Atlas Shrugged [330]
He smiled. "Who built the John Galt Line for them?"
He saw only the faintest contraction of her mouth, but he knew that the question was like a blow across an open wound. Yet she answered quietly, "I did."
"For this kind of end?"
"For the men who did not hold out, would not fight and gave up."
"Don't you see that no other end was possible?"
"No."
"How much injustice are you willing to take?"
"As much as I'm able to fight."
"What will you do now? Tomorrow?"
She said calmly, looking straight at him with the faintly proud look of stressing her calm, "Start to tear it up."
"What?"
"The John Galt Line. Start to tear it up as good as with my own hands-with my own mind, by my own instructions. Get it ready to be closed, then tear it up and use its pieces to reinforce the transcontinental track. There's a lot of work to do. It will keep me busy." The calm cracked a little, in the faintest change of her voice: "You know, I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad that I'll have to do it myself.
That's why Nat Taggart worked all that night-just to keep going. It's not so bad as long as there's something one can do. And I'll know, at least, that I'm saving the main line."
"Dagny," he asked very quietly-and she wondered what made her feel that he looked as if his personal fate hung on her answer, "what if it were the main line that you had to dismember?"
She answered irresistibly, "Then I'd let the last engine run over me!"
-but added, "No. That's just self-pity. I wouldn't."
He said gently, "I know you wouldn't. But you'd wish you could."
"Yes."
He smiled, not looking at her; it was a mocking smile, but it was a smile of pain and the mockery was directed at himself. She wondered what made her certain of it; but she knew his face so well that she would always know what he felt, even though she could not guess his reasons any longer. She knew his face as well, she thought, as she knew every line of his body, as she could still see it, as she was suddenly aware of it under his clothes, a few feet away, in the crowding intimacy of the booth. He turned to look at her and some sudden change in his eyes made her certain that he knew what she was thinking. He looked away and picked up his glass.
"Well-" he said, "to Nat Taggart."
"And to Sebastian d'Anconia?" she asked-then regretted it, because it had sounded like mockery, which she had not intended.
But she saw a look of odd, bright clarity in his eyes and he answered firmly, with the faintly proud smile of stressing his firmness, "Yes-and to Sebastian d'Anconia,"
Her hand trembled a little and she spilled a few drops on the square of paper lace that lay on the dark, shining plastic of the table. She watched him empty his glass in a single gesture; the brusque, brief movement of his hand made it look like the gesture of some solemn pledge.
She thought suddenly that this was the first time in twelve years that he had come to her of his own choice.
He had acted as if he were confidently in control, as if his confidence were a transfusion to let her recapture hers, he had given her no time to wonder that they should be here together. Now she felt, unaccountably, that the reins he had held were gone. It was only the silence of a few blank moments and the motionless outline of his forehead, cheekbone and mouth, as he sat with his face turned away from her-
but she felt as if it were he who was now struggling for something he had to recapture.
She wondered what had been his purpose tonight-and noticed that he had, perhaps, accomplished it: he had carried her over the worst moment, he had given her an invaluable defense against despair-the knowledge that a living intelligence had heard her and understood. But why had he wanted to do it? Why had he cared about her hour of despair-after the years of agony he had given her? Why had it mattered to him how she would take the death of the John Galt Line? She noticed that this was the question she had not asked him in the lobby of the Taggart Building.
This was the bond between them, she thought: that she would never be