CHAPTER V ACCOUNT OVERDRAWN

It was the first failure in the history of Rearden Steel. For the first time, an order was not delivered as promised. But by February 15, when the Taggart rail was due, it made no difference to anyone any longer.  Winter had come early, in the last days of November. People said that it was the hardest winter on record and that no one could be blamed for the unusual severity of the snowstorms. They did not care to remember that there had been a time when snowstorms did not sweep, unresisted, down unlighted roads and upon the roofs of unheated houses, did not stop the movement of trains, did not leave a wake of corpses counted by the hundreds.  The first time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to Taggart Transcontinental, in the last week of December, Danagger's cousin explained that he could not help it; he had had to cut the workday down to six hours, he said, in order to raise the morale of the men who did not seem to function as they had in the days of his cousin Kenneth; the men had become listless and sloppy, he said, because they were exhausted by the harsh discipline of the former management; he could not help it if some of the superintendents and foremen had quit him without reason, men who had been with the company for ten to twenty years; he could not help it if there seemed to be some friction between his workers and his new supervisory staff, even though the new men were much more liberal than the old slave drivers; it was only a matter of readjustment, he said. He could not help it, he said, if the tonnage intended for Taggart Transcontinental had been turned over, on the eve of its scheduled delivery, to the Bureau of Global Relief for shipment to the People's State of England; it was an emergency, the people of England were starving, with all of their State factories closing down-and Miss Taggart was being unreasonable, since it was only a matter of one day's delay.  It was only one day's delay. It caused a three days' delay in the run of Freight Train Number 386, bound from California to New York with fifty-nine carloads of lettuce and oranges. Freight Train Number 386 waited on sidings, at coaling stations, for the fuel that had not arrived. When the train  reached New York, the lettuce and oranges had to be dumped into the East River: they had waited their turn too long in the freight houses of California, with the train schedules cut and the engines forbidden, by directive, to pull a train of more than sixty cars.  Nobody but their friends and trade associates noticed that three orange growers in California went out of business, as well as two lettuce farmers in Imperial Valley; nobody noticed the closing of a commission house in New York, of a plumbing company to which the commission house owed money, of a lead-pipe wholesaler who had supplied the plumbing company. When people were starving, said the newspapers, one did not have to feel concern over the failures of business enterprises which were only private ventures for private profit.  The coal shipped across the Atlantic by the Bureau of Global Relief did not reach the People's State of England: it was seized by Ragnar Danneskjold.  The second time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to Taggart Transcontinental, in mid-January, Danagger's cousin snarled over the telephone that he could not help it: his mines had been shut down for three days, due to a shortage of lubricating oil for the machinery. The supply of coal to Taggart Transcontinental was four days late.  Mr. Quinn, of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company which had once moved from Connecticut to Colorado, waited a week for the freight train that carried his order of Rearden steel. When the train arrived, the doors of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company's plant were closed.  Nobody traced the closing of a motor company in Michigan, that had waited for a shipment of ball bearings, its machinery idle, its workers on full pay; or the closing of a sawmill in Oregon, that had waited for a new motor; or the closing of a lumber yard in Iowa, left without supply; or the bankruptcy of a building contractor in Illinois who, failing to get his lumber on time, found his contracts cancelled and the purchasers of his homes sent wandering off down snowswept roads in search of that which did not exist anywhere any longer.  The snowstorm that came at the end of January blocked the passes through the Rocky Mountains, raising white walls thirty feet high across the main-line track of Taggart Transcontinental. The men who attempted to clear the track, gave up within the first few hours: the rotary plows broke down, one after another. The plows had been kept in precarious repair for two years past the span of their usefulness. The new plows had not been delivered; the manufacturer had quit, unable to obtain the steel he needed from Orren Boyle.  Three westbound trains were trapped on the sidings of Winston Station, high in the Rockies, where the main line of Taggart Transcontinental cut across the northwest corner of Colorado. For five days, they remained beyond the reach of help. Trains could not approach them through the storm. The last of the trucks made by Lawrence Hammond broke down on the frozen grades of the mountain highways.  The best of the airplanes once made by Dwight Sanders were sent out, but never reached Winston Station; they were worn past the stage of fighting a storm.  Through the driving mesh of snow, the passengers trapped aboard the trains looked out at the lights of Winston's shanties. The lights died in the night of the second day. By the evening of the third, the lights, the heat and the food had given out aboard the trains. In the brief lulls of the storm, when the white mesh vanished and left behind it the stillness of a black void merging a lightless earth with a starless sky-the passengers could see, many miles away to the south, a small tongue of flame twisting in the wind. It was Wyatt's Torch.  By the morning of the sixth day, when the trains were able to move and proceeded down the slopes of Utah, of Nevada, of California, the trainmen observed the smokeless stacks and the closed doors of small trackside factories, which had not been closed on their last run.  "Storms are an act of God," wrote Bertram Scudder, "and nobody can be held socially responsible for the weather."  The rations of coal, established by Wesley Mouch, permitted the heating of homes for three hours a day. There was no wood to burn, no metal to make new stoves, no tools to pierce the walls of the houses for new installations. In makeshift contraptions of bricks and oil cans, professors were burning the books of their libraries, and fruit growers were burning the trees of their orchards. "Privations strengthen a people's spirit," wrote Bertram Scudder, "and forge the fine steel of social discipline. Sacrifice is the cement which unites human bricks into the great edifice of society."  "The nation which had once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor," said Francisco d'Anconia in a press interview. But this was not printed.  The only business boom, that winter, came to the amusement industry. People wrenched their pennies out of the quicksands of their food and heat budgets, and went without meals in order to crowd into movie theaters, in order to escape for a few hours the state of animals reduced to the single concern of terror over their crudest needs. In January, all movie theaters, night clubs and bowling alleys were closed by order of Wesley Mouch, for the purpose of conserving fuel. "Pleasure is not an essential of existence," wrote Bertram Scudder.  "You must learn to take a philosophical attitude," said Dr. Simon Pritchett to a young girl student who broke down into sudden, hysterical sobs in the middle of a lecture. She had just returned from a volunteer relief expedition to a settlement on Lake Superior; she had seen a mother holding the body of a grown son who had died of hunger.  "There are no absolutes," said Dr. Pritchett. "Reality is only an illusion. How does that woman know that her son is dead? How does she know that he ever existed?"  People with pleading eyes and desperate faces crowded into tents where evangelists cried in triumphant gloating that man was unable to cope with nature, that his science was a fraud, that his mind was a failure, that he was reaping punishment for the sin of pride, for his confidence in his own intellect-and that only faith in the power of mystic secrets could protect him from the fissure of a rail or from the blowout of the last tire on his last truck. Love was the key to the mystic secrets, they cried, love and selfless sacrifice to the needs of others.  Orren Boyle made a selfless sacrifice to the needs of others. He sold to the Bureau of Global Relief, for shipment to the People's State of Germany, ten thousand tons of structural steel shapes that had been intended for the Atlantic Southern Railroad. "It was a difficult decision to make," he said, with a moist, unfocused look of righteousness, to the panic-stricken president of the Atlantic Southern, "but I weighed the fact that you're a rich corporation, while the people of Germany are in a state of unspeakable misery. So I acted on the principle that need comes first. When in doubt, it's the weak that must be considered, not the strong." The president of the Atlantic Southern had heard that Orren Boyle's most valuable friend in Washington had a friend in the Ministry of Supply of the People's State of Germany. But whether this had been Boyle's motive or whether it had been the principle of sacrifice, no one could tell and it made no difference: if Boyle had been a saint of the creed of selflessness, he would have had to do precisely what he had done. This silenced the president of the Atlantic Southern; he dared not admit that he cared for his railroad more than for the people of Germany; he dared not argue against the principle of sacrifice.  The waters of the Mississippi had been rising all through the month of January, swollen by the storms, driven by the wind into a restless grinding of current against current and against every obstruction in their way. On a night of lashing sleet, in the first week of February, the Mississippi bridge of the Atlantic Southern collapsed under a passenger train. The engine and the first five sleepers went down with the cracking girders into the twisting black spirals of water eighty feet below. The rest of the train remained on the first three spans of the bridge, which held.  "You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it, too," said Francisco d'Anconia. The fury of denunciations which the holders of public voices unleashed against him was greater than their concern over the horror at the river.  It was whispered that the chief engineer of the Atlantic Southern, in despair over the company's failure to obtain the steel he needed to reinforce the bridge, had resigned six months ago, telling the company that the bridge was unsafe. He had written a letter to the largest newspaper in New York, warning the public about it; the letter had not been printed. It was whispered that the first three spans of the bridge had held because they had been reinforced with structural shapes of Rearden Metal; but five hundred tons of the Metal was all that the railroad had been able to obtain under the Fair Share Law.  As the sole result of official investigations, two bridges across the Mississippi, belonging to smaller railroads, were condemned. One of the railroads went out of business; the other closed a branch line, tore up its rail and laid a track to the Mississippi bridge of Taggart Transcontinental; so did the Atlantic Southern.  