Atlas Shrugged [621]
He closed his eyes, as if letting the sound travel through the years behind them. "Ten years, Dagny . . ., except that once there were a few weeks when I had you before me, in plain sight, within reach, not hurrying away, but held still, as on a lighted stage, a private stage for me to watch . . . and I watched you for hours through many evenings . . . in the lighted window of an office that was called the John Galt Line. . . . And one night-"
Her breath was a faint gasp. "Was it you, that night?"
"Did you see me?"
"I saw your shadow . . . on the pavement . . . pacing back and forth . . . it looked like a struggle . . . it looked like-" She stopped; she did not want to say "torture."
"It was," he said quietly. "That night, I wanted to walk in, to face you, to speak, to . . . That was the night I came closest to breaking my oath, when I saw you slumped across your desk, when I saw you broken by the burden you were carrying-"
"John, that night, it was you that I was thinking of . . . only I didn't know it . . ."
"But, you see, 7 knew it,"
". . . it was you, all my life, through everything I did and everything I wanted . . . "
"I know it."
"John, the hardest was not when I left you in the valley . . . it was-"
"Your radio speech, the day you returned?"
"Yes! Were you listening?"
"Of course. I'm glad you did it. It was a magnificent thing to do. And I-I knew it, anyway."
"You knew . . . about Hank Rearden?"
"Before I saw you in the valley."
"Was it . . . when you learned about him, had you expected it?"
"No."
"Was it . . . ?" she stopped.
"Hard? Yes. But only for the first few days. That next night . . . Do you want me to tell you what I did the night after I learned it?"
"Yes."
"I had never seen Hank Rearden, only pictures of him in the newspapers.
I knew that he was in New York, that night, at some conference of big industrialists. I wanted to have just one look at him. I went to wait at the entrance of the hotel where that conference was held. There were bright lights under the marquee of the entrance, but it was dark beyond, on the pavement, so I could see without being seen, there were a few loafers and vagrants hanging around, there was a drizzle of rain and we clung to the walls of the building. One could tell the members of the conference when they began filing out, by their clothes and their manner-ostentatiously prosperous clothes and a manner of overbearing timidity, as if they were guiltily trying to pretend that they were what they appeared to be for that moment. There were chauffeurs driving up their cars, there were a few reporters delaying them for questions and hangers-on trying to catch a word from them. They were worn men, those industrialists, aging, flabby, frantic with the effort to disguise uncertainty. And then I saw him. He wore an expensive trenchcoat and a hat slanting across his eyes. He walked swiftly, with the kind of assurance that has to be earned, as he'd earned it. Some of his fellow industrialists pounced on him with questions, and those tycoons were acting like hangers-on around him. I caught a glimpse of him as he stood with his hand on the door of his car, his head lifted, I saw the brief flare of a smile under the slanting brim, a confident smile, impatient and a little amused. And then, for one instant, I did what I had never done before, what most men wreck their lives on doing-I saw that moment out of context, I saw the world as he made it look, as if it matched him, as if he were its symbol-I saw a world of achievement, of unenslaved energy, of unobstructed drive through purposeful years to the enjoyment of one's reward-I saw, as I stood in the rain in a crowd of vagrants, what my years would have brought me, if that world had existed, and I felt a desperate longing-he was the image of everything I should have been . . . and he had everything that should have been mine. . . . But it was only a moment. Then I saw the scene in full context again and in all of its actual meaning-I saw what price he was paying for his brilliant