She looked at the glowing bands on the skin of her arm, spaced like bracelets from her wrist to her shoulder. They were strips of sunlight from the Venetian blinds on the window of an unfamiliar room. She saw a bruise above her elbow, with dark beads that had been blood. Her arm lay on the blanket that covered her body. She was aware of her legs and hips, but the rest of her body was only a sense of lightness, as if it were stretched restfully across the air in a place that looked like a cage made of sunrays.  Turning to look at him, she thought: From his aloofness, from his manner of glass-enclosed formality, from his pride in never being made to feel anything-to this, to Hank Rearden in bed beside her, after hours of a violence which they could not name now, not in words or in daylight-but which was in their eyes, as they looked at each other, which they wanted to name, to stress, to throw at each other's face.  He saw the face of a young girl, her lips suggesting a smile, as if her natural state of relaxation were a state of radiance, a lock of hair falling across her cheek to the curve of a naked shoulder, her eyes looking at him as if she were ready to accept anything he might wish to say, as she had been ready to accept anything he had wished to do.  He reached over and moved the lock of hair from her cheek, cautiously, as if it were fragile. He held it back with his fingertips and looked at her face. Then his fingers closed suddenly in her hair and he raised the lock to his lips. The way he pressed his mouth to it was tenderness, but the way his fingers held it was despair.  He dropped back on the pillow and lay still, his eyes closed. His face seemed young, at peace. Seeing it for a moment without the reins of tension, she realized suddenly the extent of the unhappiness he had borne; but it's past now, she thought, it's over.  He got up, not looking at her. His face was blank and closed again.  He picked up his clothes from the floor and proceeded to dress, standing in the middle of the room, half-turned away from her. He acted, not as if she wasn't present, but as if it did not matter that she was. His movements, as he buttoned his shirt, as he buckled the belt of his slacks, had the rapid precision of performing a duty.  She lay back on the pillow, watching him, enjoying the sight of his figure in motion. She liked the gray slacks and shirt-the expert mechanic of the John Galt Line, she thought, in the stripes of sunlight and shadow, like a convict behind bars. But they were not bars any longer, they were the cracks of a wall which the John Galt Line had broken, the advance notice of what awaited them outside, beyond the Venetian blinds-she thought of the trip back, on the new rail, with the first train from Wyatt Junction-the trip back to her office in the Taggart Building and to all the things now open for her to win-but she was free to let it wait, she did not want to think of it, she was thinking of the first touch of his mouth on hers-she was free to feel it, to hold a moment when nothing else was of any concern-she smiled defiantly at the strips of sky beyond the blinds.  "I want you to know this."  He stood by the bed, dressed, looking down at her. His voice had pronounced it evenly, with great clarity and no inflection. She looked up at him obediently. He said: "What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I've never loved anyone.  “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore-for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind.  “You're not. You're as vile an animal as I am. I should loathe my discovering it. I don't. Yesterday, I would have killed anyone who'd tell me that you were capable of doing what I've had you do. Today, I would give my life not to let it be otherwise, not to have you be anything but the bitch you are. All the greatness that I saw in you-I would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of your talent at an animal's sensation of pleasure. We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren't we? Well, this is all that's left of us-and I want no self-deception about it."  He spoke slowly, as if lashing himself with his words. There was no sound of emotion in his voice, only the lifeless pull of effort; it was not the tone of a man's willingness to speak, but the ugly, tortured sound of duty.  "I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. It had been my pride that I had always acted on my convictions. I've given in to a desire which I despise. It is a desire that has reduced my mind, my will, my being, my power to exist into an abject dependence upon you-not even upon the Dagny Taggart whom I admired-but upon your body, your hands, your mouth and the few seconds of a convulsion of your muscles. I had never broken my word. Now I've broken an oath I gave for life. I had never committed an act that had to be hidden. Now I am to lie, to sneak, to hide. Whatever I wanted, I was free to proclaim it aloud and achieve it in the sight of the whole world.  “Now my only desire is one I loathe to name even to myself. But it is my only desire. I'm going to have you-I'd give up everything I own for it, the mills, the Metal, the achievement of my whole life. I'm going to have you at the price of more than myself: at the price of my self esteem-and I want you to know it. I want no pretense, no evasion, no silent indulgence, with the nature of our actions left unnamed. I want no pretense about love, value, loyalty or respect. I want no shred of honor left to us, to hide behind. I've never begged for mercy. I've chosen to do this-and I'll take all the consequences, including the full recognition of my choice. It's depravity-and I accept it as such-and there is no height of virtue that I wouldn't give up for it. Now if you wish to slap my face, go ahead. I wish you would."  