The great Taggart Bridge at Bedford, Illinois, had been built by Nathaniel Taggart. He had fought the government for years, because the courts had ruled, on the complaint of river shippers, that railroads were a destructive competition to shipping and thus a threat to the public welfare, and that railroad bridges across the Mississippi were to be forbidden as a material obstruction; the courts had ordered Nathaniel Taggart to tear down his bridge and to carry his passengers across the river by means of barges. He had won that battle by a majority of one voice on the Supreme Court. His bridge was now the only major link left to hold the continent together. His last descendant had made it her strictest rule that whatever else was neglected, the Taggart Bridge would always be maintained in flawless shape.  The steel shipped across the Atlantic by the Bureau of Global Relief had not reached the People's State of Germany. It had been seized by Ragnar Danneskjold-but nobody heard of it outside the Bureau, because the newspapers had long since stopped mentioning the activities of Ragnar Danneskjold.  It was not until the public began to notice the growing shortage, then the disappearance from the market of electric irons, toasters, washing machines and all electrical appliances, that people began to ask questions and to hear whispers. They heard that no ship loaded with d'Anconia copper was able to reach a port of the United States; it could not get past Ragnar Danneskjold.  In the foggy winter nights, on the waterfront, sailors whispered the story that Ragnar Danneskjold always seized the cargoes of relief vessels, but never touched the copper: he sank the d'Anconia ships with their loads; he let the crews escape in lifeboats, but the copper went to the bottom of the ocean. They whispered it as a dark legend beyond men's power to explain; nobody could find a reason why Danneskjold did not choose to take the copper.  In the second week of February, for the purpose of conserving copper wire and electric power, a directive forbade the running of elevators above the twenty-fifth floor. The upper floors of the buildings had to be vacated, and partitions of unpainted boards went up to cut off the stairways. By special permit, exceptions were granted-on the grounds of "essential need"-to a few of the larger business enterprises and the more fashionable hotels. The tops of the cities were cut down.  The inhabitants of New York had never had to be aware of the weather. Storms had been only a nuisance that slowed the traffic and made puddles in the doorways of brightly lighted shops. Stepping against the wind, dressed in raincoats, furs and evening slippers, people had felt that a storm was an intruder within the city. Now, facing the gusts of snow that came sweeping down the narrow streets, people felt in dim terror that they were the temporary intruders and that the wind had the right-of-way.  "It won't make any difference to us now, forget it, Hank, it doesn't matter," said Dagny when Rearden told her that he would not be able to deliver the rail; he had not been able to find a supplier of copper.  "Forget it, Hank." He did not answer her. He could not forget the first failure of Rearden Steel.  On the evening of February 15, a plate cracked on a rail joint and sent an engine off the track, half a mile from Winston, Colorado, on a division which was to have been relaid with the new rail. The station agent of Winston sighed and sent for a crew with a crane; it was only one of the minor accidents that were happening in his section every other day or so, he was getting used to it.  Rearden, that evening, his coat collar raised, his hat slanted low over his eyes, the snow drifts rising to his knees, was tramping through an abandoned open-pit coal mine, in a forsaken corner of Pennsylvania, supervising the loading of pirated coal upon the trucks which he had provided. Nobody owned the mine, nobody could afford the cost of working it. But a young man with a brusque voice and dark, angry eyes, who came from a starving settlement, had organized a gang of the unemployed and made a deal with Rearden to deliver the coal.  They mined it at night, they stored it in hidden culverts, they were paid in cash, with no questions asked or answered. Guilty of a fierce desire to remain alive, they and Rearden traded like savages, without rights, titles, contracts or protection, with nothing but mutual understanding and a ruthlessly absolute observance of one's given word. Rearden did not even know the name of the young leader. Watching him at the job of loading the trucks, Rearden thought that this boy, if born a generation earlier, would have become a great industrialist; now, he would probably end his brief life as a plain criminal in a few more years.  Dagny, that evening, was facing a meeting of the Taggart Board of Directors.  They sat about a polished table in a stately Board room which was inadequately heated. The men who, through the decades of their careers, had relied for their security upon keeping their faces blank, their words inconclusive and their clothes impeccable, were thrown off-key by the sweaters stretched over their stomachs, by the mufflers wound about their necks, by the sound of coughing that cut through the discussion too frequently, like the rattle of a machine gun.  She noted that Jim had lost the smoothness of his usual performance.  He sat with his head drawn into his shoulders, and his eyes kept darting too rapidly from face to face.  A man from Washington sat at the table among them. Nobody knew his exact job or title, but it was not necessary: they knew that he was the man from Washington. His name was Mr. Weatherby, he had graying temples, a long, narrow face and a mouth that looked as if he had to stretch his facial muscles in order to keep it closed; this gave a suggestion of primness to a face that displayed nothing else. The Directors did not know whether he was present as the guest, the adviser or the ruler of the Board; they preferred not to find out.  "It seems to me," said the chairman, "that the top problem for us to consider is the fact that the track of our main line appears to be in a deplorable, not to say critical, condition-" He paused, then added cautiously, "-while the only good rail we own is that of the John Galt-I mean, the Rio Norte-Line."  In the same cautious tone of waiting for someone else to pick up the intended purpose of his words, another man said, "If we consider our critical shortage of equipment, and if we consider that we are letting it wear out in the service of a branch line running at a loss-" He stopped and did not state what would occur if they considered it.  "In my opinion," said a thin, pallid man with a neat mustache, "the Rio Norte Line seems to have become a financial burden which the company might not be able to carry-that is, not unless certain readjustments are made, which-" He did not finish, but glanced at Mr. Weatherby. Mr. Weatherby looked as if he had not noticed it.  "Jim," said the chairman, "I think you might explain the picture to Mr. Weatherby."  Taggart's voice still retained a practiced smoothness, but it was the smoothness of a piece of cloth stretched tight over a broken glass object, and the sharp edges showed through once in a while: "I think it is generally conceded that the main factor affecting every railroad in the country is the unusual rate of business failures. While we all realize, of course, that this is only temporary, still, for the moment, it has made the railroad situation approach a stage that may well be described as desperate. Specifically, the number of factories which have closed throughout the territory of the Taggart Transcontinental system is so large that it has wrecked our entire financial structure. Districts and divisions which had always brought us our steadiest revenues, are now showing an actual operating loss. A train schedule geared to a heavy volume of freight cannot be maintained for three shippers where there had once been seven. We cannot give them the same service-at least, not at . . . our present rates." He glanced at Mr. Weatherby, but Mr. Weatherby did not seem to notice.  "It seems to me," said Taggart, the sharp edges becoming sharper in his voice, "that the stand taken by our shippers is unfair. Most of them have been complaining about their competitors and have passed various local measures to eliminate competition in their particular fields. Now most of them are practically in sole possession of their markets, yet they refuse to realize that a railroad cannot give to one lone factory the freight rates which had been made possible by the production of a whole region. We are running our trains for them at a loss, yet they have taken a stand against any . . . raise in rates."  "Against any raise?" said Mr. Weatherby mildly, with a good imitation of astonishment. "That is not the stand they have taken."  "If certain rumors, which I refuse to credit, are true-" said the chairman, and stopped one syllable after the tone of panic had become obvious in his voice.  "Jim," said Mr. Weatherby pleasantly, "I think it would be best if we just didn't mention the subject of raising the rates."  "I wasn't suggesting an actual raise at this time," said Taggart hastily. "I merely referred to it to round out the picture."  "But, Jim," said an old man with a quavering voice, "I thought that your influence-I mean, your friendship-with Mr. Mouch would insure . . . "  He stopped, because the others were looking at him severely, in reproof for the breach of an unwritten law: one did not mention a failure of this kind, one did not discuss the mysterious ways of Jim's powerful friendships or why they had failed him.  "Fact is," said Mr. Weatherby easily, "that Mr. Mouch sent me here to discuss the demand of the railway unions for a raise in wages and the demand of the shippers for a cut in rates."  He said it in a tone of casual firmness; he knew that all these men had known it, that the demands had been discussed in the newspapers for months; he knew that the dread in these men's minds was not of the fact, but of his naming it--as if the fact had not existed, but his words held the power to make it exist; he knew that they had waited to see whether he would exercise that power; he was letting them know that he would.  Their situation warranted an outcry of protest; there was none; nobody answered him. Then James Taggart said in that biting, nervous tone which is intended to convey anger, but merely confesses uncertainty, "I wouldn't exaggerate the importance of Buzzy Watts of the National Shippers Council. He's been making a lot of noise and giving a lot of expensive dinners in Washington, but I wouldn't advise taking it too seriously."  "Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Weatherby.  "Listen, Clem, I do know that Wesley refused to see him last week."  "That's true. Wesley is a pretty busy man."  "And I know that when Gene Lawson gave that big party ten days ago, practically everybody was there, but Buzzy Watts was not invited."  "That's so," said Mr. Weatherby peaceably.  "So I wouldn't bet on Mr. Buzzy Watts, Clem. And I wouldn't let it worry me."  "Wesley's an impartial man," said Mr. Weatherby. "A man devoted to public duty. It's the interests of the country as a whole that he's got to consider above everything else." Taggart sat up; of all the danger signs he knew, this line of talk was the worst. "Nobody can deny it, Jim, that Wesley feels a high regard for you as an enlightened businessman, a valuable adviser and one of his closest personal friends."  Taggart's eyes shot to him swiftly: this was still worse. "But nobody can say that Wesley would hesitate to sacrifice his personal feelings and friendships-where the welfare of the public is concerned."  Taggart's face remained blank; his terror came from things never allowed to reach expression in words or in facial muscles. The terror was his struggle against an unadmitted thought: he himself had been "the public" for so long and in so many different issues, that he knew what it would mean if that magic title, that sacred title no one dared to oppose, were transferred, along with its "welfare," to the person of Buzzy Watts.  But what he asked, and he asked it hastily, was, "You're not implying that I would place my personal interests above the public welfare, are you?"  "No, of course not," said Mr. Weatherby, with a look that was almost a smile. "Certainly not. Not you, Jim. Your public-spirited attitude-and understanding--are too well known. That's why Wesley expects you to see every side of the picture."  "Yes, of course," said Taggart, trapped.  "Well, consider the unions' side of it. Maybe you can't afford to give them a raise, but how can they afford to exist when the cost of living has shot sky-high? They've got to eat, don't they? That comes first, railroad or no railroad." Mr. Weatherby's tone had a kind of placid righteousness, as if he were reciting a formula required to convey another meaning, clear to all of them; he was looking straight at Taggart, in special emphasis of the unstated. "There are almost a million members in the railway unions. With families, dependents and poor relatives-and who hasn't got poor relatives these days?-it amounts to about five million votes. Persons, I mean. Wesley has to bear that in mind. He has to think of their psychology. And then, consider the public. The rates you're charging were established at a time when everybody was making money. But the way things are now, the cost of transportation has become a burden nobody can afford. People arc screaming about it all over the country." He looked straight at Taggart; he merely looked, but his glance had the quality of a wink.  "There's an awful lot of them, Jim. They're not very happy at the moment about an awful lot of things. A government that would bring the railroad rates down would make a lot of folks grateful."  The silence that answered him was like a hole so deep that no sound could be heard of the things crashing down to its bottom. Taggart knew, as they all knew, to what disinterested motive Mr. Mouch would always be ready to sacrifice his personal friendships.  It was the silence and the fact that she did not want to say it, had come here resolved not to speak, but could not resist it, that made Dagny's voice sound so vibrantly harsh: "Got what you've been asking for, all these years, gentlemen?"  The swiftness with which their eyes moved to her was an involuntary answer to an unexpected sound, but the swiftness with which they moved away-to look down at the table, at the walls, anywhere but at her-was the conscious answer to the meaning of the sounds.  In the silence of the next moment, she felt their resentment like a starch thickening the air of the room, and she knew that it was not resentment against Mr. Weatherby, but against her. She could have borne it, if they had merely let her question go unanswered; but what made her feel a sickening tightness in her stomach, was their double fraud of pretending to ignore her and then answering in their own kind of manner.  The chairman said, not looking at her, his voice pointedly noncommittal, yet vaguely purposeful at the same time, "It would have been all right, everything would have worked out fine, if it weren't for the wrong people in positions of power, such as Buzzy Watts and Chick Morrison."  "Oh, I wouldn't worry about Chick Morrison," said the pallid man with the mustache. "He hasn't any top-level connections. Not really. It's Tinky Holloway that's poison."  "I don't see the picture as hopeless," said a portly man who wore a green muffler. "Joe Dunphy and Bud Hazleton are very close to Wesley. If their influence prevails, we'll be all right. However, Kip Chalmers and Tinky Holloway are dangerous."  "I can take care of Kip Chalmers," said Taggart.  Mr. Weatherby was the only person in the room who did not mind looking at Dagny; but whenever his glance rested upon her, it registered nothing; she was the only person in the room whom he did not see.  "I am thinking," said Mr. Weatherby casually, looking at Taggart, "that you might do Wesley a favor."  "Wesley knows that he can always count on me."  "Well, my thought is that if you granted the unions' wage raises-we might drop the question of cutting the rates, for the time being."  "I can't do that!" It was almost a cry. "The National Alliance of Railroads has taken a unanimous stand against the raises and has committed every member to refuse."  "That's just what I mean," said Mr. Weatherby softly. "Wesley needs to drive a wedge into that Alliance stand. If a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental were to give in, the rest would be easy. You would help Wesley a great deal. He would appreciate it."  "But, good God, Clem!-I'd be open to court action for it, by the Alliance rules!"  Mr. Weatherby smiled. "What court? Let Wesley take care of that."  "But listen, Clem, you know-you know just as well as I do-that we can't afford it!"  Mr. Weatherby shrugged. "That's a problem for you to work out."  "How, for Christ's sake?"  "I don't know. That's your job, not ours. You wouldn't want the government to start telling you how to run your railroad, would you?"  "No, of course not! But-"  "Our job is only to see that the people get fair wages and decent transportation. It's up to you to deliver. But, of course, if you say that you can't do the job, why then-"  "I haven't said it!" Taggart cried hastily, "I haven't said it at all!"  "Good," said Mr. Weatherby pleasantly. "We know that you have the ability to find some way to do it."  He was looking at Taggart; Taggart was looking at Dagny.  "Well, it was just a thought," said Mr. Weatherby, leaning back in his chair in a manner of modest withdrawal. "Just a thought for you to mull over. I'm only a guest here. I don't want to interfere. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the situation of the . . . branch lines, I believe?"  "Yes," said the chairman and sighed. "Yes. Now if anyone has a constructive suggestion to offer-" He waited; no one answered. "I believe the picture is clear to all of us." He waited. "It seems to be established that we cannot continue to afford the operation of some of our branch lines . . . the Rio Norte Line in particular . . . and, therefore, some form of action seems to be indicated. . . ."  "I think," said the pallid man with the mustache, his voice unexpectedly confident, "that we should now hear from Miss Taggart." He leaned forward with a look of hopeful craftiness. As Dagny did not answer, but merely turned to him, he asked, "What do you have to say, Miss Taggart?"  "Nothing."  "I beg your pardon?"  "All I had to say was contained in the report which Jim has read to you." She spoke quietly, her voice clear and flat.  "But you did not make any recommendations."  "I have none to make."  "But, after all, as our Operating Vice-President, you have a vital interest in the policies of this railroad."  "I have no authority over the policies of this railroad."  "Oh, but we are anxious to consider your opinion."  "I have no opinions."  "Miss Taggart," he said, in the smoothly formal tone of an order, "you cannot fail to realize that our branch lines are running at a disastrous deficit-and that we expect you to make them pay."  "How?"  "I don't know. That is your job, not ours."  "I have stated in my report the reasons why that is now impossible. If there are facts which I have overlooked, please name them."  "Oh, I wouldn't know. We expect you to find some way to make it possible. Our job is only to see that the stockholders get a fair profit. It's up to you to deliver. You wouldn't want us to think that you're unable to do the job and-"  "I am unable to do it."  The man opened his mouth, but found nothing else to say; he looked at her in bewilderment, wondering why the formula had failed.  "Miss Taggart," asked the man with the green muffler, "did you imply in your report that the situation of the Rio Norte Line was critical?"  "I stated that it was hopeless."  "Then what action do you propose?"  "I propose- nothing."  "Aren't you evading a responsibility?"  "What is it that you think you're doing?" She spoke evenly, addressing them all. "Are you counting on my not saying that the responsibility-is yours, that it was your goddamn policies that brought us where we are? Well, I'm saying it."  "Miss Taggart, Miss Taggart," said the chairman in a tone of pleading reproach, "there shouldn't be any hard feelings among us. Does it matter now who was to blame? We don't want to quarrel over past mistakes. We must all pull together as a team to carry our railroad through this desperate emergency,"  A gray-haired man of patrician bearing, who had remained silent throughout the session, with a look of the quietly bitter knowledge that the entire performance was futile, glanced at Dagny in a way which would have been sympathy had he still felt a remnant of hope. He said, raising his voice just enough to betray a note of controlled indignation, "Mr. Chairman, if it is practical solutions that we are considering, I should like to suggest that we discuss the limitation placed upon the length and speed of our trains. Of any single practice, that is the most disastrous one. Its repeal would not solve all of our problems, but it would be an enormous relief. With the desperate shortage of motive power and the appalling shortage of fuel, it is criminal insanity to send an engine out on the road with sixty cars when it could pull a hundred and to take four days on a run which could be made in three. I suggest that we compute the number of shippers we have ruined and the districts we have destroyed through the failures, shortages and delays of transportation, and then we-"  "Don't think of it," Mr. Weatherby cut in snappily. "Don't try dreaming about any repeals. We wouldn't consider it. We wouldn't even consider listening to any talk on the subject."  "Mr. Chairman," the gray-haired man asked quietly, "shall I continue?"  The chairman spread out his hands, with a smooth smile, indicating helplessness. "It would be impractical," he answered.  "I think we'd better confine the discussion to the status of the Rio Norte Line," snapped James Taggart.  There was a long silence.  The man with the green muffler turned to Dagny. "Miss Taggart," he asked sadly and cautiously, "would you say that if-this is just a hypothetical question-if the equipment now in use on the Rio Norte Line were made available, it would fill the needs of our transcontinental main-line traffic?"  "It would help."  "The rail of the Rio Norte Line," said the pallid man with the mustache, "is unmatched anywhere in the country and could not now be purchased at any price. We have three hundred miles of track, which means well over four hundred miles of rail of pure Rearden Metal in that Line. Would you say, Miss Taggart, that we cannot afford to waste that superlative rail on a branch that carries no major traffic any longer?"  "That is for you to judge."  "Let me put it this way: would it be of value if that rail were made available for our main-line track, which is in such urgent need of repair?"  "It would help."  "Miss Taggart," asked the man with the quavering voice, "would you say that there are any shippers of consequence left on the Rio Norte Line?"  "There's Ted Nielsen of Nielsen Motors. No one else."  "Would you say that the operating costs of the Rio Norte Line could be used to relieve the financial strain on the rest of the system?"  "It would help."  "Then, as our Operating Vice-President . . ." He stopped; she waited, looking at him; he said, "Well?"  "What was your question?"  "I meant to say . . . that is, well, as our Operating Vice-President, don't you have certain conclusions to draw?"  She stood up. She looked at the faces around the table. "Gentlemen," she said, "I do not know by what sort of self-fraud you expect to feel that if it's I who name the decision you intend to make, it will be I who'll bear the responsibility for it. Perhaps you believe that if my voice delivers the final blow, it will make me the murderer involved-since you know that this is the last act of a long-drawn-out  murder. I cannot conceive what it is you think you can accomplish by a pretense of this kind, and I will not help you to stage it. The final blow will be delivered by you, as were all the others."  