Atlas Shrugged

"You're a wonderful person, Jim," she said. It had the sound of damnation. Yet it was a tribute, and she meant it as such, and his pleasure came from the knowledge that they were in a realm where damnation was value.

"You know," he said suddenly, "you're wrong about those butcher's assistants, like Gonzales. They have their uses. Have you ever liked Francisco d'Anconia?"

"I can't stand him."

"Well, do you know the real purpose of that cocktail-swilling occasion staged by Senor Gonzales tonight? It was to celebrate the agreement to nationalize d'Anconia Copper in about a month."

She looked at him for a moment, the corners of her lips lifting slowly into a smile. "He was your friend, wasn't he?"

Her voice had a tone he had never earned before, the tone of an emotion which he had drawn from people only by fraud, but which now, for the first time, was granted with full awareness to the real, the actual nature of his deed: a tone of admiration.

Suddenly, he knew that this was the goal of his restless hours, this was the pleasure he had despaired of finding, this was the celebration he had wanted.

"Let's have a drink, Lil." he said.

Pouring the liquor, he glanced at her across the room, as she lay stretched limply in her chair. "Let him get his divorce," he said, "He won't have the last word. They will. The butcher's assistants. Senor Gonzales and Cuffy Meigs."

She did not answer. When he approached, she took the glass from him with a sloppily indifferent sweep of her hand. She drank, not in the manner of a social gesture, but like a lonely drinker in a saloon—for the physical sake of the liquor.

He sat down on the arm of the davenport, improperly close to her, and sipped his drink, watching her face. After a while, he asked, "What does he think of me?"

The question did not seem to astonish her. "He thinks you're a fool," she answered. "He thinks life's too short to have to notice your existence."

"He'd notice it, if—" He stopped.

"—if you bashed him over the head with a club? I'm not too sure.

He'd merely blame himself for not having moved out of the club's reach. Still, that would be your only chance."

She shifted her body, sliding lower in the armchair, stomach forward, as if relaxation were ugliness, as if she were granting him the kind of intimacy that required no poise and no respect.

"That was the first thing I noticed about him," she said, "when I met him for the first time: that he was not afraid. He looked as if he felt certain that there was nothing any of us could do to him—so certain that he didn't even know the issue or the nature of what he felt."

"How long since you saw him last?"

"Three months. I haven't seen him since . . . since the Gift Certificate . . ."

"I saw him at an industrial meeting two weeks ago. He still looks that way—only more so. Now, he looks as if he knows it." He added, "You have failed, Lillian."

She did not answer. She pushed her hat off with the back of her hand; it rolled down to the carpet, its feather curling like a question mark. "I remember the first time I saw his mills," she said. "His mills!

You can't imagine what he felt about them. You wouldn't know the kind of intellectual arrogance it takes to feel as if anything pertaining to him, anything he touched, were made sacred by the touch. His mills, his Metal, his money, his bed, his wife!" She glanced up at him, a small flicker piercing the lethargic emptiness of her eyes. "He never noticed your existence. He did notice mine. I'm still Mrs. Rearden—at least for another month."

"Yes . . ." he said, looking down at her with a sudden, new interest.

"Mrs. Rearden!" she chuckled. "You wouldn't know what that meant to him. No feudal lord ever felt or demanded such reverence for the title of his wife—or held it as such a symbol of honor. Of his unbending, untouchable, inviolate, stainless honor!" She waved her hand in a vague motion, indicating the length of her sprawled body. "Caesar's wife!" she chuckled. "Do you remember what she was supposed to be?

No, you wouldn't. She was supposed to be above reproach,"

He was staring down at her with the heavy, blind stare of impotent hatred—a hatred of which she was the sudden symbol, not the object.

"He didn't like it when his Metal was thrown into common, public use, for any chance passer-by to make . . . did he?"

"No, he didn't."

His words were blurring a little, as if weighted with drops of the liquor he had swallowed: "Don't tell me that you helped us to get that Gift Certificate as a favor to me and that you gained nothing. . . . I know why you did it."

"You knew it at the time."

"Sure. That's why I like you, Lillian."

His eyes kept coming back to the low cut of her gown. It was not the smooth skin that attracted his glance, not the exposed rise of her breasts, but the fraud of the safety pin beyond the edge.

"I'd like to see him beaten," he said. "I'd like to hear him scream with pain, just once."

"You won't, Jimmy."

"Why does he think he's better than the rest of us—he and that sister of mine?"