She had listened, sitting up straight, holding the blanket clutched at her throat to cover her body. At first, he had seen her eyes growing dark with incredulous shock. Then it seemed to him that she was listening with greater attentiveness, but seeing more than his face, even though her eyes were fixed on his. She looked as if she were studying intently some revelation that had never confronted her before. He felt as if some ray of light were growing stronger on his face, because he saw its reflection on hers, as she watched him-he saw the shock vanishing, then the wonder-he saw her face being smoothed into a strange serenity that seemed quiet and glittering at once.  When he stopped, she burst out laughing.  The shock to him was that he heard no anger in her laughter. She laughed simply, easily, in joyous amusement, in release, not as one laughs at the solution of a problem, but at the discovery that no problem had ever existed.  She threw the blanket off with a stressed, deliberate sweep of her arm.  She stood up. She saw her clothes on the floor and kicked them aside.  She stood facing him, naked. She said: "I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you-and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed-and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There's nothing you'll have to pretend-don't think of me, don't feel, don't care-I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it's to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but that sensation of pleasure which you despise--but I want it from you. You'd give up any height of virtue for it, while I-I haven't any to give up. There's none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. And seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don't have to fear that you're now dependent upon me. It's I who will depend on any whim of yours. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any. terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please-I'm not afraid to admit it-I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I-as my pride. I'm more proud of it than of anything I've done, more proud than of building the Line. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.”  When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.  The rain was invisible in the darkness of the streets, but it hung like the sparkling fringe of a lampshade under the corner light. Fumbling in his pockets, James Taggart discovered that he had lost his handkerchief.  He swore half-aloud, with resentful malice, as if the loss, the rain and his head cold were someone's personal conspiracy against him.  There was a thin gruel of mud on the pavements; he felt a gluey suction under his shoe soles and a chill slipping down past his collar. He did not want to walk or to stop. He had no place to go.  Leaving his office, after the meeting of the Board of Directors, he had realized suddenly that there were no other appointments, that he had a long evening ahead and no one to help him kill it. The front pages of the newspapers were screaming of the triumph of the John Galt Line, as the radios had screamed it yesterday and all through the night. The name of Taggart Transcontinental was stretched in headlines across the continent, like its track, and he had smiled in answer to the congratulations. He had smiled, seated at the bead of the long table, at the Board meeting, while the Directors spoke about the soaring rise of the Taggart stock on the Exchange, while they cautiously asked to see his written agreement with his sister-just in case, they said-and commented that it was fine, it was hole proof, there was no doubt but that she would have to turn the Line over to Taggart Transcontinental at once, they spoke about their brilliant future and the debt of gratitude which the company owed to James Taggart.  He had sat through the meeting, wishing it were over with, so that he could go home. Then he had stepped out into the street and realized that home was the one place where he dared not go tonight. He could not be alone, not in the next few hours, yet there was nobody to call.  He did not want to see people. He kept seeing the eyes of the men of the Board when they spoke about his greatness: a sly, filmy look that held contempt for him and, more terrifyingly, for themselves.  He walked, head down, a needle of rain pricking the skin of his neck once in a while. He looked away whenever he passed a newsstand. The papers seemed to shriek at him the name of the John Galt Line, and another name which he did not want to hear: Ragnar Danneskjold. A ship bound for the People's State of Norway with an Emergency Gift cargo of machine tools had been seized by Ragnar Danneskjold last night. That story disturbed him in some personal manner which he could not explain. The feeling seemed to have some quality in common with the things he felt about the John Galt Line.  It's because he had a cold, he thought; he wouldn't feel this way if he didn't have a cold; a man couldn't be expected to be in top form when he had a cold-he couldn't help it-what did they expect him to do tonight, sing and dance?-he snapped the question angrily at the unknown judges of his unwitnessed mood. He fumbled for his handkerchief again, cursed and decided that he'd better stop somewhere to buy some paper tissues.  Across the square of what had once been a busy neighborhood, he saw the lighted windows of a dime store, still open hopefully at this late hour. There's another one that will go out of business pretty soon, he thought as he crossed the square; the thought gave him pleasure.  There were glaring lights inside, a few tired salesgirls among a spread of deserted counters, and the screaming of a phonograph record being played for a lone, listless customer in a corner. The music swallowed the sharp edges of Taggart's voice: he asked for paper tissues in a tone which implied that the salesgirl was responsible for his cold. The girl turned to the counter behind her, but turned back once to glance swiftly at his face. She took a packet, but stopped, hesitating, studying him with peculiar curiosity.  "Are you James Taggart?" she asked.  "Yes!" he snapped. "Why?"  "Oh!"  She gasped like a child at a burst of firecrackers; she was looking at him with a glance which he had thought to be reserved only for movie stars.  "I saw your picture in the paper this morning, Mr. Taggart," she said very rapidly, a faint flush appearing on her face and vanishing. "It said what a great achievement it was and how it was really you who had done it all, only you didn't want it to be known."  "Oh," said Taggart. He was smiling.  "You look just like your picture," she said in immense astonishment, and added, "Imagine you walking in here like this, in person!"  "Shouldn't I?" His tone was amused.  "I mean, everybody's talking about it, the whole country, and you're the man who did it-and here you are! I've never seen an important person before. I've never been so close to anything important, I mean to any newspaper news."  He had never had the experience of seeing his presence give color to a place he entered: the girl looked as if she was not tired any longer, as if the dime store had become a scene of drama and wonder.  "Mr. Taggart, is it true, what they said about you in the paper?"  "What did they say?"  "About your secret."  "What secret?"  "Well, they said that when everybody was fighting about your bridge, whether it would stand or not, you didn't argue with them, you just went ahead, because you knew it would stand, when nobody else was sure of it-so the Line was a Taggart project and you were the guiding spirit behind the scenes, but you kept it secret, because you didn't care whether you got credit for it or not."  He had seen the mimeographed release of his Public Relations Department. "Yes," he said, "it's true." The way she looked at him made him feel as if it were.  "It was wonderful of you, Mr. Taggart."  "Do you always remember what you read in the newspapers, so well, in such detail?"  "Why, yes, I guess so-all the interesting things. The big things. I like to read about them. Nothing big ever happens to me."  She said it gaily, without self-pity. There was a young, determined brusqueness in her voice and movements. She had a head of reddish brown curls, wide-set eyes, a few freckles on the bridge of an upturned nose. He thought that one would call her face attractive if one ever noticed it, but there was no particular reason to notice it. It was a common little face, except for a look of alertness, of eager interest, a look that expected the world to contain an exciting secret behind every corner.  "Mr. Taggart, how does it feel to be a great man?"  "How does it feel to be a little girl?"  She laughed. "Why, wonderful."  "Then you're better off than I am."  "Oh, how can you say such a-"  "Maybe you're lucky if you don't have anything to do with the big events in the newspapers. Big. What do you call big, anyway?"  "Why . . . important."  "What's important?"  "You're the one who ought to tell me that, Mr. Taggart."  "Nothing's important."  She looked at him incredulously. "You, of all people, saying that tonight of all nights!"  "1 don't feel wonderful at all, if that's what you want to know. I've never felt less wonderful in my life."  He was astonished to see her studying his face with a look of concern such as no one had ever granted him. "You're worn out, Mr. Taggart," she said earnestly. "Tell them to go to hell."  "Whom?"  "Whoever's getting you down. It isn't right."  "What isn't?"  "That you should feel this way. You've had a tough time, but you've licked them all, so you ought to enjoy yourself now. You've earned it."  "And how do you propose that I enjoy myself?"  "Oh, I don't know. But I thought you'd be having a celebration tonight, a party with all the big shots, and champagne, and things given to you, like keys to cities, a real swank party like that-instead of walking around all by yourself, shopping for paper handkerchiefs, of all fool things!"  "You give me those handkerchiefs, before you forget them altogether," he said, handing her a dime. "And as to the swank party, did it occur to you that I might not want to see anybody tonight?"  She considered it earnestly. "No," she said, "I hadn't thought of it. But I can see why you wouldn't."  "Why?" It was a question to which he bad no answer.  "Nobody's really good enough for you, Mr. Taggart," she answered very simply, not as flattery, but as a matter of fact.  "Is that what you think?"  "I don't think I like people very much, Mr. Taggart. Not most of them."  "I don't either. Not any of them."  "I thought a man like you-you wouldn't know how mean they can be and how they try to step on you and ride on your back, if you let them. I thought the big men in the world could get away from them and not have to be flea-bait all of the time, but maybe I was wrong."  "What do you mean, flea-bait?"  "Oh, it's just something I tell myself when things get tough-that I've got to beat my way out to where I won't feel like I'm flea-bitten all the time by all kinds of lousiness-but maybe it's the same anywhere, only the fleas get bigger."  "Much bigger."  She remained silent, as if considering something. "It's funny," she said sadly to some thought of her own.  "What's funny?"  "I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater-the unhappier. It didn't make sense to me. But maybe it's true."  "It's much truer than you think."  She looked away, her face disturbed.  "Why do you worry so much about the great men?" he asked. "What are you, a hero worshipper of some kind?"  She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile, while her face remained solemnly grave; it was the most eloquently personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she answered in a quiet, impersonal voice, "Mr. Taggart, what else is there to look up to?"  A screeching sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer, rang out suddenly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence.  