Atlas Shrugged [96]
"Who?" Dagny asked tensely, stopping.
"I know a man who knew John Galt in person. This man is an old friend of a great-aunt of mine. He was there and he saw it happen. Do you know the legend of Atlantis, Miss Taggart?"
"What?"
"Atlantis."
"Why . . . vaguely."
"The Isles of the Blessed. That is what the Greeks called it, thousands of years ago. They said Atlantis was a place where hero-spirits lived in a happiness unknown to the rest of the earth. A place which only the spirits of heroes could enter, and they reached it without dying, because they carried the secret of life within them. Atlantis was lost to mankind, even then. But the Greeks knew that it had existed. They tried to find it. Some of them said it was underground, hidden in the heart of the earth. But most of them said it was an island. A radiant island in the Western Ocean. Perhaps what they were thinking of was America. They never found it. For centuries afterward, men said it was only a legend.
They did not believe it, but they never stopped looking for it, because they knew that that was what they had to find."
"Well, what about John Galt?"
"He found it."
Dagny's interest was gone. "Who was he?"
"John Galt was a millionaire, a man of inestimable wealth. He was sailing his yacht one night, in mid-Atlantic, fighting the worst storm ever wreaked upon the world, when he found it. He saw it in the depth, where it had sunk to escape the reach of men. He saw the towers of Atlantis shining on the bottom of the ocean. It was a sight of such kind that when one had seen it, one could no longer wish to look at the rest of the earth. John Galt sank his ship and went down with his entire crew. They all chose to do it. My friend was the only one who survived."
"How interesting."
"My friend saw it with his own eyes," said the woman, offended. "It happened many years ago. But John Galt's family hushed up the story."
"And what happened to his fortune? [ don't recall ever hearing of a Galt fortune."
"It went down with him." She added belligerently, "You don't have to believe it."
"Miss Taggart doesn't," said Francisco d'Anconia. "I do."
They turned. He had followed them and he stood looking at them with the insolence of exaggerated earnestness.
"Have you ever had faith in anything, Senor d'Anconia?" the woman asked angrily.
"No, madame."
He chuckled at her brusque departure. Dagny asked coldly, "What's the joke?"
"The joke's on that fool woman. She doesn't know that she was telling you the truth."
"Do you expect me to believe that?"
"No."
"Then what do you find so amusing?"
"Oh, a great many things here. Don't you?"
"No."
"Well, that's one of the things I find amusing."
"Francisco, will you leave me alone?"
"But I have. Didn't you notice that you were first to speak to me tonight?"
"Why do you keep watching me?"
"Curiosity."
"About what?"
"Your reaction to the things which you don't find amusing."
"Why should you care about my reaction to anything?"
"That is my own way of having a good time, which, incidentally, you are not having, are you, Dagny? Besides, you're the only woman worth watching here."
She stood defiantly still, because the way he looked at her demanded an angry escape. She stood as she always did, straight and taut, her head lifted impatiently. It was the unfeminine pose of an executive. But her naked shoulder betrayed the fragility of the body under the black dress, and the pose made her most truly a woman. The proud strength became a challenge to someone's superior strength, and the fragility a reminder that the challenge could be broken. She was not conscious of it. She had met no one able to see it.
He said, looking down at her body, "Dagny, what a magnificent waste!"
She had to turn and escape. She felt herself blushing, for the first time in years: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening.
She ran, trying not to think. The music stopped her. It was a sudden blast from the radio. She noticed Mort Liddy, who had turned it on, waving his arms to a group of friends,