The Early Ayn Rand

In the place of honor, a thin little figure modeled in white rose from the billowing waves of an immense skirt, a cloud of white chiffon with rhinestones sparkling as lost raindrops in the mist. She sat, straight, poised, calm, as correct as the occasion demanded, all but her hair, brushed back off her forehead, wild, untamed, ready to fly off and to carry the white cloud away with it, away from the frightening place where she had to smile, and bow, and hide her eyes and her wish to scream. On her left sat Mr. Hamburger's huge, beaming smile and Mr. Hamburger's huge, beaming diamond shirt studs. On her right sat Winston Ayers.

He sat motionless, silent, grim; he seemed to have lost his impeccable manners and forgotten to compose his face into the proper smile of enthusiasm; he showed no enthusiasm whatever; in fact, he seemed not to know or care where he was. Heddy knew suddenly that this day, this day for which she had waited and struggled through such hell, meant nothing to her compared to the thoughts which she could not guess in the mind of the man beside her. He made no effort to speak to her. So she did not turn to him, but smiled dutifully at Mr. Hamburger, at the flowers, at the endless, ringing sentences of the speakers:

"Miss Leland, whose incomparable talent... Miss Leland, whose brilliant youth has achieved... Hollywood is proud to welcome... Fame never smiled so brightly upon a greater future... We, who are ever on the lookout for the great and the gifted..."

"Miss Leland..." Winston Ayers overtook her in a dark gallery of the building, where she had fled to be alone, to leave the great banquet unnoticed and escape. She stopped short. At least, someone had missed her; he had, he who had not seemed to know that she was there.

She stood still, white as a statue in the darkness. A cold wind blew from the Hollywood hills, flaring her skirt out like a sail. He approached. He stood looking down at her. The look in his eyes did not seem to fit the words she heard in his slow, mocking voice:

"I have neglected my duties on this great day, Miss Leland," he said. "Consider yourself congratulated."

She answered without moving:

"Thank you, Mr. Ayers. And thank you — for everything."

"Unnecessary," he shrugged. "From now on, you need no further help from me." She knew he said it as an insult; but it sounded like regret.

"I'm glad of it!" she said suddenly, before she knew she was saying it, her voice alive for the first time, alive and trembling. "I still owe it all to you, but I wish I didn't. Not to you. To anyone but you. Gratitude is such a hard thing to bear. Because it can... it can..." She could not say it. "Because it can take the place of everything else, be considered to cover, to explain everything else, to... I don't want to be grateful to you! Not grateful! I wish I could die for you, but not because of gratitude! Because I..."

She stopped in time. She didn't know what she was saying; surely, she thought, he couldn't know it either. But he stood very close to her now. She looked up at him. She knew what his eyes were saying, she knew it so clearly all of a sudden, that she hardly heard his words and paid no attention to them, his words that were still struggling against that to which his eyes had surrendered.

“You owe nothing to me," he was saying coldly. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I knew I'd have to. I didn't select you because I had faith in you or because I saw anything in you. I'm just as much of a fool as the others. I selected you as a trick, a gag — to prove something unimportant to someone even less important. I'll tell you the whole story someday. I can't claim your gratitude. I can claim nothing from you. I didn't think it would ever make any difference to me, but it does. It does." He finished in a grim, low voice, still hard, still cold, but something in its coldness had broken: "Because I love you."

It was not the mocking, skeptical writer who took in his arms the trembling little white figure and whose lips met hers hungrily...

"Oh, my dear, my dear," said Winston Ayers when he led Heddy Ayers into his apartment, three days later, "more than movie careers depends on chance!"

More than movie careers depends on chance...

"Extry! Extry!" the newsboys were yelling on street corners. "Horrible catastrophe! Airliner crashes with twelve passengers!"

Eager citizens tore the papers out of the boys' hands, with the hungry joy of a big sensation. And the sensation grew when the next editions appeared with huge black headlines:

CLAIRE NASH DEAD

In smaller type it was explained that the star had been registered among the passengers of the ill-fated liner which crashed on its way to the last stop before Los Angeles; that no one aboard had survived; that the bodies were mangled beyond recognition.