n terror, both feeling as if they were swaying on an edge which she could not and he would not name, both knowing that one more step would be fatal.
"What do you think you're saying?" he asked in a tone of petty anger, which sounded almost benevolent by bringing them back into the realm of the normal, into the near-wholesomeness of nothing worse than a family quarrel. "What sort of metaphysical subject are you trying to deal with?"
"I don't know . . ." she said wearily, dropping her head, as if some shape she had tried to capture had slipped once more out of her grasp. "I don't know . . . It doesn't seem possible . . ."
"You'd better not try to wade in way over your head or--"But he had to stop, because the butler entered, bringing the glittering ice bucket with the champagne ordered for celebration.
They remained silent, letting the room be filled by the sounds which centuries of men and of struggle had established as the symbol of joyous attainment: the blast of the cork, the laughing tinkle of a pale gold liquid running into two broad cups filled with the weaving reflections of candles, the whisper of bubbles rising through two crystal stems, almost demanding that everything in sight rise, too, in the same aspiration.
They remained silent, till the butler had gone. Taggart sat looking down at the bubbles, holding the stem of his glass between two limply casual fingers. Then his hand closed suddenly about the stem into an awkwardly convulsed fist and he raised it, not as one lifts a glass of champagne, but as one would lift a butcher knife.
"To Francisco d.'Anconia!" he said.
She put her glass down. "No," she answered.
"Drink it!" he screamed.
"No," she answered, her voice like a drop of lead.
They held each other's glances for a moment, the light playing on the golden liquid, not reaching their faces or eyes.
"Oh, go to hell!" he cried, leaping to his feet, flinging his glass to smash on the floor and rushing out of the room.
She sat at the table, not moving, for a long time, then rose slowly and pressed the bell.
She walked to her room, her steps unnaturally even, she opened the door of a closet, she reached for a suit and a pair of shoes, she took off the housecoat, moving with cautious precision, as if her life depended on not jarring anything about or within her. She held onto a single thought: that she had to get out of this house--just get out of it for a while, if only for the next hour--and then, later, she would be able to face all that had to be faced.
The lines were blurring on the paper before her and, raising her head, Dagny realized that it had long since grown dark.
She pushed the papers aside, unwilling to turn on the lamp, permitting herself the luxury of idleness and darkness. It cut her off from the city beyond the windows of her living room. The calendar in the distance said: August 5.
The month behind her had gone, leaving nothing but the blank of dead time. It had gone into the planless, thankless work of racing from emergency to emergency, of delaying the collapse of a railroad--a month like a waste pile of disconnected days, each given to averting the disaster of the moment. It had not been a sum of achievements brought into existence, but only a sum of zeros, of that which had not happened, a sum of prevented catastrophes--not a task in the service of life, but only a race against death.
There had been times when an unsummoned vision--a sight of the valley--had seemed to rise before her, not as a sudden appearance, but as a constant, hidden presence that suddenly chose to assume an insistent reality. She had faced it, through moments of blinded stillness, in a contest between an unmoving decision and an unyielding pain, a pain to be fought by acknowledgment, by saying: All right, even this.
There had been mornings when, awakening with rays of sunlight on her face, she had thought that she must hurry to Hammond's Market to get fresh eggs for breakfast; then, recapturing full consciousness, seeing the haze of New York beyond the window of her bedroom, she had felt a tearing stab, like a touch of death, the touch of rejecting reality. You knew it--she had told herself severely--you knew what it would be like when you made your choice. And dragging her body, like an unwilling weight, out of bed to face an unwelcome day, she would whisper: All right, even this.
The worst of the torture had been the moments when, walking down the street, she had caught a sudden glimpse of chestnut-gold, a glowing streak of hair among the heads of strangers, and had felt as if the city had vanished, as if nothing but the violent stillness within her were delaying the moment when she would rush to him and seize him; but that next moment had come as the sight of some meaningless face--and she had stood, not wishing to live through the following step, not wishing to generate the energy of living. She had tried to avoid such moments; she had tried to forbid herself to look; she had walked, keeping her eyes on the pavements. She had failed: by some will of their own, her eyes had kept leaping to every streak of gold.
She had kept the blinds raised on the windows of her office, remembering his promise, thinking only: If you are watching me, wherever you are . . . There were no buildings close to the height of her office, but she had looked at the distant towers, wondering which window was his observation post, wondering whether some invention of his own, some device of rays and lenses, permitted him to observe her every movement from some skyscraper a block or a mile away. She had sat at her desk, at her uncurtained windows, thinking: Just to know that you're seeing me, even if I'm never to see you again.
And remembering it, now, in the darkness of her room, she leaped to her feet and snapped on the light.
Then she dropped her head for an instant, smiling in mirthless amusement at herself. She wondered whether her lighted windows, in the black immensity of the city, were a flare of distress, calling for his help--or a lighthouse still protecting the rest of the world.
The doorbell rang.
