he saw the looks of admiration and the looks of hope. There were also the faces of loose-mouthed young men and maliciously unkempt females, the kind who led the booing in newsreel theaters at any appearance of a businessman on the screen; they did not attempt a counter-demonstration; they were silent.  As he looked at the crowd, people saw in his face what the threats of the judges had not been able to evoke: the first sign of emotion.  It was a few moments before they heard the furious beating of a gavel upon the table and one of the judges yelling: "-or I shall have the courtroom cleared!"  As he turned back to the table, Rearden's eyes moved over the visitors' section. His glance paused on Dagny, a pause perceptible only to her, as if he were saying: It works. She would have appeared calm except that her eyes seemed to have become too large for her face.  Eddie Willers was smiling the kind of smile that is a man's substitute for breaking into tears. Mr. Mowen looked stupefied. Paul Larkin was staring at the floor. There was no expression on Bertram Scudder's face on Lillian's. She sat at the end of a row, her legs crossed, a mink stole slanting from her right shoulder to her left hip; she looked at Rearden, not moving.  In the complex violence of all the things he felt, he had time to recognize a touch of regret and of longing: there was a face he had hoped to see, had looked for from the start of the session, had wanted to be present more than any other face around him. But Francisco d'Anconia had not come.  “Mr. Rearden," said the eldest judge, smiling affably, reproachfully and spreading his arms, "it is regrettable that you should have misunderstood us so completely. That's the trouble-that businessmen refuse to approach us in a spirit of trust and friendship. They seem to imagine that we are their enemies. Why do you speak of human sacrifices? What made you go to such an extreme? We have no intention of seizing your property or destroying your life. We do not seek to harm your interests. We are fully aware of your distinguished achievements. Our purpose is only to balance social pressures and do justice to all. This hearing is really intended, not as a trial, but as a friendly discussion aimed at mutual understanding and co-operation."  "I do not co-operate at the point of a gun."  "Why speak of guns? This matter is not serious enough to warrant such references. We are fully aware that the guilt in this case lies chiefly with Mr. Kenneth Danagger, who instigated this infringement of the law, who exerted pressure upon you and who confessed his guilt by disappearing in order to escape trial."  "No. We did it by equal, mutual, voluntary agreement."  "Mr. Rearden," said the second judge, "you may not share some of our ideas, but when all is said and done, we're all working for the same cause. For the good of the people. We realize that you were prompted to disregard legal technicalities by the critical situation of the coal mines and the crucial importance of fuel to the public welfare."  "No. I was prompted by my own profit and my own interests. What effect it had on the coal mines and the public welfare is for you to estimate. That was not my motive."  Mr. Mowen stared dazedly about him and whispered to Paul Larkin, "Something's gone screwy here."  "Oh, shut up!" snapped Larkin.  "I am sure, Mr. Rearden," said the eldest judge, "that you do not really believe-nor docs the public-that we wish to treat you as a sacrificial victim. If anyone has been laboring under such a misapprehension, we are anxious to prove that it is not true."  The judges retired to consider their verdict. They did not stay out long. They returned to an ominously silent courtroom-and announced that a fine of $5,000 was imposed on Henry Rearden, but that the sentence was suspended.  Streaks of jeering laughter ran through the applause that swept the courtroom. The applause was aimed at Rearden, the laughter-at the judges.  Rearden stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing the applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating a vision with a bitter wonder that was almost fear. He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant-and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.  He was jolted back into the courtroom by the people pressing to surround him. He smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic, tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his smile.  "God bless you, Mr. Rearden!" said an old woman with a ragged shawl over her head. "Can't you save us, Mr. Rearden? They're eating us alive, and it's no use fooling anybody about how it's the rich that they're after-do you know what's happening to us?"  "Listen, Mr. Rearden," said a man who looked like a factory worker, "it's the rich who're selling us down the river. Tell those wealthy bastards, who're so anxious to give everything away, that when they give away their palaces, they're giving away the skin off our backs."  "I know it," said Rearden.  The guilt is ours, he thought. If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us and silently to bear punishment for our virtues-what sort of "good" did we expect to triumph in the world?  He looked at the people around him. They had cheered him today; they had cheered him by the side of the track of the John Galt Line. But tomorrow they would clamor for a new directive from Wesley Mouch and a free housing project from Orren Boyle, while Boyle's girders collapsed upon their heads. They would do it, because they would be told to forget, as a sin, that which had made them cheer Hank Rearden.  