She jerked her head, as if awakening at the scream of an alarm clock, then sighed. "That's closing time, Mr. Taggart," she said regretfully.  "Go get your hat-I'll wait for you outside," he said.  She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was one she had never held as conceivable.  "No kidding?" she whispered.  "No kidding."  She whirled around and ran like a streak to the door of the employee’s quarters, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man's invitation.  He stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling-never to identify his emotions was the only steadfast rule of his life; he merely felt it-and this particular feeling was pleasurable, which was the only identification he cared to know. But the feeling was the product of a thought he would not utter. He had often met girls of the lower classes, who had put on a brash little act, pretending to look up to him, spilling crude flattery for an obvious purpose; he had neither liked nor resented them; he had found a bored amusement in their company and he had granted them the status of his equals in a game he considered natural to both players involved. This girl was different. The unuttered words in his mind were: The damn little fool means it.  That he waited for her impatiently, when he stood in the rain on the sidewalk, that she was the one person he needed tonight, did not disturb him or strike him as a contradiction. He did not name the nature of his need. The unnamed and the unuttered could not clash into a contradiction.  When she came out, he noted the peculiar combination of her shyness and of her head held high. She wore an ugly raincoat, made worse by a gob of cheap jewelry on the lapel, and a small hat of plush flowers planted defiantly among her curls. Strangely, the lift of her head made the apparel seem attractive; it stressed how well she wore even the things she wore.  "Want to come to my place and have a drink with me?" he asked.  She nodded silently, solemnly, as if not trusting herself to find the right words of acceptance. Then she said, not looking at him, as if stating it to herself, "You didn't want to see anybody tonight, but you want to see me. . . " He had never heard so solemn a tone of pride in anyone's voice.  She was silent, when she sat beside him in the taxicab. She looked up at the skyscrapers they passed. After a while, she said, "I heard that things like this happened in New York, but I never thought they'd happen to me."  "Where do you come from?"  "Buffalo."  "Got any family?"  She hesitated. "I guess so. In Buffalo."  "What do you mean, you guess so?"  "I walked out on them."  "Why?"  "I thought that if I ever was to amount to anything, I had to get away from them, clean away."  "Why? What happened?"  "Nothing happened. And nothing was ever going to happen. That's what I couldn't stand."  "What do you mean?"  "Well, they . . . well, I guess I ought to tell you the truth, Mr. Taggart. My old man's never been any good, and Ma didn't care whether he was or not, and I got sick of it always turning out that I was the only one of the seven of us that kept a job, and the rest of them always being out of luck, one way or another. I thought if I didn't get out, it would get me-I'd rot all the way through, like the rest of them. So I bought a railroad ticket one day and left. Didn't say good-bye. They didn't even know I was going." She gave a soft, startled little laugh at a sudden thought. "Mr. Taggart," she said, "it was a Taggart train."  "When did you come here?"  "Six months ago."  "And you're all alone?"  "Yes," she said happily.  "What was it you wanted to do?"  "Well, you know-make something of myself, get somewhere."  "Where?"  "Oh, I don't know, but . . . but people do things in the world. I saw pictures of New York and I thought"-she pointed at the giant buildings beyond the streaks of rain on the cab window-"I thought, somebody built those buildings-he didn't just sit and whine that the kitchen was filthy and the roof leaking and the plumbing clogged and it's a goddamn world and . . . Mr. Taggart"-she jerked her head in a shudder and looked straight at him-"we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That's what I couldn't take-that they didn't really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger. Not enough to empty the garbage pail. And the woman next door saying it was my duty to help them, saying it made no difference what became of me or of her or of any of us, because what could anybody do anyway!" Beyond the bright look of her eyes, he saw something within her that was hurt and hard.  "I don't want to talk about them," she said. "Not with you. This-my meeting you, I mean-that's what they couldn't have. That's what I'm not going to share with them. It's mine, not theirs."  "How old are you?" he asked.  "Nineteen."  When he looked at her in the lights of his living room, he thought that she'd have a good figure if she'd eat a few meals; she seemed too thin for the height and structure of her bones. She wore a tight, shabby little black dress, which she had tried to camouflage by the gaudy plastic bracelets tinkling on her wrist. She stood looking at his room as if it were a museum where she must touch nothing and reverently memorize everything.  "What's your name?" he asked.  "Cherryl Brooks."  "Well, sit down."  He mixed the drinks in silence, while she waited obediently, sitting on the edge of an armchair. When he handed her a glass, she swallowed dutifully a few times, then held the glass clutched in her hand. He knew that she did not taste what she was drinking, did not notice it, had no time to care.  He took a gulp of his drink and put the glass down with irritation: he did not feel like drinking, either. He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoelaces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.  "Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?"  "Why should you care whether I am or not?"  "Because . . . well, if you haven't the right to be happy and proud, who has?"  "That's what I want to know-who has?" He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. "He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?"  "Who?"  "Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."  She said, puzzled, "But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?"  "He didn't do it for any noble purpose, he did it just for his own profit, he's never done anything for any other reason."  "What's wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?" Then she laughed softly, as if at the sudden solution of a riddle. "That's nonsense, Mr. Taggart. You don't mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all his profits, and so have you. You're saying those things just to be modest, when everybody knows what a great job you people have done-you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a wonderful person!"  "Yeah? That's what you think. She's a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that's what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I'm not so sure it was great-building that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation."  "But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line."  "Yes, because it was my duty-to the company and the stockholders and our employees. But don't expect me to enjoy it. I'm not so sure it was great-inventing this complex new Metal, when so many nations are in need of plain iron-why, do you know that the People's State of China hasn't even got enough nails to put wooden roofs over people's heads?"  "But . . . but I don't see that that's your fault."  "Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days-when there's so much suffering around us-would devote ten years of his life to splashing about with a lot of trick metals. You think it's great? Well, it's not any kind of superior ability, but just a hide that you couldn't pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel over his head! There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you don't read about them in the headlines and you don't run to gape at them at grade crossings-because they can't invent non-collapsible bridges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their spirit!"  She was looking at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness toned down, her eyes subdued. He felt better.  He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a sudden recollection.  "It was funny, though," he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone of a confidence to a pal. "You should have seen Orren Boyle yesterday, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt Junction! He turned green-but I mean, green, the color of a fish that's been lying around too long! Do you know what he did last night, by way of taking the bad news? Hired himself a suite at the Valhalla Hotel-and you know what that is-and the last I heard, he was still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population of upper Amsterdam Avenue!"  "Who is Mr. Boyle?" she asked, stupefied.  "Oh, a fat slob that's inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yesterday! I got a kick out of that. That-and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That smoothy didn't like it a bit, oh not a bit!-the elegant Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-leather vocabulary-but he carried it off pretty well, I must say, only you could see him squirming in every paragraph-I mean, that interview he gave out this morning, where he said, 'The country gave Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country something in return.' That was pretty nifty, considering who's been riding on the gravy train and . . . well, considering. That was better than Bertram Scudder-Mr. Scudder couldn't think of anything but 'No comment,' when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice his sentiments. 'No comment'-from Bertram Scudder who's never been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about anything you ask him or don't ask, Abyssinian poetry or the state of the ladies' rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rearden didn't invent that Metal-because he was told, by an unnamed reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless inventor whom he murdered!"  He was chuckling happily. She was listening as to a lecture on higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the language, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was certain that it did not mean-coming from him-what it would have meant anywhere else.  He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly.  He slumped into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred.  "She's coming back tomorrow," he said, with a sound like a chuckle devoid of amusement.  "Who?"  "My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she'll think she's great, won't she?"  "You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?" He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer. "Why?" she asked.  "Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."  "You don't mean it, Mr. Taggart."  "I mean, we're only human beings-and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones-so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good-that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."  "But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"  "Then he ought to apologize for it."  "To whom?"  "To those who haven't done it."  "I . . . I don't understand."  "Of course you don't. It takes years and years of study in the higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?" She shook her head, frightened. "How do you know what's good, anyway? Who knows what's good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes-as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that bridge hasn't collapsed? You only think it hasn't. How do you know that there's any bridge at all? You think that a system of philosophy-such as Dr. Pritchett's-is just something academic, remote, impractical? But it isn't. Oh, boy, how it isn't!"  "But, Mr. Taggart, the Line you built-"  "Oh, what's that Line, anyway? It's only a material achievement, is that of any importance? Is there any greatness in anything material? Only a low animal can gape at that bridge-when there are so many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recognition? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue and cry and front pages about some trick arrangement of some scraps of matter. Do they care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it's true that a great man is doomed to unhappiness in this depraved world!" He leaned forward, staring at her intently. "I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you something . . . unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person."  He saw the puzzled, anxious look of her face. "But, Mr. Taggart, you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune for you overnight, you got everything you could ask for-aren't you glad of it?"  In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, sensing a sudden fear within him. He answered, "No."  She didn't know why her voice dropped to a whisper. "You'd rather the bridge had collapsed?"  "I haven't said that!" he snapped sharply. Then he shrugged and waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. "You don't understand."  "I'm sorry . . . Oh, I know that I have such an awful lot to learn!"  "I am talking about a hunger for something much beyond that bridge. A hunger that nothing material will ever satisfy."  "What, Mr. Taggart? What is it you want?"  "Oh, there you go! The moment you ask, 'What is it?' you're back in the crude, material world where everything's got to be tagged and measured. I'm speaking of things that can't be named in materialistic words . . . the higher realms of the spirit, which man can never reach. . . . What's any human achievement, anyway? The earth is only an atom whirling in the universe-of what importance is that bridge to the solar system?"  A sudden, happy look of understanding cleared her eyes. "It's great of you, Mr. Taggart, to think that your own achievement isn't good enough for you. I guess no matter how far you've gone, you want to go still farther. You're ambitious. That's what I admire most: ambition. I mean, doing things, not stopping and giving up, but doing. I understand, Mr. Taggart . . . even if I don't understand all the big thoughts."  "You'll learn."  "Oh, I'll work very hard to learn!"  Her glance of admiration had not changed. He walked across the room, moving in that glance as in a gentle spotlight. He went to refill his glass. A mirror hung in the niche behind the portable bar. He caught a glimpse of his own figure: the tall body distorted by a sloppy, sagging posture, as if in deliberate negation of human grace, the thinning hair, the soft, sullen mouth. It struck him suddenly that she did not see him at all: what she saw was the heroic figure of a builder, with proudly straight shoulders and wind-blown hair. He chuckled aloud, feeling that this was a good joke on her, feeling dimly a satisfaction that resembled a sense of victory: the superiority of having put something over on her.  Sipping his drink, he glanced at the door of his bedroom and thought of the usual ending for an adventure of this kind. He thought that it would be easy: the girl was too awed to resist. He saw the reddish-bronze sparkle of her hair-as she sat, head bent, under a light-and a wedge of smooth, glowing skin on her shoulder. He looked away. Why bother?-he thought.  The hint of desire that he felt, was no more than a sense of physical discomfort. The sharpest impulse in his mind, nagging him to action, was not the thought of the girl, but of all the men who would not pass up an opportunity of this kind. He admitted to himself that she was a much better person than Betty Pope, perhaps the best person ever offered to him. The admission left him indifferent. He felt no more than he had felt for Betty Pope. He felt nothing. The prospect of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire to experience pleasure.  "It's getting late," he said. "Where do you live? Let me give you another drink and then I'll take you home."  When he said good-bye to her at the door of a miserable rooming house in a slum neighborhood, she hesitated, fighting not to ask a question which she desperately wished to ask him, "Will I . . . " she began, and stopped.  "What?"  "No, nothing, nothing!"  He knew that the question was: "Will I see you again?" It gave him pleasure not to answer, even though he knew that she would.  She glanced up at him once more, as if it were perhaps for the last time, then said earnestly, her voice low, "Mr. Taggart, I'm very grateful to you, because you . . . I mean, any other man would have tried to . . . I mean, that's all he'd want, but you're so much better than that, oh, so much better!"  He leaned closer to her with a faint, interested smile. "Would you have?" he asked.  She drew back from him, in sudden terror at her own words. "Oh, I didn't mean it that way!" she gasped. "Oh God, I wasn't hinting or . . . or . . ." She blushed furiously, whirled around and ran, vanishing up the long, steep stairs of the rooming house.  He stood on the sidewalk, feeling an odd, heavy, foggy sense of satisfaction: feeling as if he had committed an act of virtue-and as if he had taken his revenge upon every person who had stood cheering along the three-hundred-mile track of the John Galt Line.  When their train reached Philadelphia, Rearden left her without a word, as if the nights of their return journey deserved no acknowledgment in the daylight reality of crowded station platforms and moving engines, the reality he respected. She went on to New York, alone. But late that evening, the doorbell of her apartment rang and Dagny knew that she had expected it.  