When she opened the door, she saw the silhouette of a girl with a faintly familiar face--and it took her a moment of startled astonishment to realize that it was Cherryl Taggart. Except for a formal exchange of greetings on a few chance encounters in the halls of the Taggart Building, they had not seen each other since the wedding.
Cherryl's face was composed and unsmiling. "Would you permit me to speak to you"--she hesitated and ended on--"Miss Taggart?"
"Of course," said Dagny gravely. "Come in."
She sensed some desperate emergency in the unnatural calm of Cherryl's manner; she became certain of it when she looked at the girl's face in the light of the living room. "Sit down," she said, but Cherryl remained standing.
"I came to pay a debt," said Cherryl, her voice solemn with the effort to permit herself no sound of emotion. "I want to apologize for the things I said to you at my wedding. There's no reason why you should forgive me, but it's my place to tell you that I know I was insulting everything I admire and defending everything I despise. I know that admitting it now, doesn't make up for it, and even coming here is only another presumption, there's no reason why you should want to hear it, so I can't even cancel the debt, I can only ask for a favor--that you let me say the things I want to say to you."
Dagny's shock of emotion, incredulous, warm and painful, was the wordless equivalent of the sentence: What a distance to travel in less than a year . . . ! She answered, the unsmiling earnestness of her voice like a hand extended in support, knowing that a smile would upset some precarious balance, "But it does make up for it, and I do want to hear it."
"I know that it was you who ran Taggart Transcontinental. It was you who built the John Galt Line. It was you who had the mind and the courage that kept all of it alive. I suppose you thought that I married Jim for his money--as what shopgirl wouldn't have? But, you see, I married Jim because I ... I thought that he was you. I thought that he was Taggart Transcontinental. Now I know that he.'s"--she hesitated, then went on firmly, as if not to spare herself anything--"he's some sort of vicious moocher, though I can't understand of what kind or why. When I spoke to you at my wedding, I thought that I was defending greatness and attacking its enemy . . . but it was in reverse . . . it was in such horrible, unbelievable reverse! ... So I wanted to tell you that I know the truth . . . not so much for your sake, I have no right to presume that you'd care, but . . . but for the sake of the things I loved."
Dagny said slowly, "Of course I forgive it."
"Thank you," she whispered, and turned to go.
"Sit down."
She shook her head. "That . . . that was all, Miss Taggart."
Dagny allowed herself the first touch of a smile, no more than in the look of her eyes, as she said, "Cherryl, my name is Dagny."
Cherryl's answer was no more than a faint, tremulous crease of her mouth, as if, together, they had completed a single smile. "I ... I didn't know whether I should--"
"We're sisters, aren't we?"
"No! Not through Jim!" It was an involuntary cry.
"No, through our own choice. Sit down, Cherryl." The girl obeyed, struggling not to show the eagerness of her acceptance, not to grasp for support, not to break. "You've had a terrible time, haven't you?"
"Yes . . . but that doesn't matter . . . that's my own problem . . . and my own fault."
"I don't think it was your own fault."
Cherryl did not answer, then said suddenly, desperately, "Look . . . what I don't want is charity."
"Jim must have told you--and it's true--that I never engage in charity."
"Yes, he did .( . . But what I mean is--"
"I know what you mean."
"But there's no reason why you should have to feel concern for me . . . I didn't come here to complain and . . . and load another burden on your shoulders . . . That I happen to suffer, doesn't give me a claim on you."
"No, it doesn't. But that you value all the things I value, does."
"You mean . . . if you want to talk to me, it's not alms? Not just because you feel sorry for me?"
"I feel terribly sorry for you, Cherryl, and I'd like to help you-not because you suffer, but because you haven't deserved to suffer."
"You mean, you wouldn't be kind to anything weak or whining or rotten about me? Only to whatever you see in me that's good?"
"Of course."
Cherryl did not move her head, but she looked as if it were lifted--as if some bracing current were relaxing her features into that rare look which combines pain and dignity.
"It's not alms, Cherryl. Don't be afraid to speak to me."
"It's strange . . . You're the first person I can talk to . . . and it feels so easy . . . yet I ... I was afraid to speak to you. I wanted to ask your forgiveness long ago . . . ever since I learned the truth. I went as far as the door of your office, but I stopped and stood there in the hall and didn't have the courage to go in.... I didn't intend to come here tonight. I went out only to ... to think something over, and then, suddenly, I knew that I wanted to see you, that in the whole of the city this was the only place for me to go and the only thing still left for me to do."
"I'm glad you did."
"You know, Miss Tag--Dagny," she said softly, in wonder, "you're not as I expected you to be at all.... They, Jim and his friends, they said you were hard and cold and unfeeling."
"But it's true, Cherryl. I am, in the sense they mean--only have they ever told you in just what sense they mean it?"
"No. They never do. They only sneer at me when I ask them what they mean by anything . . . about anything. What did they mean about you?"
"Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that .'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality. He means . . . What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the abnormal intensity of the girl's face.
"It's . . . it's something I've tried so hard to understand . . . for such a long time...."
