Atlas Shrugged

She had not seen him since the nationalization of the San Sebastian Line. He had not sought to discuss it with her, and she had said nothing about it. She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary. A feeling which was part courtesy, part mercy had stopped her from stating to him the conclusion to be drawn from the events. In all reason and justice, there was but one conclusion he could draw. She had heard about his speech to the Board of Directors. She had shrugged, contemptuously amused; if it served his purpose, whatever that was, to appropriate her achievements, then, for his own advantage, if for no other reason, he would leave her free to achieve, from now on.

"So you think you're the only one who's doing anything for this railroad?"

She looked at Mm, bewildered. His voice was shrill; he stood in front of her desk, tense with excitement.

"So you think that I've ruined the company, don't you?" he yelled.

"And now you're the only one who can save us? Think I have no way to make up for the Mexican loss?"

She asked slowly, "What do you want?"

"I want to tell you some news. Do you remember the Anti-dog-eat dog proposal of the Railroad Alliance that I told you about months ago?

You didn't like the idea. You didn't like it at all."

"I remember. What about it?"

"It has been passed."

"What has been passed?"

"The Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule. Just a few minutes ago. At the meeting.

Nine months from now, there's not going to be any Phoenix-Durango Railroad in Colorado!"

A glass ashtray crashed to the floor off the desk, as she leaped to her feet.

"You rotten bastards!"

He stood motionless. He was smiling.

She knew that she was shaking, open to him, without defense, and that this was the sight he enjoyed, but it did not matter to her. Then she saw his smile—and suddenly the blinding anger vanished. She felt nothing. She studied that smile with a cold, impersonal curiosity.

They stood facing each other. He looked as if, for the first time, he was not afraid of her. He was gloating. The event meant something to him much beyond the destruction of a competitor. It was not a victory over Dan Conway, but over her. She did not know why or in what manner, but she felt certain that he knew.

For the flash of one instant, she thought that here, before her, in James Taggart and in that which made him smile, was a secret she had never suspected, and it was crucially important that she learn to understand it. But the thought flashed and vanished.

She whirled to the door of a closet and seized her coat.

"Where are you going?" Taggart's voice had dropped; it sounded disappointed and faintly worried.

She did not answer. She rushed out of the office.

"Dan, you have to fight them. I'll help you. I'll fight for you with everything I've got."

Dan Conway shook his head.

He sat at his desk, the empty expanse of a faded blotter before him, one feeble lamp lighted in a corner of the room. Dagny had rushed straight to the city office of the Phoenix-Durango. Conway was there, and he still sat as she had found him. He had smiled at her entrance and said, "Funny, I thought you would come," his voice gentle, lifeless.

They did not know each other well, but they had met a few times in Colorado.

"No," he said, "it's no use."

"Do you mean because of that Alliance agreement that you signed?

It won't hold. This is plain expropriation. No court will uphold it. And if Jim tries to hide behind the usual looters' slogan of 'public welfare,' I’ll go on the stand and swear that Taggart Transcontinental can't handle the whole traffic of Colorado, And if any court rules against you, you can appeal and keep on appealing for the next ten years."

"Yes," he said, "I could . . . I'm not sure I'd win, but I could try and I could hang onto the railroad for a few years longer, but . . . No, it's not the legal points that I'm thinking about, one way or the other. It's not that."

"What, then?"

"I don't want to fight it, Dagny."

She looked at him incredulously. It was the one sentence which, she felt sure, he had never uttered before; a man could not reverse himself so late in life.

Dan Conway was approaching fifty. He had the square, stolid, stubborn face of a tough freight engineer, rather than a company president; the face of a fighter, with a young, tanned skin and graying hair. He had taken over a shaky little railroad in Arizona, a road whose net revenue was "less than that of a successful grocery store, and he had built it into the best railroad of the Southwest. He spoke little, seldom read books, had never gone to college. The whole sphere of human endeavors, with one exception, left him blankly indifferent; he had no touch of that which people called culture. But he knew railroads.

"Why don't you want to fight?"

"Because they had the right to do it."

"Dan," she asked, "have you lost your mind?"

"I've never gone back on my word in my life," he said tonelessly. "I don't care what the courts decide. I promised to obey the majority. I have to obey."