Why were they ready to renounce their highest moments as a sin? Why were they willing to betray the best within them? What made them believe that this earth was a realm of evil where despair was their natural fate? He could not name the reason, but he knew that it had to be named. He felt it as a huge question mark within the courtroom, which it was now his duty to answer.  This was the real sentence imposed upon him, he thought-to discover what idea, what simple idea available to the simplest man, had made mankind accept the doctrines that led it to self-destruction.  "Hank, I'll never think that it's hopeless, not ever again," said Dagny that evening, after the trial. "I'll never be tempted to quit. You've proved that the right always works and always wins-" She stopped, then added, "-provided one knows what is the right."  Lillian said to him at dinner next day, "So you've won, have you?"  Her voice was noncommittal; she said nothing else; she was watching him, as If studying a riddle.  The Wet Nurse asked him at the mills, "Mr. Rearden, what's a moral premise?" "What you're going to have a lot of trouble with."  The boy frowned, then shrugged and said, laughing, "God, that was a wonderful show! What a beating you gave them, Mr. Rearden! I sat by the radio and howled." "How do you know it was a beating?" "Well, it was, wasn't it?" "Are you sure of it?" "Sure I'm sure." "The thing that makes you sure is a moral premise."  The newspapers were silent. After the exaggerated attention they had given to the case, they acted as if the trial were not worthy of notice. They printed brief accounts on unlikely pages, worded in such generalities that no reader could discover any hint of a controversial issue.  The businessmen he met seemed to wish to evade the subject of his trial. Some made no comment at all, but turned away, their faces showing a peculiar resentment under the effort to appear noncommittal, as if they feared that the mere act of looking at him would be interpreted as taking a stand. Others ventured to comment: "In my opinion, Rearden, it was extremely unwise of you. . . . It seems to me that this is hardly the time to make enemies. . . . We can't afford to arouse resentment."  "Whose resentment?" he asked.  "I don't think the government will like it."  "You saw the consequences of that."  "Well, I don't know . . . The public won't take it, there's bound to be a lot of indignation."  "You saw how the public took it."  "Well, I don't know . . . We've been trying hard not to give any grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed-and you've given ammunition to the enemy."  "Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right to your profits and your property?"  "Oh, no, no, certainly not-but why go to extremes? There's always a middle ground."  "A middle ground between you and your murderers?"  "Now why use such words?"  "What I said at the trial, was it true or not?"  "It's going to be misquoted and misunderstood."  "Was it true or not?"  "The public is too dumb to grapple with such issues."  "Was it true or not?"  "It's no time to boast about being rich-when the populace is starving. It's just goading them on to seize everything."  "But telling them that you have no right to your wealth, while they have-is what's going to restrain them?"  "Well, I don't know . . ."  "I don't like the things you said at your trial," said another man.  "In my opinion, I don't agree with you at all. Personally, I'm proud to believe that I am working for the public good, not just for my own profit. I like to think that I have some goal higher than just earning my three meals a day and my Hammond limousine."  "And I don't like that idea about no directives and no controls," said another. "I grant you they're running hog-wild and overdoing it. But-no controls at all? I don't go along with that. I think some controls are necessary. The ones which are for the public good."  "I am sorry, gentlemen," said Rearden, "that I will be obliged to save your goddamn necks along with mine."  A group of businessmen headed by Mr. Mowen did not issue any statements about the trial. But a week later they announced, with an inordinate amount of publicity, that they were endowing the construction of a playground for the children of the unemployed.  Bertram Scudder did not mention the trial in his column. But ten days later, he wrote, among items of miscellaneous gossip: "Some idea of the public value of Mr. Hank Rearden may be gathered from the fact that of all social groups, he seems to be most unpopular with his own fellow businessmen. His old-fashioned brand of ruthlessness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of profit."  On an evening in December-when the street beyond his window was like a congested throat coughing with the horns of pre-Christmas traffic-Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, fighting an enemy more dangerous than weariness or fear: revulsion against the thought of having to deal with human beings.  He sat, unwilling to venture into the streets of the city, unwilling to move, as if he were chained to his chair and to this room. He had tried for hours to ignore an emotion that felt like the pull of homesickness: his awareness that the only man whom he longed to see, was here, in this hotel, just a few floors above him.  