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spent freshman year in college “hoping I would meet a gaunt, orange-haired architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect,” she wrote.) The publisher Bobbs-Merrill boasted that two and a half million copies of the novel had been sold, in hardback and paperback. It issued a deluxe anniversary edition, with a new introduction by the author and with Frank O’Connor’s painting of a cityscape at dawn, Man Also Rises, as the cover illustration. Rand’s anniversary introduction touched on the hardships she had faced when trying to publish the book, including the legendary twelve rejections by publishers. She emphasized her continuing commitment to the novel’s theme of man worship and chastised all collectivists, religionists, and positivists who still denied man’s grandeur. And in four seemingly heartfelt paragraphs, she thanked O’Connor for his years of dedication to her and her work. “He gave me, in the hours of my own days, the reality of that sense of life which created The Fountainhead,” she wrote, repeating a phrase from Kay Gonda’s theatrical cry of longing in Ideal, and added, “The essence of the bond between us is the fact that neither of us has ever wanted or been tempted to settle for anything less than the world presented in The Fountainhead. We never will.” Again, it is impossible to know what Frank thought.

The first shoe fell in early summer. On July 3, Branden telephoned Barbara in her office and asked her to come to his apartment. When she arrived, he handed her a long letter, or “paper,” addressed to his patroness and mentor, explaining that the difference in their ages had become a barrier to his sexual response. With an oddly endearing neo-Victorian flourish, he called his loss of sexual desire for her “physical alienation.” The letter itself appears to have since been lost, but as Branden recalled its contents, it offered an apology for not telling her the truth, thanked her for all the years of support, affection, and instruction she had given him, and expressed his hope that they would remain good friends. Barbara thought it was as diplomatic as such a devastating document could be. Rand was due for dinner in Branden’s apartment at eight o’clock that evening. He planned to hand her the letter, give her time to read it, and then stand by to discuss it with her at whatever length and in whatever way she wanted.

She didn’t read the letter. She skimmed the first two pages and construed the rest. Her reaction was manic and alarming. “You bastard!” she shrieked, according to Branden’s 1989 account. “You bastard, you bastard! You nothing! You fraud! You contemptible swine!” She ran to the telephone to summon Barbara. “Come down at once,” she said, “and see what this monster has done!” When the younger woman entered, Rand handed her the sheets of paper, trembling with rage, and went on hurling accusations. “Face twisted in hatred,” Branden wrote, she shouted, “‘Everything that you have ever professed to be is a lie! Everything was stolen from me! When did you ever have an idea of your own?’” Bitterly, she lamented, “Everyone else profits from my ideas, but I am punished for them, punished for bringing happiness to others, for initiating and living up to those ideas.” His paper was the worst and most depraved instance in a lifetime of being penalized for her virtues, she cried. The best mind she had ever known had rejected her as a person, and there was nothing left to live for.

At some point during the hours of discussion that followed, he offered to make her a gift of his half ownership of The Objectivist. She rebuffed the offer as offensive. While he stood by, she swore to Barbara that she would never see or deal with him again. Her reaction appeared to be exactly as he had feared. Although she didn’t mention his sexual rejection of her and never so much as hinted that she was wounded and perhaps frightened by it, sexual abandonment was the unspoken accelerant of her rage. She accused him of immorality, irrationality, cowardice, and unforgivable exploitation of her time and her ideas. The relationship