When she stepped out and handed him a bill, he extended the change to her and, suddenly, leaned forward for a closer look at her face.
She felt certain that he recognized her and she held his glance austerely for an instant. His bitter face and his over patched shirt were worn out by a hopeless, losing struggle. As she handed him. a tip, he said quietly, with too earnest, too solemn an emphasis for a mere acknowledgment of the corns, "Thank you, ma'am,"
She turned swiftly and hurried into the building, not to let him see the emotion which was suddenly more than she could bear.
Her head was drooping, as she unlocked the door of her apartment, and the light struck her from below, from the carpet, before she jerked her head up in astonishment at finding the apartment lighted. She took a step forward—and saw Hank Rearden standing across the room.
She was held still by two shocks: one was the sight of his presence, she had not expected him to be back so soon; the other was the sight of his face. His face had so firm, so confident, so mature a look of calm, in the faint half-smile, in the clarity of the eyes, that she felt as if he had aged decades within one month, but aged in the proper sense of human growth, aged in vision, in stature, in power. She felt that he who had lived through a month of agony, he whom she had hurt so deeply and was about to hurt more deeply still, he would now be the one to give her support and consolation, his would be the strength to protect them both. She stood motionless for only an instant, but she saw his smile deepening as if he were reading her thoughts and telling her that she had nothing to fear. She heard a slight, crackling sound and saw, on a table beside him, the lighted dial of a silent radio. Her eyes moved to his as a question and he answered by the faintest nod, barely more than a lowering of his eyelids; he had heard her broadcast.
They moved toward each other in the same moment. He seized her shoulders to support her, her face was raised to his, but he did not touch her lips, he took her hand and kissed her wrist, her fingers, her palm, as the sole form of the greeting which so much of his suffering had gone to await. And suddenly, broken by the whole of this day and of that month, she was sobbing in his arms, slumped against him, sobbing as she had never done in her life, as a woman, in surrender to pain and in a last, futile protest against it.
Holding her so that she stood and moved only by means of his body, not hers, he led her to the couch and tried to make her sit down beside him, but she slipped to the floor, to sit at his feet and bury her face in his knees and sob without defense or disguise.
He did not lift her, he let her cry, with his arm tight about her. She felt his hand on her head, on. her shoulder, she felt the protection of his firmness, a firmness which seemed to tell her that as her tears were for both of them, so was his knowledge, that he knew her pain and felt it and understood, yet was able to witness it calmly—and his calm seemed to lift her burden, by granting her the right to break, here, at his feet, by telling her that he was able to carry what she could not carry any longer. She knew dimly that this was the real Hank Rearden, and no matter what form of insulting cruelty he had once given to their first nights together, no matter how often she had seemed as the stronger of the two, this had always been within him and at the root of their bond—this strength of his which would protect her if ever hers were gone.
When she raised her head, he was smiling down at her.
"Hank . . ." she whispered guiltily, in desperate astonishment at her own break.
"Quiet, darling."
She let her face drop back on his knees; she lay still, fighting for rest, fighting against the pressure of a wordless thought: he had been able to bear and to accept her broadcast only as a confession of her love; it made the truth she now had to tell him more inhuman a blow than anyone had the right to deliver. She felt terror at the thought that she would not have the strength to do it, and terror at the thought that she would.
When she looked up at him again, he ran his hand over her forehead, brushing the hair o2 her face.
"It's over, darling," he said. "The worst of it is over, for both of us."
"No, Hank, it isn't."
He smiled.
He drew her to sit beside him, with her head on his shoulder. "Don't say anything now,” he said. "You know that we both understand all that has to be said, and we'll speak of it, but not until it has ceased to hurt you quite so much."
His hand moved down the line of her sleeve, down a fold of her skirt, with so light a pressure that it seemed as if the hand did not feel the body inside the clothes, as if he were regaining possession, not of her body, but only of its vision.
"You've taken too much," he said. "So have I. Let them batter us.