He had caught himself, in the past few weeks, wasting time in the lobby whenever he entered the hotel or left it, loitering unnecessarily at the mail counter or the newsstand, watching the hurried currents of people, hoping to see Francisco d'Anconia among them. He had caught himself eating solitary dinners in the restaurant of the Wayne-Falkland, with his eyes on the curtains of the entrance doorway, Now he caught himself sitting in his room, thinking that the distance was only a few floors.  He rose to his feet, with a chuckle of amused indignation; he was acting, he thought, like a woman who waits for a telephone call and fights against the temptation to end the torture by making the first move. There was no reason, he thought, why he could not go to Francisco d'Anconia, if that was what he wanted. Yet when he told himself that he would, he felt some dangerous element of surrender in the intensity of his own relief.  He made a step toward the phone, to call Francisco's suite, but stopped. It was not what he wanted; what he wanted was simply to walk in, unannounced, as Francisco had walked into his office; it was this that seemed to state some unstated right between them.  On his way to the elevator, he thought: He won't be in or, if he is, you'll probably find him entertaining some floozie, which will serve you right. But the thought seemed unreal, he could not make it apply to the man he had seen at the mouth of the furnace-he stood confidently in the elevator, looking up-he walked confidently down the hall, feeling his bitterness relax into gaiety-he knocked at the door.  Francisco's voice snapped, "Come in!" It had a brusque, absentminded sound.  Rearden opened the door and stopped on the threshold. One of the hotel's costliest satin-shaded lamps stood in the middle of the floor, throwing a circle of light on wide sheets of drafting paper. Francisco d'Anconia, in shirt sleeves, a strand of hair hanging down over his face, lay stretched on the floor, on his stomach, propped up by his elbows, biting the end of a pencil in concentration upon some point of the intricate tracing before him. He did not look up, he seemed to have forgotten the knock. Rearden tried to distinguish the drawing: it looked like the section of a smelter. He stood watching in startled wonder; had he had the power to bring into reality his own image of Francisco d'Anconia, this was the picture he would have seen: the figure of a purposeful young worker intent upon a difficult task, In a moment, Francisco raised his head. In the next instant, he flung his body upward to a kneeling posture, looking at Rearden with a smile of incredulous pleasure. In the next, he seized the drawings and threw them aside too hastily, face down.  "What did I interrupt?" asked Rearden.  "Nothing much. Come in." He was grinning happily. Rearden felt suddenly certain that Francisco had waited, too, had waited for this as for a victory which he had not quite hoped to achieve.  "What were you doing?" asked Rearden.  "Just amusing myself."  "Let me see it."  "No." He rose and kicked the drawings aside.  Rearden noted that if he had resented as impertinence Francisco's manner of proprietorship in his office, he himself was now guilty of the same attitude-because he offered no explanation for his visit, but crossed the room and sat down in an armchair, casually, as if he were at home.  "Why didn't you come to continue what you had started?" he asked.  "You have been continuing it brilliantly without my help."  "Do you mean, my trial?"  "I mean, your trial."  "How do you know? You weren't there."  Francisco smiled, because the tone of the voice confessed an added sentence: I was looking for you. "Don't you suppose I heard every word of it on the radio?"  "You did? Well, how did you like hearing your own lines come over the air, with me as your stooge?"  "You weren't, Mr. Rearden. They weren't my lines. Weren't they the things you had always lived by?"  "Yes."  "I only helped you to see that you should have been proud to live by them."  "I am glad you heard it."  "It was great, Mr. Rearden-and about three generations too late."  "What do you mean?"  "If one single businessman had had the courage, then, to say that he worked for nothing but his own profit-and to say it proudly-he would have saved the world."  "I haven't given up the world as lost."  "It isn't. It never can be. But oh God!-what he would have spared us!"  "Well, I guess we have to fight, no matter what era we're caught in."  "Yes . . . You know, Mr. Rearden, I would suggest that you get a transcript of your trial and read what you said. Then see whether you are practicing it fully and consistently-or not."  "You mean that I'm not?"  "See for yourself."  "I know that you had a great deal to tell me, when we were interrupted, that night at the mills. Why don't you finish what you had to say?"  "No. It's too soon."  Francisco acted as if there were nothing unusual about this visit, as if he took it as a matter of natural course-as he had always acted in Rearden's presence. But Rearden noted that he was not so calm as he wished to appear; he was pacing the room, in a manner that seemed a release for an emotion he did not want to confess; he had forgotten the lamp and it still stood on the floor as the room's sole illumination.  "You've been taking an awful beating in the way of discoveries, haven't you?" said Francisco, "How did you like the behavior of your fellow businessmen?"  "I suppose it was to be expected."  His voice tense with the anger of compassion, Francisco said, "It's been twelve years and yet I'm still unable to see it indifferently!" The sentence sounded involuntary, as if, trying to suppress the sound of emotion, he had uttered suppressed words.  "Twelve years-since what?" asked Rearden.  There was an instant's pause, but Francisco answered calmly, "Since I understood what those men were doing," He added, "I know what you're going through right now . . . and what's still ahead."  "Thanks," said Rearden.  "For what?"  "For what you're trying so hard not to show. But don't worry about me. I'm still able to stand it. . . . You know, I didn't come here because I wanted to talk about myself or even about the trial."  "I'll agree to any subject you choose-in order to have you here."  He said it in the tone of a courteous joke; but the tone could not disguise it; he meant it. "What did you want to talk about?"  "You."  Francisco stopped. He looked at Rearden for a moment, then answered quietly, "All right."  If that which Rearden felt could have gone directly into words, past the barrier of his will, he would have cried: Don't let me down-I need you-I am fighting all of them, I have fought to my limit and am condemned to fight beyond it-and, as sole ammunition possible to me, I need the knowledge of one single man whom I can trust, respect and admire.  Instead, he said calmly, very simply-and the only note of a personal bond between them was that tone of sincerity which comes with a direct, unqualifiedly rational statement and implies the same honesty of mind in the listener-"You know, I think that the only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim."  "That's true."  "If I say that that is the dilemma you've put me in, would you help me by answering a personal question?"  "I will try."  "I don't have to tell you-I think you know it-that you are the man of the highest mind I have ever met. I am coming to accept, not as right, but at least as possible, the fact that you refuse to exercise your great ability in the world of today. But what a man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.  And this is what I find inconceivable: no matter what you've given up, so long as you chose to remain alive, how can you find any pleasure in spending a life as valuable as yours on running after cheap women and on an imbecile's idea of diversions?"  Francisco looked at him with a fine smile of amusement, as if saying: No? You didn't want to talk about yourself? And what is it that you're confessing but the desperate loneliness which makes the question of my character more important to you than any other question right now?  The smile merged into a soft, good-natured chuckle, as if the question involved no problem for him, no painful secret to reveal. "There's a way to solve every dilemma of that kind, Mr. Rearden. Check your premises." He sat down on the floor, settling himself gaily, informally, for a conversation he would enjoy. "Is it your own first-hand conclusion that I am a man of high mind?"  "Yes."  "Do you know of your own first-hand knowledge that I spend my life running after women?"  "You've never denied it."  "Denied it? I've gone to a lot of trouble to create that impression."  "Do you mean to say that it isn't true?"  "Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?"  "Good God, no!"  "Only that kind of man spends his life running after women."  "What do you mean?"  "Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the mail who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures -which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value."  "You'd better explain that."  "Did it ever occur to you that it's the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think-for the same reason-that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you-just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.  “Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment-just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!-an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as., his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience-or to fake-a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer-because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to . . . What's the matter?" he asked, seeing the look on Rearden's face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an abstract discussion.  "Go on," said Rearden tensely.  "He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises-because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives-and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values-and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws-and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex-nothing but shame."  Rearden said slowly, looking off, not realizing that he was thinking aloud, "At least . . . I've never accepted that other tenet . . . I've never felt guilty about making money."  