She turned to go. The chairman half-rose, asking helplessly, "But, Miss Taggart-"  "Please remain seated. Please continue the discussion-and take the vote in which I shall have no voice. I shall abstain from voting. I’ll stand by, if you wish me to, but only as an employee. I will not pretend to be anything else."  She turned away once more, but it was the voice of the gray-haired man that stopped her. "Miss Taggart, this is not an official question, it is only my personal curiosity, but would you tell me your view of the future of the Taggart Transcontinental system?"  She answered, looking at him in understanding, her voice gentler, "I have stopped thinking of a future or of a railroad system. I intend to continue running trains so long as it is still possible to run them. I don't think that it will be much longer."  She walked away from the table, to the window, to stand aside and let them continue without her. She looked at the city. Jim had obtained the permit which allowed them the use of electric power to the top of the Taggart Building. From the height of the room, the city looked like a flattened remnant, with but a few rare, lonely streaks of lighted glass still rising through the darkness to the sky.  She did not listen to the voices of the men behind her. She did not know for how long the broken snatches of their struggle kept rolling past her-the sounds that nudged and prodded one another, trying to edge back and leave someone pushed forward-a struggle, not to assert one's own will, but to squeeze an assertion from some unwilling victim -a battle in which the decision was to be pronounced, not by the winner, but by the loser: "It seems to me . . . It is, I think . . . It must, in my opinion . . .If we were to suppose . . . I am merely suggesting . . . I am not implying, but . . . If we consider both sides . . . It is, in my opinion, indubitable . . . It seems to me to be an unmistakable fact . . ."  She did not know whose voice it was, but she heard it when the voice pronounced: ". . . and, therefore, I move that the John Galt Line be closed."  Something, she thought, had made him call the Line by its right name.  You had to bear it, too, generations ago-it was just as hard for you, just as bad, but you did not let it stop you-was it really as bad as this? as ugly?-never mind, it's different forms, but it's only pain, and you were not stopped by pain, not by whatever kind it was that you had to bear-you were not stopped-you did not give in to it-you faced it and this is the kind I have to face-you fought and I will have to -you did it-I will try . . . She heard, in her own mind, the quiet intensity of the words of dedication-and it was some time before she realized that she was speaking to Nat Taggart.  The next voice she heard was Mr. Weatherby's: "Wait a minute, boys. Do you happen to remember that you need to obtain permission before you can close a branch line?"  "Good God, Clem!" Taggart's cry was open panic. "Surely there's not going to be any trouble about-"  "I wouldn't be too sure of it. Don't forget that you're a public service and you're expected to provide transportation, whether you make money or not."  "But you know that it's impossible!"  "Well, that's fine for you, that solves your problem, if you close that Line-but what will it do to us? Leaving a whole state like Colorado practically without transportation-what sort of public sentiment will it arouse? Now, of course, if you gave Wesley something in return, to balance it, if you granted the unions' wage raises-"  "I can't! I gave my word to the National Alliance!"  "Your word? Well, suit yourself; We wouldn't want to force the Alliance. We much prefer to have things happen voluntarily. But these are difficult times and it's hard telling what's liable to happen. With everybody going broke and the tax receipts falling, we might-fact being that we hold well over fifty per cent of the Taggart bonds-we might be compelled to call for the payment of railroad bonds within six months."  "What?!" screamed Taggart.  "-or sooner."  "But you can't! Oh God, you can't! It was understood that the moratorium was for five years! It was a contract, an obligation! We were counting on it!"  "An obligation? Aren't you old-fashioned, Jim? There aren't any obligations, except the necessity of the moment. The original owners of those bonds were counting on their payments, too."  Dagny burst out laughing.  She could not stop herself, she could not resist it, she could not reject a moment's chance to avenge Ellis Wyatt, Andrew Stockton, Lawrence Hammond, all the others. She said, torn by laughter: "Thanks, Mr. Weatherby!"  Mr. Weatherby looked at her in astonishment. "Yes?" he asked coldly.  "I knew that we would have to pay for those bonds one way or another. We're paying."  "Miss Taggart," said the chairman severely, "don't you think that I told-you-so's are futile? To talk of what would have happened if we had acted differently is nothing but purely theoretical speculation. We cannot indulge in theory, we have to deal with the practical reality of the moment."  "Right," said Mr. Weatherby. "That's what you ought to be-practical. Now we offer you a trade. You do something for us and we'll do something for you. You give the unions their wage raises and we'll give you permission to close the Rio Norte Line."  "All right," said James Taggart, his voice choked.  Standing at the window, she heard them vote on their decision. She heard them declare that the John Galt Line would end in six weeks, on March 31.  It's only a matter of getting through the next few moments, she thought; take care of the next few moments, and then the next, a few at a time, and after a while it will be easier; you'll get over it, after a while.  The assignment she gave herself for the next few moments was to put on her coat and be first to leave the room.  Then there was the assignment of riding in an elevator down the great, silent length of the Taggart Building. Then there was the assignment of crossing the dark lobby.  Halfway through the lobby, she stopped. A man stood leaning against the wall, in a manner of purposeful waiting-and it was she who was his purpose, because he was looking straight at her. She did not recognize him at once, because she felt certain that the face she saw could not possibly be there in that lobby at this hour.  "Hi, Slug," he said softly.  She answered, groping for some great distance that had once been hers, "Hi, Frisco."  "Have they finally murdered John Galt?"  She struggled to place the moment into some orderly sequence of time. The question belonged to the present, but the solemn face came from those days on the hill by the Hudson when he would have understood all that the question meant to her.  "How did you know that they'd do it tonight?" she asked.  "It's been obvious for months that that would be the next step at their next meeting."  "Why did you come here?"  "To see how you'd take it."  "Want to laugh about it?"  "No, Dagny, I don't want to laugh about it."  She saw no hint of amusement in his face; she answered trustingly, "I don't know how I'm taking it."  "I do."  "I was expecting it, I knew they'd have to do it, so now it's only a matter of getting through"-tonight, she wanted to say, but said-"all the work and details."  He took her arm. "Let's go some place where we can have a drink together."  "Francisco, why don't you laugh at me? You've always laughed about that Line."  "I will-tomorrow, when I see you going on with all the work and details. Not tonight."  "Why not?"  "Come on. You're in no condition to talk about it."  "I-" She wanted to protest, but said, "No, I guess I'm not."  He led her out to the street, and she found herself walking silently in time with the steady rhythm of his steps, the grasp of his fingers on her arm unstressed and firm. He signaled a passing taxicab and held the door open for her. She obeyed him without questions; she felt relief, like a swimmer who stops struggling. The spectacle of a man acting with assurance, was a life belt thrown to her at a moment when she had forgotten the hope of its existence. The relief was not in the surrender of responsibility, but in the sight of a man able to assume it.  "Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He did not say, 'It seems to me,' and he did not take orders from those who say, 'In my opinion.'"  She chuckled, wondering at his accuracy: he had guessed the nature of the sickening sense that held her, the sense of a swamp which she had to escape.  "Look around you," he said. "A city is the frozen shape of human courage-the courage of those men who thought for the first time of every bolt, rivet and power generator that went to make it. The courage to say, not 'It seems to me,' but 'It is'-and to stake one's life on one's judgment. You're not alone. Those men exist. They have always existed. There was a time when human beings crouched in caves, at the mercy of any pestilence and any storm. Could men such as those on your Board of Directors have brought them out of the cave and up to this?" He pointed at the city.  "God, no!"  "Then there's your proof that another kind of men do exist."  "Yes," she said avidly. "Yes."  "Think of them and forget your Board of Directors."  "Francisco, where are they now-the other kind of men?"  "Now they're not wanted."  "I want them. Oh God, how I want them!"  "When you do, you'll find them."  He did not question her about the John Galt Line and she did not speak of it, until they sat at a table in a dimly lighted booth and she saw the stem of a glass between her fingers. She had barely noticed how they had come here. It was a quiet, costly place that looked like a secret retreat; she saw a small, lustrous table under her hand, the leather of a circular seat behind her shoulders, and a niche of dark blue mirror that cut them off from the sight of whatever enjoyment or pain others had come here to hide. Francisco was leaning against the table, watching her, and she felt as if she were leaning against the steady attentiveness of his eyes.  They did not speak of the Line, but she said suddenly, looking down at the liquid in her glass: "I'm thinking of the night when Nat Taggart was told that he had to abandon the bridge he was building. The bridge across the Mississippi. He had been desperately short of money-because people were afraid of the bridge, they called it an impractical venture. That morning, he was told that the river steamboat concerns had filed suit against him, demanding that his bridge be destroyed as a threat to the public welfare. There were three spans of the bridge built, advancing across the river. That same day, a local mob attacked the structure and set fire to the wooden scaffolding. His workers deserted him, some because they were scared, some because they were bribed by the steamboat people, and most of them because he had had no money to pay them for weeks. Throughout that day, he kept receiving word that men who had subscribed to buy the stock of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad were cancelling their subscriptions, one after another. Toward evening, a committee, representing two banks that were his last hope of support, came to see him. It was right there, on the construction site by the river, in the old railway coach where he lived, with the door open to the view of the blackened ruin, with the wooden remnants still smoking over the twisted steel. He had negotiated a loan from those banks, but the contract had not been signed. The committee told him that he would have to give up his bridge, because he was certain to lose the suit, and the bridge would be ordered torn down by the time he completed it. If he was willing to give it up, they said, and to ferry his passengers across the river on barges, as other railroads were doing, the contract would stand and he would get the money to continue his line west on the other shore; if not, then the loan was off. What was his answer?