Atlas Shrugged

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 "A sale," said Rearden slowly, "requires the seller's consent." He got up and walked to the window. "I'll
tell you what you can do.”
He pointed to the siding where ingots of Rearden Metal were being loaded onto freight cars. "There's
Rearden Metal. Drive down there with your trucks—like any other looter, but without his risk, because I
won't shoot you, as you know I can't—take as much of the Metal as you wish and go. Don't try to send
me payment. I won't accept it.
Don't print out a check to me. It won't be cashed. If you want that Metal, you have the guns to seize it.
Go ahead."
"Good God, Mr. Rearden, what would the public think!"
It was an instinctive, involuntary cry. The muscles of Rearden's face moved briefly in a soundless
laughter. Both of them had understood the implications of that cry. Rearden said evenly, in the grave,
unstrained tone of finality, "You need my help to make it look like a sale—like a safe, just, moral
transaction. I will not help you."
The man did not argue. He rose to leave. He said only, "You will regret the stand you've taken, Mr.
Rearden."
"I don't think so," said Rearden.
He knew that the incident was not ended. He knew also that the secrecy of Project X was not the main
reason why these people feared to make the issue public. He knew that he felt an odd, joyous,
lighthearted self-confidence. He knew that these were the right steps down the trail he had glimpsed.
Dagny lay stretched in an armchair of her living room, her eyes closed. This day had been hard, but she
knew that she would see Hank Rearden tonight. The thought of it was like a lever lifting the weight of
hours of senseless ugliness away from her.
She lay still, content to rest with the single purpose of waiting quietly for the sound of the key in the lock.
He had not telephoned her, but she had heard that he was in New York today for a conference with
producers of copper, and he never left the city till next morning, nor spent a night in New York that was
not hers. She liked to wait for him. She needed a span of time as a bridge between her days and his
nights.
The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to that savings account of
one's life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived. The only pride of her
workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived.
It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any
hour of one's life. But she could not think of it now. She was thinking of him, of the struggle she had
watched through the months behind them, his struggle for deliverance; she had known that she could help
him win, but must help him in every way except in words.
She thought of the evening last winter when he came in, took a small package from his pocket and held it
out to her, saying, "I want you to have it." She opened it and stared in incredulous bewilderment at a
pendant made of a single pear-shaped ruby that spurted a violent fire on the white satin of the jeweler's
box. It was a famous stone, which only a dozen men in the world could properly afford to purchase; he