Atlas Shrugged [338]
She knew that she had to speak, while her mind was fighting to grasp the full meaning of her discovery. The words were part of the plan she had intended to use, if she had met him after he had found the roses in his compartment.
He did not answer, he stood watching her, frowning.
"I missed you, Henry, I know what I am confessing. But I don't expect it to mean anything to you any longer." The words did not fit the tight face, the lips that moved with effort, the eyes that kept glancing away from him down the length of the platform. "I wanted . . . I merely wanted to surprise you." A look of shrewdness and purpose was returning to her face.
He took her arm, but she drew back, a little too sharply.
"Aren't you going to say a word to me, Henry?"
"What do you wish me to say?"
"Do you hate it as much as that-having your wife come to meet you at the station?" She glanced down the platform: Dagny Taggart was walking toward them; he did not see her.
"Let's go," he said.
She would not move. "Do you?" she asked.
"What?"
"Do you hate it?"
"No, I don't hate it. I merely don't understand it."
"Tell me about your trip. I'm sure you've had a very enjoyable trip."
"Come on. We can talk at home."
"When do I ever have a chance to talk to you at home?" She was drawling her words impassively, as if she were stretching them to fill time, for some reason which he could not imagine. "I had hoped to catch a few moments of your attention-like this-between trains and business appointments and all those important matters that hold you day and night, all those great achievements of yours, such as . . .
Hello, Miss Taggart!" she said sharply, her voice loud and bright.
Rearden whirled around. Dagny was walking past them, but she stopped.
"How do you do," she said to Lillian, bowing, her face expressionless.
"I am so sorry, Miss Taggart," said Lillian, smiling, "you must forgive me if I don't know the appropriate formula of condolences for the occasion." She noted that Dagny and Rearden had not greeted each other. "You're returning from what was, in effect, the funeral of your child by my husband, aren't you?"
Dagny's mouth showed a faint line of astonishment and of contempt.
She inclined her head, by way of leave-taking, and walked on.
Lillian glanced sharply at Rearden's face, as if in deliberate emphasis. He looked at her indifferently, puzzled.
She said nothing. She followed him without a word when he turned to go. She remained silent in the taxicab, her face half-turned away from him, while they rode to the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. He felt certain, as he looked at the tautly twisted set of her mouth, that some uncustomary violence was raging within her. He had never known her to experience a strong emotion of any kind.
She whirled to face him, the moment they were alone in his room.
"So that's who it is?" she asked.
He had not expected it. He looked at her, not quite believing that he had understood it correctly.
"It's Dagny Taggart who's your mistress, isn't she?"
He did not answer.
"I happen to know that you had no compartment on that train. So I know where you've slept for the last four nights. Do you want to admit it or do you want me to send detectives to question her train crews and her house servants? Is it Dagny Taggart?"
"Yes," he answered calmly.
Her mouth twisted into an ugly chuckle; she was staring past him.
"I should have known it. I should have guessed. That's why it didn't work!"
He asked, in blank bewilderment, "What didn't work?"
She stepped back, as if to remind herself of his presence. "Had you-
when she was in our house, at the party-had you, then . . . ?"
"No. Since."
"The great businesswoman," she said, "above reproach and feminine weaknesses. The great mind detached from any concern with the body . . ." She chuckled, "The bracelet . . ." she said, with the still look that made