Atlas Shrugged [78]
She asked with effort, "Is that what you're after?"
"Yes."
"Is that what you find amusing?"
"Yes."
"I am thinking of your name," she said, while another part of her mind was crying to her that reproaches were useless. "It was a tradition of your family that a d'Anconia always left a fortune greater than the one he received."
"Oh yes, my ancestors had a remarkable ability for doing the right thing at the right time-and for making the right investments. Of course, 'investment' is a relative term. It depends on what you wish to accomplish. For instance, look at San Sebastian. It cost me fifteen million dollars, but these fifteen million wiped out forty million belonging to Taggart Transcontinental, thirty-five million belonging to stockholders such as James Taggart and Orren Boyle, and hundreds of millions which will be lost in secondary consequences. That's not a bad return on an investment, is it, Dagny?"
She was sitting straight. "Do you realize what you're saying?"
"Oh, fully! Shall I beat you to it and name the consequences you were going to reproach me for? First, I don't think that Taggart Transcontinental will recover from its loss on that preposterous San Sebastian Line. You think it will, but it won't. Second, the San Sebastian helped your brother James to destroy the Phoenix-Durango, which was about the only good railroad left anywhere."
"You realize all that?"
"And a great deal more."
"Do you"-she did not know why she had to say it, except that the memory of the face with the dark, violent eyes seemed to stare at her-
"do you know Ellis Wyatt?"
"Sure."
"Do you know what this might do to him?"
"Yes. He's the one who's going to be wiped out next."
"Do you . . . find that . . . amusing?"
"Much more amusing than the ruin of the Mexican planners."
She stood up. She had called him corrupt for years; she had feared it, she had thought about it, she had tried to forget it and never think of it again; but she had never suspected how far the corruption had gone.
She was not looking at him; she did not know that she was saying it aloud, quoting his words of the past: ". . . who'll do greater honor, you-to Nat Taggart, or I-to Sebastian d'Anconia . . ."
"But didn't you realize that I named those mines in honor of my great ancestor? I think it was a tribute which he would have liked."
It took her a moment to recover her eyesight; she had never known what was meant by blasphemy or what one felt on encountering it; she knew it now.
He had risen and stood courteously, smiling down at her; it was a cold smile, impersonal and unrevealing.
She was trembling, but it did not matter. She did not care what he saw or guessed or laughed at.
"I came here because I wanted to know the reason for what you've done with your life," she said tonelessly, without anger.
"I have told you the reason," he answered gravely, "but you don't want to believe it."
"I kept seeing you as you were. I couldn't forget it. And that you should have become what you are-that does not belong in a rational universe."
"No? And the world as you see it around you, does?"
"You were not the kind of man who gets broken by any kind of world"
"True."
"Then-why?"
He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"
"Oh, don't use gutter language!"
He glanced at her. His lips held the hint of a smile, but his eyes were still, earnest and, for an instant, disturbingly perceptive.
"Why?" she repeated.
He answered, as he had answered in the night, in this hotel, ten years ago, "You're not ready to hear it."
He did not follow her to the door. She had put her hand on the doorknob when she turned-and stopped. He stood across the room, looking at her; it was a glance directed at her whole person; she knew its meaning and it held her motionless, "I still want to sleep with you," he said. "But I am not a man who is happy enough to do it."
"Not happy enough?" she repeated in complete bewilderment.
He laughed. "Is it proper that that should be the first