Atlas Shrugged [513]
The hint of derision remained in his eyes; he knew that she had wanted to hear this, but that this was not the answer to the one question she feared.
She looked from his face to Francisco's approaching figure, not hiding from herself any longer that her sudden, heavy, desolate anxiety was the fear that Galt might throw the three of them into the hopeless waste of self-sacrifice.
Francisco approached, looking at her thoughtfully, as if weighing some question of his own, but some question that gave a sparkle of reckless gaiety to his eyes.
"Dagny, there's only one week left," he said. "If you decide to go back, it will be the last, for a long time," There was no reproach and no sadness in his voice, only some softened quality as sole evidence of emotion. "If you leave now-oh yes, you'll still come back -but it won't be soon. And I-in a few months, I'll come to live here permanently, so if you go, I won't see you again, perhaps for years.
I'd like you to spend this last week with me. I'd like you to move to my house. As my guest, nothing else, for no reason, except that I'd like you to."
He said it simply, as if nothing were or could be hidden among the three of them. She saw no sign of astonishment in Galt's face. She felt some swift tightening in her chest, something hard, reckless and almost vicious that had the quality of a dark excitement driving her blindly into action.
"But I'm an employee," she said, with an odd smile, looking at Galt, "I have a job to finish."
"I won't hold you to it," said Galt, and she felt anger at the tone of his voice, a tone that granted her no hidden significance and answered nothing but the literal meaning of her words. "You can quit the job any time you wish. It's up to you."
"No, it isn't. I'm a prisoner here. Don't you remember? I'm to take orders. I have no preferences to follow, no wishes to express, no decisions to make. I want the decision to be yours."
"You want it to be mine?"
"Yes!"
"You've expressed a wish."
The mockery of his voice was in its seriousness-and she threw at him defiantly, not smiling, as if daring him to continue pretending that he did not understand: "All right. That's what I wish!"
He smiled, as at a child's complex scheming which he had long since seen through. "Very well." But he did not smile, as he said, turning to Francisco, "Then-no."
The defiance toward an adversary who was the sternest of teachers, was all that Francisco had read in her face. He shrugged, regretfully, but gaily. "You're probably right. If you can't prevent her from going back-nobody can."
She was not hearing Francisco's words. She was stunned by the magnitude of the relief that hit her at the sound of Galt's answer, a relief that told her the magnitude of the fear it swept away. She knew, only after it was over, what had hung for her on his decision; she knew that had his answer been different, it would have destroyed the valley in her eyes.
She wanted to laugh, she wanted to embrace them both and laugh with them in celebration., it did not seem to matter whether she would stay here or return to the world, a week was like an endless span of time, either course seemed flooded by an unchanging sunlight-and no struggle was hard, she thought, if this was the nature of existence. The relief did not come from the knowledge that he would not renounce her, nor from arty assurance that she would win-the relief came from the certainty that he would always remain what he was.
"I don't know whether I'll go back to the world or not," she said soberly, but her voice was trembling with a subdued violence, which was pure gaiety. "I'm sorry that I'm still unable to make a decision.
I'm certain of only one thing: that I won't be afraid to decide."
Francisco took the sudden brightness of her face as proof that the incident had been of no significance. But Galt understood; he glanced at her and the glance was part