The Early Ayn Rand

He rose a few steps, and stood pressed to the wall, and listened. It was a woman's voice, young, clear, resonant, and it was raised in full force, as if addressing a huge crowd. He heard, incredibly, this:

... but do not question me. I do not answer questions.

You have a choice to make: accept me now

or go your own silent, starless way

to an unsung defeat in uncontested battle.

I stand before you here, I am unarmed;

I offer you tonight my only weapon—

the weapon of that certainty I carry,

unchangeable, untouched and unshared.

Tomorrow's battle I have won tonight

if you but follow me. We'll lift together

the siege of Orleans and win the freedom

I am alone to see and to believe...

The voice was exultant, breaking under an emotion it could not control. It seemed to fail suddenly in the wrong places, speaking the words not as they should have been spoken on a stage, but as a person would fling them out in delirium, unable to hold them, choking upon them. It was the voice of a somnambulist, unconscious of its own sounds, knowing only the violence and the ecstasy of the dream from which it came.

Then it stopped and there was no sound in the room above. Roark went up swiftly and threw the door open.

A girl stood in the middle of the room, with her back to him. She whirled about, when she heard the door knock against the wall. His eyes could not catch the speed of her movement. He had not seen her turn. But there she was suddenly, facing him, as if she had sprung up from the floor and frozen for a second. Her short brown hair stood up wildly with the wind of the motion. Her thin body stood as it had stopped, twisted in loose, incredible angles, awkward, except for her long, slim legs that could not be awkward, even when planted firmly, stubbornly wide apart, as they were now.

"What do you want here?" she snapped ferociously.

"Well," said Roark, "don't you think that I should ask you that?"

She looked at him, at the room.

"Oh," she said, something extinguishing itself in her voice, "I suppose it's your room. I'm sorry."

She made a brusque movement to go. But he stepped in front of the door.

"What were you doing here?" he asked.

"It's your own fault. You should lock your room when you go out. Then you won't have to be angry at people for coming in."

"I'm not angry. And there's nothing here to lock up."

"Well, I am angry! You heard me here, didn't you? Why didn't you knock?"

But she was looking at him closely, her eyes widening, clearing slowly with the perception of his face; he could almost see each line of his face being imprinted, reflected upon hers; and suddenly she smiled, a wide, swift, irresistible smile that seemed to click like a windshield wiper and sweep everything else, the anger, the doubt, the wonder, off her face. He could not decide whether she was attractive or not; somehow, one couldn't be aware of her face, but only of its expressions: changing, snapping, jerking expressions, like projections of a jolting film that unrolled somewhere beyond the muscles of her face.

He noticed a wide mouth, a short, impertinent nose turned up, dark, greenish eyes. There was a certain quality for which he looked unconsciously upon every face that passed him; a quality of awareness, of will, of purpose, a quality hard and precise; lacking it, the faces passed him unnoticed; with its presence — and he found it rarely — they stopped his eyes for a brief, curious moment of wonder. He saw it now, undefinable and unmistakable, upon her face; he liked that face, coldly, impersonally, almost indifferently; but sharply and quite personally, he liked the thing in her voice which he had heard before he entered.

"I'm sorry you heard me," she said, smiling, still with a hard little tone of reproach in her voice. "I don't want anyone to hear that... But then, it's you," she added. "So I guess it's all right."

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know. Do you?"

"Yes, I think so. It is all right. What were you reciting?"

"Joan d'Arc. It's from an old German play I found. It's of no interest to you or anyone."

"Where are you going to do it?"

"I'm not doing it anywhere — yet. It's never been produced here. What I'm doing is the part of Polly Mae — five sides — in You're Telling Me at the Majestic. Opens February the nineteenth. Don't come. I won't give you any passes and I don't want you to see it."

"I don't want to see it. But I want to know how you got here."