He turned brusquely away from the window. He seized his overcoat with the harsh sweep of a gesture intended to jolt him back into the discipline of action. He slammed the two folds of the overcoat about his body, he jerked the belt tight, then hastened to turn off the lights with rapid snaps of his hand on his way out of the office.
He threw the door open—and stopped. A single lamp was burning in a corner of the dimmed anteroom. The man who sat on the edge of a desk, in a pose of casual, patient waiting, was Francisco d’Anconia.
Rearden stood still and caught a brief instant when Francisco, not moving, looked at him with the hint of an amused smile that was like a wink between conspirators at a secret they both understood, but would not acknowledge. It was only an instant, almost too brief to grasp, because it seemed to him that Francisco rose at once at his entrance, with a movement of courteous deference. The movement suggested a strict formality, the denial of any attempt at presumption—but it stressed the intimacy of the fact that he uttered no word of greeting or explanation.
Rearden asked, his voice hard, “What are you doing here?”
“I thought that you would want to see me tonight, Mr. Rearden.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason that has kept you so late in your office. You were not working.”
“How long have you been sitting here?”
“An hour or two.”
“Why didn’t you knock at my door?”
“Would you have allowed me to come in?”
“You’re late in asking that question.”
“Shall I leave, Mr. Rearden?”
Rearden pointed to the door of his office. “Come in.”
Turning the lights on in the office, moving with unhurried control, Rearden thought that he must not allow himself to feel anything, but felt the color of life returning to him in the tensely quiet eagerness of an emotion which he would not identify. What he told himself consciously was: Be careful.
He sat down on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms, looked at Francisco, who remained standing respectfully before him, and asked with the cold hint of a smile, “Why did you come here?”
“You don’t want me to answer, Mr. Rearden. You wouldn’t admit to me or to yourself how desperately lonely you are tonight. If you don’t question me, you won’t feel obliged to deny it. Just accept what you do know, anyway: that I know it.”
Taut like a string pulled by anger against the impertinence at one end and by admiration for the frankness at the other, Rearden answered, “I’ll admit it, if you wish. What should it matter to me, that you know it?”
“That I know and care, Mr. Rearden. I’m the only man around you who does.”
“Why should you care? And why should I need your help tonight?”
“Because it’s not easy to have to damn the man who meant most to you.”
“I wouldn’t damn you if you’d only stay away from me.”
Francisco’s eyes widened a little, then he grinned and said, “I was speaking of Mr. Danagger.”
For an instant, Rearden looked as if he wanted to slap his own face, then he laughed softly and said, “All right. Sit down.”
He waited to see what advantage Francisco would take of it now, but Francisco obeyed him in silence, with a smile that had an oddly boyish quality: a look of triumph and gratitude, together.
“I don’t damn Ken Danagger,” said Rearden.
“You don’t?” The two words seemed to fall with a singular emphasis; they were pronounced very quietly, almost cautiously, with no remnant of a smile on Francisco’s face.
“No. I don’t try to prescribe how much a man should have to bear.
If he broke, it’s not for me to judge him.”
“If he broke... ?”
“Well, didn’t he?”
Francisco leaned back; his smile returned, but it was not a happy smile. “What will his disappearance do to you?”
“I will just have to work a little harder.”
Francisco looked at a steel bridge traced in black strokes against red steam beyond the window, and said, pointing, “Every one of those girders has a limit to the load it can carry. What’s yours?”
Rearden laughed. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that why you came here? Were you afraid I’d break? Did you want to save me, as Dagny Taggart wanted to save Ken Danagger? She tried to reach him in time, but couldn’t.”
“She did? I didn’t know it. Miss Taggart and I disagree about many things.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to vanish. Let them all give up and stop working. I won’t. I don’t know my limit and don’t care. All I have to know is that I can’t be stopped.”
“Any man can be stopped, Mr. Rearden.”
“How?”
“It’s only a matter of knowing man’s motive power.”
“What is it?”
“You ought to know, Mr. Rearden. You’re one of the last moral men left to the world.”
Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement. “I’ve been called just about everything but that. And you’re wrong. You have no idea how wrong.”
“Are you sure?”
“I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?”
Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. “This.”
For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then asked only, “What do you mean?”
“If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form—there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you had to choose the best within your knowledge—the best for your purpose, which was to make steel—and then move on and extend the knowledge, and do better, and still better, with your purpose as your standard of value. You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind, and the purest, the most ruthless consecration to the rule of doing right, of doing the best, the utmost best possible to you. Nothing could have made you act against your judgment, and you would have rejected as wrong—as evil—any man who attempted to tell you that the best way to heat a furnace was to fill it with ice. Millions of men, an entire nation, were not able to deter you from producing Rearden Metal—because you had the knowledge of its superlative value and the power which such knowledge gives. But what I wonder about, Mr. Rearden, is why you live by one code of principles when you deal with nature and by another when you deal with men?”
Rearden’s eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question came slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction: “What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have judged every brick within this place by its value to the goal of making steel. Have you been as strict about the goal which your work and your steel are serving? What do you wish to achieve by giving your life to the making of steel? By what standard of value do you judge your days? For instance, why did you spend ten years of exacting effort to produce Rearden Metal?”
Rearden looked away, the slight, slumping movement of his shoulders like a sigh of release and disappointment. “If you have to ask that, then you wouldn’t understand.”
“If I told you that I understand it, but you don’t—would you throw me out of here?”
“I should have thrown you out of here anyway—so go ahead, tell me what you mean.”
“Are you proud of the rail of the John Galt Line?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the best rail ever made.”
“Why did you make it?”
“In order to make money.”
“There were many easier ways to make money. Why did you choose the hardest?”
“You said it in your speech at Taggart’s wedding: in order to exchange my best effort for the best effort of others.”
“If that was your purpose, have you achieved it?”