But most of her mind seemed swept by some enormous sense of release, as if she were laughing at all doubts. Her glance kept going back over the path they had traveled to get here, over the two exhausting miles of a twisted trail that ran, like a precarious corkscrew, from the tip of her feet down to the floor of the valley. Her eyes kept studying it, her mind racing with some purpose of its own.

Brush, pines and a clinging carpet of moss went climbing from the green slopes far below, up the granite ledges. The moss and the brush vanished gradually, but the pines went on, struggling upward in thinning strands, till only a few dots of single trees were left, rising up the naked rock toward the white sunbursts of snow in the crevices at the peaks. She looked at the spectacle of the most ingenious mining machinery she had ever seen, then at the trail where the plodding hoofs and swaying shapes of mules provided the most ancient form of transportation.

"Francisco," she asked, pointing, "who designed the machines?"

"They're just adaptations of standard equipment."

"Who designed them?"

"I did. We don't have many men to spare. We had to make up for it."

"You're wasting an unconscionable amount of manpower and time, carting your ore on muleback. You ought to build a railroad down to the valley."

She was looking down and did not notice the sudden, eager shot of his glance to her face or the sound of caution in his voice: "I know it, but it's such a difficult job that the mine's output won't justify it at present."

"Nonsense! It's much simpler than it looks. There's a pass to the east where there's an easier grade and softer stone, I watched it on the way up, it wouldn't take so many curves, three miles of rail or less would do it."

She was pointing east, she did not notice the intensity with which the two men were watching her face.

"Just a narrow-gauge track is all you’ll need . . . like the first railroads . . . that's where the first railroads started—at mines, only they were coal mines. . . . Look, do you see that ridge? There's plenty of clearance for a three-foot gauge, you wouldn't need to do any blasting or widening. Do you see where there's a slow rise for a stretch of almost half a mile? That would be no worse than a four per cent grade, any engine could manage it." She was speaking with a swift, bright certainty, conscious of nothing but the joy of performing her natural function in her natural world where nothing could take precedence over the act of offering a solution to a problem. "The road will pay for itself within three years. I think, at a rough glance, that the costliest part of the job will be a couple of steel trestles—and there's one spot where I might have to blast a tunnel, but it's only for a hundred feet or less. I'll need a steel trestle to throw the track across that gorge and bring it here, but it's not as hard as it looks—let me show you, have you got a piece of paper?"

She did not notice with what speed Galt produced a notebook and a pencil and thrust them into her hands—she seized them, as if she expected them to be there, as if she were giving orders on a construction site where details of this kind were not to delay her.

"Let me give you a rough idea of what I mean. If we drive diagonal piles into the rock"—she was sketching rapidly—"the actual steel span would be only six hundred feet long—it would cut off this last half mile of your corkscrew turns—I could have the rail laid in three months and—"

She stopped. When she looked up at their faces, the fire had gone out of hers. She crumpled her sketch and flung it aside into the red dust of the gravel. "Oh, what for?" she cried, the despair breaking out for the first time. "To build three miles of railroad and abandon a transcontinental system!"

The two men were looking at her, she saw no reproach in their faces, only a look of understanding which was almost compassion.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, dropping her eyes.

"If you change your mind," said Francisco, "I'll hire you on the spot-—or Midas will give you a loan in five minutes to finance that railroad, if you want to own it yourself."

She shook her head. "I can't . . ." she whispered, "not yet . . ."

She raised her eyes, knowing that they knew the nature of her despair and that it was useless to hide her struggle. "I've tried it once," she said. "I've tried to give it up . . . I know what it will mean . . .

I'll think of it with every crosstie I'll see laid here, with every spike driven . . . I'll think of that other tunnel and . . . and of Nat Taggart's bridge. . . . Oh, if only I didn't have to hear about it! If only I could stay here and never know what they're doing to the railroad, and never learn when it goes!"

"You'll have to hear about it," said Galt; it was that ruthless tone, peculiarly his, which sounded implacable by being simple, devoid of any emotional value, save the quality of respect for facts. "You'll hear the whole course of the last agony of Taggart Transcontinental.

You'll hear about every wreck. You'll hear about every discontinued train. You'll hear about every abandoned line. You'll hear about the collapse of the Taggart Bridge. Nobody stays in this valley except by a full, conscious choice based on a full, conscious knowledge of every fact involved in his decision. Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever."

She looked at him, her head lifted, knowing what chance he was rejecting. She thought that no man of the outer world would have said this to her at this moment—she thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy—she felt a stab of revulsion against that code, suddenly seeing its full ugliness for the first time—she felt an enormous pride for the tight, clean face of the man before her—he saw the shape of her mouth drawn firm in self-control, yet softened by some tremulous emotion, while she answered quietly, "Thank you. You're right."

"You don't have to answer me now," he said. "You'll tell me when you've decided. There's still a week left."

"Yes," she said calmly, "just one more week."

He turned, picked up her crumpled sketch, folded it neatly and slipped it into his pocket.

"Dagny," said Francisco, "when you weigh your decision, consider the first time you quit, if you wish, but consider everything about it.

In this valley, you won't have to torture yourself by shingling roofs and building paths that lead nowhere."

"Tell me," she asked suddenly, "how did you find out where I was, that time?'1

He smiled. "It was John who told me. The destroyer, remember?

You wondered why the destroyer had not sent anyone after you. But he had. It was he who sent me there."

"He sent you?"

"Yes."

"What did he say to you?"

"Nothing much. Why?"

"What did he say? Do you remember the exact words?"

"Yes, I do remember. He said, 'If you want your chance, take it.

You’ve earned it.' I remember, because—" He turned to Galt with the untroubled frown of a slight, casual puzzle. "John, I never quite understood why you said it. Why that? Why—my chance?"

"Do you mind if I don't answer you now?"

"No, but—"

Someone hailed him from the ledges of the mine, and he went off swiftly, as if the subject required no further attention.

She was conscious of the long span of moments she took while turning her head to Galt. She knew that she would find him looking at her. She could read nothing in his eyes, except a hint of derision, as if he knew what answer she was seeking and that she would not find it in his face.

"You gave him a chance that you wanted?"

"I could have no chance till he'd had every chance possible to him."

"How did you know what he had earned?"

"I had been questioning him about you for ten years, every time I could, in every way, from every angle. No, he did not tell me—it was the way he spoke of you that did. He didn't want to speak, but he spoke too eagerly, eagerly and reluctantly together—and then I knew that it had not been just a childhood friendship. I knew how much he had given up for the strike and how desperately he hadn't given it up forever. I? I was merely questioning him about one of our most important future strikers—as I questioned him about many others,"