"Well, observe that you never hear that accusation in defense of innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those who don't feel any sympathy for the evil he's committed or for the pain he suffers as a consequence. Well, it's true--that is what I do not feel. But those who feel it, feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You'll find that it's one or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you'll see what motive is the opposite of charity."
"What?" she whispered.
"Justice, Cherryl."
Cherryl shuddered suddenly and dropped her head. "Oh God!" she moaned. "If you knew what hell Jim has been giving me because I believed just what you said!" She raised her face in the sweep of another shudder, as if the things she had tried to control had broken through; the look in her eyes was terror. "Dagny," she whispered, "Dagny, I'm afraid of them . . . of Jim and all the others . . . not afraid of something they'll do ... if it were that, I could escape . . . but afraid, as if there's no way out . . . afraid of what they are and . . . and that they exist."
Dagny came forward swiftly to sit on the arm of her chair and seize her shoulder in a steadying grasp. "Quiet, kid," she said. "You're wrong. You must never feel afraid of people in that way. You must never think that their existence is a reflection on yours--yet that's what you're thinking."
"Yes ... Yes, 1 feel that there's no chance for me to exist, if they do . . . no chance, no room, no world I can cope with.... I don't want to feel it, I keep pushing it back, but it's coming closer and I know I have no place to run.... I can't explain what it feels like, I can't catch hold of it--and that's part of the terror, that you can't catch hold of anything--it's as if the whole world were suddenly destroyed, but not by an explosion--an explosion is something hard and solid--but destroyed by ... by some horrible kind of softening . . . as if nothing were solid, nothing held any shape at all, and you could poke your finger through stone walls and the stone would give, like jelly, and mountains would slither, and buildings would switch their shapes like clouds--and that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo."
"Cherryl ... Cherryl, you poor kid, there have been centuries of philosophers plotting to turn the world into just that--to destroy people's minds by making them believe that that's what they're seeing. But you don't have to accept it. You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is--say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
"But ... but nothing is, any more. Jim and his Mends--they're not. I don't know what I'm looking at, when I'm among them, I don't know what I'm hearing when they speak . . . it's not real, any of it, it's some ghastly sort of act that they're all going through . . . and I don't know what they're after.... Dagny! We've always been told that human beings have such a great power of knowledge, so much greater than animals, but I--I feel blinder than any animal right now, blinder and more helpless. An animal knows who are its friends and who are its enemies, and when to defend itself. It doesn't expect a friend to step on it or to cut its throat. It doesn't expect to be told that love is blind, that plunder is achievement, that gangsters are statesmen and that it's great to break the spine of Hank Rearden!--oh God, what am I saying?"
"I know what you're saying."
"I mean, how am I to deal with people? I mean, if nothing held firm for the length of one hour--we couldn't go on, could we? Well, I know that things are solid--but people? Dagny! They're nothing and anything, they're not beings, they're only switches, just constant switches without any shape. But I have to live among them. How am I to do it?"
"Cherryl, what you've been struggling with is the greatest problem in history, the one that has caused all of human suffering. You've understood much more than most people, who suffer and die, never knowing what killed them. I'll help you to understand. It's a big subject and a hard battle--but first, above all, don't be afraid."
The look on Cherryl's face was an odd, wistful longing, as if, seeing Dagny from a great distance, she were straining and failing to come closer. "I wish I could wish to fight," she said softly, "but I don't. I don't even want to win any longer. There's one change that I don't seem to have the strength to make. You see, I had never expected anything like my marriage to Jim. Then when it happened, I thought that life was much more wonderful than I had expected. And now to get used to the idea that life and people are much more horrible than anything I had imagined and that my marriage was not a glorious miracle, but some unspeakable kind of evil which I'm still afraid to learn fully--that is what I can't force myself to take. I can't get past it." She glanced up suddenly. "Dagny, how did you do it? How did you manage to remain unmangled?"
"By holding to just one rule."
"Which?"
"To place nothing--nothing--above the verdict of my own mind."
"You've taken some terrible beatings . . . maybe worse than I did ... worse than any of us.... What held you through it?"
"The knowledge that my life is the highest of values, too high to give up without a fight."
She saw a look of astonishment, of incredulous recognition on Cherryl's face, as if the girl were struggling to recapture some sensation across a span of years. "Dagny"--her voice was a whisper--"that's ... that's what I felt when I was a child . . . that's what I seem to remember most about myself . . . that kind of feeling . . . and I never lost it, it's there, it's always been there, but as I grew up, I thought it was something that I must hide.... I never had any name for it, but just now, when you said it, it struck me that that's what it was.... Dagny, to feel that way about your own life--is that good?"
"Cherryl, listen to me carefully: that feeling--with everything which it requires and implies--is the highest, noblest and only good on earth."
"The reason I ask is because I ... I wouldn't have dared to think that. Somehow, people always made me feel as if they thought it was a sin . . . as if that were the thing in me which they resented and ... and wanted to de