-they asked. He did not say a word, he picked up the contract, tore it across, handed it to them and walked out. He walked to the bridge, along the spans, down to the last girder. He knelt, he picked up the tools his men had left and he started to clear the charred wreckage away from the steel structure. His chief engineer saw him there, axe in hand, alone over the wide river, with the sun setting behind him in that west where his line was to go. He worked there all night. By morning, he had thought out a plan of what he would do to find the right men, the men of independent judgment-to find them, to convince them, to raise the money, to continue the bridge."  She spoke in a low, flat voice, looking down at the spot of light that shimmered in the liquid as her fingers turned the stem of her glass once in a while. She showed no emotion, but her voice had the intense monotone of a prayer: "Francisco . . . if he could live through that night, what right have I to complain? What does it matter, how I feel just now? He built that bridge, I have to hold it for him. I can't let it go the way of the bridge of the Atlantic Southern. I feel almost as if he'd know it, if I let that happen, he'd know it that night when he was alone over the river . . . no, that's nonsense, but here's what I feel: any man who knows what Nat Taggart felt that night, any man living now and capable of knowing it-it's him that I would betray if I let it happen . . . and I can't."  "Dagny, if Nat Taggart were living now, what would he do?"  She answered involuntarily, with a swift, bitter chuckle, "He wouldn't last a minute!"-then corrected herself: "No, he would. He would find a way to fight them."  "How?"  "I don't know."  She noticed some tense, cautious quality in the attentive way he watched her as he leaned forward and asked, "Dagny, the men of your Board of Directors are no match for Nat Taggart, are they? There's no form of contest in which they could beat him, there's nothing he'd have to fear from them, there's no mind, no will, no power in the bunch of them to equal one-thousandth of his."  "No, of course not."  "Then why is it that throughout men's history the Nat Taggarts, who make the world, have always won-and always lost it to the men of the Board?"  "I . . . don't know."  "How could men who're afraid to hold an unqualified opinion about the weather, fight Nat Taggart? How could they seize his achievement, if he chose to defend it? Dagny, he fought with every weapon he possessed, except the most important one. They could not have won, if we -he and the rest of us-had not given the world away to them."  "Yes, You gave it away to them. Ellis Wyatt did. Ken Danagger did, I won't."  He smiled. "Who built the John Galt Line for them?"  He saw only the faintest contraction of her mouth, but he knew that the question was like a blow across an open wound. Yet she answered quietly, "I did."  "For this kind of end?"  "For the men who did not hold out, would not fight and gave up."  "Don't you see that no other end was possible?"  "No."  "How much injustice are you willing to take?"  "As much as I'm able to fight."  "What will you do now? Tomorrow?"  She said calmly, looking straight at him with the faintly proud look of stressing her calm, "Start to tear it up."  "What?"  "The John Galt Line. Start to tear it up as good as with my own hands-with my own mind, by my own instructions. Get it ready to be closed, then tear it up and use its pieces to reinforce the transcontinental track. There's a lot of work to do. It will keep me busy." The calm cracked a little, in the faintest change of her voice: "You know, I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad that I'll have to do it myself. That's why Nat Taggart worked all that night-just to keep going. It's not so bad as long as there's something one can do. And I'll know, at least, that I'm saving the main line."  "Dagny," he asked very quietly-and she wondered what made her feel that he looked as if his personal fate hung on her answer, "what if it were the main line that you had to dismember?"  She answered irresistibly, "Then I'd let the last engine run over me!" -but added, "No. That's just self-pity. I wouldn't."  He said gently, "I know you wouldn't. But you'd wish you could."  "Yes."  He smiled, not looking at her; it was a mocking smile, but it was a smile of pain and the mockery was directed at himself. She wondered what made her certain of it; but she knew his face so well that she would always know what he felt, even though she could not guess his reasons any longer. She knew his face as well, she thought, as she knew every line of his body, as she could still see it, as she was suddenly aware of it under his clothes, a few feet away, in the crowding intimacy of the booth. He turned to look at her and some sudden change in his eyes made her certain that he knew what she was thinking. He looked away and picked up his glass.  "Well-" he said, "to Nat Taggart."  "And to Sebastian d'Anconia?" she asked-then regretted it, because it had sounded like mockery, which she had not intended.  But she saw a look of odd, bright clarity in his eyes and he answered firmly, with the faintly proud smile of stressing his firmness, "Yes-and to Sebastian d'Anconia,"  Her hand trembled a little and she spilled a few drops on the square of paper lace that lay on the dark, shining plastic of the table. She watched him empty his glass in a single gesture; the brusque, brief movement of his hand made it look like the gesture of some solemn pledge.  She thought suddenly that this was the first time in twelve years that he had come to her of his own choice.  He had acted as if he were confidently in control, as if his confidence were a transfusion to let her recapture hers, he had given her no time to wonder that they should be here together. Now she felt, unaccountably, that the reins he had held were gone. It was only the silence of a few blank moments and the motionless outline of his forehead, cheekbone and mouth, as he sat with his face turned away from her-but she felt as if it were he who was now struggling for something he had to recapture.  She wondered what had been his purpose tonight-and noticed that he had, perhaps, accomplished it: he had carried her over the worst moment, he had given her an invaluable defense against despair-the knowledge that a living intelligence had heard her and understood. But why had he wanted to do it? Why had he cared about her hour of despair-after the years of agony he had given her? Why had it mattered to him how she would take the death of the John Galt Line? She noticed that this was the question she had not asked him in the lobby of the Taggart Building.  This was the bond between them, she thought: that she would never be astonished if he came when she needed him most, and that he would always know when to come. This was the danger: that she would trust him even while knowing that it could be nothing but some new kind of trap, even while remembering that he would always betray those who trusted him.  He sat, leaning forward with his arms crossed on the table, looking straight ahead. He said suddenly, not turning to her: "1 am thinking of the fifteen years that Sebastian d'Anconia had to wait for the woman he loved. He did not know whether he would ever find her again, whether she would survive . . . whether she would wait for him. But he knew that she could not live through his battle and that he could not call her to him until it was won. So he waited, holding his love in the place of the hope which he had no right to hold. But when he carried her across the threshold of his house, as the first Senora d'Anconia of a new world, he knew that the battle was won, that they were free, that nothing threatened her and nothing would ever hurt her again."  In the days of their passionate happiness, he had never given her a hint that he would come to think of her as Senora d'Anconia. For one moment, she wondered whether she had known what she had meant to him. But the moment ended in an invisible shudder: she would not believe that the past twelve years could allow the things she was hearing to be possible. This was the new trap, she thought.  "Francisco," she asked, her voice hard, "what have you done to Hank Rearden?"  He looked startled that she should think of that name at that moment "Why?" he asked.  "He told me once that you were the only man he'd ever liked. But last time I saw him, he said that he would kill you on sight."  "He did not tell you why?"  "No."  "He told you nothing about it?"  "No." She saw him smiling strangely, a smile of sadness, gratitude and longing. "I warned him that you would hurt him-when he told me that you were the only man he liked."  His words came like a sudden explosion: "He was the only man-with one exception-to whom I could have given my life!"  "Who is the exception?"  "The man to whom I have."  "What do you mean?"  He shook his head, as if he had said more than he intended, and did not answer.  "What did you do to Rearden?"  "I'll tell you some time. Not now."  "Is that what you always do to those who . . . mean a great deal to you?"  He looked at her with a smile that had the luminous sincerity of innocence and pain. "You know," he said gently, "I could say that that is what they always do to me." He added, "But I won't. The actions-and the knowledge-were mine."  He stood up. "Shall we go? I'll take you home."  She rose and he held her coat for her; it was a wide, loose garment, and his hands guided it to enfold her body. She felt his arm remain about her shoulders a moment longer than he intended her to notice.  She glanced back at him. But he was standing oddly still, staring intently down at the table. In rising, they had brushed aside the mats of paper lace and she saw an inscription cut into the plastic of the table top. Attempts had been made to erase it, but the inscription remained, as the graven voice of some unknown drunk's despair: "Who is John Galt?"  With a brusque movement of anger, she flicked the mat back to cover the words. He chuckled.  "I can answer it," he said. "I can tell you who is John Galt."  "Really? Everybody seems to know him, but they never tell the same story twice."  "They're all true, though-all the stories you've heard about him."  "Well, what's yours? Who is he?"  "John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire-until the day when men withdraw their vultures."  The band of crossties swept in wide curves around granite corners, clinging to the mountainsides of Colorado. Dagny walked down the ties, keeping her hands in her coat pockets, and her eyes on the meaningless distance ahead; only the familiar movement of straining her steps to the spacing of the ties gave her the physical sense of an action pertaining to a railroad.  A gray cotton, which was neither quite fog nor clouds, hung in sloppy wads between sky and mountains, making the sky look like an old mattress spilling its stuffing down the sides of the peaks. A crusted snow covered the ground, belonging neither to winter nor to spring. A net of moisture hung in the air, and she felt an icy pin-prick on her face once in a while, which was neither a raindrop nor a snowflake.  The weather seemed afraid to take a stand and clung noncommittally to some sort of road's middle; Board of Directors' weather, she thought.  The light seemed drained and she could not tell whether this was the afternoon or the evening of March 31. But she was very certain that it was March 31; that was a certainty not to be escaped.  She had come to Colorado with Hank Rearden, to buy whatever machinery could still be found in the closed factories. It had been like a hurried search through the sinking hulk of a great ship before it was to vanish out of reach. They could have given the task to employees, but they had come, both prompted by the same unconfessed motive: they could not resist the desire to attend the run of the last train, as one cannot resist the desire to give a last salute by attending a funeral, even while knowing that it is only an act of self-torture.  They had been buying machinery from doubtful owners in sales of dubious legality, since nobody could tell who had the right to dispose of the great, dead properties, and nobody would come to challenge the transactions. They had bought everything that could be moved from the gutted plant of Nielsen Motors. Ted Nielsen had quit and vanished, a week after the announcement that the Line was to be closed.  