Atlas Shrugged [331]
He sat, leaning forward with his arms crossed on the table, looking straight ahead. He said suddenly, not turning to her: "1 am thinking of the fifteen years that Sebastian d'Anconia had to wait for the woman he loved. He did not know whether he would ever find her again, whether she would survive . . . whether she would wait for him. But he knew that she could not live through his battle and that he could not call her to him until it was won. So he waited, holding his love in the place of the hope which he had no right to hold.
But when he carried her across the threshold of his house, as the first Senora d'Anconia of a new world, he knew that the battle was won, that they were free, that nothing threatened her and nothing would ever hurt her again."
In the days of their passionate happiness, he had never given her a hint that he would come to think of her as Senora d'Anconia. For one moment, she wondered whether she had known what she had meant to him. But the moment ended in an invisible shudder: she would not believe that the past twelve years could allow the things she was hearing to be possible. This was the new trap, she thought.
"Francisco," she asked, her voice hard, "what have you done to Hank Rearden?"
He looked startled that she should think of that name at that moment "Why?" he asked.
"He told me once that you were the only man he'd ever liked. But last time I saw him, he said that he would kill you on sight."
"He did not tell you why?"
"No."
"He told you nothing about it?"
"No." She saw him smiling strangely, a smile of sadness, gratitude and longing. "I warned him that you would hurt him-when he told me that you were the only man he liked."
His words came like a sudden explosion: "He was the only man-
with one exception-to whom I could have given my life!"
"Who is the exception?"
"The man to whom I have."
"What do you mean?"
He shook his head, as if he had said more than he intended, and did not answer.
"What did you do to Rearden?"
"I'll tell you some time. Not now."
"Is that what you always do to those who . . . mean a great deal to you?"
He looked at her with a smile that had the luminous sincerity of innocence and pain. "You know," he said gently, "I could say that that is what they always do to me." He added, "But I won't. The actions-and the knowledge-were mine."
He stood up. "Shall we go? I'll take you home."
She rose and he held her coat for her; it was a wide, loose garment, and his hands guided it to enfold her body. She felt his arm remain about her shoulders a moment longer than he intended her to notice.
She glanced back at him. But he was standing oddly still, staring intently down at the table. In rising, they had brushed aside the mats of paper lace and she saw an inscription cut into the plastic of the table top. Attempts had been made to erase it, but the inscription remained, as the graven voice of some unknown drunk's despair: "Who is John Galt?"
With a brusque movement of anger, she flicked the mat back to cover the words. He chuckled.
"I can answer it," he said. "I can tell you who is John Galt."
"Really? Everybody seems to know him, but they never tell the same story twice."
"They're all true, though-all the stories you've heard about him."
"Well, what's yours? Who is he?"
"John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire-until the day when men withdraw their vultures."
The band of crossties swept in wide curves around granite corners, clinging to the mountainsides of Colorado. Dagny walked down the ties, keeping her hands in her coat pockets, and her eyes on the meaningless distance ahead; only the familiar movement of straining her steps