“It’s... it’s something I’ve tried so hard to understand... for such a long time...”
“Well, observe that you never hear that accusation in defense of innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those who don’t feel any sympathy for the evil he’s committed or for the pain he suffers as a consequence. Well, it’s true—that is what I do not feel. But those who feel it, feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You’ll find that it’s one or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.
Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you’ll see what motive is the opposite of charity.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Justice, Cherryl.”
Cherryl shuddered suddenly and dropped her head. “Oh God!” she moaned. “If you knew what hell Jim has been giving me because I believed just what you said!” She raised her face in the sweep of another shudder, as if the things she had tried to control had broken through; the look in her eyes was terror. “Dagny,” she whispered, “Dagny, I’m afraid of them... of Jim and all the others... not afraid of something they’ll do... if it were that, I could escape... but afraid, as if there’s no way out... afraid of what they are and... and that they exist.”
Dagny came forward swiftly to sit on the arm of her chair and seize her shoulder in a steadying grasp. “Quiet, kid,” she said. “You’re wrong. You must never feel afraid of people in that way. You must never think that their existence is a reflection on yours—yet that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Yes... Yes, I feel that there’s no chance for me to exist, if they do... no chance, no room, no world I can cope with... I don’t want to feel it, I keep pushing it back, but it’s coming closer and I know I have no place to run... I can’t explain what it feels like, I can’t catch hold of it—and that’s part of the terror, that you can’t catch hold of anything—it’s as if the whole world were suddenly destroyed, but not by an explosion—an explosion is something hard and solid—but destroyed by... by some horrible kind of softening... as if nothing were solid, nothing held any shape at all, and you could poke your finger through stone walls and the stone would give, like jelly, and mountains would slither, and buildings would switch their shapes like clouds—and that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo.”
“Cherryl... Cherryl, you poor kid, there have been centuries of philosophers plotting to turn the world into just that—to destroy people’s minds by making them believe that that’s what they’re seeing.
But you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is—say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“But... but nothing is, any more. Jim and his friends—they’re not. I don’t know what I’m looking at, when I’m among them, I don’t know what I’m hearing when they speak... it’s not real, any of it, it’s some ghastly sort of act that they’re all going through... and I don’t know what they’re after... Dagny! We’ve always been told that human beings have such a great power of knowledge, so much greater than animals, but I—I feel blinder than any animal right now, blinder and more helpless. An animal knows who are its friends and who are its enemies, and when to defend itself. It doesn’t expect a friend to step on it or to cut its throat. It doesn’t expect to be told that love is blind, that plunder is achievement, that gangsters are statesmen and that it’s great to break the spine of Hank Rearden!—oh God, what am I saying?”
“I know what you’re saying.”
“I mean, how am I to deal with people? I mean, if nothing held firm for the length of one hour—we couldn’t go on, could we? Well, I know that things are solid—but people? Dagny! They’re nothing and anything, they’re not beings, they’re only switches, just constant switches without any shape. But I have to live among them. How am I to do it?”
“Cherryl, what you’ve been struggling with is the greatest problem in history, the one that has caused ail of human suffering. You’ve understood much more than most people, who suffer and die, never knowing what killed them. I’ll help you to understand. It’s a big subject and a hard battle—but first, above all, don’t be afraid.”
The look on Cherryl’s face was an odd, wistful longing, as if, seeing Dagny from a great distance, she were straining and failing to come closer, “I wish I could wish to fight,” she said softly, “but I don’t. I don’t even want to win any longer. There’s one change that I don’t seem to have the strength to make. You see, I had never expected anything like my marriage to Jim. Then when it happened, I thought that life was much more wonderful than I had expected. And now to get used to the idea that life and people are much more horrible than anything I had imagined and that my marriage was not a glorious miracle, but some unspeakable kind of evil which I’m still afraid to learn fully—that is what I can’t force myself to take. I can’t get past it.” She glanced up suddenly. “Dagny, how did you do it? How did you manage to remain unmangled?”
“By holding to just one rule.”
“Which?”
“To place nothing—nothing—above the verdict of my own mind.”
“You’ve taken some terrible beatings... maybe worse than I did... worse than any of us... What held you through it?”
“The knowledge that my life is the highest of values, too high to give up without a fight.”
She saw a look of astonishment, of incredulous recognition on Cherryl’s face, as if the girl were struggling to recapture some sensation across a span of years. “Dagny”—her voice was a whisper—“that’s... that’s what I felt when I was a child... that’s what I seem to remember most about myself... that kind of feeling... and I never lost it, it’s there, it’s always been there, but as I grew up, I thought it was something that I must hide... I never had any name for it, but just now, when you said it, it struck me that that’s what it was... Dagny, to feel that way about your own life—is that good?”
“Cherryl, listen to me carefully: that feeling—with everything which it requires and implies—is the highest, noblest and only good on earth.”
“The reason I ask is because I... I wouldn’t have dared to think that. Somehow, people always made me feel as if they thought it was a sin... as if that were the thing in me which they resented and... and wanted to destroy.”
“It’s true. Some people do want to destroy it. And when you learn to understand their motive, you’ll know the darkest, ugliest and only evil in the world, but you’ll be safely out of its reach.”
Cherryl’s smile was like a feeble flicker struggling to retain its hold upon a few drops of fuel, to catch them, to flare up. “It’s the first time in months,” she whispered, “that I’ve felt as if... as if there’s still a chance.” She saw Dagny’s eyes watching her with attentive concern, and she added, “I’ll be all right... Let me get used to it—to you, to all the things you said. I think I’ll come to believe it... to believe that it’s real... and that Jim doesn’t matter.” She rose to her feet, as if trying to retain the moment of assurance.
Prompted by a sudden, causeless certainty, Dagny said sharply, “Cherryl, I don’t want you to go home tonight.”
“Oh no! I’m all right. I’m not afraid, that way. Not of going home.”
“Didn’t something happen there tonight?”
“No... not really... nothing worse than usual. It was just that I began to see things a little more clearly, that was all... I’m all right. I have to think, think harder than I ever did before... and then I’ll decide what I must do. May I—” She hesitated.
“Yes?”
“May I come back to talk to you again?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, I... I’m very grateful to you.”
“Will you promise me that you’ll come back?”
“I promise.”
Dagny saw her walking off down the hall toward the elevator, saw the slump of her shoulders, then the effort that lifted them, saw the slender figure that seemed to sway then marshal all of its strength to remain erect. She looked like a plant with a broken stem, still held together by a single fiber, struggling to heal the breach, which one more gust of wind would finish.
Through the open door of his study, James Taggart had seen Cherryl cross the anteroom and walk out of the