She had felt like a scavenger, but the activity of the hunt had made her able to bear these past few days. When she had found that three empty hours remained before the departure of the last train, she had gone to walk through the countryside, to escape the stillness of the town. She had walked at random through twisting mountain trails, alone among rocks and snow, trying to substitute motion for thought, knowing that she had to get through this day without thinking of the summer when she had ridden the engine of the first train.  But she found herself walking back along the roadbed of the John Galt Line-and she knew that she had intended it, that she had gone out for that purpose.  It was a spur track which had already been dismembered. There were no signal lights, no switches, no telephone wires, nothing but a long band of wooden strips left on the ground-a chain of ties without rail, like the remnant of a spine-and, as its lonely guardian, at an abandoned grade crossing, a pole with slanted arms saying: "Stop. Look. Listen."  An early darkness mixed with fog was slipping down to fill the valleys, when she came upon the factory. There was an inscription high on the lustrous tile of its front wall: "Roger Marsh. Electrical Appliances." The man who had wanted to chain himself to his desk in order not to leave this, she thought. The building stood intact, like a corpse in that instant when its eyes have just closed and one still waits to see them open again. She felt that the lights would flare up at any moment behind the great sheets of windows, under the long, flat roofs. Then she saw one broken pane, pierced by a stone for some young moron's enjoyment-and she saw the tall, dry stem of a single weed rising from the steps of the main entrance. Hit by a sudden, blinding hatred, in rebellion against the weed's impertinence, knowing of what enemy this was the scout, she ran forward, she fell on her knees and jerked the weed up by its roots. Then, kneeling on the steps of a closed factory, looking at the vast silence of mountains, brush and dusk, she thought: What do you think you're doing?  It was almost dark when she reached the end of the ties that led her back to the town of Marshville. Marshville had been the end of the Line for months past; service to Wyatt Junction had been discontinued long ago; Dr. Ferris' Reclamation Project had been abandoned this winter.  The street lights were on, and they hung in mid-air at the intersections, in a long, diminishing line of yellow globes over the empty streets of Marshville. All the better homes were closed-the neat, sturdy houses of modest cost, well built and well kept; there were faded "For Sale" signs on their lawns. But she saw lights in the windows of the cheap, garish structures that had acquired, within a few years, the slovenly dilapidation of slum hovels; the homes of people who had not moved, the people who never looked beyond the span of one week. She saw a large new television set in the lighted room of a house with a sagging roof and cracking walls. She wondered how long they expected the electric power companies of Colorado to remain in existence. Then she shook her head: those people had never known that power companies existed.  The main street of Marshville was lined by the black windows of shops out of business. All the luxury stores are gone-she thought, looking at their signs; and then she shuddered, realizing what things she now called luxury, realizing to what extent and in what manner those things, once available to the poorest, had been luxuries: Dry Cleaning-Electrical Appliances-Gas Station-Drug Store-Five and Ten. The only ones left open were grocery stores and saloons.  The platform of the railroad station was crowded. The glaring arc lights seemed to pick it out of the mountains, to isolate and focus it, like a small stage on which every movement was naked to the sight of the unseen tiers rising in the vast, encircling night. People were carting luggage, bundling their children, haggling at ticket windows, the stifled panic of their manner suggesting that what they really wanted to do was to fall down on the ground and scream with terror. Their terror had the evasive quality of guilt: it was not the fear that comes from understanding, but from the refusal to understand.  The last train stood at the platform, its windows a long, lone streak of light. The steam of the locomotive, gasping tensely through the wheels, did not have its usual joyous sound of energy released for a sprint; it had the sound of a panting breath that one dreads to hear and dreads more to stop hearing. Far at the end of the lighted windows, she saw the small red dot of a lantern attached to her private car. Beyond the lantern, there was nothing but a black void.  The train was loaded to capacity, and the shrill notes of hysteria in the confusion of voices were the pleas for space in vestibules and aisles. Some people were not leaving, but stood in vapid curiosity, watching the show; they had come, as if knowing that this was the last event they would ever witness in their community and, perhaps, in their lives.  She walked hastily through the crowd, trying not to look at anyone.  Some knew who she was, most of them did not. She saw an old woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and the graph of a lifetime's struggle on the cracked skin of her face; the woman's glance was a hopeless appeal for help. An unshaved young man with gold-rimmed glasses stood on a crate under an arc light, yelling to the faces shifting past him, "What do they mean, no business! Look at that train! It's full of passengers! There's plenty of business! It's just that there's no profits for them-that's why they're letting you perish, those greedy parasites!" A disheveled woman rushed up to Dagny, waving two tickets and screaming something about the wrong date. Dagny found herself pushing people out of the way, fighting to reach the end of the train-but an emaciated man, with the staring eyes of years of malicious futility, rushed at her, shouting, "It's all right for you, you've got a good overcoat and a private car, but you won't give us any trains, you and all the selfish-"  He stopped abruptly, looking at someone behind her. She felt a hand grasping her elbow: it was Hank Rearden. He held her arm and led her toward her car; seeing the look on his face, she understood why people got out of their way. At the end of the platform, a pallid, plumpish man stood saying to a crying woman, "That's how it's always been in this world. There will be no chance for the poor, until the rich are destroyed." High above the town, hanging in black space like an uncooled planet, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was twisting in the wind.  Rearden went inside her car, but she remained on the steps of the vestibule, delaying the finality of turning away. She heard the "All aboard!" She looked at the people who remained on the platform as one looks at those who watch the departure of the last lifeboat.  The conductor stood below, at the foot of the steps, with his lantern in one hand and his watch in the other. He glanced at the watch, then glanced up at her face. She answered by the silent affirmation of closing her eyes and inclining her head. She saw his lantern circling through the air, as she turned away-and the first jolt of the wheels, on the rails of Rearden Metal, was made easier for her by the sight of Rearden, as she pulled the door open and went into her car.  When James Taggart telephoned Lillian Rearden from New York and said, "Why, no-no special reason, just wondered how you were and whether you ever came to the city-haven't seen you for ages and just thought we might have lunch together next time you're in New York"-she knew that he had some very special reason in mind.  When she answered lazily, "Oh, let me see-what day is this? April second?-let me look at my calendar-why, it just so happens that I have some shopping to do in New York tomorrow, so I'll be delighted to let you save me my lunch money"-he knew that she had no shopping to do and that the luncheon would be the only purpose of her trip to the city.  They met in a distinguished, high-priced restaurant, much too distinguished and high-priced ever to be mentioned in the gossip columns; not the kind of place which James Taggart, always eager for personal publicity, was in the habit of patronizing; he did not want them to be seen together, she concluded.  The half-hint of half-secret amusement remained on her face while she listened to him talking about their friends, the theater and the weather, carefully building for himself the protection of the unimportant. She sat gracefully not quite straight, as if she were leaning back, enjoying the futility of his performance and the fact that he had to stage it for her benefit. She waited with patient curiosity to discover his purpose.  "I do think that you deserve a pat on the back or a medal or something, Jim," she said, "for being remarkably cheerful in spite of all the messy trouble you're having. Didn't you just close the best branch of your railroad?"  "Oh, it's only a slight financial setback, nothing more. One has to expect retrenchments at a time like this. Considering the general state of the country, we're doing quite well. Better than the rest of them." He added, shrugging, "Besides, it's a matter of opinion whether the Rio Norte Line was our best branch. It is only my sister who thought so. It was her pet project."  She caught the tone of pleasure blurring the drawl of his syllables.  She smiled and said, "I see."  Looking up at her from under his lowered forehead, as if stressing that he expected her to understand, Taggart asked, "How is he taking it?"  "Who?" She understood quite well.  "Your husband."  "Taking what?"  "The closing of that Line."  She smiled gaily. "Your guess is as good as mine, Jim-and mine is very good indeed,"  "What do you mean?"  "You know how he would take it-just as you know how your sister is taking it. So your cloud has a double silver lining, hasn't it?"  "What has he been saying in the last few days?"  "He's been away in Colorado for over a week, so I-" She stopped; she had started answering lightly, but she noticed that Taggart's question had been too specific while his tone had been too casual, and she realized that he had struck the first note leading toward the purpose of the luncheon; she paused for the briefest instant, then finished, still more lightly, "so I wouldn't know. But he's coming back any day now."  "Would you say that his attitude is still what one might call recalcitrant?"  "Why, Jim, that would be an understatement!"  "It was to be hoped that events had, perhaps, taught him the wisdom of a mellower approach."  It amused her to keep him in doubt about her understanding. "Oh yes," she said innocently, "it would be wonderful if anything could ever make him change."  "He is making things exceedingly hard for himself."  "He always has."  "But events have a way of beating us all into a more . . . pliable frame of mind, sooner or later."  "I've heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but 'pliable' has never been one of them."  "Well, things change and people change with them. After all, it is a law of nature that animals must adapt themselves to their background. And I might add that adaptability is the one characteristic most stringently required at present by laws other than those of nature. We're in for a very difficult time, and I would hate to see you suffer the consequences of his intransigent attitude. I would hate-as your friend-to see you in the kind of danger he's headed for, unless he learns to cooperate."  "How sweet of you, Jim," she said sweetly.  He was doling his sentences out with cautious slowness, balancing himself between word and intonation to hit the right degree of semi clarity. He wanted her to understand, but he did not want her to understand fully, explicitly, down to the root-since the essence of that modern language, which he had learned to speak expertly, was never to let oneself or others understand anything down to the root.  