Atlas Shrugged

His desire for her had died in the first week of their marriage. What remained was only a need which he was unable to destroy. He had never entered a whorehouse; he thought, at times, that the self-loathing he would experience there could be no worse than what he felt when he was driven to enter his wife's bedroom.

He would often find her reading a book. She would put it aside, with a white ribbon to mark the pages. When lie lay exhausted, his eyes closed, still breathing in gasps, she would turn on the light, pick up the book and continue her reading.

He told himself that he deserved the torture, because he had wished never to touch her again and was unable to maintain his decision. He despised himself for that. He despised a need which now held no shred of joy or meaning, which had become the mere need of a woman's body, an anonymous body that belonged to a woman whom he had to forget while he held it. He became convinced that the need was depravity.

He did not condemn Lillian. He felt a dreary, indifferent respect for her. His hatred of his own desire had made him accept the doctrine that women were pure and that a pure woman was one incapable of physical pleasure.

Through the quiet agony of the years of his marriage, there had been one thought which he would not permit himself to consider; the thought of infidelity. He had given his word. He intended to keep it. It was not loyalty to Lillian; it was not the person of Lillian that he wished to protect from dishonor—but the person of his wife.

He thought of that now, standing at the window. He had not wanted to enter her room. He had fought against it. He had fought, more fiercely, against knowing the particular reason why he would not be able to withstand it tonight. Then, seeing her, he had known suddenly that he would not touch her. The reason which had driven him here tonight was the reason which made it impossible for him.

He stood still, feeling free of desire, feeling the bleak relief of indifference to his body, to this room, even to his presence here. He had turned away from her, not to see her lacquered chastity. What he thought he should feel was respect; what he felt was revulsion.

". . . but Dr. Pritchett said that our culture is dying because our universities have to depend on the alms of the meat packers, the steel puddlers and the purveyors of breakfast cereals."

Why had she married him?—he thought. That bright, crisp voice was not talking at random. She knew why he had come here. She knew what it would do to him to see her pick up a silver buffer and go on talking gaily, polishing her fingernails. She was talking about the party.

But she did not mention Bertram Scudder—or Dagny Taggart.

What had she sought in marrying him? He felt the presence of some cold, driving purpose within her—but found nothing to condemn. She had never tried to use him. She made no demands on him. She found no satisfaction in the prestige of industrial power—she spurned it—she preferred her own circle of friends. She was not after money—she spent little—she was indifferent to the kind of extravagance he could have afforded. He had no right to accuse her, he thought, or ever to break the bond. She was a woman of honor in their marriage. She wanted nothing material from him.

He turned and looked at her wearily.

"Next time you give a party," he said, "stick to your own crowd.

Don't invite what you think are my friends. I don't care to meet them socially."

She laughed, startled and pleased. "I don't blame you, darling," she said.

He walked out, adding nothing else.

What did she want from him?—he thought. What was she after? In the universe as he knew it. There was no answer.

CHAPTER VII

THE EXPLOITERS AND THE EXPLOITED

The rails rose through the rocks to the oil derricks and the oil derricks rose to the sky. Dagny stood on the bridge, looking up at the crest of the hill where the sun hit a spot of metal on the top of the highest rigging.

It looked like a white torch lighted over the snow on the ridges of Wyatt OIL By spring, she thought, the track would meet the line growing toward it from Cheyenne. She let her eyes follow the green-blue rails that started from the derricks, came down, went across the bridge and past her. She turned her head to follow them through the miles of clear air, as they went on in great curves hung on the sides of the mountains, far to the end of the new track, where a locomotive crane, like an arm of naked bones and nerves, moved tensely against the sky.

A tractor went past her, loaded with green-blue bolts. The sound of drills came as a steady shudder from far below, where men swung on metal cables, cutting the straight stone drop of the canyon wall to reinforce the abutments of the bridge. Down the track, she could see men working, their arms stiff with the tension of their muscles as they gripped the handles of electric tie tampers.