He said nothing when he entered, he looked at her, making his silent presence more intimate a greeting than words. There was the faint suggestion of a contemptuous smile in his face, at once admitting and mocking his knowledge of her hours of impatience and his own. He stood in the middle of her living room, looking slowly around him; this was her apartment, the one place in the city that had been the focus of two years of his torment, as the place he could not think about and did, the place he could not enter-and was now entering with the casual, unannounced right of an owner. He sat down in an armchair, stretching his legs forward-and she stood before him, almost as if she needed his permission to sit down and it gave her pleasure to wait.  "Shall I tell you that you did a magnificent job, building that Line?" he asked. She glanced at him in astonishment; he had never paid her open compliments of that kind; the admiration in his voice was genuine, but the hint of mockery remained in his face, and she felt as if he were speaking to some purpose which she could not guess. "I've spent all day answering questions about you--and about the Line, the Metal and the future. That, and counting the orders for the Metal.  “They're coming in at the rate of thousands of tons an hour. When was it, nine months ago?-I couldn't get a single answer anywhere. Today, I had to cut off my phone, not to listen to all the people who wanted to speak to me personally about their urgent need of Rearden Metal. What did you do today?"  "I don't know. Tried to listen to Eddie's reports-tried to get away from people-tried to find the rolling stock to put more trains on the John Galt Line, because the schedule I'd planned won't be enough for the business that's piled up in just three days."  "A great many people wanted to see you today, didn't they?"  "Why. yes."  "They'd have given anything just for a word with you, wouldn't they?" '  "I . . . I suppose so."  "The reporters kept asking me what you were like. A young boy from a local sheet kept saying that you were a great woman. He said he'd be afraid to speak to you, if he ever had the chance. He's right. That future that they're all talking and trembling about-it will be as you made it, because you had the courage none of them could conceive of. All the roads to wealth that they're scrambling for now, it's your strength that broke them open. The strength to stand against everyone. The strength to recognize no will but your own."  She caught the sinking gasp of her breath: she knew his purpose. She stood straight, her arms at her sides, her face austere, as if in unflinching endurance; she stood under the praise as under a lashing of insults.  "They kept asking you questions, too, didn't they?" He spoke intently, leaning forward. "And they looked at you with admiration. They looked, as if you stood on a mountain peak and they could only take their hats off to you across the great distance. Didn't they?"  "Yes," she whispered.  "They looked as if they knew that one may not approach you or speak in your presence or touch a fold of your dress. They knew it and it's true. They looked at you with respect, didn't they? They looked up to you?"  He seized her arm, threw her down on her knees, twisting her body against his legs, and bent down to kiss her mouth. She laughed soundlessly, her laughter mocking, but her eyes half-closed, veiled with pleasure.  Hours later, when they lay in bed together, his hand moving over her body, he asked suddenly, throwing her back against the curve of his arm, bending over her-and she knew, by the intensity of his face, by the sound of a gasp somewhere in the quality of his voice, even though his voice was low and steady, that the question broke out of him as if it were worn by the hours of torture he had spent with it: "Who were the other men that had you?"  He looked at her as if the question were a sight visualized in every detail, a sight he loathed, but would not abandon; she heard the contempt in his voice, the hatred, the suffering-and an odd eagerness that did not pertain to torture; he had asked the question, holding her body tight against him.  She answered evenly, but he saw a dangerous flicker in her eyes, as of a warning that she understood him too well. "There was only one other, Hank."  "When?"  "When I was seventeen.”  "Did it last?"  "For some years."  "Who was he?"  She drew back, lying against his arm; he leaned closer, his face taut; she held his eyes. "I won't answer you."  "Did you love him?"  "I won't answer."  "Did you like sleeping with him?"  "Yes!"  The laughter in her eyes made it sound like a slap across his face, the laughter of her knowledge that this was the answer he dreaded and wanted.  He twisted her arms behind her, holding her helpless, her breasts pressed against him; she felt the pain ripping through her shoulders, she heard the anger in his words and the huskiness of pleasure in his voice: "Who was he?"  She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain, was the shape of a mocking smile.  He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his lips.  He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out of her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eagerness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way she wanted to be taken.  * * *  The silhouette of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire in the sky, raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inexhaustible number of small black buckets rode out of the earth in a diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter kept going through the rattle of the chains which a young man in blue overalls was fastening over the machinery, securing it to the flatcars lined on the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.  Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying, blondish head.  