Francisco missed the significance of the first two words; he smiled and said eagerly, "You do see that it's the same issue? No, you'd never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn't be able to force it upon yourself. If you tried to damn sex as evil, you'd still find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise. You'd be attracted to the highest woman you met. You'd always want a heroine. You'd be incapable of self-contempt. You'd be unable to believe that existence is evil and that you're a helpless creature caught in an impossible universe. You're the man who's spent his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You're the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love-and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool's self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one's code of values. It's the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. But observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist.  “The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence-and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure-and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him-and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. He tells himself that all he's after is physical pleasure-but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling, of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body? Now that is your woman-chaser. Does the description fit me?"  "God, no!"  "Then you can judge, without asking my word for it, how much chasing of women I've done in my life."  "But what on earth have you been doing on the front pages of newspapers for the last-isn't it twelve-years?"  "I've spent a lot of money on the most ostentatiously vulgar parties I could think of, and a miserable amount of time on being seen with the appropriate sort of women. As for the rest-" He stopped, then said, "I have some friends who know this, but you are the first person to whom I am confiding it against my own rules: I have never slept with any of those women. I have never touched one of them."  "What is more incredible than that, is that I believe you."  The lamp on the floor beside him threw broken bits of light across Francisco's face, as he leaned forward; the face had a look of guiltless amusement. "If you care to glance over those front pages, you'll see that I've never said anything. It was the women who were eager to rush into print with stories insinuating that being seen with me at a restaurant was the sign of a great romance. What do you suppose those women are after but the same thing as the chaser-the desire to gain their own value from the number and fame of the men they conquer? Only it's one step phonier, because the value they seek is not even in the actual fact, but in the impression on and the envy of other women. Well, I gave those bitches what they wanted-but what they literally wanted, without the pretense that they expected, the pretense that hides from Them the nature of their wish. Do you think they wanted to sleep with me or with any man? They wouldn't be capable of so real and honest a desire. They wanted food for their vanity-and I gave it to them. I gave them the chance to boast to their friends and to see themselves in the scandal sheets in the roles of great seductresses. But do you know that it works in exactly the same way as what you did at your trial? If you want to defeat any kind of vicious fraud-comply with it literally, adding nothing of your own to disguise its nature. Those women understood. They saw whether there's any satisfaction in being envied by others for a feat one has not achieved. Instead of self-esteem, their publicized romances with me have given them a deeper sense of inferiority: each one of them knows that she's tried and failed. If dragging me into bed is supposed to be her public standard of value, she knows that she couldn't live up to it. I think those women hate me more than any other man on earth. But my secret is safe-because each one of them thinks that she was the only one who failed, while all the others succeeded, so she'll be the more vehement in swearing to our romance and will never admit the truth to anybody."  "But what have you done to your own reputation?"  Francisco shrugged. "Those whom I respect, will know the truth about me, sooner or later. The others"-his face hardened-"the others consider that which I really am as evil. Let them have what they prefer-what I appear to be on the front pages."  "But what for? Why did you do it? Just to teach them a lesson?"  "Hell, no! I wanted to be known as a playboy."  "Why?"  "A playboy is a man who just can't help letting money run through his fingers."  "Why did you want to assume such an ugly sort of role?"  "Camouflage."  "For what?"  "For a purpose of my own."  "What purpose?"  Francisco shook his head. "Don't ask me to tell you that. I've told you more than I should. You'll come to know the rest of it soon, anyway."  "If it's more than you should, why did you tell me?"  "Because . . . you've made me become impatient for the first time in years." The note of a suppressed emotion came back into his voice.  "Because I've never wanted anyone to know the truth about me as I wanted you to know it. Because I knew that you'd despise a playboy more than any other sort of man-as I would, too. Playboy? I've never loved but one woman in my life and still do and always will!" It was an involuntary break, and he added, his voice low, "I've never confessed that to anyone . . . not even to her."  "Have you lost her?"  Francisco sat looking off into space; in a moment, he answered tonelessly, "I hope not."  The light of the lamp hit his face from below, and Rearden could not see his eyes, only his mouth drawn in lines of endurance and oddly solemn resignation. Rearden knew that this was a wound not to be probed any further.  