There had been mornings when, awakening with rays of sunlight on her face, she had thought that she must hurry to Hammond’s Market to get fresh eggs for breakfast; then, recapturing full consciousness, seeing the haze of New York beyond the window of her bedroom, she had felt a tearing stab, like a touch of death, the touch of rejecting reality. You knew it—she had told herself severely—you knew what it would be like when you made your choice. And dragging her body, like an unwilling weight, out of bed to face an unwelcome day, she would whisper: All right, even this.
The worst of the torture had been the moments when, walking down the street, she had caught a sudden glimpse of chestnut-gold, a glowing streak of hair among the heads of strangers, and had felt as if the city had vanished, as if nothing but the violent stillness within her were delaying the moment when she would rush to him and seize him; but that next moment had come as the sight of some meaningless face—and she had stood, not wishing to live through the following step, not wishing to generate the energy of living. She had tried to avoid such moments; she had tried to forbid herself to look; she had walked, keeping her eyes on the pavements. She had failed: by some will of their own, her eyes had kept leaping to every streak of gold.
She had kept the blinds raised on the windows of her office, remembering his promise, thinking only: If you are watching me, wherever you are... There were no buildings close to the height of her office, but she had looked at the distant towers, wondering which window was his observation post, wondering whether some invention of his own, some device of rays and lenses, permitted him to observe her every movement from some skyscraper a block or a mile away. She had sat at her desk, at her uncurtained windows, thinking: Just to know that you’re seeing me, even if I’m never to see you again.
And remembering it, now, in the darkness of her room, she leaped to her feet and snapped on the light.
Then she dropped her head for an instant, smiling in mirthless amusement at herself. She wondered whether her lighted windows, in the black immensity of the city, were a flare of distress, calling for his help—or a lighthouse still protecting the rest of the world.
The doorbell rang.
When she opened the door, she saw the silhouette of a girl with a faintly familiar face—and it took her a moment of startled astonishment to realize that it was Cherryl Taggart. Except for a formal exchange of greetings on a few chance encounters in the halls of the Taggart Building, they had not seen each other since the wedding.
Cherryl’s face was composed and unsmiling. “Would you permit me to speak to you”—she hesitated and ended on—“Miss Taggart?”
“Of course,” said Dagny gravely. “Come in.”
She sensed some desperate emergency in the unnatural calm of Cherryl’s manner; she became certain of it when she looked at the girl’s face in the light of the living room. “Sit down,” she said, but Cherryl remained standing.
“I came to pay a debt,” said Cherryl, her voice solemn with the effort to permit herself no sound of emotion. “I want to apologize for the things I said to you at my wedding. There’s no reason why you should forgive me, but it’s my place to tell you that I know I was insulting everything I admire and defending everything I despise. I know that admitting it now, doesn’t make up for it, and even coming here is only another presumption, there’s no reason why you should want to hear it, so I can’t even cancel the debt, I can only ask for a favor—that you let me say the things I want to say to you.”
Dagny’s shock of emotion, incredulous, warm and painful, was the wordless equivalent of the sentence: What a distance to travel in less than a year... ! She answered, the unsmiling earnestness of her voice like a hand extended in support, knowing that a smile would upset some precarious balance, “But it does make up for it, and I do want to hear it.”
“I know that it was you who ran Taggart Transcontinental. It was you who built the John Galt Line. It was you who had the mind and the courage that kept all of it alive. I suppose you thought that I married Jim for his money—as what shop girl wouldn’t have? But, you see, I married Jim because I... I thought that he was you. I thought that he was Taggart Transcontinental. Now I know that he’s”—she hesitated, then went on firmly, as if not to spare herself anything—“he’s some sort of vicious moocher, though I can’t understand of what kind or why. When I spoke to you at my wedding, I thought that I was defending greatness and attacking its enemy... but it was in reverse... it was in such horrible, unbelievable reverse!... So I wanted to tell you that I know the truth... not so much for your sake, I have no right to presume that you’d care, but... but for the sake of the things I loved.”
Dagny said slowly, “Of course I forgive it.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, and turned to go.
“Sit down.”
She shook her head. “That... that was all, Miss Taggart.”
Dagny allowed herself the first touch of a smile, no more than in the look of her eyes, as she said, “Cherryl, my name is Dagny.”
Cherryl’s answer was no more than a faint, tremulous crease of her mouth, as if, together, they had completed a single smile. “I...
I didn’t know whether I should—”
“We’re sisters, aren’t we?”
“No! Not through Jim!” It was an involuntary cry.
“No, through our own choice. Sit down, Cherryl.” The girl obeyed, struggling not to show the eagerness of her acceptance, not to grasp for support, not to break. “You’ve had a terrible time, haven’t you?”
“Yes... but that doesn’t matter... that’s my own problem... and my own fault.”
“I don’t think it was your own fault.”
Cherryl did not answer, then said suddenly, desperately, “Look... what I don’t want is charity.”
“Jim must have told you—and it’s true—that I never engage in charity.”
“Yes, he did... But what I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.”
“But there’s no reason why you should have to feel concern for me... I didn’t come here to complain and... and load another burden on your shoulders... That I happen to suffer, doesn’t give me a claim on you.”
“No, it doesn’t. But that you value all the things I value, does.”
“You mean... if you want to talk to me, it’s not alms? Not just because you feel sorry for me?”
“I feel terribly sorry for you, Cherryl, and I’d like to help you—not because you suffer, but because you haven’t deserved to suffer.”
“You mean, you wouldn’t be kind to anything weak or whining or rotten about me? Only to whatever you see in me that’s good?”
“Of course.”
Cherryl did not move her head, but she looked as if it were lifted—as if some bracing current were relaxing her features into that rare look which combines pain and dignity.
“It’s not alms, Cherryl. Don’t be afraid to speak to me.”
“It’s strange... You’re the first person I can talk to... and it feels so easy... yet I... I was afraid to speak to you. I wanted to ask your forgiveness long ago... ever since I learned the truth, I went as far as the door of your office, but I stopped and stood there in the hall and didn’t have the courage to go in... I didn’t intend to come here tonight. I went out only to... to think something over, and then, suddenly, I knew that I wanted to see you, that in the whole of the city this was the only place for me to go and the only thing still left for me to do.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“You know, Miss Tag—Dagny,” she said softly, in wonder, “you’re not as I expected you to be at all... They, Jim and his friends, they said you were hard and cold and unfeeling.”
“But it’s true, Cherryl. I am, in the sense they mean—only have they ever told you in just what sense they mean it?”
“No. They never do. They only sneer at me when I ask them what they mean by anything... about anything. What did they mean about you?”
“Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that ‘to feel’ is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality. He means... What’s the matter?” she asked, seeing the abnormal intensity of the girl’s face.