Atlas Shrugged [494]
Her eyes lowered, her face stern, holding her head bowed as in an act of reverence, she said slowly, as if fulfilling a solemn promise, "Will you forgive me?"
He looked astonished, then chuckled gaily, remembering, and answered, "Not yet. There's nothing to forgive, but I'll forgive it when you join us."
He rose, he drew her to her feet-and when his arms closed about her, their kiss was the summation of their past, its end and their seal of acceptance.
Galt turned to them from across the living room, when they came out. He had been standing at a window, looking at the valley-and she felt certain that he had stood there all that time. She saw his eyes studying their faces, his glance moving slowly from one to the other.
His face relaxed a little at the sight of the change in Francisco's.
Francisco smiled, asking him, "Why do you stare at me?"
"Do you know what you looked like when you came in?"
"Oh, did I? That's because I hadn't slept for three nights. John, will you invite me to dinner? I want to know how this scab of yours got here, but I think that I might collapse sound asleep in the middle of a sentence-even though right now I feel as if I'll never need any sleep at all-so I think I'd better go home and stay there till evening."
Galt was watching him with a faint smile. "But aren't you going to leave the valley in an hour?"
"What? No . . ." he said mildly, in momentary astonishment. "No!"
he laughed exultantly. "I don't have to! That's right, I haven't told you what it was, have I? I was searching for Dagny. For . . . for the wreck of her plane. She'd been reported lost in a crash in the Rockies."
"I see," said Galt quietly.
"I could have thought of anything, except that she would choose to crash in Galt's Gulch," Francisco said happily; he had the tone of that joyous relief which almost relishes the horror of the past, defying it by means of the present. "I kept flying over the district between Afton, Utah, and Winston, Colorado, over every peak and crevice of it, over every remnant of a car in any gully below, and whenever I saw one, I-" He stopped; it looked like a shudder. "Then at night, we went out on foot-the searching parties of railroad men from Winston-
we went climbing at random, with no clues, no plan, on and on, until it was daylight again, and-" He shrugged, trying to dismiss it and to smile. "I wouldn't wish it on my worst-"
He stopped short; his smile vanished and a dim reflection of the look he had worn for three days came back to his face, as if at the sudden presence of an image he had forgotten.
After a long moment, he turned to Galt. "John," his voice sounded peculiarly solemn, "could we notify those outside that Dagny is alive . . . in case there's somebody who . . . who'd feel as I did?"
Galt was looking straight at him. "Do you wish to give any outsider any relief from the consequences of remaining outside?"
Francisco dropped his eyes, but answered firmly, "No."
"Pity, Francisco?"
"Yes. Forget it. You're right."
Galt turned away with a movement that seemed oddly out of character: it had the unrhythmical abruptness of the involuntary.
He did not turn back; Francisco watched him in astonishment, then asked softly, "What's the matter?"
Galt turned and looked at him for a moment, not answering. She could not identify the emotion that softened the lines of Galt's face: it had the quality of a smile, of gentleness, of pain, and of something greater that seemed to make these concepts superfluous.
"Whatever any of us has paid for this battle," said Galt, "you're the one who's taken the hardest beating, aren't you?"
"Who? I?" Francisco grinned with shocked, incredulous amusement.
"Certainly not! What's