"Certainly not!" The cry was immediate; it had a sound of panic and the quality of an automatic reflex, like the jerk of withdrawal of a pickpocket's hand caught in action. She added, with an angry, nervous chuckle, in a tone of sarcasm and sincerity that confessed a reluctant admission of her actual opinion, "That would be the possibility farthest from my mind."

"Then you will please apologize to Miss Taggart," said Rearden.

Dagny caught her breath, cutting off all but the faint echo of a gasp.

They both whirled to him. Lillian saw nothing in "his face; Dagny saw torture.

"It isn't necessary, Hank," she said.

"It is—for me," he answered coldly, not looking at her; he was looking at Lillian in the manner of a command that could not be disobeyed.

Lillian studied his face with mild astonishment, but without anxiety or anger, like a person confronted by a puzzle of no significance.

"But of course,” she said complaisantly, her voice smooth and confident again. "Please accept my apology, Miss Taggart, if I gave you the impression that I suspected the existence of a relationship which I would consider improbable for you and—from my knowledge of his inclinations—impossible for my husband."

She turned and walked away indifferently, leaving them together, as if in deliberate proof of her words.

Dagny stood still, her eyes closed; she was thinking of the night when Lillian had given her the bracelet. He had taken his wife's side, then; he had taken hers, now. Of the three of them, she was the only one who understood fully what this meant.

"Whatever is the worst you may wish to say to me, you will be right."

She heard him and opened her eyes. He was looking at her coldly, his face harsh, allowing no sign of pain or apology to suggest a hope of forgiveness.

"Dearest, don't torture yourself like that," she said. "I knew that you're married. I've never tried to evade that knowledge. I'm not hurt by it tonight,"

Her first word was the most violent of the several blows he felt: she had never used that word before. She had never let him hear that particular tone of tenderness. She had never spoken of his marriage in the privacy of their meetings—yet she spoke of it here with effortless simplicity.

She saw the anger in his face—the rebellion against pity—the look of saying to her contemptuously that he had betrayed no torture and needed no help—then the look of the realization that she knew his face as thoroughly as he knew hers—he closed his eyes, he inclined his head a little, and he said very quietly, "Thank you."

She smiled and turned away from him.

James Taggart held an empty champagne glass in his hand and noticed the haste with which Balph Eubank waved at a passing waiter, as if the waiter were guilty of an unpardonable lapse. Then Eubank completed his sentence: "—but you, Mr. Taggart, would know that a man who lives on a higher plane cannot be understood or appreciated. It's a hopeless struggle—trying to obtain support for literature from a world ruled by businessmen. They are nothing but stuffy, middle-class vulgarians or else predatory savages like Rearden."

"Jim," said Bertram Scudder, slapping his shoulder, "the best compliment I can pay you is that you're not a real businessman!"

"You're a man of culture, Jim," said Dr. Pritchett, "you're not an ex-ore-digger like Rearden. I don't have to explain to you the crucial need of Washington assistance to higher education."

"You really liked my last novel, Mr. Taggart?" Balph Eubank kept asking. "You really liked it?"

Orren Boyle glanced at the group, on his way across the room, but did not stop. The glance was sufficient to give him an estimate of the nature of the group's concerns. Fair enough, he thought, one's got to trade something. He knew, but did not care to name just what was being traded.

"We arc at the dawn of a new age," said James Taggart, from above the rim of his champagne glass. "We are breaking up the vicious tyranny of economic power. We will set men free of the rule of the dollar. We will release our spiritual aims from dependence on the owners of material means. We will liberate our culture from the stranglehold of the profit-chasers. We will build a society dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by—"

"—the aristocracy of pull," said a voice beyond the group.

They whirled around. The man who stood facing them was Francisco d'Anconia.

His face looked tanned by a summer sun, and his eyes were the exact color of the sky on the kind of day when he had acquired his tan.

His smile suggested a summer morning. The way he wore his formal clothes made the rest of the crowd look as if they were masquerading in borrowed costumes.

"What's the matter?" he asked in the midst of their silence. "Did I say something that somebody here didn't know?"

"How did you get here?" was the first thing James Taggart found himself able to utter.

"By plane to Newark, by taxi from there, then by elevator from my suite fifty-three floors above you."

"I didn't mean . . . that is, what I meant was—"

"Don't look so startled, James. If I land in New York and hear that there's a party going on, I wouldn't miss it, would I? You've always said that I'm just a party hound."

The group was watching them.

"I'm delighted to see you, of course," Taggart said cautiously, then added belligerently, to balance it, "But if you think you're going to—"

Francisco would not pick up the threat; he let Taggart's sentence slide into mid-air and stop, then asked politely, "If I think what?"

"You understand me very well."

"Yes. I do. Shall I tell you what I think?"

"This is hardly the moment for any—"

"I think you should present me to your bride, James. Your manners have never been glued to you too solidly—you always lose them in an emergency, and that's the time when one needs them most."

Turning to escort him toward Cherryl, Taggart caught the faint sound that came from Bertram Scudder; it was an unborn chuckle. Taggart knew that the men who had crawled at his feet a moment ago, whose hatred for Francisco d'Anconia was, perhaps, greater than his own, were enjoying the spectacle none the less. The implications of this knowledge were among the things he did not care to name.

Francisco bowed to Cherryl and offered his best wishes, as if she were the bride of a royal heir. Watching nervously, Taggart felt relief—and a touch of nameless resentment, which, if named, would have told him he wished the occasion deserved the grandeur that Francisco's manner gave it for a moment.

He was afraid to remain by Francisco's side and afraid to let him loose among the guests, He backed a few tentative steps away, but Francisco followed him, smiling.

"You didn't think I'd want to miss your wedding, James—when you're my childhood friend and best stockholder?"

"What?" gasped Taggart, and regretted it: the sound was a confession of panic.

Francisco did not seem to take note of it; he said, his voice gaily innocent, "Oh, but of course I know it. I know the stooge behind the stooge behind every name on the list of the stockholders of d'Anconia Copper. It's surprising how many men by the name of Smith and Gomez are rich enough to own big chunks of the richest corporation in the world—so you can't blame me if I was curious to learn what distinguished persons I actually have among my minority stockholders. I seem to be popular with an astonishing collection of public figures from all over the world—from People's States where you wouldn't think there's any money left at all."

Taggart said dryly, frowning, "There are many reasons—business reasons—why it is sometimes advisable not to make one's investments directly."

"One reason is that a man doesn't want people to know he's rich.