Atlas Shrugged [312]
"I haven't given up the world as lost."
"It isn't. It never can be. But oh God!-what he would have spared us!"
"Well, I guess we have to fight, no matter what era we're caught in."
"Yes . . . You know, Mr. Rearden, I would suggest that you get a transcript of your trial and read what you said. Then see whether you are practicing it fully and consistently-or not."
"You mean that I'm not?"
"See for yourself."
"I know that you had a great deal to tell me, when we were interrupted, that night at the mills. Why don't you finish what you had to say?"
"No. It's too soon."
Francisco acted as if there were nothing unusual about this visit, as if he took it as a matter of natural course-as he had always acted in Rearden's presence. But Rearden noted that he was not so calm as he wished to appear; he was pacing the room, in a manner that seemed a release for an emotion he did not want to confess; he had forgotten the lamp and it still stood on the floor as the room's sole illumination.
"You've been taking an awful beating in the way of discoveries, haven't you?" said Francisco, "How did you like the behavior of your fellow businessmen?"
"I suppose it was to be expected."
His voice tense with the anger of compassion, Francisco said, "It's been twelve years and yet I'm still unable to see it indifferently!" The sentence sounded involuntary, as if, trying to suppress the sound of emotion, he had uttered suppressed words.
"Twelve years-since what?" asked Rearden.
There was an instant's pause, but Francisco answered calmly, "Since I understood what those men were doing," He added, "I know what you're going through right now . . . and what's still ahead."
"Thanks," said Rearden.
"For what?"
"For what you're trying so hard not to show. But don't worry about me. I'm still able to stand it. . . . You know, I didn't come here because I wanted to talk about myself or even about the trial."
"I'll agree to any subject you choose-in order to have you here."
He said it in the tone of a courteous joke; but the tone could not disguise it; he meant it. "What did you want to talk about?"
"You."
Francisco stopped. He looked at Rearden for a moment, then answered quietly, "All right."
If that which Rearden felt could have gone directly into words, past the barrier of his will, he would have cried: Don't let me down-I need you-I am fighting all of them, I have fought to my limit and am condemned to fight beyond it-and, as sole ammunition possible to me, I need the knowledge of one single man whom I can trust, respect and admire.
Instead, he said calmly, very simply-and the only note of a personal bond between them was that tone of sincerity which comes with a direct, unqualifiedly rational statement and implies the same honesty of mind in the listener-"You know, I think that the only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim."
"That's true."
"If I say that that is the dilemma you've put me in, would you help me by answering a personal question?"
"I will try."
"I don't have to tell you-I think you know it-that you are the man of the highest mind I have ever met. I am coming to accept, not as right, but at least as possible, the fact that you refuse to exercise your great ability in the world of today. But what a man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.
And this is what I find inconceivable: no matter what you've given up, so long as you chose to remain alive, how can you find any pleasure in spending a life as valuable as yours on running after cheap women and on an imbecile's idea of diversions?"
Francisco looked at him with a fine smile of amusement, as if saying: No? You didn't want to talk about yourself? And what is it that you're confessing but the desperate