Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [487]
He entered the house, and as he moved across the living room, he did not look to his left and neither did she, but she knew that both of them were seeing the door on his left that led to his bedroom. He walked the length of the darkness to the wedge of moonlight that fell across the guest-room bed, he placed her down upon it, she felt an instant’s pause of his hands still holding her shoulder and waistline, and when his hands left her body, she knew that the moment was over.
He stepped back and pressed a switch, surrendering the room to the harshly public glare of light. He stood still, as if demanding that she look at him, his face expectant and stern.
“Have you forgotten that you wanted to shoot me on sight?” he .asked.
It was the unprotected stillness of his figure that made it real. The shudder that threw her upright was like a cry of terror and denial; but she held his glance and answered evenly, “That’s true. I did.”
“Then stand by it.”
Her voice was low, its intensity was both a surrender and a scornful reproach: “You know better than that, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “No. I want you to remember that that had been your wish. You were right, in the past. So long as you were part of the outer world, you had to seek to destroy me. And of the two courses now open to you, one will lead you to the day when you will find yourself forced to do it.” She did not answer, she sat looking down, he saw the strands of her hair swing jerkily as she shook her head in desperate protest. “You are my only danger. You are the only person who could deliver me to my enemies. If you remain with them, you will. Choose that, if you wish, but choose it with full knowledge. Don’t answer me now. But until you do”—the stress of severity in his voice was the sound of effort directed against himself—“remember that I know the meaning of either answer.”
“As fully as I do?” she whispered.
“As fully.”
He turned to go, when her eyes fell suddenly upon the inscriptions she had noticed, and forgotten, on the walls of the room.
They were cut into the polish of the wood, still showing the force of the pencil’s pressure in the hands that had made them, each in his own violent writing: “You’ll get over it—Ellis Wyatt” “It will be all right by morning—Ken Danagger” “It’s worth it—Roger Marsh.” There were others.
“What is that?” she asked.
He smiled. “This is the room where they spent their first night in the valley. The first night is the hardest. It’s the last pull of the break with one’s memories, and the worst. I let them stay here, so they can call for me, if they want me. I speak to them, if they can’t sleep. Most of them can’t. But they’re free of it by morning.... They’ve all gone through this room. Now they call it the torture chamber or the anteroom—because everyone has to enter the valley through my house.”
He turned to go, he stopped on the threshold and added:
“This is the room I never intended you to occupy. Good night, Miss Taggart.”
CHAPTER II
THE UTOPIA OF GREED
“Good morning.”
She looked at him across the living room from the threshold of her door. In the windows behind him, the mountains had that tinge of silver-pink which seems brighter than daylight, with the promise of a light to come. The sun had risen somewhere over the earth, but it had not reached the top of the barrier, and the sky was glowing in its stead, announcing its motion. She had heard the joyous greeting to the sunrise, which was not the song of birds, but the ringing of the telephone a moment ago; she saw the start of day, not in the shining green of the branches outside, but in the glitter of chromium on the stove, the sparkle of a glass ashtray on a table, and the crisp whiteness of his shirt sleeves. Irresistibly, she heard the sound of a smile in her own voice, matching his, as she answered:
“Good morning.”
He was gathering notes of penciled calculations from his desk and stuffing them into his pocket.