She did not answer; she sat looking straight at him with a faint smile, as if asking him to listen to the meaning of his own words.
"I've always wanted to enjoy my wealth," he said. "I didn't know how to do it. I didn't even have time to know how much T wanted to.
But I knew that all the steel I poured came back to me as liquid gold, and the gold was meant to harden into any shape I wished, and it was I who had to enjoy it. Only I couldn't. I couldn't find any purpose for it. I've found it, now. It's I who've produced that wealth and it's I who am going to let it buy for me every kind of pleasure I want—including the pleasure of seeing Row much I'm able to pay for—including the preposterous feat of turning you into a luxury object."
"But I'm a luxury object that you've paid for long ago," she said; she was not smiling.
"How?"
"By means of the same values with which you paid for your mills."
She did not know whether he understood it with that full, luminous finality which is a thought named in words; but she knew that what he felt in that moment was understanding. She saw the relaxation of an invisible smile in his eyes.
"I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures and it seemed so miserably senseless to me—after what I felt at the mills. I used to watch steel being poured, tons of liquid steel running as I wanted it to, where I wanted it. And then I'd go to a banquet and I'd see people who sat trembling in awe before their own gold dishes and lace tablecloths, as if their dining room were the master and they were just objects serving it, objects created by their diamond shirt studs and necklaces, not the other way around. Then I'd run to the sight of the first slag heap I could find—and they'd say that I didn't know how to enjoy life, because I cared for nothing but business."
He looked at the dim, sculptured beauty of the room and at the people who sat at the tables. They sat in a manner of self-conscious display, as if the enormous cost of their clothes and the enormous care of their grooming should have fused into splendor, but didn't. Their faces had a look of rancorous anxiety.
"Dagny, look at those people. They're supposed to be the playboys of life, the amusement-seekers and luxury-lovers. They sit there, waiting for this place to give them meaning, not the other way around.
But they're always shown to us as the enjoyers of material pleasures —and then we're taught that enjoyment of material pleasures is evil.
Enjoyment? Are they enjoying it? Isn't there some sort of perversion in what we're taught, some error that's vicious and very important?"
"Yes, Hank—very vicious and very, very important."
"They are the playboys, while we're just tradesmen, you and I. Do you realize that we're much more capable of enjoying this place than they can ever hope to be?"
"Yes."
He said slowly, in the tone of a quotation, "Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours." She looked at him, startled. He smiled. "I remember every word you said to me at that party. I didn't answer you then, because the only answer I had, the only thing your words meant to me, was an answer that you would hate me for, I thought; it was that I wanted you." He looked at her. "Dagny, you didn't intend it then, but what you were saying was that you wanted to sleep with me, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Hank. Of course."
He held her eyes, then looked away. They were silent for a long time. He glanced at the soft twilight around them, then at the sparkle of two wine glasses on their table. "Dagny, in my youth, when I was working in the ore mines in Minnesota, I thought that I wanted to reach an evening like this. No, that was not what I was working for, and I didn't think of it often. But once in a while, on a winter night, when the stars were out and it was very cold, when I was tired, because I had worked two shifts, and wanted nothing on earth except to lie down and fall asleep right there, on the mine ledge—I thought that some day I would sit in a place like this, where one drink of wine would cost more than my day's wages, and I would have earned the price of every minute of it and of every drop and of every flower on the table, and I would sit there for no purpose but my own amusement."
She asked, smiling, "With your mistress?"
She saw the shot of pain in his eyes and wished desperately that she had not said it.
"With . . . a woman," he answered. She knew the word he had not pronounced. He went on, his voice soft and steady: "When I became rich and saw what the rich did for their amusement, I thought that the place I had imagined, did not exist. I had not even imagined it too clearly. I did not know what it would be like, only what I would feel. I gave up expecting it years ago. But I feel it tonight."
He raised his glass, looking at her.
"Hank, I . . . I'd give up anything I've ever had in my life, except my being a . . . a luxury object of your amusement."