There was a first touch of September chill in the air. All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide open, while men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking the vital organs and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.  "Another one?" asked Mr. Mowen, jerking his thumb at the plant, even though he knew the answer.  "Huh?" asked the young man, who had not noticed him standing there.  "Another company moving to Colorado?"  "Uh-huh."  "It's the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks," said Mr. Mowen. "And when you look at what's happening in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic coast . . ."  The young man was not looking and did not seem to listen. "It's like a leaking faucet," said Mr. Mowen, "and all the water's running out to Colorado. All the money." The young man flung the chain across and followed it deftly, climbing over the big shape covered with canvas.  "You'd think people would have some feeling for their native state, some loyalty . . . But they're running away. I don't know what's happening to people."  "It's the Bill," said the young man.  "What Bill?"  "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill."  "How do you mean?"  "I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he's made up his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel."  "I don't see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It's a rotten shame-old firms that have been here for generations . . . There ought to be a law . . ."  The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it. Behind him. the conveyor belt kept rising and clattering against the sky.  Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in the reddish glow of the evening.  Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since the days of his father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Quinn Ball Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.  "It isn't right," he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large, but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear him.  "That's not the way it was in my father's time. I'm not a big shot. I don't want to fight anybody. What's the matter with the world?" There was no answer, "Now you, for instance-are they taking you along to Colorado?"  "Me? No. I don't work here. I'm just transient labor. Just picked up this job helping to lug the stuff out."  "Well, where are you going to go when they move away?"  "Haven't any idea."  "What are you going to do, if more of them move out?"  "Wait and see."  Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously: he could not tell whether the answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the young man's attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking down.  He moved on, to the shrouded shapes on the next flatcar, and Mr. Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something up in space: "I've got rights, haven't I? I was born here. I expected the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he's got a right to count on it, hasn't he? . . . Something ought to be done about it."  "About what?"  "Oh, I know, you think it's great, don't you?-that Taggart boom and Rearden Metal and the gold rush to Colorado and the drunken spree out there, with Wyatt and his bunch expanding their production like kettles boiling over! Everybody thinks it's great-that's all you hear anywhere you go-people are slap-happy, making plans like six-year olds on a vacation-you'd think it was a national honeymoon of some kind or a permanent Fourth of July!"  The young man said nothing.  "Well, I don't think so," said Mr. Mowen. He lowered his voice. 'The newspapers don't say so, either-mind you that-the newspapers aren't saying anything."  Mr. Mowen heard no answer, only the clanking of the chains.  "Why are they all running to Colorado?" he asked. "What have they got down there that we haven't got?"  The young man grinned. "Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got."  "What?" The young man did not answer. "I don't see it. It's a backward, primitive, unenlightened place. They don't even have a modern government. It's the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing-outside of keeping law courts and a police department.  It doesn't do anything for the people. It doesn't help anybody. I don't see why all our best companies want to run there."  The young man glanced down at him, but did not answer.  Mr. Mowen sighed. "Things aren't right," he said. "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill was a sound idea. There's got to be a chance for everybody. It's a rotten shame if people like Quinn take unfair advantage of it. Why didn't he let somebody else start manufacturing ball bearings in Colorado? . . . I wish the Colorado people would leave us alone. That Stockton Foundry out there had no right going into the switch and signal business. That's been my business for years, I have the right of seniority, it isn't fair, it's dog-eat-dog competition, newcomers shouldn't be allowed to muscle in. Where am I going to sell switches and signals? There were two big railroads out in Colorado. Now the Phoenix-Durango's gone, so there's just Taggart Transcontinental left. It isn't fair-their forcing Dan Conway out. There's got to be room for competition. . . . And I've been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle-and now he says he can't promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there's a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench. It isn't fair-Rearden being allowed to ruin other people's markets that way. . . . And I want to get some Rearden Metal, too, I need it-but try and get it! He has a waiting line that would stretch across three states-nobody can get a scrap of it, except his old friends, people like Wyatt and Danagger and such. It isn't fair. It's discrimination. I'm just as good as the next fellow. I'm entitled to my share of that Metal."  The young man looked up. "I was in Pennsylvania last week," he s............