He had not needed many words to understand Mr. Weatherby. On his last trip to Washington, he had pleaded with Mr. Weatherby that a cut in the rates of the railroads would be a deathblow; the wage raises had been granted, but the demands for the cut in rates were still heard in the press-and Taggart had known what it meant, if Mr. Mouch still permitted them to be heard; he had known that the knife was still poised at his throat. Mr. Weatherby had not answered his pleas, but had said, in a tone of idly irrelevant speculation, "Wesley has so many tough problems. If he is to give everybody a breathing spell, financially speaking, he's got to put into operation a certain emergency program of which you have some inkling. But you know what hell the unprogressive elements of the country would raise about it. A man like Rearden, for instance. We don't want any more stunts of the sort he's liable to pull. Wesley would give a lot for somebody who could keep Rearden in line. But I guess that's something nobody can deliver. Though I may be wrong. You may know better, Jim, since Rearden is a sort of friend of yours, who comes to your parties and all that."  Looking at Lillian across the table, Taggart said, "Friendship, I find, is the most valuable thing in life-and I would be amiss if I didn't give you proof of mine."  "But I've never doubted it."  He lowered his voice to the tone of an ominous warning: "I think I should tell you, as a favor to a friend, although it's confidential, that your husband's attitude is being discussed in high places-very high places. I'm sure you know what I mean."  This was why he hated Lillian Rearden, thought Taggart: she knew the game, but she played it with unexpected variations of her own. It was against all rules to look at him suddenly, to laugh in his face, and -after all those remarks showing that she understood too little-to say bluntly, showing that she understood too much, "Why, darling, of course I know what you mean. You mean that the purpose of this very excellent luncheon was not a favor you wanted to do me, but a favor you wanted to get from me. You mean that it's you who are in danger and could use that favor to great advantage for a trade in high places. And you mean that you are reminding me of my promise to deliver the goods."  "The sort of performance he put on at his trial was hardly what I'd call delivering the goods," he said angrily. "It wasn't what you had led me to expect."  "Oh my, no, it wasn't," she said placidly. "It certainly wasn't. But, darling, did you expect me not to know that after that performance of his he wouldn't be very popular in high places? Did you really think you had to tell me that as a confidential favor?"  "But it's true. I heard him discussed, so I thought I'd tell you."  "I'm sure it's true. I know that they would be discussing him. I know also that if there were anything they could do to him, they would have done it right after his trial. My, would they have been glad to do it! So I know that he's the only one among you who is in no danger whatever, at the moment. I know that it's they who are afraid of him. Do you see how well I understand what you mean, darling?"  "Well, if you think you do, I must say that for my part I don't understand you at all. I don't know what it is you're doing."  "Why, I'm just setting things straight-so that you'll know that I know how much you need me. And now that it's straight, I'll tell you the truth in my turn: I didn't double-cross you, I merely failed. His performance at the trial-I didn't expect it any more than you did. Less. I had good reason not to expect it. But something went wrong. I don't know what it was. I am trying to find out. When I do, I will keep my promise. Then you'll be free to take full credit for it and to tell your friends in high places that it's you who've disarmed him."  "Lillian," he said nervously, "I meant it when I said that I was anxious to give you proof of my friendship-so if there's anything-1 can do for-"  She laughed. "There isn't. I know you meant it. But there's nothing you can do for me. No favor of any kind. No trade. I'm a truly noncommercial person, I want nothing in return. Tough luck, Jim. You'll just have to remain at my mercy."  "But then why should you want to do it at all? What are you getting out of it?"  She leaned back, smiling. "This lunch. Just seeing you here. Just knowing that you had to come to me."  An angry spark flashed in Taggart's veiled eyes, then his eyelids narrowed slowly and he, too, leaned back in his chair, his face relaxing to a faint look of mockery and satisfaction. Even from within that unstated, unnamed, undefined muck which represented his code of values, he was able to realize which one of them was the more dependent on the other and the more contemptible.  When they parted at the door of the restaurant, she went to Rearden's suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, where she stayed occasionally in his absence. She paced the room for about half an hour, in a leisurely manner of reflection. Then she picked up the telephone, with a smoothly casual gesture, but with the purposeful air of a decision reached. She called Rearden's office at the mills and asked Miss Ives when she expected him to return.  "Mr. Rearden will be in New York tomorrow, arriving on the Comet, Mrs. Rearden," said Miss Ives' clear, courteous voice.  "Tomorrow? That's wonderful. Miss Ives, would you do me a favor? Would you call Gertrude at the house and tell her not to expect me for dinner? I'm staying in New York overnight."  She hung up, glanced at her watch and called the florist of the Wayne-Falkland. "This is Mrs. Henry Rearden," she said. "I should like to have two dozen roses delivered to Mr. Rearden's drawing room aboard the Comet. . . . Yes, today, this afternoon, when the Comet reaches Chicago. . . . No, without any card-just the flowers. . . . Thank you ever so much."  She telephoned James Taggart. "Jim, will you send me a pass to your passenger platforms? I want to meet my husband at the station tomorrow."  She hesitated between Balph Eubank and Bertram Scudder, chose Balph Eubank, telephoned him and made a date for this evening's dinner and a musical show. Then she went to take a bath and lay relaxing in a tub of warm water, reading a magazine devoted to problems of political economy.  It was late afternoon when the florist telephoned her. "Our Chicago office sent word that they were unable to deliver the flowers, Mrs. Rearden," he said, "because Mr. Rearden is not aboard the Comet."  "Are you sure?" she asked.  "Quite sure, Mrs. Rearden. Our man found at the station in Chicago that there was no compartment on the train reserved in Mr. Rearden's name. We checked with the New York office of Taggart Transcontinental, just to make certain, and were told that Mr. Rearden's name is not on the passenger list of the Comet."  "I see. . . . Then cancel the order, please. . . . Thank you."  She sat by the telephone for a moment, frowning, then called Miss Ives. "Please forgive me for being slightly scatterbrained, Miss Ives, but I was rushed and did not write it down, and now I'm not quite certain of what you said. Did you say that Mr. Rearden was coming back tomorrow? On the Comet?"  "Yes, Mrs. Rearden."  "You have not heard of any delay or change in his plans?"  "Why, no. In fact, I spoke to Mr. Rearden about an hour ago. He telephoned from the station in Chicago, and he mentioned that he had to hurry back aboard, as the Comet was about to leave."  "I see. Thank you."  She leaped to her feet as soon as the click of the instrument restored her to privacy. She started pacing the room, her steps now unrhythmically tense. Then she stopped, struck by a sudden thought.  There was only one reason why a man would make a train reservation under an assumed name: if he was not traveling alone. Her facial muscles went flowing slowly into a smile of satisfaction: this was an opportunity she had not expected.  Standing on the Terminal platform, at a point halfway down the length of the train, Lillian Rearden watched the passengers descending from the Comet. Her mouth held the hint of a smile; there was a spark of animation in her lifeless eyes; she glanced from one face to another, jerking her head with the awkward eagerness of a schoolgirl. She was anticipating the look on Rearden's face when, with his mistress beside him, he would see her standing there.  Her glance darted hopefully to every flashy young female stepping off the train. It was hard to watch: within an instant after the first few figures, the train had seemed to burst at the seams, flooding the platform with a solid current that swept in one direction, as if pulled by a vacuum; she could barely distinguish separate persons. The lights were more glare than illumination, picking this one strip out of a dusty, oily darkness. She needed an effort to stand still against the invisible pressure of motion.  Her first sight of Rearden in the crowd came as a shock: she had not seen him step out of a car, but there he was, walking in her direction from somewhere far down the length of the train. He was alone. He was walking with his usual purposeful speed, his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. There was no woman beside him, no companion of any kind, except a porter hurrying along with a bag she recognized as his.  In a fury of incredulous disappointment, she looked frantically for any single feminine figure he could, have left behind. She felt certain that she would recognize his choice. She saw none that could be possible. And then she saw that the last car of the train was a private car, and that the figure standing at its door, talking to some station official-a figure wearing, not minks and veils, but a rough sports coat that stressed the incomparable grace of a slender body in the confident posture of this station's owner and center-was Dagny Taggart. Then Lillian Rearden understood.  "Lillian! What's the matter?"  She heard Rearden's voice, she felt his hand grasping her arm, she saw him looking at her as one looks at the object of a sudden emergency. He was looking at a blank face and an unfocused glance of terror.  "What happened? What are you doing here?"  "I . . . Hello, Henry . . . I just came to meet you . . . No special reason . . . I just wanted to meet you." The terror was gone from her face, but she spoke in a strange, flat voice. "I wanted to see you, it was an impulse, a sudden impulse and I couldn't resist it, because-"  "But you look . . . looked ill."  "No . . . No, maybe I felt faint, it's stuffy here. . . . I couldn't resist coming, because it made me think of the days when you would have been glad to see me . . . it was a moment's illusion to recreate for myself. . . ." The words sounded like a memorized lesson.  She knew that she had to speak, while her mind was fighting to grasp the full meaning of her discovery. The words were part of the plan she had intended to use, if she had met him after he had found the roses in his compartment.  He did not answer, he stood watching her, frowning.  "I missed you, Henry, I know what I am confessing. But I don't expect it to mean anything to you any longer." The words did not fit the tight face, the lips that moved with effort, the eyes that kept glancing away from him down the length of the platform. "I wanted . . . I merely wanted to surprise you." A look of shrewdness and purpose was returning to her face.  He took her arm, but she drew back, a little too sharply.  "Aren't you going to say a word to me, Henry?"  "What do you wish me to say?"  "Do you hate it as much as that-having your wife come to meet you at the station?" She glanced down the platform: Dagny Taggart was walking toward them; he did not see her.  "Let's go," he said.  She would not move. "Do you?" she asked.  "What?"  "Do you hate it?"  "No, I don't hate it. I merely don't understand it."  "Tell me about your trip. I'm sure you've had a very enjoyable trip."  "Come on. We can talk at home."  "When do I ever have a chance to talk to you at home?" She was drawling her words impassively, as if she were stretching them to fill time, for some reason which he could not imagine. "I had hoped to catch a few moments of your attention-like this-between trains and business appointments and all those important matters that hold you day and night, all those great achievements of yours, such as . . .Hello, Miss Taggart!" she said sharply, her voice loud and bright.  Rearden whirled around. Dagny was walking past them, but she stopped.  "How do you do," she said to Lillian, bowing, her face expressionless.  "I am so sorry, Miss Taggart," said Lillian, smiling, "you must forgive me if I don't know the appropriate formula of condolences for the occasion." She noted that Dagny and Rearden had not greeted each other. "You're returning from what was, in effect, the funeral of your child by my husband, aren't you?"  Dagny's mouth showed a faint line of astonishment and of contempt. She inclined her head, by way of leave-taking, and walked on.  Lillian glanced sharply at Rearden's face, as if in deliberate emphasis. He looked at her indifferently, puzzled. She said nothing. She followed him without a word when he turned to go. She remained silent in the taxicab, her face half-turned away from him, while they rode to the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. He felt certain, as he looked at the tautly twisted set of her mouth, that some uncustomary violence was raging within her. He had never known her to experience a strong emotion of any kind.  She whirled to face him, the moment they were alone in his room. "So that's who it is?" she asked.  He had not expected it. He looked at her, not quite believing that he had understood it correctly.  "It's Dagny Taggart who's your mistress, isn't she?"  He did not answer.  "I happen to know that you had no compartment on that train. So I know where you've slept for the last four nights. Do you want to admit it or do you want me to send detectives to question her train crews and her house servants? Is it Dagny Taggart?"  "Yes," he answered calmly.  Her mouth twisted into an ugly chuckle; she was staring past him.  "I should have known it. I should have guessed. That's why it didn't work!"  He asked, in blank bewilderment, "What didn't work?"  She stepped back, as if to remind herself of his presence. "Had you-when she was in our house, at the party-had you, then . . . ?"  "No. Since."  "The great businesswoman," she said, "above reproach and feminine weaknesses. The great mind detached from any concern with the body . . ." She chuckled, "The bracelet . . ." she said, with the still look that made it sound as if the words were dropped accidentally out of the torrent in her mind. "That's what she meant to you. That's the weapon she gave you."  "If you really understand what you're saying-yes."  "Do you think I'll let you get away with it?"  "Get away . . . ?" He was looking at her incredulously, in cold, astonished curiosity.  "That's why, at your trial-" She stopped.  "What about my trial?"  She was trembling. "You know, of course, that I won't allow this to continue."  "What does it have to do with my trial?"  "I won't permit you to have her. Not her. Anyone but her."  He let a moment pass, then asked evenly, "Why?"  "I won't permit it! You'll give it up!" He was looking at her without expression, but the steadiness of his eyes hit her as his most dangerous answer. "You'll give it up, you'll leave her, you'll never see her again!"  "Lillian, if you wish to discuss it, there's one thing you'd better understand; nothing on earth will make me give it up."  "But I demand it!"  "I told you that you could demand anything but that."  He saw the look of a peculiar panic growing in her eyes: it was not the look of understanding, but of a ferocious refusal to understand-as if she wanted to turn the violence of her emotion into a fog screen, as if she hoped, not that it would blind her to reality, but that her blindness would make reality cease to exist.  "But I have the right to demand it! I own your life! It's my property. My property-by your own oath. You swore to serve my happiness, Not yours-mine! What have you done for me? You've given me nothing, you've sacrificed nothing, you've never been concerned with anything but yourself-your work, your mills, your talent, your mistress! What about me? I hold first claim! I'm presenting it for collection! You're the account I own!"  It was the look on his face that drove her up the rising steps of her voice, scream by scream, into terror. She was seeing, not anger or pain or guilt, but the one inviolate enemy: indifference.  "Have you thought of me?" she screamed, her voice breaking against his face. "Have you thought of what you're doing to me? You have no right to go on, if you know that you're putting me through hell every time you sleep with that woman! I can't stand it, I can't stand one moment of knowing it! Will you sacrifice me to your animal desire? Are you as vicious and selfish as that? Can you buy your pleasure at the price of my suffering? Can you have it, if this is what it does to me?"  Feeling nothing but the emptiness of wonder, he observed the thing which he had glimpsed briefly in the past and was now seeing in the full ugliness of its futility: the spectacle of pleas for pity delivered, in snarling hatred, as threats and as demands.  "Lillian," he said very quietly, "I would have it, even if it took your life."  She heard it. She heard more than he was ready to know and to hear in his own words. The shock, to him, was that she did not scream in answer, but that he saw her, instead, shrinking down into calm. "You have no right . . ." she said dully. It had the embarrassing helplessness of the words of a person who knows her own words to be meaningless.  "Whatever claim you may have on me," he said, "no human being can hold on another a claim demanding that he wipe himself out of existence."  "Does she mean as much as that to you?"  "Much more than that."  The look of thought was returning to her face, but in her face it had the quality of a look of cunning. She remained silent.  "Lillian, I'm glad that you know the truth. Now you can make a choice with full understanding. You may divorce me-or you may ask that we continue as we are. That is the only choice you have. It is all I can offer you. I think you know that I want you to divorce me. But I don't ask for sacrifices. I don't know what sort of comfort you can find in our marriage, but if you do, I won't ask you to give it up. I don't know why you should want to hold me now, I don't know what it is that I mean to you, I don't know what you're seeking, what form of happiness is yours or what you will obtain from a situation which I see as intolerable for both of us. By every standard of mine, you should have divorced me long ago. By every standard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud. But my standards are not yours. I do not understand yours, I never have, but I will accept them. If this is the manner of your love for me, if bearing the name of my wife will give you some form of contentment, I won't take it away from you. It's I who've broken my word, so I will atone for it to the extent I can. You know, of course, that I could buy one of those modern judges and obtain a divorce any time I wished. I won't do it. I will keep my word, if you so desire, but this is the only form in which I can keep it. Now make your choice-but if you choose to hold me, you must never speak to me about her, you must never show her that you know, if you meet her in the future, you must never touch that part of my life."  She stood still, looking up at him, the posture of her body slouched and loose, as if its sloppiness were a form of defiance, as if she did not care to resume for his sake the discipline of a graceful bearing. "Miss Dagny Taggart . . ." she said, and chuckled. "The superwoman whom common, average wives were not supposed to suspect. The woman who cared for nothing but business and dealt with men as a man. The woman of great spirit who admired you platonically, just for your genius, your mills and your Metal!" She chuckled. "I should have known that she was just a bitch who wanted you in the same way as any bitch would want you-because you are fully as expert in bed as you are at a desk, if I am a judge of such matters. But she would appreciate that better than I, since she worships expertness of any kind and since she has probably been laid by every section hand on her railroad!"  She stopped, because she saw, for the first time in her life, by what sort of look one learns that a man is capable of killing. But he was not looking at her. She was not sure whether he was seeing her at all or hearing her voice.  He was hearing his own voice saying her words-saying them to Dagny in the sun-striped bedroom of Ellis Wyatt's house. He was seeing, in the nights behind him, Dagny's face in those moments when, his body leaving hers, she lay still with a look of radiance that was more than a smile, a look of youth, of early morning, of gratitude to the fact of one's own existence. And he was seeing Lillian's face, as he had seen it in bed beside him, a lifeless face with evasive eyes, with some feeble sneer on its lips and the look of sharing some smutty guilt. He saw who was the accuser and who the accused-he saw the obscenity of letting impotence hold itself as virtue and damn the power of living as a sin-he saw, with the clarity of direct perception, in the shock of a single instant, the terrible ugliness of that which had once been his own belief.  It was only an instant, a conviction without words, a knowledge grasped as a feeling, left unsealed by his mind. The shock brought him back to the sight of Lillian and to the sound of her words. She appeared to him suddenly as some inconsequential presence that had to be dealt with at the moment.  "Lillian," he said, in an unstressed voice that did not grant her even the honor of anger, "you are not to speak of her to me. If you ever do it again, I will answer you as I would answer a hoodlum: I will beat you up. Neither you nor anyone else is to discuss her."  She glanced at him. "Really?" she said. It had an odd, casual sound -as if the word were tossed away, leaving some hook implanted in her mind. She seemed to be considering some sudden vision of her own.  He said quietly, in weary astonishment, "I thought you would be glad to discover the truth. I thought you would prefer to know-for the sake of whatever love or respect you felt for me-that if I betrayed you, it was not cheaply and casually, it was not for a chorus girl, but for the cleanest and most serious feeling of my life."  The ferocious spring with which she whirled to him was involuntary, as was the naked twist of hatred in her face. "Oh, you goddamn fool!"  He remained silent.  Her composure returned, with the faint suggestion of a smile of secret mockery. "I believe you're waiting for my answer?" she said. "No, I won't divorce you. Don't ever hope for that. We shall continue as we are-if that is what you offered and if you think it can continue. See whether you can flout all moral principles and get away with it!"  He did not listen to her while she reached for her coat, telling him that she was going back to their home. He barely noticed it when the door closed after her. He stood motionless, held by a feeling he had never experienced before. He knew that he would have to think later, to think and understand, but for the moment he wanted nothing but to observe the wonder of what he felt.  It was a sense of freedom, as if he stood alone in the midst of an endless sweep of clean air, with only the memory of some weight that had been torn off his shoulders. It was the feeling of an immense deliverance. It was the knowledge that it did not matter to him what Lillian felt, what she suffered or what became of her, and more: not only that it did not matter, but the shining, guiltless knowledge that it did not have to matter.