Atlas Shrugged

Dagny listened to the Fourth Concerto, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. She lay half-stretched across the corner of a couch, her body relaxed and still; but tension stressed the shape of her mouth on her motionless face, a sensual shape drawn in lines of longing.

After a while, she opened her eyes. She noticed the newspaper she had thrown down on the couch. She reached for it absently, to turn the vapid headlines out of sight. The paper fell open. She saw the photograph of a face she knew, and the heading of a story. She slammed the pages shut and flung them aside.

It was the face of Francisco d'Anconia. The heading said that he had arrived in New York. What of it?—she thought. She would not have to see him. She had not seen him for years.

She sat looking down at the newspaper on the floor. Don't read it, she thought; don't look at it. But the face, she thought, had not changed.

How could a face remain the same when everything else was gone? She wished they had not caught a picture of him when he smiled. That kind of smile did not belong in the pages of a newspaper. It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a brilliant intelligence.

Don't read it, she thought; not now—not to that music—oh, not to that music!

She reached for the paper and opened it.

The story said that Senor Francisco d'Anconia had granted an interview to the press in his suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. He said that he had come to New York for two important reasons: a hat-check girl at the Cub Club, and the liverwurst at Moe's Delicatessen on Third Avenue. He had nothing to say about the coming divorce trial of Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Vail. Mrs. Vail, a lady of noble breeding and unusual loveliness, had taken a shot at her distinguished young husband, some months ago, publicly declaring that she wished to get rid of him for the sake of her lover, Francisco d'Anconia. She had given to the press a detailed account of her secret romance, including a description of the night of last New Year's Eve which she had spent at d'Anconia's villa in the Andes. Her husband had survived the shot and had sued for divorce.

She had countered with a suit for half of her husband's millions, and with a recital of his private life which, she said, made hers look innocent.

All of that had been splashed over the newspapers for weeks. But Senor d'Anconia had nothing to say about it, when the reporters questioned him. Would he deny Mrs. Vail's story, they asked. "I never deny anything," he answered. The reporters had been astonished by his sudden arrival in town; they had thought that he would not wish to be there just when the worst of the scandal was about to explode on the front pages. But they had been wrong. Francisco d'Anconia added one more comment to the reasons for his arrival. "I wanted to witness the farce," he said.

Dagny let the paper slip to the floor. She sat, bent over, her head on her arms. She did not move, but the strands of hair, hanging down to her knees, trembled in sudden jolts once in a while.

The great chords of Halley's music went on, filling the room, piercing the glass of the windows, streaming out over the city. She was hearing the music. It was her quest, her cry.

James Taggart glanced about the living room of his apartment, wondering what time it was; he did not feel like moving to find his watch.

He sat in an armchair, dressed in wrinkled pajamas, barefooted; it was too much trouble to look for his slippers. The light of the gray sky in the windows hurt his eyes, still sticky with sleep. He felt, inside his skull, the nasty heaviness which is about to become a headache. He wondered angrily why he had stumbled out into the living room. Oh yes, he remembered, to look for the time.

He slumped sidewise over the arm of the chair and caught sight of a clock on a distant building: it was twenty minutes past noon.

Through the open door of the bedroom, he heard Betty Pope washing her teeth in the bathroom beyond. Her girdle lay on the floor, by the side of a chair with the rest of her clothes; the girdle was a faded pink, with broken strands of rubber.

"Hurry up, will you?" he called irritably. "I've got to dress,"

She did not answer. She had left the door of the bathroom open; he could hear the sound of gargling.

Why do I do those things?—he thought, remembering last night. But it was too much trouble to look for an answer.

Betty Pope came into the living room, dragging the folds of a satin negligee harlequin-checkered in orange and purple. She looked awful in a negligee, thought Taggart; she was ever so much better in a riding habit, in the photographs on the society pages of the newspapers. She was a lanky girl, all bones and loose joints that did not move smoothly.

She had a homely face, a bad complexion and a look of impertinent condescension derived from the fact that she belonged to one of the very best families.