Atlas Shrugged [235]
The car left the highway and turned toward the lighted squares of distant windows, that hung above the snow beyond a grillwork of bare branches. Then, in a soft, dim light, they sat at a table by a window facing darkness and trees. The inn stood on a knoll in the woods; it had the luxury of high cost and privacy, and an air of beautiful taste suggesting that it had not been discovered by those who sought high cost and notice. She was barely aware of the dining room; it blended away into a sense of superlative comfort, and the only ornament that caught her attention was the glitter of iced branches beyond the glass of the window.
She sat, looking out, the blue fur half-slipping off her naked arms and shoulders. He watched her through narrowed eyes, with the satisfaction of a man studying his own workmanship.
"I like giving things to you," he said, "because you don't need them."
"No?"
"And it's not that I want you to have them. I want you to have them from me."
"That is the way I do need them, Hank. From you."
"Do you understand that it's nothing but vicious self-indulgence on my part? I'm not doing it for your pleasure, but for mine."
"Hank!" The cry was involuntary; it held amusement, despair, indignation and pity. "If you'd given me those things just for my pleasure, not yours, I would have thrown them in your face."
"Yes . . . Yes, then you would-and should."
"Did you call it your vicious self-indulgence?"
"That's what they call it."
"Oh, yes! That's what they call it. What do you call it, Hank?"
"I don't know," he said indifferently, and went on intently. "I know only that if it's vicious, then let me be damned for it but that's what I want to do more than anything else on earth."
She did not answer; she sat looking straight at him with a faint smile, as if asking him to listen to the meaning of his own words.
"I've always wanted to enjoy my wealth," he said. "I didn't know how to do it. I didn't even have time to know how much T wanted to.
But I knew that all the steel I poured came back to me as liquid gold, and the gold was meant to harden into any shape I wished, and it was I who had to enjoy it. Only I couldn't. I couldn't find any purpose for it. I've found it, now. It's I who've produced that wealth and it's I who am going to let it buy for me every kind of pleasure I want-including the pleasure of seeing Row much I'm able to pay for-including the preposterous feat of turning you into a luxury object."
"But I'm a luxury object that you've paid for long ago," she said; she was not smiling.
"How?"
"By means of the same values with which you paid for your mills."
She did not know whether he understood it with that full, luminous finality which is a thought named in words; but she knew that what he felt in that moment was understanding. She saw the relaxation of an invisible smile in his eyes.
"I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures and it seemed so miserably senseless to me-after what I felt at the mills. I used to watch steel being poured, tons of liquid steel running as I wanted it to, where I wanted it. And then I'd go to a banquet and I'd see people who sat trembling in awe before their own gold dishes and lace tablecloths, as if their dining room were the master and they were just objects serving it, objects created by their diamond shirt studs and necklaces, not the other way around. Then I'd run to the sight of the first slag heap I could find-and they'd