Atlas Shrugged [164]
"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 employees1
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