Atlas Shrugged [61]
"Will you wait for me?" she asked gaily.
He answered, without smiling, "Always."
As they went up the hill to the house, he spoke to Eddie, while she walked silently by his side. She felt that there was a new reticence between them which, strangely, was a new kind of intimacy.
She did not question him about the university. Days later, she asked him only whether he liked it.
"They're teaching a lot of drivel nowadays," he answered, "but there are a few courses I like."
"Have you made any friends there?"
"Two."
He told her nothing else.
Jim was approaching his senior year in a college in New York. His studies had given him a manner of odd, quavering belligerence, as if he had found a new weapon. He addressed Francisco once, without provocation, stopping him in the middle of the lawn to say in a tone of aggressive self-righteousness: "I think that now that you've reached college age, you ought to learn something about ideals. It's time to forget your selfish greed and give some thought to your social responsibilities, because I think that all those millions you're going to inherit are not for your personal pleasure, they are a trust for the benefit of the underprivileged and the poor, because I think that the person who doesn't realize this is the most depraved type of human being."
Francisco answered courteously, "It is not advisable, lames, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."
Dagny asked him, as they walked away, "Are there many men like Jim in the world?"
Francisco laughed. "A great many."
"Don't you mind it?"
"No. I don't have to deal with them. Why do you ask that?"
"Because I think they're dangerous in some way . . . I don't know how . . ."
"Good God, Dagny! Do you expect me to be afraid of an object like James?"
It was days later, when they were alone, walking through the woods on the shore of the river, that she asked: "Francisco, what's the most depraved type of human being?"
"The man without a purpose."
She was looking at the straight shafts of the trees that stood against the great, sudden, shining spread of space beyond. The forest was dim and cool, but the outer branches caught the hot, silver sunrays from the water. She wondered why she enjoyed the sight, when she had never taken any notice of the country around her, why she was so aware of her enjoyment, of her movements, of her body in the process of walking.
She did not want to look at Francisco. She felt that his presence seemed more intensely real when she kept her eyes away from him, almost as if the stressed awareness of herself came from him, like the sunlight from the water.
"You think you're good, don't you?" he asked.
"I always did," she answered defiantly, without turning.
"Well, let me sec you prove it. Let me see how far you'll rise with Taggart Transcontinental. No matter how good you are, I'll expect you to wring everything you've got, trying to be still better. And when you've worn yourself out to reach a goal, I'll expect you to start for another."
"Why do you think that I care to prove anything to you?" she asked.
"Want me to answer?"
"No," she whispered, her eyes fixed upon the other shore of the river in the distance.
She heard him chuckling, and after a while he said, "Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean."
"I know it now. But . . . Francisco, why are