With one of his swift changes of mood, Francisco said, "Oh well, it's just a little longer!" and rose to his feet, smiling.  "Since you trust me," said Rearden, "I want to tell you a secret of mine in exchange. I want you to, know how much I trusted you before I came here. And I might need your help later."  "You're the only man left whom I'd like to help."  "There's a great deal that I don't understand about you, but I'm certain of one thing: that you're not a friend of the looters."  "I'm not." There was a hint of amusement in Francisco's face, as at an understatement.  "So I know that you won't betray me if I tell you that I'm going to continue selling Rearden Metal to customers of my own choice in any amount I wish, whenever I see a chance to do it. Right now, I'm getting ready to pour an order twenty times the size of the one they tried me for."  Sitting on the arm of a chair, a few feet away, Francisco leaned forward to look at him silently, frowning, for a long moment, "Do you think that you're fighting them by doing it?" he asked.  "Well, what would you call it? Co-operating?"  "You were willing to work and produce Rearden Metal for them at the price of losing your profits, losing your friends, enriching stray bastards who had the pull to rob you, and taking their abuse for the privilege of keeping them alive. Now you're willing to do it at the price of accepting the position of a criminal and the risk of being thrown in jail at any moment-for the sake of keeping in existence a system which can be kept going only by its victims, only by the breaking of its own laws."  "It's not for their system, but for customers whom I can't abandon to the mercy of their system-I intend to outlast that system of theirs -I don't intend to let them stop me, no matter how hard they make it for me-and I don't intend to give up the world to them, even if I am the last man left. Right now, that illegal order is more important to me than the whole of my mills."  Francisco shook his head slowly and did not answer; then he asked, "To which one of your friends in the copper industry are you going to give the valuable privilege of informing on you this time?"  Rearden smiled. "Not this time. This time, I'm dealing with a man I can trust."  "Really? Who is it?"  "You."  Francisco sat up straight. "What?" he asked, his voice so low that he almost succeeded in hiding the sound of a gasp.  Rearden was smiling. "You didn't know that I'm one of your customers now? It was done through a couple of stooges and under a phony name-but I'll need your help to prevent anyone on your staff from becoming inquisitive about it. I need that copper, I need it on time-and I don't care if they arrest me later, so long as I get this through. I know that you've lost all concern for your company, your wealth, your work, because you don't care to deal with looters like Taggart and Boyle. But if you meant all the things you taught me, if I am the last man left whom you respect, you'll help me to survive and to beat them. I've never asked for anyone's help. I'm asking for yours. I need you. I trust you. You've always professed your admiration for me. Well, there's my life in your hands-if you want it. An order of d'Anconia copper is being shipped to me right now. It left San Juan on December fifth."  "What?!"  It was a scream of plain shock. Francisco had shot to his feet, past any attempt to hide anything. "On December fifth?"  "Yes," said Rearden, stupefied.  Francisco leaped to the telephone. "I told you not to deal with d'Anconia Copper!" It was the half-moaning, half-furious cry of despair.  His hand was reaching for the telephone, but jerked back. He grasped the edge of the table, as if to stop himself from lifting the receiver, and he stood, head down, for how long a time neither he nor Rearden could tell. Rearden was held numb by the fact of watching an agonized struggle with the motionless figure of a man as its only evidence. He could not guess the nature of the struggle, he knew  only that there was something which Francisco had the power to prevent in that moment and that it was a power which he would not use.  When Francisco raised his head, Rearden saw a face drawn by so great a suffering that its lines were almost an audible cry of pain, the more terrible because the face had a look of firmness, as if the decision had been made and this was the price of it.  "Francisco . . . what's the matter?"  "Hank, I . . . " He shook his head, stopped, then stood up straight.  "Mr. Rearden," he said, in a voice that had the strength, the despair and the peculiar dignity of a plea he knew to be hopeless, "for the time when you're going to damn me, when you're going to doubt every word I said . . . I swear to you-by the woman I love-that I am your friend."  The memory of Francisco's face as it looked in that moment, came back to Rearden three days later, through a blinding shock of loss and hatred-it came back, even though, standing by the radio in his office, he thought that he must now keep away from the Wayne-Falkland or he would kill Francisco d'Anconia on sight-it kept coming back to him, through the words he was hearing-he was hearing that three ships of d'Anconia copper, bound from San Juan to New York, had been attacked by Ragnar Danneskjold and sent to the bottom of the ocean-it kept coming back, even though he knew that much more than the copper had gone down for him with those ships.