honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.”
Rearden’s startled glance at him was like the involuntary thrust of a hand grasping for support in a desperate need. The glance betrayed how much he wanted to find the sort of man he thought he was seeing. Then Rearden lowered his eyes, almost closing them, slowly, shutting out the vision and the need. His face was hard; it had an expression of severity, an inner severity directed at himself; it looked austere and lonely.
“All right,” he said tonelessly. “What do you want, if it’s not my confidence?”
“I want to learn to understand you.”
“What for?”
“For a reason of my own which need not concern you at present.”
“What do you want to understand about me?”
Francisco looked silently out at the darkness. The fire of the mills was dying down. There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible.
“It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.”
Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny...”
“What?”
“You told me what I was thinking just a while ago...”
“You were?”
“... only I didn’t have the words for it.”
“Shall I tell you the rest of the words?”
“Go ahead.”
“You stood here and watched the storm “with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are able to have summer flowers and half naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.”
“How did you know that?”
In tune with his question, Rearden realized that it was not his thoughts this man had named, but his most hidden, most personal emotion; and that he, who would never confess his emotions to anyone, had confessed it in his question. He saw the faintest flicker in Francisco’s eyes, as of a smile or a check mark.
“What would you know about a pride of that kind?” Rearden asked sharply, as if the contempt of the second question could erase the confidence of the first.
“That is what I felt once, when I was young.”
Rearden looked at him. There was neither mockery nor self-pity in Francisco’s face; the fine, sculptured planes and the clear, blue eyes held a quiet composure, the face was open, offered to any blow, unflinching.
“Why do you want to talk about it?” Rearden asked, prompted by a moment’s reluctant compassion.
“Let us say—by way of gratitude, Mr. Rearden.”
“Gratitude to me?”
“If you will accept it.”
Rearden’s voice hardened. “I haven’t asked for gratitude. I don’t need it.”
“I have not said you needed it. But of all those whom you are saving from the storm tonight, I am the only one who will offer it.”
After a moment’s silence, Rearden asked, his voice low with a sound which was almost a threat, “What are you trying to do?”
“I am calling your attention to the nature of those for whom you are working.”
“It would take a man who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life, to think or say that.” The contempt in Rearden’s voice had a note of relief; he had been disarmed by a doubt of his judgment on the character of his adversary; now he felt certain once more. “You wouldn’t understand it if I told you that the man who works, works for himself, even if he does carry the whole wretched bunch of you along. Now I’ll guess what you’re thinking: go ahead, say that it’s evil, that I’m selfish, conceited, heartless, cruel. I am. I don’t want any part of that tripe about working for others. I’m not.”
For the first time, he saw the look of a personal reaction in Francisco’s eyes, the look of something eager and young. “The only thing that’s wrong in what you said,” Francisco answered, “is that you permit anyone to call it evil.” In Rearden’s pause of incredulous silence, he pointed at the crowd in the drawing room. “Why are you willing to carry them?”
“Because they’re a bunch of miserable children who struggle to remain alive, desperately and very badly, while I—I don’t even notice the burden.”
“Why don’t you tell them that?”
“What?”
“That you’re working for your own sake, not theirs.”
“They know it.”
“Oh yes, they know it. Every single one of them here knows it. But they don’t think you do. And the aim of all their efforts is to keep you from knowing it.”
“Why should I care what they think?”
“Because it’s a battle in which one must make one’s stand clear.”
“A battle? What battle? I hold the whip hand. I don’t fight the disarmed.”
“Are they? They have a weapon against you. It’s their only weapon, but it’s a terrible one. Ask yourself what it is, some time.”
“Where do you see any evidence of it?”
“In the unforgivable fact that you’re as unhappy as you are.”
Rearden could accept any form of reproach, abuse, damnation anyone chose to throw at him; the only human reaction which he would not accept was pity. The stab of a coldly rebellious anger brought him back to the full context of the moment. He spoke, fighting not to acknowledge the nature of the emotion rising within him, “What sort of effrontery are you indulging in? What’s your motive?”
“Let us say—to give you the words you need, for the time when you’ll need them.”
“Why should you want to speak to me on such a subject?”
“In the hope that you will remember it.”
What he felt, thought Rearden, was anger at the incomprehensible fact that he had allowed himself to enjoy this conversation. He felt a dim sense of betrayal, the hint of an unknown danger. “Do you expect me to forget what you are?” he asked, knowing that this was what he had forgotten.
“I do not expect you to think of me at all.”
Under his anger, the emotion which Rearden would not acknowledge remained unstated and unthought; he knew it only as a hint of pain.
Had he faced it, he would have known that he still heard Francisco’s voice saying, “I am the only one who will offer it... if you will accept it...” He heard the words and the strangely solemn inflection of the quiet voice and an inexplicable answer of his own, something within him that wanted to cry yes, to accept, to tell this man that he accepted, that he needed it—though there was no name for what he needed, it was not gratitude, and he knew that it was not gratitude this man had meant.
Aloud, he said, “I didn’t seek to talk to you. But you’ve asked for it and you’re going to hear it. To me, there’s only one form of human depravity—the man without a purpose.”
“That is true.”
“I can forgive all those others, they’re not vicious, they’re merely helpless. But you—you’re the kind who can’t be forgiven.”
“It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you.”
“You had the greatest chance in life. What have you done with it?
If you have the mind to understand all the things you said, how can you speak to me at all? How can you
